3 Tenets for Mindful Compassionate Dialogue as a Spiritual Practice

Mar 24

As you engage Mindful Compassionate Dialogue (MCD) as both a map and a system of healing, learning, and transformation, it’s important to be aware of three primary tenets upon which it is founded.

Wise and compassionate relationship to experience
Trust in aliveness and connection as your guide
Responsible and engaged interdependence

1. Wise and compassionate relationship to experience

With the nine foundations, 12 relationship competencies of MCD, and four primary expressions you have a large array of information and tools to help you relate to your experience with clarity, compassion, and skill.

The most fundamental understanding with regards to cultivating a helpful relationship to your experience is that it is not the experiences themselves which create suffering, but rather it is your relationship to them. An experience is a moment of densely packed information regarding thoughts, sensations, emotions, needs, impulses, desires, and more. Whether or not you are conscious of your experiences, with the speed of light you label them as neutral, pleasant or unpleasant and then, in the absence of mindfulness, you react to them by ignoring what’s neutral, trying to hang onto what's pleasant and move away from what is unpleasant. The more this unconscious domino effect of reactivity is allowed to progress, the more you will experience suffering. Suffering in this context is specifically defined as an experience you have when you are resisting the constantly changing flow of life.

Locating your awareness in a “you” that compassionately observes your experience is the most common approach to cultivating an equanimous relationship to your experience. This part of you is called “the compassionate witness.” From this place in yourself you simply name aspects of your experience as they arise with a tone of warmth, care, and compassion. This is a useful meditation practice as well a mindful practice to engage throughout the day. It follows, that the more subtly you are able to sort your experience, the more you will be able to observe it with equanimity. Being able to name your experience with subtlety allows you to disidentify with it and ground yourself in the compassionate witness. For example, when you are identified with an experience, you often use a form of the verb to be; “I am angry” or “I am sad.”

When you are located in the compassionate witness your language changes. You say things like; “A part of me feels sad and a part of me feels relief.” Or you say, “I notice that I am telling myself a story about being worthless and with that feelings of shame are present.” You are naturally able to describe experience in a more complex way when you disidentify with it.

Mindfulness practice in MCD teaches you that feelings are just feelings, and needs are just needs; they are neither good nor bad nor heavy with meaning. Meaning is added to feelings and needs through your reaction to them. Needs are basic to every living being and provide a map for thriving. They arise, along with feelings, according to your perception in the moment. Understanding these basic mechanics of your experience at ever more subtle levels helps you find liberation from clinging and aversion. When you can meet others from this place of freedom, you live more fully from equanimity and compassion and the gift of your practice ripples out.

2. Trust in aliveness and connection as your guide

When your mind is deeply calm and focused, or in the midst of another type of peak experience, you access what is always there— the substrate of life; a bright, clear, joyful aliveness. MCD asks you to trust this as your guide for living. What I am calling “aliveness” goes by many names: in the zone, intuition, something that "feels right," alignment, buoyancy, connection, spirit, the tao, etc. When you release thoughts of what should or shouldn't be, and what you imagine you or others "have to" do, you are able to notice what’s authentic for you - what’s truly alive in you. Of course, this is simple to say and challenging to realize.

Your mind is complex and has layers and layers of conditioning that can prevent you from having clear contact with aliveness. It is easy to confuse authentic aliveness for excitement, pleasure, or other strong emotions. Aliveness is not an emotion. It is a sense of alignment, openness, and flow. You can practice opening to aliveness by asking yourself a simple question each day, "If I knew that I had nothing to fear, nothing to gain, and nothing to lose, what am I called to on this day? Where and how do I truly want to direct my attention and energy today?"

3. Responsible and engaged interdependence

At the heart of any spiritual practice is the call to be deeply responsible for your life and how you impact others. This acknowledges the truth of our absolute interdependence. When you choose an intentional life of pursuing transformation and living from love, you are saying, "I would like to be an active and responsible part of this complex system of interdependence. I want to find a way for us to work together to serve life."

The wisdom and practical skills of MCD help you manifest this aspiration in daily life. The nine foundations of MCD direct your attention and provide a guide for cultivating an integrated and thriving sense of self. The 12 relationship competencies offer a step by step guide for showing up in relationships with an incredible depth of skill, wisdom, and compassion. The four primary expressions of responsible interdependence (mindful engagement, compassionate relating, access to agency, and wise action) orient you on your journey.