The Big Squeeze

by Pema Chödrön

If we want to communicate and we have a strong aspiration to help others – on the level of social action, on the level of our family, at work in our community, or we just want to be there for people when they need us – then sooner or later we’re going to experience the big squeeze. Our ideals and the reality of what’s happening don’t match. We feel as if we’re between the fingers of a big giant who is squeezing us. We find ourselves between a rock and a hard place.

There is often a discrepancy between our ideals and what we actually encounter. For instance, with raising children, we have a lot of good ideas, but sometimes it’s very challenging to put together all the good ideas with who our children really are, there at the breakfast table with food all over themselves. Or with the meditation, have you noticed how difficult it is to actually feel emotions without getting totally swept away by them, or how difficult it is to simply cultivate friendliness toward yourself when you’re feeling completely miserable or panicked or caught up?

There’s a discrepancy between your inspiration and the situation as it presents itself, the immediacy of the situation. It’s the rub between those two things – the squeeze between reality and vision – that causes you to grow up, to wake up to be 100 percent decent, alive and compassionate.

The big squeeze is one of the most productive places on the spiritual path and in particular in this journey of awakening the heart. It’s worth talking about because when we find ourselves in that place again and again, usually we want to run away; sometimes we want to give up the whole thing. It’s like “burn out”: it feels extremely uncomfortable and you can’t wiggle out of it. It’s like a dog that gets its teeth in your arm and you can’t shake it off. Times of the big squeeze feel like crisis periods. We have the aspiration to wake up and to help and at the same time it doesn’t seem to work out on our terms. It feels impossible for us to buy our situation and also impossible for us to throw it out. Being caught in the big squeeze humbles you, and at the same time, it has great vision. This is the interesting part – it softens you and yet it has a big perspective.

Through meditation practice we learn not to reject, but also not to grasp. This is the same paradox that we are presented with in our lives. It’s not so much that you do or don’t reject, it’s more that sometimes you find that you can’t do either or you do both at the same time.

I was invited to teach in a situation with the Sawang, Trungpa Rinpoche’s eldest son, in which it wasn’t exactly clear what my status was. Sometimes I was treated as a big deal who should come in a special door and sit in a special seat. Then I’d think, “Okay, I’m a big deal.” I’d start running with that idea and come up with big-deal notions about how things should be, and then I’d get the messages back, “Oh, no, no, no. You should sit on the floor and mix with everybody and be one of the crowd.” Okay so now the message was that I should just be ordinary, not set myself up to be the teacher. But as soon as I was getting comfortable with being humble, I would be asked to do something special or other that only big deals did. This was a painful experience because I was always being insulted and humiliated by my own expectations. As soon as I was sure how it should be, so I would feel secure, I would get a message that it should be the other way.

Finally I said to the Sawang, “This is really hurting. I just don’t know who I am supposed to be,” and he said “Well, you have to be big and small at the same time.” I think that’s the point. We can always get comfortable being either big or small, either right or wrong.

Although we think that wrong is bad, if we get into the habit of thinking that we are wrong, that can be quite comfortable too. Any ground will do; we just want to be able to get our ground, either as a loser or a winner, as a big deal or an ordinary deal. But if we wish to communicate, if we really wish to open our hearts, sooner or later we are going to find ourselves in the big squeeze, where we can’t buy it and we can’t throw it out, and we are caught in the juicy situation of being big and small at the same time.

Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both. Appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, energizes us. We feel connected. But if that’s all that’s happening, we get arrogant and start to look down on others, and there is a sense of making ourselves a big deal and being really serious about it, wanting it to be like that forever. The gloriousness becomes tinged by craving and addiction.

On the other hand, wretchedness – life’s painful aspect – softens us up considerably. Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person. When you are feeling a lot of grief, you can look right into somebody’s eyes because you feel you haven’t got anything to lose – you’re just there. The wretchedness humbles us and softens us, but if we were only wretched, we would all just go down the tubes. We’d be so depressed, discouraged, and hopeless that we wouldn’t have enough energy to eat an apple. Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together.

From Start Where You Are by Pema Chödrön,
(c) 2001 Pema Chödrön.
Reprinted by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc.,
www.shambhala.com

Pema Chödrön is widely known for her down-to-earth interpretation of Tibetan Buddhism for Western audiences. She is the author of No Time to Lose, The Places that Scare You, and numerous other books.