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The Charter for Compassion

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

On November 14, 2009, I attended one of the hundreds of unveiling ceremonies across the world for The Charter for Compassion.  Compelled to promote this most essential human gift, a small committee gathered to begin collecting essays on the meaning of compassion from individuals across globe - religious and non-religious, all races, rich and poor alike.

Over the months, the organization gathered steam, not unlike the Obama campaign, as more and more people were moved to think about their lives with compassion as the center pole.  The unveiling of the Charter is only the beginning of a momentum that needs to spread, must spread, if human life is to do more than survive.

The Charter is a worthy meditation.  The courage to examine one's life according to this dimension and commit to growth in the area of compassion is a worthy devotion.

THE CHARTER FOR COMPASSION, November 14, 2009

The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.

It is also necessary in both public and private life to refrain consistently and empathically from inflicting pain. To act or speak violently out of spite, chauvinism, or self-interest, to impoverish, exploit or deny basic rights to anybody, and to incite hatred by denigrating others - even our enemies - is a denial of our common humanity. We acknowledge that we have failed to live compassionately and that some have even increased the sum of human misery in the name of religion.

We therefore call upon all men and women to restore compassion to the centre of morality and religion ~ to return to the ancient principle that any interpretation of scripture that breeds violence, hatred or disdain is illegitimate ~ to ensure that youth are given accurate and respectful information about other traditions, religions and cultures ~ to encourage a positive appreciation of cultural and religious diversity ~ to cultivate an informed empathy with the suffering of all human beings, even those regarded as enemies.

We urgently need to make compassion a clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world. Rooted in a principled determination to transcend selfishness, compassion can break down political, dogmatic, ideological and religious boundaries. Born of our deep interdependence, compassion is essential to human relationships and to a fulfilled humanity. It is the path to enlightenment, and indispensible to the creation of a just economy and a peaceful global community.

For more information go to www.charterforcompassion.org  

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Too Good to be True?

Friday, August 21st, 2009

EMDR or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is a technique for processing trauma discovered by Francine Shapiro, Ph.D. The past weekend, I had the opportunity to attend a training weekend on EMDR and still am trying to absorb and make sense of what I learned and experienced. In some ways, what I was taught this weekend was not new, namely that traumatic experiences due to their overwhelming affect storm, get stored in the body and segregated from the thinking and processing left hemisphere of the brain. As a psychoanalyst, I understood that talk therapy over years would eventually create new links between the location of the stored trauma (i.e. body and limbic brain) and the processing mind, thereby rendering the memory of the trauma more manageable, less affectively charged and ultimately held with a different meaning (e.g. rather than “I am a victim”, the meaning becomes, “I am a strong survivor who can trust her judgment”).

I was not wrong in my understanding and in fact, trauma does work through as a result of talk therapy…it just takes a very long time. But this past weekend changed my mind about that. Dr. Shapiro knew that her discovery would be received with much skepticism and consequently began her research on EMDR immediately, while still a graduate student. The research is plentiful and compelling. (see www.emdria.org) Veterans of war, for example, who have suffered with PTSD for 20+ years, find lasting relief with 3-5 sessions. What EMDR does is utilize something talk therapy does not – bilateral stimulation. The guided movement of one’s eyes back and forth while focusing on the trauma allows the person to access both sides of the brain and lay down fresh neural pathways in the corpus callosum previously blocked by the original trauma. These fresh neural pathways are like new onramps to the brain’s already existing elaborate freeway system of connections. The trauma can finally be processed by the adult mind of the individual. The EMDR process is not completed until a more reality based thought and feeling about the personal meaning of the traumatic event is securely located and connected with in the brain.

Too good to be true? That certainly was my original take on EMDR. Yet clients who have used EMDR say it has changed their lives, transforming their anxiety into competence and their insecurity into feelings of lovability. As a student in the training, I did experience some shifting in my thought process when I was the guinea pig during our practicum sessions. I am left feeling cautiously optimistic and hopeful for the the many people who carry the burden of unresolved trauma.

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