Attuning to Compassion as the Movement of Reality in Nondual Therapy

Key note: Recognising the presence of a core quality of being, which is always here, is often through the appearance of seeking for it. The seeking IS the quality, contracted and distorted through attempting to source it outside of being - which doesn’t exist in reality. Nothing is outside of being - there is no ‘outside’. We recognise the quality in the heart of the felt sense of the seeking energy that is specific to the seeking of the particular quality. This is energetic unfoldment through transmutation.

Within the Reparenting as Presence framework, if The Radiant Parent is water, and presence is wetness, then compassionate attunement is the way in which the water moves, fluxes and changes. It is consciousness’ responsive engagement with itself through the human experience - the conscious following of the flow of experiencing, in knowing that healing is already here as the nature of this.

When compassionate attunement is not recognised, we can inadvertently and innocently create further seeking- a sense of wrongness and shame around how experience of seeking and suffering is showing up. This can lead to pathologising experience, accentuating the experience of splitting and fragmentation further. Through the need for safety- this can crystallise as ‘realisations’ into a conceptual understanding that ‘sticks in the head’ as assumption and expresses as projection through separation, largely because experience hasn’t been ‘digested’ through the human vehicle of experiencing (i.e. the energetic metabolising (transmutation) of sense impressions through the bodymind -head, heart, and gut). 

We do not need to create or manufacture compassion, or ‘be a compassionate person’ as a doing or a trying. This would be the movement of seeking for compassion to be, arising out of the misperception that reality is separate from itself and thus the misunderstanding that compassion is not already here. This obstructs the noticing of the natural dynamism of compassion inherent to the wholeness of experiencing as a natural given that is not: earned or deserved, created or cultivated, owned or disowned, claimed or learned.

We might notice that we are in this mode of ‘seeking compassion to be’, as an underlying sense of fear or anger, expressing as both erecting or dismantling illusory boundaries to protect or to care through an ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ frame of experiencing.

Seeking compassion to be, given that it is a core need through the human experience of suffering and a core quality of true nature, will also express through our seeking styles, colouring how they play out. We might try to ‘be compassionate’ for sympathy, approval, acceptance, to appear spiritually or therapeutically intelligent, significant, powerful or strong as individuals. This will obscure the noticing of the qualities of love, authenticity, belonging, wisdom, worth, and sovereignty that the inherent dynamic of compassionate attunement (compassion beyond seeking) is revealing - already in deep engagement as what is. We might subtly use ideals of compassion to judge our experience of ‘others’ – common to those of us who experience patterns of identification around ‘the healer and the healed’, ‘the teacher and the taught’. Seeking compassion to be and trying to create it or be it as ‘a thing’ obscures the opportunity to tune in to the true intelligence of compassion from, as, and for the movement of healing, wholeness, and self-revealing. 

Judgement and fear are the spinning coin of compassion in disguise. A prevalent way that this may play out is that upon feeling our own fear in the context of another’s suffering, we frame (judge) it as a problem and then move to fix, because we don’t want to be confronted with how we feel. We make suffering into a ‘thing’ apart from life, perpetuating the sense of separation that lies at the heart of the experiencing in the first place – isolating child mind further into a closed loop of ever unfolding seeking that by its nature is fundamentally false (misperception and projection). When we judge experience as a problem to be fixed, at best we may facilitate transformation, ‘expansion’, and ‘growth’, on the level of the human, but we won’t facilitate transmutation and self-revealing.  This is because when we are feeling or attempting to resolve with a view to being rid of some aspect of experiencing (a perception), we cannot recognise and resource its’ truth and source as fullness, wholeness, and completeness (that self without aspects or parts) through knowing and exploring itself exactly as it is – this which is fundamentally real. Whilst overlooking the natural self-revealing nature of reality, we also arrest the recognition and resourcing of compassionate attunement which functions specifically as the dynamism of self-revealing via passionate dispassion and earnestness for truth.

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"We cannot discover anything but experience itself. We cannot find objects, beings, ourselves, the world, our life, or our history. All we find is experience."

PETER BROWN - (The Yoga of Radiant Presence)

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Notice how you feel whilst reading the above quotes – is there a sense of fear, numbness, anger, or confusion? Maybe there is a feeling that compassion is not here or that there is no-one to care? Can you gently rest with it? If so, you will begin to notice the subtle and quiet flow of compassion in direct alignment as truth and attunement to experience as the

 one life that we are.

Subtle movements of judging experience as it is and moving to fix (resistance) through a more ‘spiritual’ context would be pushing to dissolve or transcend emotions or particular aspects of self-experiencing through fear, resistance, or trying to ‘get’ a particular outcome. This would be an active mode of seeking. In a more conventional western medicine context, it might be through emotional numbing and sedation through pharmaceuticals, or denial through developing ‘positive coping’ and ‘self-esteem’ with a focus on outcomes of how one appears to/is perceived by, the world - or how much positive emotion or ‘success’ is being experienced or reported. A clue might be that we are driven by action and/or experience ‘stuckness’ with a flavour of being ‘time bound’ -which in more extreme cases expresses as a perceived state of emergency and/or fear of doing harm. This obscures our tuning into the intelligence of compassion that is here for ‘both suffering parties’ and the underlying existential angst  - the state of emergence that is primary to whilst fully inclusive of the facilitator-client dynamic. 

Compassionate attunement is not about ‘the what’. Methods relating to seeking compassion could also be a natural expression of compassionate attunement in flow– supporting anchoring and facilitating unfolding through layers of experiencing. To not ‘act’ or intervene can be equally a movement of seeking compassion through a passive dynamic as a fear response. There is not a ‘specific way’ that compassionate attunement plays out through healing. It is spontaneous, immediate, direct, and dynamic. Neither active nor passive, it is ceaselessly engaged. 

To recognise if compassionate attunement is being sought, and to resource this in its immediacy- the yardstick is always, simply yet profoundly: 

‘How do you feel right now’?

‘What is here?’

‘If its’ here, it matters’.

By aligning with the actuality of experience we can discover a natural compassion that arises from being present with what is real. Thus, compassionate attunement is a natural given that helps to illuminate the underlying unity and completeness inherent in all experiences, supporting us in recognising our own innate wholeness as the one life that we are in a way that is lasting, embodied, and dynamic.  

Recognising that there is a seeking of compassion to be is good news. It is an indicator that compassionate attunement is here – wide open and available, yet quietly waiting beyond judgement to be recognised, resourced, and revealed as a natural dynamic through the process of self-unfoldment and self-revealing. The natural self-unfoldment as the nature of experiencing - that is, consciousness knowing and revealing itself to itself -is already here.  

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"There is in the body, a current of energy, affection and intelligence, which guides, maintains and energizes the body. Discover that current and stay with it"  

SRI NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ

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A powerful practice for both recognising and resourcing compassionate attunement is to read the teachings of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj through his dialogue with questioners in the book ‘I Am That’ - while resting awareness in the heart. Notice how his responses are deeply attuned to the questioners’ own inquiry, meeting their experience directly and pointing to the true nature of experience. Notice how his responses are often contradictory, depending on who he is speaking to. The expression is ‘in love, all ways’ and is not bound by preconceived ideas about the nature of reality. Responses are direct and spontaneous, meeting the needs of the moment as the natural compassion and healing intelligence arising out of neutrality. Practice reading while resting in the felt sense of presence/experiencing and notice attuning to the subtleties. Also, engage in a facilitated experiential inquiry with a nondual practitioner. Compassionate attunement is not something to learn. It is recognised, resourced, revealed, and embodied, as self-nature.

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1. Transmutation involves gently uncovering the true nature of reality as the Self, moving beyond the qualities of experience that create the illusion of separation. This process allows us to meet existential suffering with understanding and release ourselves from the endless cycle of striving and becoming.

   
   

2. ’Emergence’ is this one consciousness unfolding through allowing, holding, releasing, and revealing core needs in ‘perfect time’ (the eternal) as a natural configuration and reconfiguration of the already flowing whole.  It is ongoing as the nature of reality but may manifest as the seeking child mind recognising its source in relation to particular qualities of consciousness (Needs) and an experience of an energetic blossoming (popularly referred to as ‘rebirth’). Symptoms of a ‘spiritual emergency’ are an indicator or tipping point of emergence. This can take place through the experience of the individual and also the collective, through varying spheres/microcosms.