Beyond Broken

Self Exploration

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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Coming out of the Fog of Negativity – A Gift for the New Year

Recently a friend sent me an article from the New York Times entitled, When Do You Know Your Work Is Done Here On Earth?  The title is provocative because it reminds me of a recurring dream I’ve been having and had just had, once again, the night before.  In this dream I am either at school or at a job and I have not done the work required.  If I am at school the whole year has gone by and I have not done any of the assignments.  If I am at a job I am showing up but not actually doing my work .  I wrote back to my friend to tell her how the article overlayed with this dream I keep having and she wished me well in finding the meaning.  I turned this wish into a prayer.  As the holiday unwound and I had some free days I actively asked to be shown the meaning of this dream.  In addition, I have spent many hours reading a new Pathwork book just published by Liam Quirk.  The Book, Being and Becoming, Five Essential Pathwork Lessons, (Pathwork Press) is the book that has been so needed to distill the Pathwork into meaningful, relatable liturgy.  I say liturgy because I am carrying the book around with me everywhere like a bible.  Liam was a student of mine and as I read the book I vacillate between feeling the pride of a parent and the awe of  his mastery.

Liam weaves so artfully the essential message of the Pathwork Guide that we are already perfect as we are AND we must attend to our distortions and negativities to get back to that state of perfection.  Early on in Lesson One he asks us two questions: what is the truth and what can I learn?   I ask these questions again of my dreams and I have another dream on New Years Eve.  In this dream I am with friends who in real life have recently disappointed me.  We are eating dinner and I am feeling unseen and uncared for and a lack of attunement.  I wake up at 5:45.  I lay in bed and recount all the actual disappointment that the dream left me feeling.  My mind spins from one disappointing relationship to another.  I cuddle with my husband who is sound asleep and rather than feel the pleasure of our comfy warm bed and his embrace I am off in a negative, even rageful rant that I seem to have no control over.  Finally I get up just before 7:00, get dressed and go out to the beach to watch the sun rise.  It is a completely foggy day with no sun but somehow this is a great comfort to me.  I walk in the fog realizing it is so dense I may not find my way home.  The low moan of the fog horn and this dense mist matches my internal state.  And it is a relief to lose myself in the ocean, in nature, in something bigger than myself….

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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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