The Bridging of Two Inner Worlds To be human is to be vulnerable in your humanness and indestructible in your spirit at the same time. In therapy, you can open up to the loss, limitation and conditioning of your human life. It is from your humanness that you are able to experience the whole range of feelings, from the deepest of sorrow to the most incredible joy.
Presence as I offer it as a depth-oriented therapist is loving and non-judgmental, holding open space for your difficult human experiences with unconditional compassion. In unconditioned presence, every inner conflict can be embraced and reconciled.
Structured and Unstructured Consciousness We alternate between two basic states of consciousness - the conditioned or ego structured state of consciousness and the creative/intuitive unstructured consciousness that is not informed by the past. The conditioned parts of your conscious are held in various parts of your body.
Your human conditioning is where all your emotional problems come from. And, the unstructured or unconditioned state of being is a "no problem state." In your larger, unstructured consciousness, you can rest in a place of stillness and witnessing acceptance for whatever pain or loss you are experiencing.
You will know when you are inside your structured/conditioned awareness when you are searching for something that feels missing in your life. You will feel compelled to do something to fill the void or to change the feeling you are having.
In your body, your painful emotions are held apart from the center core of your body. When you experience emotional pain from your unconditioned center, integration can happen.
Deep presence held in therapy helps you distinguish between your alternating conditioned and unconditioned states so that you can begin to find wholeness and peace even in the midst of difficult feelings.
The Natural Release of Emotions When you sit quietly in the presence of a compassionate other, what needs to come up for healing will feel free to present itself. When you express yourself honestly in an unconditionally loving space, it is possible to experience a natural release of pain without effortful emotional processing techniques.
What You Resist Persists Your emotional suffering and feeling of loss persist when you resist what you are feeling in each moment. In a conditioned state of mind, most of your life energy will go toward resisting difficult feelings. You might be expending a great deal of energy, by being overly busy, over-indulging, or controlling and manipulating yourself or others in order to avoid feeling emotional pain.
A Larger Perspective on Emotional Pain In therapy, we will take the time to meet your pain unadorned and focus on helping you move through it in a whole and gentle way. Since it is your conditioned mind's job to create and perpetuate problems, I also might ask you to pull back and look at what you are believing about your life.
And blessedly, it is your unconditioned mind's job to be peaceful, unperturbed and problem-free. Without access to unconditioned consciousness, we all could literally stay in therapy for years as each one of us has a non-stop supply of difficult circumstances and painful memories to draw upon and work on.
The Creativity of Presence When you start to spend more time in your unconditioned (present-moment) mind you are in a creative state that knows how to heal. If you speak and express your feelings from within the experience of your unconditioned awareness in therapy, wisdom, healing paradoxes and intuitions can arise that can incite joy. Surprise and laughter can burble up, offering a fresh and unconventional way to move forward in your life.
So much of our ego-conditioned mind is invested in either trying to create problems or to appear sensible and sane. There is a natural creative exuberance that arises in a state of unconditioned presence. Self-acceptance from this centered "all-is-well" place inside you is the key to your healing and wholeness.
With love,
Shelley