Lets start with what may be the most challenging concept first, for it is the thing which we have been taught to be most afraid: That Person Is You! Theyve got nicknames: Lizards, Turkeys, Skells, Scrotes, a tassel of radio codes, Gomers, Scumbags, Idiots, a plethora of racial epithets, the Terminal CA in bed four, and names youve never thought of but sound funny and ring true. Whether youre in the hospital, ambulance, doctors office, laboratory, massage room, or mechanics bay, theres something the people with whom you are in contact can be called to help you keep your distance. It boils down to one word, them. The funny thing is, when you enter the healing arts you put yourself into the most likely position to experience the truth that we are basically experiencing the same thing, and its called life. There is no them. There is only us. Most often, the realization comes when least expected. There you are, in the role of caregiver, and you lose the sensation of the difference between you and the person youre with. Something in the present rings so true with something that lives inside you that you cannot escape it. This could be called a moment of "unplanned connection" where the barrier between lives evaporates. You suddenly become part of the Great Mystery where, for a brief flash, its all you including him. If, in your work with others you havent yet experienced this, you will. Guaranteed! Often, its not a pretty sight. Working with someone reprehensible, it becomes unavoidable that given a series of events -- custom-designed to hit your own personal hot buttons -- you would crumble close to the same way. Oh, what a grisly reflection! We have been taught to shrug off the experience of Oneness, joke around it, or completely cut off the feelings surrounding the moments impact on us. All that, we are told, is not real. Whats in the drug box, thats real! What makes it harder is we are taught that when you feel the experience of others you cannot ACT in their behalf. The assumption is, feeling the connection will hobble your effectiveness because youll be living in the emotion and not in the moment requiring action. All it takes is the truth of that one experience of Oneness to get the point. When you know this, you cannot un-know it. From then on, unless you learn to embrace and work with the concept, you tend to look for avenues of escape. Why? Because, as Charlie Brown puts it, Pain hurts! and an imposed fear makes you believe that the empathetic pain you feel while with another will never end. In truth, emotional pain is just an experience of the moment. Each moment carries with it a new emotion. If you allow yourself to get stuck on one moment, one emotion, of course you are in the past or future, not in the now. The now is where the action must occur. Suppressing, denying, or avoiding an experience of any sort DOES mean youre stuck because the energy of that emotion, when held back, does not go away, it lurks in the shadows awaiting expression. Then, it becomes a matter of having to apply more and more effort to keep a growing pile of tinder in your gut from igniting. In the process, there is a hardening that goes on that keeps you away from not only that connection, but all connections, the most severe being the connection to yourself. So now what? The understanding that we are connected can live inside of you and be operational without it having to overwhelm you. Acknowledging it will neither disable your ability to function, nor compel you to have to be a Mother Teresa, the Christ, or the Buddha all the time, every time. Rather than resisting emotions of empathy, sympathetic reactions, or the sense of connection -- or even rage and disgust -- allow them to pass through you. Yes, you will experience tinges of fear, sadness, anger, maybe even despair, but practice will show you that in the next moment (and in the most unlikely of circumstances, too!) you will also experience hope, joy and wonder. It is in the resistance of what we call "negative" emotions that the smoldering begins. What you will find is that being human means having a fluid emotional life. Recognizing this in yourself also allows you to work more effectively with others by going with the flow of their emotions moment to moment and working with what is rather than what you want it to be to protect yourself. The act of not resisting the flow of e-motion energy in motion -- will help you to discover new ways to approach every person you deal with. By being willing to notice the ways that you do share a common heartbeat, it will be easier to see and appreciate the mystery of diversity of which you are a part. |
