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