Beyond Broken

Relationship

The Mandala Moment

This past fall a class gathered to take a deep dive into the topics of Autonomy and Authority.  Eleven of us from around the world took on the challenges and the promise of this work.  First we opened up to an audacious concept that infinite possibilities are available to us at any moment.  It is amazing to tap into this energy — that all you can imagine already exists waiting for you to grasp it!  Then we had to examine deeply what is in our way of actually doing so.  Each of us looked and felt our young emotional dependency, waiting for a parental figure, a gate keeper, to give us the permission we felt we needed as children.  In this mindset someone or something was in the way of what we wanted — of all that was possible.  We each had to answer the question — what do I really want when I wait and lean on another for all that is already waiting for me?  This was a vulnerable place.  I could feel each of us literally grow up a bit as we began to activate in our selves what we wanted from another.

Next we embraced another huge, expansive idea. If you focus inward and are willing to go through the uncomfortable emptiness, you will find everything!  This is a challenging practice. We found constant distractions.  And then we found that what was in our way was how we all give over our attention to outward authorities and wrestle with them instead of finding our own inner authority.  The promise of an ongoing practice of turning inward versus reaching out is that we will experience vibrancy, aliveness and an unleashing of our innate creativity….

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Allowing – Coming Into Congruence With Our True Nature

By now it is obvious to me that most therapeutic tools and also spiritual practices have one main unifying focus.  That focus is to help us develop the willingness to pay attention, while letting feelings be as they are.  Mark Epstein writes in The Zen of Therapy that “non-interfering attentiveness… is by its very nature transformative.  The point isn’t to stop feeling or thinking them (our feelings) but to change our relationship with them.”

Fear is one of our strongest and most prevalent feelings.  Recently I have noticed that it is my go-to feeling.  It overrides many more authentic feelings underneath.  Here are a few of my examples: A house keeper does not show up.  I feel very anxious and panicky instead of disappointed and actually a little angry at her.  Another example cutting back on medication I have a back spasm.  I feel anxious and afraid instead of sad and in pain.  James Hollis, PhD. writes in Living an Examined Life, “If we are going to have a meaningful life we have to feel our feelings.  Much of our behaviors are fear based. Fear protects us but also constricts us.”  In 1912 Jung said, “The spirit of evil is negation of the life force by fear.  Only boldness can deliver us from fear and if the risk is not taken the meaning of life is violated.”  Hollis goes on to say, “Realize ninety percent of energy that blocks you has its origin in your childhood where everything was overwhelming.  When we are stuck, we have activated this archaic fear.”  Sooner or later, to have a meaningful life, we have to  begin with allowing our feelings with open, curious attention.

James Hollis goes on to asks us “what does our soul ask for us?”  To get to this question there are layers of blocked feelings that block our intuitions and knowing.  Jung said “We don’t solve these problems … we can’t cut our history out of us like a tumor… our task is to outgrow their influences.  You cannot rule out what is wired in neurologically or in your psyche but you can watch it with curiosity, compassion and spaciousness.  In this attentiveness it loses its power….

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Expecting Disappointment

The holidays seem an apt time to write about disappointment.  How many of us struggle during December and January to create meaningful experiences that end up falling short in comparison to some magic we remember as children?  There is a “big D” of Disappointment.  COVID is still here and we cannot see family and friends without feeling anxious and in danger and there is the “little d” of disappointment; the gift that was not quite right, the lack of attunement of a friend or family member.  All disappointing.  There is the FOMO and being excluded during holiday events and there is the overwhelm of too many activities and burn out.  More disappointment.

However we have an odd coping mechanism to avoid disappointment. WE EXPECT IT!

What sense does that possibly make?  Because expecting something is a setup for having it actually happen!  Ways that we try to avoid disappointment include perfectionism, pessimism, vigilance and a kind of living on the edge of life….

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The You AND Me Universe

Join me in an exploration of the Me AND You Universe, a concept introduced to me eight years ago by Diane Poole Heller.  She described an interpersonal Me AND You universe; I have found that idea applies also to our intra-personal and transpersonal experience.

In one of her modules of her DARe Training, Diane teaches about how the Me AND You Universe contrasts with the Me OR You Universe.  She calls each state of mind a universe because they are a lived reality that is exclusive of other realities in a person’s experience.  Most of us live in the You OR Me Universe.  Unfortunately, our early attachment experiences lead us to the conclusion that we can have either ourselves or the other, me or you. In Pathwork terms we might call this a Main Image.  It’s a belief that “if I have you, then I lose myself, and if I have me, I lose you.”  This is a duality of consciousness or psychological splitting which is very painful.  The way this often shows up for me is that I am loving being with you, but also can’t wait for some “quiet time”.  Then when I am alone and have this “quiet time” I am missing being with you.  Either way there is a tinge of dissatisfaction and a lack of wholeness.

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A Japanese Lesson In Sorrow and Joy

切ない (Setsunai): When You Need a Word to Hold Both Sorrow and Joy

My last blog post was back in March. Tom and I had begun an intensive teaching assignment with the Pathwork In Japan. On July 2nd we completed our last teaching module.  It was very rewarding and also challenging,  always wondering what might be lost in translation.

I am now back to writing and it seems fitting that I would begin a new blog with a uniquely Japanese concept discussed in the New York Times and passed along to me by a dear friend. It is one of those wonderful words in another language with no counterpart in English. The word is Setsunai.

Setsunai implies something once bright, now faded. It is the painful twinge at the edge of a memory, the joy in the knowledge that everything is temporary. Perhaps, then implicit in setsunai is the way the passage of time eventually draws a thin line of blood, of pain, across even the roundest, fullest happiness.

I have noticed lately that most people I work with hate sadness. They will do anything rather than feel it.  I honor this fear.  Sadness can be a bellwether for depression and depression is scary.  But sadness is not depression. Sadness is a feeling and depression is a numbness.  When I invite myself and others into sadness it always holds a warmth that expands and begins to actually feel quite good!

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