More Conscious Awareness

      Our health & quality of life depends on our becoming consciously aware of who we truly are, as well as what influences our behavior. Both of these require deep self-reflection & meditation. The former is profoundly helped by advanced meditation & self-inquiry practices; the latter by Jungian analysis (depth psychology), Internal Family Systems (IFS), Transpersonal Psychology etc.
     Sadly, our current society, is not only ignorant about, but actively & passively discourages self-reflection, serious meditation, & sustained attention to anything of substance. 

               “For what is not available in our culture
                we are now obliged to find for ourselves.”         James Hollis

     “The mother complex, that is, the affectively (emotionally) charged idea of mother, is in us all. It is experienced as the longing for warmth, connection and nurturance.
     When one’s initial experience of life met these needs, or largely so, one feels that one belongs in life, that here is a place where one will be nurtured and protected. … the child will feel more grounded in his or her own reality and more trusting of the world around. As Freud once observed, the child who has the mother’s devotion will feel invincible.     

     Where the primal experience of the feminine was conditional or painful, one feels deracinated (uprooted from one's natural geographical, social, or cultural environment), disconnected. Such an ontological wound is felt in the body, burdens the soul and is frequently projected onto the world at large. One’s entire Weltanschauung (philosophy, view of life, worldview) can derive from this largely unconscious, phenomenological ‘reading’ of the world.

     I have seen a considerable number of men in therapy whose need for mothering is so extensive that they are doomed to be dissatisfied with their wives. While it is clear that women do not want to be mothers to their husbands, it is also clear that many men seek in their wives the sort of unconditional acceptance and nourishment associated with positive mothers. Indeed, I have seen many men stuck in marriages that were dreadful for various reasons but they were unable to countenance the idea of leaving. Departure held all the terrors of the child leaving home for the unknown. Sexuality, in particular, is freighted with the infantile need for bodily contact and nurturance. As women grow weary of taking care of little boys, so little boys find it harder and harder to leave home and grow up, since neither father nor the fathers are available to show the way.
     When men feel the push-pull of the mother complex they are apt to confuse that power with the outer woman in their life. Just as they often regress in intimate relationships, making a mother of their partner, unconsciously demanding she be ‘the good breast,’ so they fear and oppress women, as if by controlling them they might master the fear of their own undertow. The sorry history of men’s treatment of women is stark testimony to this. One oppresses what one fears. Fear is responsible for the oppression of women and for gay bashing, the latter most notably by young men insecure in their on psychological reality. The resistance President Clinton encountered in proposing to end the ban on homosexuals in the American military was not because there were no homosexuals already serving bravely and honorably, nor because regulations regarding sexual harassment were not already in place, but because of the macho man’s fear of his own feminine side.
     Machoism is in direct proportion to man’s fear, and the banding together of fearful men is the breeding ground of violence and the tacit admission of the power of the feminine in their lives. Vast bastions of macho mentality remain in contemporary society, perhaps none more regressive than the military. Possibly, in order to do the work of killing, a man has to override every principle of relatedness within him; he can ill afford to pay attention to doubt or to the eros principle. In his frightened heart he knows what the Greeks made clear long ago, that in the end Ares (Mars) was no match for Aphrodite (Venus). But he will fight her power because, sadly, he has not yet learned that to be a man is to feel comfortable with his feminine side as well. Because his fear is only partly conscious, it is projected onto women and gays, among others. In his unreasoning fear, the macho man remains a little boy just as much as the man who expects all women to mother him. Both of them have unwittingly succumbed to the power of the mother experience and denied that same large power within themselves.
     Surely the greatest tragedy for men in regard to the feminine principle is that their fear alienates them from their own anima, the principle of relatedness, feeling and connection to the life force. This alienation from self obliges alienation from other men as well. Often their only connection with each other comes through superficial talk about outer events, such as sports and politics.”
      James Hollis. “Under Saturn’s Shadow: The Wounding and Healing of Men.” Inner City Books, 1994. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

      Our task then is to become fully conscious of all the mostly unconscious material that so profoundly affects our life. Actively investigating all of this, mostly subconscious material, is best accomplished with the assistance of a trained Jungian analyst. The excerpt from Hollis' book points out how all of us need to balance assertiveness, competency & empowerment with relatedness, feeling & connection to the life force. Skillfully investigating & integrating this material allows us to become BALANCED enough to prioritize realizing how we are INFINITELY MORE than these neuroses, complexes & habits. SEE: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.com/2021/07/learning-to-rest-in-silence.html

 

Awakening, Simple Honesty and Humility

      Below are excerpts from an interview with Adyashanti, who imho is a wise meditation teacher.
     First, an insight into how awakened / awakening people can confidently proclaim that everything is perfect, even when we often find ourselves & our world in a sorry mess.

     “Look at the people that we all admire (I presume he's referring to people like Buddha, Jesus, Mohammad). They are people that have assumed immense responsibility for the well-being of all of us, because they don’t see themselves as being separate from the rest of life. And they may see the innate bottom-line perfection of existence.
     But it’s a tricky thing, once you see that (Here I presume he's referring to those of us on the awakening journey). It’s really seductive to get attached to it. Because you can go ‘I see that life’s just perfect, even when it’s a mess. It’s perfect. It’s all an expression of love.’ At the deepest dimension of being, that’s true. You see and you feel that, and it feels very, very real. And it’s seductive just to hold up in there. And if somebody is in pain you just stay with ‘It’s just perfect.’ Every state of realization has its own built-in illusions. They’re very easy to miss. They’re very easy to miss. You can see the perfection of everything. And it’s not that that’s not true and that’s not real. But that’s not the only thing that’s true and real. Existence is unimaginably paradoxical. It’s absolutely perfect and beautiful AND it’s a total disaster – it’s a bloody mess, at the same time, occupying the exact same space. And that’s why, at least historically, at least as far as I see it, the greatest realizers that have ever walked around this place, haven’t taken their realization, hidden in a cave, and gone ‘Well good for me. I’m in heaven and that’s what I’ll do.’ They’ve generally completely dedicated themselves to the well-being of the world that they see as perfect. But I think it’s because their vision is big enough that it can hold this paradoxical vision, that it’s perfect and complete AND it’s a bloody mess, with a lot of potential. Our minds don’t like those kinds of things. They want to know ‘Which is it?’ ‘Is it this or that?’ Both!"

     Many of us at times become enthused, excited, energized after discovering something, and we just have to tell everyone about it ("missionary zeal"). Our message can be as lofty as an insight into the meaning of life. More often, it's something like finding a decent toaster. Enlightenment or awakening belongs in the former category, but even this is a work in progress, among ordinary, easily deluded human beings, with very human limitations.

     "Even enlightenment itself is part of the game. Enlightenment doesn’t necessarily guarantee that you’re going to be good in intimate relationships; it doesn’t mean you’re not going to delude yourself; it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re not going to be seduced by power or desire. It doesn’t guarantee that. The more everybody admits that, then you can get on with business.
     Spiritual awakening is very, very transformative – it’s foundational, freedom stuff. But, that’s one of the high-level illusions, because you start to feel like everything’s totally OK eternally. Even to screw everything up is all OK, it’s all forgiven. And that’s true but if you attach to that, that truth starts to delude you. Because then you’re in unconscious denial of other parts or dimensions of your humanity which might be very underdeveloped. And to call it perfection, isn’t going to do it.
     The funny thing about bumping into these, what we often call ‘realizations of reality’ - it’s like the image of a diamond with many facets. One of the facets is everything is totally perfect. Another one is nothing exists, the world is an illusion. There are lots of these facets, they’re like perspectives of the deepest dimensions of consciousness. But each one feels 100% complete, each one. Because it’s a facet of a totality, you’re kind of experiencing a totality through that facet. But that’s the key. You’re experiencing the totality through a given facet of perception and the trick is, the danger is, that you will conclude because everything in you will feel that it’s complete, because you’re touching upon completeness. But there may be 50 other facets. Each facet has a high level of delusion. And one of the delusions, because it feels totally complete and all-encompassing, is that it is complete and all-encompassing. No, it just feels complete and all-encompassing.
     Like the metaphor of the blind men, feeling different parts of an elephant and from that, concluding the whole animal's appearance: (leg) like the trunk of a tree, (ear) like a huge leaf, (stomach) like a mountainside, etc. (Likewise), the world’s different enlightenment teachings are far from saying the same thing. One has this facet, or two or three facets, another one has another. And people get all confused about which is the right one. And then they usually decide based on their own biases. Nobody’s going to hold the whole diamond. I’ve never read it, I’ve never heard of it, I’ve never seen it.
     But the more of those facets we can touch upon, the bigger our view is. And then, quite apart from the facets of the diamond of reality, don’t let those facets delude you into thinking that you’ve got your entire human act together, or that if you don’t, that it doesn’t matter. Because it does matter. It does matter, because it’s going to affect the next person you meet. And of course if your life starts to play out on a bigger scale, it affects more, and more, and more, and more people. That’s the tricky thing, because enlightenment fills you with a kind of confidence. But that confidence can slip over into overconfidence, into a kind of delusion.
     When we have parts that are underdeveloped, we attract people around our incompleteness. And when you’re playing life out on a bigger scale, everything gets amplified. Those same things happen in a smaller, unamplified version in people’s lives all the time. Every once in a while, I try to scare people a little bit. I’ll say, ‘Well, you know this enlightenment thing comes with immense responsibility. It’s not just a freebee gift. You better realize that you become more and more and more and more responsible. And the consequences for not taking it on become greater and greater, not less and less.’ That’s why you can have these immense falls from grace, because the consequences go up for you as well as for others. I keep that in mind all the time. I don’t get nervous about it at all, because I don’t intentionally pretend to have every facet of the diamond, or that I’m totally perfect … If I did, then you’re darned well right I’d be nervous. One of the best protectors for any of us, forget about spirituality or enlightenment or all the rest, one of the best ways we can protect ourselves and each other is just be honest – just be a real human being. It’s boots on the ground simple.”
     Adyashanti interview: https://play.acast.com/s/advaita/http%3A%2F%2Fpatrick.fm%2Fadvaita%2FAdyashanti.mp3 The ENTIRE 74min interview is well worth a listen!

 

Safe Harbor from the Storm

      When a storm comes up, where do you find shelter? How safe is this harbor? How much of life is on a mirror-calm sea with a clear-blue sky overhead? These questions are important to observe closely. Unless we wake up & intentionally remain awake, we'll squander our precious time, energy & immense potential by living the life of the most primitive single-cell organisms: pulling away from unpleasant stimuli, and pulling towards the pleasant stimuli. We can live infinitely more meaningful lives.

      “In the first half of life, our summons is to build an ego strong enough to enter the world, deal with it, meet its demands, and create a living space for ourselves in it. This is seemingly what growing up requires and all life apparently expects. But if we are privileged to live longer than that, we often find other, insistent demands beginning to wash up on our shores from the vast sea within. … I think the meaning of the entire second half of life, (second half used more metaphorically than chronologically) is about finding, or submitting to, something larger than our ego needs, something larger than our complexes with their insistent chatter.
     If the first half of life is about ‘what does the world want from me, and how do I meet its demands,’ the second ‘half’ is about ‘what wants to enter the world through me?’ … I further believe that we all swim in mystery, and that that mystery – what some call the voice of God, some the Daimon, some ‘destiny’ – seeks its expression through us. We are the humble vehicles of that expression. It little matters if we wish that summons – it happens. And the more we submit, the richer our live becomes because we are flush with some kind of energy, and we experience our lives, however conflictual and traumatic, as meaningful. The experience of enduring meaning is not found in the precincts of pleasure, affluence, or achievement, as we once thought evident, but in surrendering to something developmental, redeeming, and enlarging, something coursing through us, something wishing embodiment through us."
     James Hollis. “Prisms. Reflections on This Journey We Call Life.” Chiron, 2021.

“Because the volume of the world is so loud,
it’s drowning out the whisper from the heart.”          Muhammad Iqbal

“That whisper in your heart
may not have wings,
but it has the power to fly.”     Muhammad Iqbal

     “In the final analysis we do not solve our problems, for life is not a problem to be solved but an experiment to be lived. It is enough to have suffered through into deeper and deeper meaning. Such meaning enriches and is its own reward. We cannot avoid the swamplands of the soul, but we may come to value them for what they can bring us.”
     James Hollis. “Swamplands of the Soul: New Life in Dismal Places.” Inner City Books, 1966. 

 
     “We are equipped for the journey. We possess the resilience of our ancestors who clung to this spinning orb, tumbling through measureless space, and we survive … rich for all that has accumulated on our journey.”
      James Hollis. “Living Between Worlds. Finding Personal Resilience in Changing Times.” Sounds True, 2020.

“The whole path of mindfulness is this:
Whatever you are doing, be aware of it.” 

Dipa Ma

Alex Grey CoSM.org

Suffering, Healing, Maturation

     “Humans have a mysterious ability to deceive themselves and supply the necessary delusions. It is super-honest to recognize that our desires are not always very clear-cut, and sometimes, with the pretext of saving others, we are mainly seeking recognition and gratitude, something to bind our wounds with. A whole host of influences shape our actions and our behavior, and even the way we view the world. If I look back over the path I’ve traveled, I see many moments in which, while thinking myself completely free, I was only deluding myself. Looking more closely at my interest in the spiritual life, the main thing I discover is an immense fear of suffering. In the beginning I was a bit like a shipwreck survivor trying to get hold of a life preserver. Over the course of time, this mainly self-centered motivation has become more diffuse, and I am beginning to open myself toward others.” Alexandre Jollien
     Matthieu Ricard, Christophe Andre, Alexandre Jollien. “In Search of Wisdom. A Monk, a Philosopher, and a Psychiatrist on What Matters Most.” Sounds True, 2018.

     “The story begins with Faust, a middle-aged college professor, just becoming wise enough to know that he knows nothing. He has reached the pinnacle of success – the highest position possible for him – but finds himself alone, unrelated, his life meaningless. … When one’s ‘reality function’ – the feet-on-the-ground’ ability – is threatened, an encounter with the dark side … is the corrective.
     This is a terrible moment in the life of an intelligent human. He now sees that his level of consciousness, his perspective on life, will not support him. He has explored discipline and self-consciousness only to find them a dead end. This exploration is absolutely essential in one’s evolution, and the man who has not trodden that road is not eligible for the moment of despair that is also the moment of redemption and enlightenment. This is the midlife crisis, the mute suffering*** of existential man, the dark night of the soul. This is the experience of the intelligent man, the heroic man, the one who has reached the goal of modern consciousness. This is what happens when you reach the top of the ladder only to find that it was set up against the wrong wall. It is the very best human who suffers this Hamlet crisis. Lesser men take refuge in guilt at their inadequacy, or blame their environment, or find yet another set of windmills to vanquish – anything but face the terror of seeing that (their current) three-dimensional consciousness is not bearable, no matter how finely developed it is.
     It is a compliment of the highest order when a man finds that he cannot go farther and that his life is an irredeemable tragedy. His ego consciousness is stalemated, and this stalemate is the only medicine that will drive him out of the Hamlet tragedy and inspire him into a new consciousness.
     A fault of this magnitude cannot be repaired, but can be healed only by finding a whole new level of consciousness from which to function.
     … the ego-centered man fails; (one) who learns a center of gravity GREATER than himself, redeems that failure. If one were a genius the process would be inspirational, but for most of us it is experienced as the torture at the end of the rope. This divine/hellish point is the critical moment that can make or break the rest of a man’s life.”
     Robert A. Johnson. “Transformation. Understanding the Three Levels of Masculine Consciousness.” HarperOne, 1991.

*** “The curative solitude and the healing tears come automatically to us – for nature is aware of our suffering ... All symptoms are healing, but only if we listen to them and respond. ...
     The first task is to take the suffering inside as an interior event. As long as one blames someone outside or holds some institution responsible for the problem, there is little chance of learning or enhancing consciousness.”
     Robert A. Johnson. “The Fisher King & The Handless Maiden. Understanding the Wounded Feeling Function in Masculine and Feminine Psychology.” HarperOne, 1993.
     The old meaning of suffer was 'to allow', whereas we try desperately to exclude suffering.

     “in the Old French tarot, the Fool is blindfolded, which indicates a voluntary willingness both to forgo a dependence on the outer eye and to move toward a contemplative life with an inner eye, and to trust the companionship and guidance of his dog. In this sense this figure is the Wise Old Man. (Marie-Louise) Von Franz equates the Fool with ‘a part of the personality or even of humanity which remains behind and therefore still has the original wholeness of nature.’ In this way the dog seems a natural companion to the Fool.
     Another way to look at the dog jumping up from behind, would be … as an instinctual attack from the unconscious, exposing one’s human nature … as a way of being driven onward. Von Franz writes of this instinct within the archetypal process of individuation when she writes, ‘there seems to be a tendency in man to reach a further level of reflection and consciousness, and this comes from instinct and not always from outer disturbing factors alone.’ In this view individuation is seen … as something that must be suffered, and the Fool is viewed as the wanderer, the stranger, the lonely man suffering his own fate, being driven by his instincts.”
     Eleanora M. Woloy. “The Symbol of the Dog in the Human Psyche. A Study of the Human-Dog Bond.” Chiron, 2018.
     Again, the old meaning of suffer was 'to allow', rather than exclude or resist.

     "In times of trial as in times of joy, one must continually ask oneself, ‘What is my existence calling me to, here and now?’ … Here there is no promotion in rank to be won – it’s just a matter of going forward and loving ever more deeply, without clinging to any fixed reference point. Someone who confines himself to a particular identity will never know an end to suffering." Christophe Andre
     Matthieu Ricard, Christophe Andre, Alexandre Jollien. “In Search of Wisdom. A Monk, a Philosopher, and a Psychiatrist on What Matters Most.” Sounds True, 2018.

 

“Whoever uses the spirit that is in him creatively is an artist.
To make living itself an art, that is the goal.”  

Henry Miller

"To heal means to meet ourselves in a new way –
in the newness of each moment
where all is possible and
nothing is limited to the old.”

 

Stephen Levine

 

Old French Tarot card "The Fool"

 

Playing Small Doesn't Serve Anyone

Essence
Chelan Harkin
from: “Let Us Dance! The Stumble and Whirl with the Beloved” Soulfruit Publishing, 2021

There's an Essence
within you
that can neither be
enhanced
nor diminished

it spans Universes
and embraces the minuscule
the infinitesimal

it is infinite
in the way that the numbers
between 0 and 1
are infinite
which is complete
and wondrously
eternally satisfying
and yet allows for infinitely more
infinities

it is the exaltation of the hermit crab
when it ceases to need
to scurry from shell to shell
to find respite

it dips into pools
of intergalactic radiance
for play and restoration

it tickles the stars
and high fives
the suns

it has no need to bypass
the trappings
of the small mind
but nor does it take them seriously

there is nothing to prove or do or please
to earn this --
this is your birthright
that I solemnly swear
no -- joyfully exclaim!

all humanity is growing into.

 

 DO watch / listen to an excellent, inspiring, energizing interview with this wonderful young poet / mystic Chelan Harkin: https://batgap.com/chelan-harkin/

 

     “One day, when working under guard in a grey dawn landscape (Nazi concentration camp), feeling somewhat numb, (Viktor Frankl’s) mind again questioning and resisting the apparent senselessness of his existence, he suddenly, as it were, ‘heard’, a triumphant affirmative: the word ‘Yes’, filling his mind and his entire soul. At the exact moment, a light was lit in a farmhouse in the distance, as if to confirm the fact of a sacred light ‘shining in the darkness’. This is the light, St. John tells us, that cannot be overcome; a powerful message of hope.
     You do not have to be a psychologist, or even an educated person, for such an experience. The knowledge it brings is beyond thought. The whole psychological being of the person is involved – senses, thoughts and emotions – and such experiences can happen to anyone. They are not accompanied by any impulse to act, because the entire experience is one of being acted upon by some great and loving power. The feeling is of being in a state of awe and acceptance, of surrender, of grace and gratitude, of insight and understanding, of peace. In an instant, life becomes full, complete, and bursting with meaning, with the significance of knowing oneself to be part of and at one with a perfect, timeless, infinite and eternal whole, an indescribably sacred unity, an infallible source of hope. The Hamlet question becomes redundant. Life is no longer about being or non-being. The two are subsumed into one: being and non-being. This works because having once been, we cannot be obliterated. We leave an indelible imprint, an ineradicably secure trace in the realm of the human spirit.”
     Larry Culliford. “Love, Healing and Happiness: In Search of the Flipside of Suffering.”
       https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/docs/default-source/members/sigs/spirituality-spsig/spirituality-special-interest-group-publications-larry-culliford-love-healing-and-happiness.pdf?sfvrsn=29f43365_2

 

"Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding." Kahlil Gibran

 

Jackson Browne - "The Barricades of Heaven"

Toward Our Unconfused True Nature

    A palpable joyous energy animates us when we're open to our own depth. YET far too much of our life is a meaningless energy drain - which we've learned to quickly rationalize!

     “… wisdom broadly defined is the understanding & practice of the full profundity of what it means to be human …” Michael C. Kalton

     "… what others accept as wisdom, we need not accept ourselves unless we have independently confirmed it to be so; and what we may believe to be wisdom will not be so for others. It may even be that what will appear as wisdom to us now may not be so a year after our present epiphany. Buddhism teaches that when examining its doctrinal explanations of wisdom, remembering these points is essential to the examination and to the development of wisdom itself.
     … it is worthwhile to engender a spirit of inquiry, discovery & experience." Ari Goldfield

     “... there are three categories of worldview: Preconventional, Conventional, and Postconventional, each with its own sense of wisdom and morality.
     The Preconventional worldview is rooted in the notion that those with superior power determine what is true, wise, and good. You know an action is good because compliance is rewarded, and resistance is punished. Wisdom is the system that identifies what is good and what is not based on reward and punishment, and truth is simply that set of ideas insisted upon by those with the power to enforce them.
     In Preconventional worldviews right and wrong are determined by power and personal satisfaction. In Conventional worldviews a more sophisticated level of thinking is required that subsumes individual happiness to group cohesion. The community rather than the powerful individual determines what is good and true and wise. Adherence to the community’s rules and laws, rather than the often arbitrary whim of the powerful, now constitutes morality. This is the worldview to which most people ascribe … The central teaching of the Conventional worldview is that wisdom and morality lie with group conformity.
     The worldview of the wisdom sages falls into the Postconventional category. The Postconventional thinker seeks to identify universal moral principles, and to use these to guide her actions. The Hebrew Wisdom sages did not find wisdom in the covenant with God, the sacrificial service of priests, or even the revelations of prophets. They were independent observers of life, and their teachings reflected what they saw to be true rather than what the official arbiters of truth insisted is true. … life is more than a matter of trusting in God, adhering to the commandments, or even doing good and receiving good. Life was, and is, a wild chaotic struggle for survival that can be neither tamed nor avoided, only well traveled.
     Creation is irreducibly wild … chaotic and unformed. There is no conquering the chaos of life. There is no avoiding the terror of merely being alive. There is only learning how to make meaning in the madness. … Whatever justice and order there may be in the universe it is beyond the limited anthropomorphic fantasies of the conventional worldview. … A vast and wild universe transcends human categories of justice. It isn’t that life has no meaning, but that only when you see life for what it is are you able to make meaning in the midst of it. Yet seeing the truth can be frightening, and our initial response may be to hide from it.” Rami Shapiro

     “the more one is in tune with one’s inner self, the more natural and more fluid are one’s actions.” Livia Kohn

“Making mistake after mistake, I walk on the authentic path,
Forgetting and forgetting, I rely on unforgetting mindfulness,
Experiencing confusion after confusion, I search for the unconfused true nature.”
                                                                                                                                                            Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso 

      Roger Walsh ed. “The World’s Great Wisdom: Timeless Teachings from Religions and Philosophies.” State Univ of New York Press, 2014.

 

Frightened Children and Wise Elders

      All of us have a fearful, hurt inner child part, as well as a wise grandparent or wise elder nature. Our inner child is easily triggered into 'fight, flight or freeze' survivalist reactions. The more our inner child is held in safety & unconditional love & heals - sometimes with the help of mental-health professionals - the more our wise elder self can continuously express itself & be an aware, nurturing, 'tend & befriend' presence. This gradual progressive shift from compulsive self-centeredness (noisy ego) towards appropriate care for self, others & the environment (quiet ego, allocentricity & ecocentricity), is a hallmark of psycho-social healing, normal human maturation, healthy aging, individuation, evolution of consciousness, arising of wisdom, etc. Self-reflection, meditation, contemplation are essential components of this deep human journey.
     Some of us require help from mental-health professionals simply to survive. Many can endure a life of 'ordinary unhappiness,' but with professional help, could actually thrive, flourish! Two powerful therapies well worth careful consideration are Internal Family Systems (IFS) and depth psychology (Jungian analysis). Those who have taken an 8-week Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course will have considerable insight into both of these therapies.

     Internal Family Systems (IFS) is an evidence-based psychotherapy which helps us 'lean in' & get to know all of our sub-personalities ('parts'), see how these are all actually trying to help us (even parts we initially fear or dislike), and gradually guide all these parts to become peacefully allies. Then the 'Self' (with a capital S, to distinguish it from the common use of the word 'self'), can arise with 8 C qualities (Compassion, Curiosity, Calm, Clarity, Courage, Connectedness, Confidence, Creativity).
     "That ('Self') is what people meditate to get to, that in other traditions would be called Buddha nature, or Atman, or there are analogies in most every spiritual tradition, and I stumbled onto a way to access that 'person' pretty quickly, and not only have it become a kind of observing presence, but to become an active leader.
      IFS does change the way people understand themselves and each other in a very profound way. If everybody knew that there was this undamageable, intact, 8-C Self inside of themselves and everybody else; and that they were connected in the way we were talking about before; and that these protectors aren’t what they seem and they don’t have to fight inside with them (instead, love helps them transform) ... the more you can love your parts that drive you crazy ordinarily, the more you can love people who resemble those parts the same way; then it does change many, many aspects of human interacting, and will have a big impact on the culture." Dick Schwartz PhD, interview: https://resources.soundstrue.com/podcast/no-bad-parts/?utm_source=Customer%20Service&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=N210627-Schwartz%20%28TQHxAh%29&_kx=oubFt43NAjNBb0_NppHaGCF951bovtuCAx1o4i41Tys%3D.JMDgaq
     Richard C. Schwartz. "No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model." Sounds True, 2021.

     Like MBSR & IFS, depth psychology (Jungian analysis) is non-pathologizing ie sees how our mind is actually trying to help us, no matter how confused, inappropriate or even frankly harmful it may appear. Also like MBSR & IFS, Jungian analysis seeks to go much deeper than mere temporary symptom relief, but go to the very root of our suffering, and finally untangle our earliest knots. Again, like MBSR & IFS, Jungian analysis aims to take us well beyond the abandoned fearful child ('noisy ego'), and help stabilize connection with our deepest, wisest nature, which is profoundly connected to all of life.

     “The capacity of the psyche to heal itself, to express both the problem and the agenda for growth in symbolic forms, has been and remains a miraculous engagement to me. We do not invent or create these things; they are working within us to serve and support the work of nature.
     … the psyche always speaks to us. It speaks through the venues of body, of mind, of dreams, of intuitions, and it speaks symbolically. If we knew, as Jung once argued, that there is a two-million-year-old person inside of each of us – a presence bearing the wisdom of nature, the directives of the soul – would it not behoove us to pay attention to that personage, indeed, to cultivate a relationship to it?”
     James Hollis. “Living Between Worlds. Finding Personal Resilience in Changing Times.” Sounds True, 2020. An exceptionally fine book (imho) - essential reading for those deeply interested in their patients' & their own OPTIMAL health.

      "The small man builds cages for everyone he knows. While the sage keeps dropping keys all night long for the beautiful, rowdy prisoners." Hafiz