The BLEEDING Heart of Compassion

Gyomei Himejima, Anime: Demon Slayer Kimetsu No Yaiba S4 - Episode 6, Fair Use

What is a bleeding heart of compassion? Why are there Buddhist drawing of the meditating saints weeping with compassionate love for all beings? What is taking place? What does this compassion look like, feel like, express like? Can those of us who feel like we are more regular people reach this stage?

For those who have yet to experience the opening the heart, perhaps your past pain, clinging and grasping has been too great. Something tightened your inner warmth within many protective walls. You did what you needed to at the time.

You reached for love and didn’t understand. There was pain. There was desire. There was suffering. This is love? You thought. You closed, closed, closed.

“There is no love. There is no hope. I will be brave. I will be strong. I will try my best…,” all these things you say consecutively over time. Then you proclaim, “I am healed!” as you supposedly feel stronger, but really you only hardened around the pain, keeping it compartmentalised whilst still the calloused coldness remains deep within.

Why me? When is my turn? Your pain is felt. It is real. It is a journey of restriction, tightening, suffering, to feel this side of reality. And when the moment is right for your true surrender, you will begin to understand, to comprehend how to forgive—yourself & others, letting go of all of it. You feel it all and travel through this pain, these feelings without any attachment simply forgiving all of it.

I forgive myself for how I acted and felt. I was doing the best I could with what I knew at the time.

You learn how to surrender—to give up your pain, stories, craving and let it all go, opening to the love that was always beaming brightly within your own heart, beneath all the coverings and obscuration. This is the natural quality of what we call the Essence.

I move into the loving awareness that sees all as One, that naturally knows and understands what the mind cannot explain. I observe everything without clinging, labels, stories or getting involved in my thoughts and emotions.

In the Gnostic teachings, we refer to this as dis-identification.

And finally, you learn how to accept—every moment, every event is an expression of sweet beauty in manifestation when we know how to see this.

I remain open, continuously observant all that is within and without, allowing, perceiving with intuition, freedom and balance. I do not tighten or wrap around any circumstance with stories, clinging, nor pain.

This description we could call, an Awakening of the Consciousness in its level.

To forgive, we can practice quieting the mind and reviewing all these past hurts and disappointments, applying forgiveness to it all. Continue in this practice for as long as it takes without any judgement or attachment to time. Allow this process.

Let’s now expand on this important middle step—surrender—where many may struggle.

What is this surrender we need to re-open to love? Perhaps the words of the song Walls can touch us with a sense of what this means?

Some walls are made of stone
Sometimes we build our own
Some walls stand for years
And some wash away with tears
Some walls are lined with gold where
Some hearts stay safe and cold
Some walls are made from doubt
Holding in and keeping out
If there's any hope for love at all...
Some walls must fall

—Written by Randy Sharp, Mary Ann Kennedy and Pam Rose, performed by Tommy Emmanuel & Lizzie Watkins

It is our own walls which we must surrender in order to open to love. Love is the force within us, not something we “get” from someone else.

If we can surrender, we move into the practice of continuous acceptance.

How do we accept the world and everything that happens? Reality is a mathematical dance of forces at play. Fighting it, resenting it, resisting it all do not change nor take away these events. Quoting the late Bhante Vimalaramsi, the founder and abbot of the Dhamma Sukha Meditation Center near Annapolis, Missouri, “It HAS to be okay, because it’s the truth.”

So when we know…

we cannot stop others from hating or being against us,

we cannot stop our workmates from giving us challenges,

we cannot stop a neighbour from being grumpy,

we cannot make the man or woman of our dreams appear to supposedly build some kind of fantasy fairytale like every Disney story or those couples we admire,

we cannot regain the friends we lost due to mistakes and misunderstandings,

we cannot make another give up their resentment and bitterness,

we cannot undo those hurts we caused when we were caught up in our own selfishness and narcissism,

we cannot stop those who spread hateful words and arguments,

we cannot house all of the homeless people nor can we stop the addicts of drugs and alcohol from continuing in their habits of degradation,

we cannot make those on opposite sides of the fence to unite their hearts in common ground,

we cannot stop the wars that are being fought now and the wars we may fear to come…

In the face of all these things that we cannot control, where we wish there were more love in the world, we start by HEALING OURSELVES, knowing that we are a legitimate part of this collective, with our part to play.

We do not fall into apathy, numbness or rejection. We do not lose hope, faith and confidence. We gather our strength and courage. We make peace with all that we see and experience.

Instead of closing, hardening, judging, separating, we lean into the very LIFE FORCE that pulses in our veins, that is richly abundant when we begin to tap into it and ALLOW it. We open to the place of love that has been hidden within, knowing that this is all we need. Little by little, this is the radiance that has the power to heal the world. We may not be able to convince anyone of anything, but that is not our work. Our work is to heal ourselves and this powerful AWAKENING TO DIVINE LOVE, is what begins to realign the collective.

Master Samael Aun Weor said,

“The love and resentments are atomic substances incompatible. In love there can be no resentment of any kind. Love is eternal forgiveness.”

“Only the great Souls can and know how to love.”

“Really Love itself is the extract of the whole Knowledge… in the final synthesis the Wisdom can be reduced into Love, and the Love into Happiness.”

Once we remember that we are whole within, we can begin to send this compassion outwards, so that we could never put another being outside of our heart. To paraphrase Ram Dass, we need to learn to allow the pain that continuously breaks us open, but never let us give up on love. We are talking about true love that doesn’t seek but gives unconditionally and is thereby made complete in its expression.

The teacher of loving awareness, Ram Dass had said:

“…when I’m breathing out of my heart, I allow whatever love I can muster for anything to be offered to people, to beings around me, and when I’m breathing in, I’m taking the existence of the universe into myself… the breathing out is, ‘May all beings be free of suffering…’”

“I’d rather have my heartbreak again and again and again… because then I am alive in the situation.”

“Our rational minds can never understand what has happened, but our hearts… if we can keep them open… will find their own intuitive way.”

“It’s not just about ‘Oh, ok, love everyone, sure,’ it’s about looking for a deeper feeling of actual connectedness with the universe — tuning into that and then softening and opening to it.”

Ram Dass

What is the result of learning to forgive, surrender & accept? Compassion. This loving compassion radiates out from the heart. It shatters all the us-them barriers so that we have the natural capacity to radiate love to all beings—ALL BEINGS. Could you put a picture of someone difficult or oppressive on your altar and radiate love to them? When we put someone out of our heart—ANYONE—we become responsible for perpetuating the separation of polar opposites amongst our brothers and sisters of the collective.

To bring this to life, the story of hippies going to protest during the counterculture movement of the late 1960s arises.

“Hippies create police. Police create hippies. If you’re in polarity, you’re creating polar opposites. You can only protest effectively when you love the person whose ideas you are protesting against as much as yourself.”

—Ram Dass

“I know many of you will feel uncomfortable when I say this, but the hippies create the police as much as the police create the hippies … as long as you are attached to whatever pole you are representing, the vibrations which you are sending out are creating its polar opposite around you.”

—Ram Dass

Any strengthening of “one side of the fence” increases its opposite. Only when we are in full balance with the conciliating force of Divine Love and equanimous neutrality can we hold balance for ourselves and the reality around us. It is the very balance that is required for every stage of the spiritual path.

When we sit with compassion, radiating it outward to even the most supposedly difficult characters, we see that they are also us, playing their part in this subjective experience, even if their role in this construct is a negative one.

VM Lakhsmi was yet another of many spiritual teachers who taught this same thread regarding the power of Love—not human love, but Divine Love:

"There is no Religion which is more elevated than LOVE. That man or woman who has love and who cultivates that love just like one cultivates the little flower in one’s garden... this, thus, is how love is strengthened in the heart of the human."

"Wisdom is tenderness; it is the maximum expression of love."

And VM Lakhsmi adds this important secret to maintaining this balance once we reach this state:

"We must gravitate in the heart... It is the stabilizing element in every characteristic of the person; it is the center of gravity."

Again we hear this message echoed from Source by another great spiritual teacher:

“Let thy Soul lend its ear to every cry of pain like as the lotus bares its heart to drink the morning sun.”
— The Voice of the Silence, Fragment I, HP Blavasky

HP Blavatsky

This same message comes from many because it is UNIVERSAL. It is that which we re-discover within ourselves, through honest opening and return to our soul-memory. Thereby we have what is called Gnosis—knowledge through direct experience. In this way, it is not a teaching that we receive from anyone external, but a remembering within ourselves. Until we contact this within, it is only words.

When this compassion is ignited, we could lovingly weep for another in pain who is supposedly against us, and still send them love. If someone triggers your ego—whether a world leader or a regular passerby in the game of life, meditate upon them, sending them unconditional love until the barriers melt. When you contact the “Breath of God” or the Unity within them, your heart has the potential to burst open to Universal Love.

Maybe these people—within their subjective experience—will continue in the perspective of separation for now, but little by little, your own heart will heal, and these ripples will flow outward, one oscillation at a time.

This healing brings us home to love in our own hearts. NOW we can love more radiantly, more freely, in friendships, in marriage, in community and to all beings. Let this love bleed out, for healing, for peace, for true harmony and cooperation. Let us cover this existence with the awareness of no separation. Forgive. Surrender. Accept. This leads to compassion and awareness of the UNITY.

We continue bravely, openly, in this work, until every heart returns home.