{"id":8167,"date":"2021-01-18T01:54:54","date_gmt":"2021-01-18T01:54:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adpca.mycounselling.info\/?post_type=article&p=8167"},"modified":"2021-03-30T14:44:32","modified_gmt":"2021-03-30T14:44:32","slug":"pcj9-unconditional-compassion-a-struggle-to-apply-the-lesson","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/adpca.org\/zh\/article\/9_2\/pcj9-unconditional-compassion-a-struggle-to-apply-the-lesson\/","title":{"rendered":"\u65e0\u6761\u4ef6\u7684\u540c\u60c5\u5fc3\uff1a\u4e3a\u5e94\u7528\u8fd9\u4e00\u6559\u8bad\u800c\u594b\u6597"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.8.1″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″ background_color=”RGBA(0,0,0,0)”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.8.1″ _module_preset=”default”][et_pb_column _builder_version=”4.8.1″ _module_preset=”default” type=”4_4″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.8.1″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]

Barbara June Hunter, Ph.D.<\/strong><\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.8.1″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ sticky_enabled=”0″]On May 25 Molly read a newspaper account of a police officer, Justin V, who had pled guilty to a charge of ramming the broken-off handle of a toilet plunger into the rectum of a suspect, Abner L.\u00a0 Mr. L was a Haitian immigrant who, ironically, had fled his country to avoid the violent persecution regularly meted out there by uniformed armed officers of the government.\n\nThe circumstances in brief, according to the media, were that Officer V had subjected Mr. L to this torture one night in the precinct station house, after arresting Mr. L for allegedly punching him.\u00a0 Sometime later, newspapers reported\u00a0 that Mr. L was not the man who had punched Officer V.\u00a0 During the two years that elapsed between the incident and Officer V\u2019s guilty plea, he and later his lawyer had steadfastly denied that the officer had participated in the station house torture.\u00a0 Furthermore, according to press reports, prior to the officer\u2019s admission of guilt his lawyer had speculated that Mr. L\u2019s multiple and severe internal injuries had, in fact, resulted from consensual homosexual sex.\u00a0 This, the lawyer alleged, had occurred sometime before Mr. L\u2019s arrest by Officer V.\n\nAfter she read the story, Molly found herself confronting a dilemma, a dilemma related to a lesson she\u2019d recently learned.\u00a0 About three months earlier Molly had had a disappointing experience at the end of which she unexpectedly received a rationale for having compassion for all. \u00a0This lesson had seemed so important to her mission to become a compassionate being that, because of the outcome, she came to refer to the experience as her \u201caccidental journey.\u201d\u00a0 As a consequence of the lesson, and of her sense of mission, Molly was aware of a need to feel compassion for Officer V.\n\nHer dilemma was that she was not feeling compassion for him.\u00a0 In spite of that need, Molly found that she had, in reality, an equally strong contradictory feeling.\u00a0 Her natural response was repugnance — combined with an attitude of absolute condemnation and moral superiority toward the officer.\u00a0 Molly was aware that she had at times felt rage, that she had made wounding comments, but rageful behavior had never been so much as a shadow of a thought in her mind.\u00a0 In this way she justified her response.\n\nThough Molly\u2019s need to feel compassion was strong, it did not\u00a0 have as powerful a pull as her more familiar, horrified disapproval of the police officer.\u00a0 \u201cHe is, after all, reprehensible beyond words, isn\u2019t he?\u201d she reasoned.\u00a0 Yet even as she entertained this thought, Molly felt the subtle but unmistakable tendrils of self-reproach insert themselves into chinks in the armor of her righteous indignation.\u00a0 Her horrified disapproval of Officer V took off in a new direction: it turned into equally intense disappointment in herself, in the absence of compassion she found herself confronting.\u00a0 \u201cAnd so soon after that beautiful insight that was to enable me to feel compassion for all, even the meanest,\u201d Molly berated herself.\u00a0 She was dismayed.\u00a0 \u201cHere is a specific, admitted perpetrator of a brutal act, a chance for me actually to reflect the unconditional compassion to which I believed I gained access through my recent lesson.\u201d\n\nThe internal conflict was painful; how could she resolve it?\u00a0 Whatever emotional struggle the conflict presented Molly, her cognitive preference was unequivocal.\u00a0 It was not only clear that that preference was for compassion rather than disapproval; it was equally clear that the compassion she sought did exist within her.\u00a0 She knew she was simply unable to find the path by which to access it.\u00a0 As she searched her mind, struggling to find that path, the next step occurred to her almost like a suggestion:\u00a0 \u201cFeel empathy for Officer V.\u201d\u00a0 Certain that that was possible but less certain about how to accomplish it, Molly once again found herself seeking a path and once again the answer presented itself, almost as if by magic.\n\nShe had been aware of feeling sadness throughout all of the foregoing reflections, and she began to cry.\u00a0 Molly knew that, although her crying was partly for Mr. L and his experience of brutalization, it was also partly because she identified with the terror, excruciating pain, and powerlessness that she\u00a0 was attributing to his experience.\u00a0 Having lived with terror and powerlessness through years of having been the sole object of her parents\u2019 verbal rages, Molly was familiar with both.\u00a0 Mr. L\u2019s pain resonated deeply within her.\n\nThat resonance, in turn, seemed to nudge Molly slowly, almost imperceptibly toward empathy with Officer V.\u00a0 She mused, \u201cHow readily I can cry for Mr. L and for myself but not for Officer V…\u201d and immediately realized that probably this would be true for most people.\u00a0 \u201cProbably they feel Mr. L\u2019s and maybe their own resonating pain, but with no awareness of (let alone identifying with) Officer V\u2019s pain.\u201d\u00a0 For, in part from newspaper glimpses into the officer\u2019s childhood, Molly had become certain that Officer V had intense pain — emotional pain.\u00a0 But, partly from those same newspaper glimpses, she was equally certain that unlike Mr. L\u2019s pain, glaringly apparent, or her own, expressed whenever she chose, Officer V\u2019s pain had never even been acknowledged by him, let alone been expressed so others might know of it.\n\nShe knew that to have no one else know of, nor therefore understand, one\u2019s excruciating pain was likely to exacerbate the pain almost beyond enduring.\u00a0 Recalling having lived in that unbearable, lonely place that Molly was now ascribing to Officer V, she found she could now cry for him as well as Mr. L and herself.\u00a0 She was aware how readily emotional pain, if never acknowledged – so never expressed and never comforted, could mutate into unfathomable rage.\u00a0 The rage, in turn, would remove its bearer even further from the likelihood of comforting or compassion from caring others.\u00a0 That, in turn, would exacerbate the loneliness, exacerbate the rage and turn normal human emotion into intolerable but unseen torment – a kind of hidden torture.\u00a0 \u201cOf course I can now cry for Officer V, for all three of us,\u201d Molly reflected. \u201cLooked at in a certain sense, in three different (or maybe not-so-different) ways, we have all been tortured.\n\nWith that thought she came to empathize with the unseen pain of Officer V, as she had done earlier with the highly public pain of Mr. L.\u00a0 Compassion for the officer, which Molly had sought with such difficulty shortly before, suddenly coursed through her.\u00a0 While she unequivocally condemned his heinous, brutal behavior, she found she could nonetheless sense the spirit within him: however damaged, it was still one that her own now could recognize.\u00a0 She realized that she had become able to empathize and, through empathy, to feel compassion for Officer V.\u00a0 Molly realized, too, that she had managed to apply, if somewhat shakily, the rationale for compassion for all that had unexpectedly become the ultimate destination of her earlier \u201caccidental journey.\u201d\n\n[For details of Molly\u2019s lesson, see Hunter, B.\u00a0 (199_).\u00a0 An accidental journey, the spiritual plane and a very late breakfast.\u00a0 The Person-Centered Journal, 7(1),__ ][\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Barbara June Hunter, Ph.D.On May 25 Molly read a newspaper account of a police officer, Justin V, who had pled guilty to a charge of ramming the broken-off handle of a toilet plunger into the rectum of a suspect, Abner L.\u00a0 Mr. L was a Haitian immigrant who, ironically, had fled his country to avoid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"parent":2236,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"original_author":[140],"publication_date":[168],"volume":[167],"number":[43],"class_list":["post-8167","article","type-article","status-publish","hentry","original_author-barbara-june-hunter","publication_date-168","volume-167","number-43"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adpca.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/8167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adpca.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adpca.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/article"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adpca.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/8167\/revisions"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adpca.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/2236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adpca.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"original_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adpca.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/original_author?post=8167"},{"taxonomy":"publication_date","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adpca.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publication_date?post=8167"},{"taxonomy":"volume","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adpca.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/volume?post=8167"},{"taxonomy":"number","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adpca.org\/zh\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/number?post=8167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}