Start Where You Are

Communication from the Heart

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The Big Squeeze
I
f w e w a n t
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 com-
munity, or we just want to be there for people when
they need us—then sooner or later we’re going to ex-
perience the big squeeze. Our ideals and the reality
of what’s really 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 the way our children really are,
there at the breakfast table with food all over them-
selves. Or with meditation, have you noticed how
difficult it is to actually feel emotions without get-
ting totally swept away by them, or how difficult it 
is simply to cultivate friendliness toward yourself
when you’re feeling completely miserable or pan-
icked or caught up?
175

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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 per-
cent 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; some-
times 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 just 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 im-
possible 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 re-
ject, 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 some-
times you find that you can’t do either or that you do
both at the same time.
176
The Big Squeeze

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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 through
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 just 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 or be the teacher. But as soon as I
was getting comfortable with being humble, I would
be asked to do some special something or other that
only big deals did. This was a painful experience be-
cause I was always being insulted and humiliated by
my own expectations. As soon as I was sure how it
should be, so I could feel secure, I would get a mes-
sage that it should be the other way.
Finally I said to the Sawang, “This is really hurting.
I just don’t know who I’m supposed to be,” and he
said, “Well, you have to learn to be big and small at
the same time.” I think that’s the point. We can al-
ways 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