Heroic Compassion: Inviting a Lifetime of Challenges, Healing, and Spiritual Awakening

By ZenDoe Linda Frank

A handbook for spiritual awakening and healing. From our vantage point in the realm of Spirit, difficult and life-altering events provide the very stepping stones we need in order to reach our goals for a human incarnation. But, why does it have to be so painful? And what do our struggles have to do with spiritual awakening?

Heroic Compass

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bodhi Leaf Publishing
• Release date: Jun 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9780692120859

ZenDoe Linda Frank

ZenDoe Linda Frank is a medium, a spiritual teacher and the author of Heroic Compassion: Inviting a Lifetime of Challenges, Healing, and Spiritual Awakening. She has practiced meditation for more than four decades, and as the founder of a Zen meditation center, has taught meditation to countless individuals. She has written extensively about the healing power of present awareness under the pen name ZenDoe, at her award-winning blog available at windhorseblog.wordpress.com

Book preview

COMPASSION

Inviting a Lifetime

of Challenges, Healing,

and Spiritual Awakening

ZenDoe Linda Frank

Copyright © 2018 by Linda Frank

No part of this book may be reproduced in any written, electronic, recording, or photocopying form without written permission of the publisher. The exception would be in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing, 2018

ISBN 978-0-692-12085-9  E-Book

ISBN 978-0-692-12081-1  Paperback

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Bodhi Leaf Publishing

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Cover photograph: Linda Frank

Cover design: Stallard Publishing

Acknowledgments

My deepest and most heartfelt thanks to my anchor and my soft place to fall, Chip Arnold, who endured a year or so of frozen food so that I could finish the manuscript. Our late-night talks gave life to all of the topics in this book. I promise I’ll try to let you get some sleep now.

I am indebted to Michelle Stokotelny. Your skills as a medium are matched by your devotion to your calling as a teacher. Thank you for your faith in me, and for the ethics and depth of character that you bring to your work.

My sincere appreciation to Jim and Patty Stallard for your support and encouragement as well as for your expertise with the cover design.

Eternal gratitude to Stan for the turning words.

Solomon, my old friend, you already understand.

Contents

Introduction

Chapter One:

Hearing the Cry

Chapter Two:

Challenging Our Collective Truth

Chapter Three:

You Are Eternally Spirit

Chapter Four:

Amnesia

Chapter Five:

Life Lessons and Free Will

Chapter Six:

I Must Have Lousy Karma

Chapter Seven:

But, I’m So Afraid

Chapter Eight:

Changing Your Mind ~ Having a Practice

Chapter Nine:

Healing

Introduction

A human lifetime can be unimaginably hard. Despite that, we are all adventurers and explorers within them. We look up from the factory floor of our lives, imagining what might lie beyond the chipping paint of the ceiling that we’re so comfortably familiar with. Perhaps there is a vast blue sky filled with possibility, but from our vantage point, the struggle of life seems inescapable. We search for relief from the suffering that keeps us enmeshed in the gears of our human experience using the tools available to us here. But, more often than not, these tools dig us deeper into the morass of pain and confusion. Trauma becomes depression. Abuse becomes blame and self-recrimination. The shock of loss becomes a fight for sanity that threatens to destroy us.

Each one of us carries the seed of knowledge that there is something more, something greater, and something beyond our day to day experience, which will help us to make sense of our lives so that we can not only heal, but thrive spiritually. We get glimpses of it when we stand alone under a starry sky or walk along the edge of an ocean. We all wonder what our purpose is here, and we suspect that somehow there’s a connection between that purpose and the difficulties we face. But the distance between the grunge of our factory floor and the brilliance of the heavens can seem as hopelessly vast as eternity. We know that we each carry the keys to the great mystery in our own pocket; they just don’t seem to fit any of the available locks. The problem is that we are searching for relief from our suffering by looking here, in the physical and mental world that is the source of that suffering.

There’s a story about a man who stumbles out of a bar and meanders toward home in the middle of the night. In the darkness, he trips over his own feet and falls. As he crashes to the ground, he hears the jingle of the contents of his pockets spilling onto the cobblestones. Later, a passerby sees the man crawling on his hands and knees, searching for something on the ground under a streetlight.

What are you looking for, Sir? asks the passerby.

I’m looking for my keys, says the man.

Is this where you lost them?

No, I lost them in the alley. But, there is more light here, so this is where I’m looking.

Perhaps we are looking for our keys in the wrong place. As human beings, we are relentlessly driven to find reasons for what has happened to us. When there are no answers to be found, we fill the hole with whatever reason seems to make the most sense to us, even if it lays waste to our sense of self and threatens to calcify our spirit. Life lessons can be brutal, and some of us seem to be here on the PhD program with regard to difficulties. Unfortunately, the tools available to us to mitigate our suffering lead us into the dark forest of guilt, blame, addiction, and any number of coping strategies which not only fail to make us feel whole, they engender a more protracted and profound misery.

Through it all, we are spiritual beings. We turn to our spirituality for comfort, for plausible explanations of our circumstances, and simply because we must. We know without question that somewhere behind our pain, the real nature of our existence has something to do with infinite compassion and wholeness. From time to time, like looking up from the factory floor, we recognize that we are asleep here in the physical world, using physical parameters to try to solve our problems. What if our vision could expand so dramatically that we were able to see with perfect clarity what this lifetime is about? What if the key to unlock that vision were as simple as shifting our perspective from what we’ve been conditioned to believe to what we know is possible?

I want to help you to see your life and your suffering through the wide-angle lens of your own divinity. Your life really does have a plan, a plan that you set in motion for your own spiritual growth, long before you were even born. You will come to see, through the eyes of your own spirit, or soul, that you are precisely where you need to be in order to accomplish the goals that brought you here to this difficult life. What you’ll also comprehend is that much of your suffering is unnecessary, and that through understanding and practice you really are capable of releasing it and surging forward on your spiritual journey.

As you come to understand how and why we are entangled in our limited and contracted human viewpoint, you’ll recognize what you have known all along—that you are here on a mission of heroic compassion. With this knowledge, you will finally begin to realize how to cultivate deep and genuine compassion, not only for those people and situations that have deeply hurt you, but also for yourself. You’ll see through your difficulties and no longer be chained to the endless cycle of fear, pain, and contractedness that seems to define you. Most importantly, you will begin to heal in a way that is profound and lasting through trusting in your own divine plan.

Bringing this knowledge to light has been the work of my own lifetime. I launched myself into adulthood at just sixteen with a backpack, a mangled world view, an almost permanently crippled sense of self, and with questions that would haunt me for the next forty-odd years to the point of obsession. I suffered from crushing PTSD, depression, anxiety, and numerous other debilitating conditions that were the direct result of my own attempt to make sense of what had happened to me. And yet, I had a strength of spirit that was as healthy, strong, and curious as my psyche was battered. Before I was old enough to drive, I was sitting in meditation for an hour or more each day, and having experiences that were to become the foundation of my spiritual practice. I earned a degree in psychology, trying in every way possible to understand my own desperate suffering. My spiritual search led me to study and practice Zen Buddhism, where I eventually began to learn how to simply be. As my practice matured, I was given inka (authority to teach), and I worked with countless students as they made their own way through the illusion that the thinking mind is who we really are.

The last piece of the puzzle fell into place for me when I began to pay attention to the one thing that I had pushed away since childhood, which was my ability to see and hear those in Spirit. Many people have the experience of feeling or even seeing the presence of a loved one in Spirit. I wanted to develop that ability. I learned that mediumship was not about turbans and crystal balls and road-side palm readers. It is a skill, like any other, which can be practiced and developed in order to bridge the gap between those in Spirit and those here who miss them. It is deeply moving work to bring messages of love, of hope, and of healing to a client.

Although I knew these things, I still had a great deal of trouble accepting that I was really talking with spirits. In fact, throughout my initial training to develop as a medium, I steadfastly insisted that I was making it all up. Even when I brought through the most extraordinary evidence and validation to my sitters that I was indeed talking with their loved ones, I blew it off as coincidence or some trick of the light. As time went on though, and this just kept happening, I began to question my staunch adherence to the idea that it was impossible, and instead began paying attention to what was being communicated by these souls. Without my realizing it, I was being taught.

What I have learned is that you and I are on a journey that is inconceivably heroic, and that we are far, far more than we appear to be. We have made this journey many times. What I hope to unveil for you is that the nature of this world, including our suffering, is more stunningly beautiful than can be imagined. Our brokenness is nothing short of the light of our own dazzling spirit, in humble disguise. It’s not hard to see, if you know where to look.

Chapter One

Hearing the Cry

AT THE CENTER of my small meditation room is a statue of Kwan Yin. She is somewhat worse for the wear, despite having spent most of her life sitting serenely on the altar at the Zen Buddhist meditation center that I founded, and where I worked with students of Zen for more than a decade. She started out as a rather drab black plaster statue that I bought online with what little money I had, but, she began to come to life one afternoon in my sunny kitchen as I painstakingly covered her (and half the countertop) with gold leaf. By the time Still Water Zen Center officially opened, she was ready to grace the altar.

I remember teaching visitors and new students that as we enter the meditation hall we always bow to the Buddha. There is a small image of the Buddha in the crown of Kwan Yin’s headdress, so in bowing to Kwan Yin, the bodhisattva of compassion, we are always bowing to the Buddha. Many balked at the idea of bowing to anything. Bowing to a statue is absurdly alien if not sacrilegious to most westerners. Still, I asked them to bow – just bow – and to let everything else go.

Over the years, the poorly applied gold leaf chipped in places. Her head was knocked off during a move, and her original shine faded. Over the years, much the same thing happens to those who travel a spiritual path.

These days, she rests in relative safety on a beautifully painted low table from Tibet, in the room where I now conduct mediumship readings. I’ve learned through many sessions, as I’ve connected people with their loved ones in spirit, that those who have transitioned home are concerned only with communicating messages of healing and of love. So, it seems fitting for Kwan Yin to grace such a space.

This little room, like my own life, is a mish-mash of cultures, experiences, and colors, which would offend some of my more traditional Zen friends to no end. That’s alright. Our paths sometimes lead in directions that surprise the hell out of us, and we are irrevocably changed as a result. The statue’s beauty is no longer a result of applied gold leaf. The glow reflecting from her gentle face is that of the hundreds who bowed to their own nature as She who hears the cries of the world, and responds with compassion. This is the meaning of Kwan Yin’s name, and it is the meaning and purpose of our existence. Each time I enter this room, I bow. It’s a hold-over from the formal days at the Zen center, but it’s also a continued practice. To bow is to acknowledge, to be humbled, to be in one moment both student and teacher. Simply breathe, bend at the waist, rise. Only this.

Tradition has it that a bodhisattva (enlightened being) like Kwan Yin, is one who has attained enlightenment and is just a breath away from becoming a Buddha herself. She (or he) is ready to step off the wheel of karma, of misery, and of the necessity of taking human form, to become a fully awakened Buddha, adorned in the spiritual realm with dazzling flowers of light and the radiance of complete perfection. At the last instant of this journey toward becoming Buddha, Kwan Yin is said to have heard a cry, and naturally, she turned to help. This was the moment in which her enlightenment was complete. She delayed her imminent Buddhahood to come back and help the rest of us.

I was attracted to Kwan Yin, and to her story, from the moment I first heard it. Who wouldn’t feel drawn to an enlightened, exquisite celestial being who hears the cries of the world, including yours, and responds with compassion? And, who hasn’t considered what it would be like to attain perfection? Of course, I never really believed that there was such an actual entity. Like the bible stories of my Presbyterian upbringing, Kwan Yin was certainly a metaphor for compassion at a level we mere mortals could only begin to imagine. Yet, I was captivated by her. To be truthful, I was captivated by even the faintest hint that suffering was heard and responded to by anyone.

I’ve come to understand that Kwan Yin is indeed an actual person. Kwan Yin is the nurse in the hospital who keeps you company when you’re frightened, long after her shift is over. Her work is visible in the strong hands of the EMT with sweat running into his eyes as he does chest compressions, trying to keep life in the body of your husband. Kwan Yin is you, as you carry your dear pet into the vet’s office for the last time. It doesn’t matter if your heart is pounding or that you can’t hold back the tears. Perhaps, Kwan Yin really does abide in the spirit world somewhere. I believe I may have seen her a time or two, masquerading as a beloved mother or husband, coming through during a reading to offer love and encouragement. You never know.

One thing is certain; she is very busy. Each of us cries out, hoping that someone is listening, hoping that someone can ease our