Deteriorating Compassion Disorder (DCD): A soul condition leaving one feeling disconnected from others, spiritually alone and emotionally empty. Symptoms often include irritability; anger; procrastination; not laughing very much; eating Ben and Jerry's Chocolate Macadamian Nut ice cream in large quantities (which, actually, many times, increases symptoms)......jb

So, several years ago in my clinical practice, I saw two different women for a first time visit, separated by about a month. What was striking about these two women was that they told me the same story about each having been in a car accident where neither was at fault, but another driver had run a stop light and crashed into the two women's cars. What I found so intriguing was their polar opposite responses to the same script. The first woman was still quite angry: "What a jerk! This was the last thing I needed. I hate buying a new car..." The second woman told me that after the accident, she had an awareness of how short and precious life is: "No one got really hurt. I have insurance...." I realized that at a deep level of truth, this was, perhaps, not two women but one woman at two different ends of the 'compassion continuum'.... I've been at both of those different ends.

 The past three days the T.D.'s (Technology Demons) have laid seige. On Sunday Night, we came home to find sewage backed up in our basement sink. On Monday our internet and cable t.v. had a sit-down protest. On Tuesday, my home copier/fax machine had a tantrum and died. Deteriorating Compassion Disorder was settling in for a stay.

Last night, my friend David and I went out for dinner and a bad movie.  We go on a Wednesday night when it' s half price night and we can take advantage of our new status as 'elder Americans'. My agreement with David is that we see really bad movies, ones that our wives would never see, then we critique them. Last night was "Predators": "So I thought Adrian Brody was better in his role in "The Pianist"; or "I thought the cinematography reminded me of "Umbreallas of Cherbourg"; or "This was the worst 'worst movie' we've seen- it was even an hour and a half too long!"

With a connection with my friend, DCD was lifting. We laughed and enjoyed friendship together.... And it occurred to me, again, that it was the same me- at two different ends of the Compassion Continuum.

I've seen this transformation many times during an Opening the Heart weekend. It's not unusual to see participants at the Opening Circle on Friday night experiencing some DCD symptoms. When I speak into that circle I sometimes say that when we look into another's eyes and see 'difference', we experience fear and separation. By Sunday, I see many people looking into each others eyes, seeing 'no difference' and experiencing compassion and connection. And so, for a moment the Deteriorating Compassion Disorder is gone and we see with Beginners Eyes, and the reason that 'moment' is so important is that we can remember our Greatness.

With Love and Respect, Jon

A most amazing, beloved friend of mine sent me this poem the other day.

I realized in the silver unfolding of that day, how words reach in and rearrange priorities, how we can be urged, guided and loved into more compassionate living, simply by our willingness to receive beauty.

In this spirit, I offer this poem, for the heart of all seekers.

May it lift a tender place into gentle flight.

 Morning Song

by Marcia F. Brown

Here, I place
a blue glazed cup
where the wood
is slightly whitened.
Here, I lay down
two bright spoons,
our breakfast saucers, napkins
white and smooth as milk.

I am stirring at the sink,
I am stirring
the amount of dew
you can gather in two hands,
folding it into the fragile
quiet of the house.
Before the eggs,
before the coffee
heaving like a warm cat,
I step out to the feeder-
one foot, then the other,
alive on wet blades.

Air lifts my gown – I might fly –

This thistle seed I pour
is for the tiny birds.
This ritual,
for all things frail
and imperiled.
Wings surround me, frothing
the air. I am struck
by what becomes holy.

A woman
who lost her teenage child
to an illness without mercy,
said that at the end, her daughter
sat up in her hospital bed
and asked:
What should I do?
What should I do?

Into a white enamel bath
I lower four brown eggs.

You fill the door frame,
warm and rumpled, kiss
the crown of my head.
I know how the topmost leaves
of dusty trees
feel at the advent
of the monsoon rains.

I carry the woman with the lost child
in my pocket, where she murmurs
her love song without end:
          

Just this, each day:
Bear yourself up on small wings 
to receive what is given.
Feed one another
with such tenderness,
it could almost be an answer.

Someone recently asked why they should even consider experiencing an Opening the Heart Workshop™. Here's the list I gave them to consider:

You're living life with a 'safety first' approach.

You want to be more 'whole hearted' in your relationships.

You tend to substitute a fantasy life for the real thing.

You wish you were able to be more spontaneous.

You spend a lot of time being anxious.

You'd love to live life more gracefully.

You live a constricted existence.

You'd like to be more genuine in your interactions with others.

There's a compulsive or desperate quality to your actions.

You'd love your responses to others and to situations to be more appropriate.

Real fulfillment is absent from your life.

You long for clarity of expression.

You'd love to be more gratedul and less grouchy.

You'd like to feel that you had more choices.

You live in the past or future rather than the present.

Your responses don't match the situation.

You are hesitant or tentative in your interactions with others.

You are inhibited in living up to your potential.

You'd love to be more 'present'.

We're very confident that the workshop can help any of the above conditions. If you haven't done so already you might like to investigate further at The Opening the Heart Workshop™

Jon's fishing story brought to mind a time in the early 60s when I was a student in London. This was pre-Beatles, and our live entertainment was mainly folk music played in the pubs of the Kings Road in Chelsea. There were a lot of really talented singers and folk groups. Many of them happened to be from Ireland. One of my favorite songs of the time was The Shoals of Herring. Hope you enjoy this great version of the song as sung by contemporary folk singer Luke Kelly:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGP2oJnjyVw&feature=related

Krishana Das is a sadhu, a seeker, a practicer of khirtan, or devotional chanting. In his autobiography, he talks about the stories, or myths, that we carry, sometimes for our whole lifetime, about who we are. The myths are formed when our hearts are broken or we are forgotten or not heard or cut deeply by cruel life circumstances. When the cold winds blow, the stories are etched in ice carvings and when the gentle winds blow, there is a little melting and we are able to summon a bit more Deep Memory and self love. Some people call this grace. I call it Coming Home. It is a place where we have more perspective, where we are more able to watch the parade rather than march in it- and because of that perspective, we suffer a little less.

For as long as I can remember I have loved being outdoors, especially by water: oceans, streams, tidal rivers, estuaries, lakes, ponds. I guess it was only natural, then, that I would come to love fishing. The serenity of fly casting on the North Fork of the Flathead River in Montana or dropping worms in the Saco River in a canoe with my son, watching osprey and eagles being more successful than I was at catching dinner. The great blue herons and white egrets feeding along the shore, the wind on the water, the tides changing. Never really mattered if I caught anything- until it did.

You see, in all these years of fishing, I never caught anything- nada, nil, chada, zilch, nothing! And the more I didn’t, the more it mattered. When we bought our little summer cottage in Westport, Mass. on the Westport River 5 years ago, my neighbor, Rory, took it as a personal challenge to help me catch my first fish. He’s lived here his whole life and caught 8 million stripers and blues and thought it would be no challenge to take me to his best spots on the river and make a success of me.

I remember that first summer when he asked me to go out with him on Thursday night, but I said I couldn’t go but would go with him Friday night. Thursday night he came back with 3 stripers- 29, 32 and 33 pounds! When we went out Friday night it was a full moon with a beautiful breeze and a sky full of stars and we fished for 3 hours. Can you guess what I caught? Rory, by now, was determined, and continued to encourage me to bring my bad luck onto his boat with him. I continued to encourage him to leave me behind if he wanted to catch fish, but he insisted. One night I agreed to go with him but got him to agree to call me Fred while we were on the river (so the fish couldn’t recognize me, of course. The mind begins to create some weird stories.) Nothing changed the outcome- not that summer or for the past four summers. Last month, Rory, the eternal optimist, told me it was a perfect tide, perfect weather and that I was going to catch my first fish. I told him I was cursed, to leave me behind. He said he had a secret weapon this time- a nine hook ‘umbrella rig’ he had been working on for months and it was time for me to try it. I wanted to believe, to see beyond the myth I created. But these stories die hard.

Rory and I trolled for almost an hour, he continuing to cheerlead me until I snagged something hard and broke his lead line and sank his secret weapon in the Westport River. I knew he was trying not to scream “Loser! Lunkhead! Dolt! You’re right, Jon- cursed!” But he just smiled and said “Things happen.” And so I settled into my myth as a cursed fisherman. Until:

Very recently, my son, Ari, wrapped a present for me and asked me to open it. He had found a picture of me at age 19 which he framed. It was a much younger, smiling me holding a lake salmon that I had caught in northern Maine. Ari inserted one word in the bottom corner of the frame: …PROOF…

Music features prominently in our workshop and we are very aware of its power to evoke many different emotional states. Nevertheless I am always glad to be reminded of this power when something new comes to my attention. Here is the latest 'something'.

Emotional Intelligence is very much a core concept of The Opening the Heart Workshop. I'd like to point our readers to an excellent and very clear exposition of recent developments in the field by Dr Philippe Goldin of Stanford University. Enjoy!

Midsummer eve the air was rich and thick with life. The sultry smell of honeysuckle infused our yard while fireflies danced like blinking polkadots on the dark blue fabric of night.  Night birds sang in the trees and  bullfrogs answered  from the pond in a subtle but discernible underlying rhythm.

Midsummer night took me back to another time in my life when I attended college in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The air there was also heavy and sweet but the smells and sounds were those of a tropical island.Honeysuckle was replaced by the smell of ripe bananas on the tree and the constant sounds of small frogs called coqui interpenetrated rainforest nights.

In spite of transportation, the island was then culturally quite different from the Puerto Rican subcultures found in U.S. cites. Puerto Rico itself at that time was still in the process of moving away from it’s agrarian past into a more industrialized future.  However it had not lost touch with its roots. The extended family reigned supreme and despite the island’s inevitable and unique problems, the culture was full of heart.

I saw heart on the city buses when I rode across from someone with a birth defect or handicap.  No one seemed to pay it any mind unless the person needed help and then it was given. I saw heart in the delight taken in children, in the respect towards elders and the in the aged cared for at home. I saw heart when bank tellers or other professionals looked into my eyes and connected with me – not rare or special events but simply as a matter of course.

I remember “The General”. He was a fixture in Old San Juan when I was in school.  He would stand in the traffic-tangled main plaza at rush hour every day in full military regalia directing traffic. Although he likely had mental health challenges he was not arrested or put away somewhere. He was a beloved part of the community. It seems no one would think to interfere with him. He belonged, had found his niche and was giving to others in his own way.

Contrast this with my own trip to Costa Rica earlier this year as a medical advocate for a friend seeking treatment out of the country.  While in Costa Rica her handicap was met everywhere with extreme kindness and compassion. Once we got on the airplane bound for Boston the story changed.  She could not walk up the aisle on the airplane very fast because of her disability, I was slow because of the amount of medical equipment I was carrying.  Instead of kindness we were looked at with impatience, anger and even hostility. Not one person asked if we needed any help.

My midsummer night’s dream is for the courage to be kind. Courage means to take heart, and the source of the courage to be kind comes from the heart.  My midsummer night’s dream is that all who are vulnerable because of infirmity, age, perceived difference, bad circumstance or other condition are met with kindness every day and that because of misfortune no one feels isolated or ostracized or left out of the circle.

I look at the homeless on our streets and at the many people who are put in institutions because perhaps no one knows quite what to do with them and I see ample opportunities for my own kindness to grow.

My midsummer night’s dream is, (to paraphrase Kate Wolfe’s song)  "love will make a circle that holds us all inside where strangers are as family and loneliness can’t hide.”

We do this quite well in the Opening the Heart workshop.  My midsummer night’s dream is that we are able to do this every day.