Mercy
What does it mean to you?
Stephen Levine was one of my first spiritual teachers. His teachings were filled with the word “mercy”. That word is back in my vocabulary and it startles people when I use it. In some languages it translates into “pity”, in others it means “grace” or “unrelenting kindness”. The word “mercy” has a religious quality to it and perhaps that’s one of the reasons it’s not heard as often these days.
There’s a young woman with beautiful blue eyes who sits across from me and remembers a sexual assault decades before by a man three times her age. She has blamed herself for years. She’s done work in psychotherapy, but body memories impact her even more.
My work as a body centered guide is shaped by Depth Psychology, Internal Family Systems, and Hakomi Body Centered process. These approaches hold that at the heart of each of us is an essential, brilliant, self that is untouchable. That said, we are having a human experience and life is difficult. For all of us.
It’s a journey to even acknowledge our essential self. It’s another step to be curious from that place and ask: Where do I stand in relationship to this part that has been harmed? How have I internalized that experience? What body sensations offer clues to my relationship to these parts of myself? What parts wish me well and can offer me mercy & safety? When we endure what our mind cannot comprehend, our body keeps track. As psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk says “Human memory is a sensory experience.” We can’t think our way through these memories. To tend the body is to mend the mind and heart.
How do I begin to allow myself back into my own good heart?
That for me, is an inquiry that leads to mercy and an important element in healing: it is tender & patient work.To have mercy on ourselves is to become more intimate with ourselves. To become intimate with ourselves is to restore faith in our emotional lives. We can discover our heart is large enough to hold all of who we are. It’s “the healing we took birth for”, as Stephen would say.
