#676 Brokenness & Unconditional Love

     People seek help from psychotherapists when they feel broken and want to feel whole. 
     Ideally, psychotherapists themselves first undergo psychotherapy. Doing so, psychotherapists are better able to hold both their own brokenness and their own wholeness. Before we can accept others, we must learn self-acceptance.
     Psychotherapists ideally hold clients in "unconditional positive regard" and "meditative equipoise." These terms suggest great spaciousness, porousness, awareness, acceptance, unshakable love, understanding, peace, stillness, silence, wisdom. These therapists' qualities ideally remain stable, despite the variability & severity of problems and personalities of their clients.
     Obsessing about our needs, our brokenness, how we didn't receive unconditional love as children, is an endless wallowing in misery. It's also backwards. To heal, an inversion must occur.
     Unconditional love does appear to be the very core of human life. But our wholeness, authenticity, true happiness - all appear to be proportional to the degree to which we embody, we are the source of, unconditional love. Indeed, when a person feels utterly miserable, the best thing she can do for herself, is to help others in similar or worse situations.
     Traumas do hurt, traumas do crack our armor, and mercifully, the cracks do light our darkness. But our authenticity is in shining - being unconditional love.

Springtime at Luxembourg Gardens, Paris

#519 The Feeling of "I'm No Good at Meditating!"

     Are you with a group that's sitting in meditation for 30-40 minutes, but you don't actually feel like you belong because you're just looking around feeling frustrated? Is self-talk flooding the circuits?: "I'm just no good at this"; "Get me out of here"; "When is this going to be over"; "I've got a million things to do"?
     That too is OK! The facilitator(s) can "hold" that too. Unconditional love & acceptance is hopefully being modeled by both the facilitator(s) and your fellow participants. This holding, this space of acceptance is key to nurturing transformation from suffering to wholeness and beyond. 
     Their example helps you yourself to accept & hold the part of you that feels frustrated plus a mixed bag of other challenging emotions. Your inner wisdom is capable of unconditional love for your own fearful inner child (& everyone else's). A part of you resides in peace, stillness, silence, wisdom, timelessness. Practice lowering your center of gravity from the self-talk jungle of the head, down past the jangled turmoil of the chest, down to the belt level (2 inches below the navel) - the hara or dan tien. See: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2013/05/326-classical-japanese-centeredness.html
     How can you modify mindfulness practice to suit your current situation? It's possible that, at this point in time, you most benefit sitting in meditation for a much shorter time period - maybe 5 minutes. 
     You are your own trainer, therapist, sports psychologist - guide your practice wisely, for best long-term results. Never, ever, ever give up on your #1 client! You can & will do infinitely better than you can currently possibly imagine - just keep practicing wisely, ideally with some guidance from those who've been practicing for a long time.

Cary Maures   www.dpreview.com