Dan Mohad Dib wrote: the universe does not allow us to go this way by having put pain in this corner, the lack of understanding of all that keeps us in hell, whether wealthy in money or not..

So pain is not to be avoided, but welcomed and attentively listned to as to a wise and loving teacher.. It has someting important to tell us about life and living?

Dan Mohad Dib wrote: wise and loving teacher seems right to me....the pain is in the refusal

Good to talk to you too ol´man! Did not mean to suggest anything. Just wanted to check if my hearing was alright. And so it seems..

There is a significant difference in approaching problem and pain as a teacher that one might learn from or to approach it as one would ones prosecutor; one is the road to freedom and the other the road to prison.. We cannot afford to be victimised by circumstance do we? Better to be notknowing and learning than knowing and stagnated!

Daniel Dan wrote: ..just told when I was alive...

Thank you Dan for sharing your story. Something similar has happened here to, of course. That lingering connection coming to surface now and then. And yes. It is a curse. And a blessing. More of a blessing I would say though.

I am not sharing your pessimism at the end of the day Dan. Of course K´s words will be twisted, misused and even turned into fashion at some places. Maybe even here at this forum amongst us. Even so there is also some moments of meeting when we in inner honesty touches real. This is when the seed of truth is sprouting, when inner healing takes place and we share a moment in communion. Those are the moments that makes the visits here worthwhile..

Cheers fellow traveller!

A responsible therapist will serve as a midwife for truth to be safely born into the human world. What would you say are the requisites for him to succeed in this venture? What does it take?

Mina Martini wrote: Absolutely. And here ultimately we are not only talking about the 'therapists' who exercise an occupation which carries that name, but about you and me and anyone.

Yes dear. You are absolutely right. This is not just about being a responsible professional; It is all about being a responsible human being.

Mina Martini wrote: The word medium comes to mind Per, as describing a true therapist. Being a medium for that which is true, without adding anything to it, or taking away anything from it, which means freedom from the distortion and filter of a self.

This too is crystal clear about being a responsible human being. Nothing to add an nothing moor to say really:-)

Dr.sudhir sharma wrote: A responsible therapist must have the best interest of his patient on the top of the list...and patient's life is full of conflicts and contraditions. He has the company of sorrow, stress, fears, anxieties, depression etc as companions.

The therapist may understand and is perhaps living without conflict, but is it not necessary to start the journey of recovery of the patient from the level that he (pt.) understands and on which he is living?

With this patient having fragmented psyche, what will be the right approach of the responsible therapist? How/on what note does he start the interaction with him?

These are very good questions doctor, but let me first clarify a few issues: We operate in different fields you and me. You are in the field of science and medicine I presume, and I in the field of human relations. I do not see patients. And I do not treat people. My client is the relationships in which the suffering is enmeshed. Moreover I am as therapist part of the therapeutic system that we are investigating together. I am myself as much of a client as anybody else in the room - whatever goes on in me belongs to the therapeutic process. My job is not to change people but to set stuck relationships into motion. And to do that I must be very ready to change.

What is going on around and in between us in the relational field is of interest, not so much what is going on in the individual mind. On behalf of the therapist there is a "vertical listening" going on; he is listening to himself as he is listening to the other. He is tracking the wordless understanding that is moving about, and when "that" is put into words by anybody it is instantaneously shared and understood by everybody. This wordless understanding is the truth that must be midwifed into being and shared in communion, and when that happens the miracle healing is taking place.

I do not know if these scribbles are conveying anything meaningful to you, or if they are answering any of your questions. Hopefully they do as this is what comes to be expressed from here..

We all live i a culture heavily infested with pain and neglect. Everybody has got his or her fair share of wounds from the war of growing up. There is a huge legacy of pain that is traded over and developed further from one generation to the next. (It will take many generations to manifest a full scale diagnosis of any kind..)

And still. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with you. The pain you suffer is relational. You may think and feel that you are wrong, unworthy, misfitted or inferior. That is your conclusions from your relational experiences. From your experiences of neglect. From what people have told you, showed to you nonverbally or conclusions that you have formed secretly for yourself, often at a very young age. You suffer from your image of yourself compared to others. The very self-center, the isolation, the "me", is a result of pain and neglect traded over from one generation to the next since Jesus wore shorts..

The way out of this suffering, the therapy, is purely spiritual. It is about knowing who you are. When you see that, when you touch real on that, it is also seen that there is no separation. That everything is perfect. That we all suffer from a pain of our own making - and that we where never really thrown out of the Garden of Eden. We have just blindfolded ourselves with the known..

Daniel Dan wrote: I do not place you in the professional therapist...:-)....

I know, I am a strange bird. Words and titles are so misleading. For many years I have been searching a fruitful intersection between therapy and spirituality. A spirituality that is grounded and comprehensible, far from new age and all that nonsense. I fond it in K´s teachings and eventually the intersection is becoming clearer. For some reason I find it easier and more interesting to share the findings here amongst you, open minded people, than it is amongst colleagues in my field..

Dr.sudhir sharma wrote: Do you mean that what is going on as verbal discussion in relational field is of more interest?

Not really, at least not only. There are a number of other things simultaneously going on in that field. The atmosphere in the room, restless fingers, a shared glance, a moving foot, someone coughing, the quality of the silence, the timbre of the voices and, more than anything; that which is subtly present but not yet expressed. You can feel it and when someone is putting words to it you know it is the truth that is being uttered. That is the "wordless understanding" lurking about, waiting for someone to express it. And when it is expressed it is immediately recognized and shared in communion, not seldom in silence. From there on words and pauses are pregnant with meaning.. Now we´re talking..

Dr.sudhir sharma wrote: Can a divided mind be aware of this subtle presence?

Sometimes it can, as an act of Grace receive it and thereby become still, quiet, non divided. Subtlety is there always. Presence is Grace..

Dr.sudhir sharma wrote: Who will be able to feel it, Per? Is understanding the ways of working of one's own mind is a pre-requisite or not for this feeling to be present?

If one person has a living understanding, is presently aware of, the workings of the mind it will affect the others nonverbally. Very few words are needed then to share the understanding. Are we talking?

Peng Shu Tse wrote: Whereas, if one views the therapist (in so far as this has to be a designated social role) as a participant in therapy rather than a practitioner of it, the hierarchy of understanding need not arise.

Indeed, the client may have more understanding than the therapist of his/her own mind, yet the session may prove most beneficial to the depth of understanding and the enhancement of the subtle feeling of them both.

Right on target sir! Beautifully put!

Peng Shu Tse wrote: What do you think about this?

I think your Ana is a very wise doctor and I agree to what you are saying that she says..; As there is no separation between us, and moreover, as we are fundamentally in a not knowing position together there are no separated doctor/therapist - client relation. There are just a number of interconnected human beings giving their hearts and souls to understanding the suffering together in a way that will eventually dissolve it.

As a family therapist I am a part of the therapeutic system on equal terms with the family members that I meet; none of us is actually knowing what the suffering is about. And I, the therapist, must be very ready to change and to give up my prejudices as soon as I find them not useful in the therapeutic process.

In this "giving our hearts and souls to truth" a biblical saying can be applied. "Whenever two or more of you are gathered in my name I will be in your midst". Meaning that truth is the real therapist, not me..

Peng Shu Tse wrote: 'Jesus' began the quoted passage with, "Whenever two or three are gathered." And this is the key. To 'gather' in this sense means not a physical gathering but a true communion. It means to live the teaching. In Greek, the word 'koinonia' comes to mind, communion in the spirit.

Thank you Peng. What you write is most clarifying. It is not my intention here to make a big mystic number of therapy, spirit, truth, communion and all. It is simply my experience quite often that when people in serious dialog about their real suffering touches truth, there is an atmosphere of sacredness, wholeness and healing emerging in the room. It is also the experience here that for this to happen the therapist has to be very honest, vulnerably naked and not hidden behind a professional role, behind theories, ideologies or methods. I know the therapist is given a certain authority in the room. He becomes a role model and must be ready to risk it all. He must dare to leap into the unknown for truth to be born into the relational field.. But first and last he must transmit calm assertive energy from a real source within..

Mina Martini wrote: In its absence only this pure feeling of Love remains, but it does not seem to have a subject or an object, it is not divided.

It comes to be seen that Love is our deepest nature. We ARE love. It is our true Self. When i love you or anybody I love Self. This brings Rumis words to mind; Love, lover and beloved are One.

In Love.

Per

Precisely so dear friend! ;-))

Peng Shu Tse wrote: I think Per is not saying, "I will lead you."

He seems to be saying, "We are blind. Let us examine this blindness, together."

No, I am not leading anyone. Rather I am saying "I don´t know, let us explore into this together." I know I am blindfolded by prejudices, or so called knowledge, by images, words, experiences and self-made patterns of connection. That veil has been lifted or dissolved at occasions and the wordless wonder of being lived. The memory of these occasions is of course nothing but new threads in the blindfold. But non the less. This is how I know I am blindfolded..

Beyond this. When the leap into the unknown is made. When "I" is left behind, truth has a chance to be known. And this is the state of true relationship.. We cannot bring light to another, but in true relationship light can arise. And there only. True relationship IS being in light..

Hayall! Why complicate things that are simple? To be in love is etierily different from being in love.. One belongs to the world of images and the other does not.

We are not born human beings. We become human beings in interaction with other human beings. We become human beings when relating and moving about in human culture and eventually soaked up in it. We are human culture. My pain is your pain. My gain is your gain. We are One. And ultimately we are so soaked up in culture that we have lost track of our nature.

Culture is fragmented, distorted, full of pain and contradictions whereas nature is pure, simple and truthful. The question I was inviting you to explore with me in this thread can be reframed; how can we, distorted, confused and pain ridden human beings relate to one another in a way that gives room for nature, for truth to act upon us, to heal us? That would be a therapeutic relationship for both parties, would it not - far from the nonsense we usually call therapy..?

Is there a way for us, in all honesty, to break this vicious circle of blind leading blind, or are we forever doomed to live in it? And for sure, not recognizing ones own blindness does not mean that one can see..

Robert Clarke wrote: We interpret our surroundings and act.

If we act from interpretation we merely react, won´t you say? Such action, or rather reaction, will bring no healing. It will only add to the confusion in the world. Intelligence is something completely different..

Robert Clarke wrote: We are what we have created, this insane world. We will probably bring about our end, but looking around me at the destruction we have caused,

Yes, this is agreed. We are the insane world that we have created and in which we live. We are the human culture, as I pointed out before. And still. There must be a way out of this mess. If that topic holds no interest for you I am afraid that you and I are just wasting our time here..?

Our house is on fire. Authority will not help us. Belief will not help us. Hope will not help us. Ideology will not help us. Religion will not help us. No theory will help us. No method will..

Other species on this beautiful planet seems able to live in harmony with nature. Intelligence in action. What is wrong with us? What is preventing us from acting sanely, intelligently?

From here it is obvious that we human beings are stuck in between: We must either transform or face extinction. On this level we cannot stay..

Robert Clarke wrote: One thing I feel confident about is that there will always be vast amounts of people who will try to 'live the teachings', endlessly debating this or that aspect of what was said or written, and maybe less than a dozen that faced the loneliness of the death of the 'I'.

"I Am" is a limitless statement. "I Am" does not have to die for wholeness to be. It is the limited identification with "this or that" that has to "die" - and there is no loneliness to be faced in that dissolution. On the contrary. Limited identification and thus limited awareness is the origin of loneliness..

Patricia Hemingway wrote: "I Am" is a statement of limited thought - so how can it be 'limitless'?

You miss the mark Patricia; "I Am" as thought is of course limited. But as pointed out many times, "the word is not the thing". Go to the source of your actual being, the source of your actual living "I Am" experience and find out for yourself.

Patricia Hemingway wrote: why should I be interested in having an "I Am" experience?

Dear Patricia. I was not asking you to collect yet another experience. I just presumed that you are actually experiencing the fact of being alive right now - and that is not too far fetched is it? The question was whether this "I Am" experience is limited or not. What can my answer give you but words? You will have to find out for your self Patricia. You will have to do your own homework!

Patricia Hemingway wrote: I do find out for myself, and I make sure at every lived moment that I am not fooled by 'the monkey'! What is more - to do so is highly recommended, because 'monkey' is very tricky!

Yes Patricia, you seems to know a great deal about tricky monkeys;-) I never mentioned "Higher self", but you did at several times already..!

Patricia Hemingway wrote: Of course 'this "I Am" experience' is limited. Come on!

How and to what is it limited Patricia?

Patricia Hemingway wrote: It is limited to and by the limitations of the very thought that invented it ('it' being the "I Am" experience).

You are cheating on your homework, dear Patricia. The living experience of being is not a thought. - Try again!

Patricia Hemingway wrote: Enough homework for you Per?

No Patricia. Not quite. You seem to still be stuck in the monkey world, unable to move in and out of it..

What you have written is clearly seen and agreed to. And very well put I must say.But there is much more to it; I was not referring to the monkey´s being with "I Am". I was referring to a wordless, imageless, silent, watchful probing into the essence of being.. That, and nothing less, should be the homework!

If you succeed in that, without you succeeding of course, the beauty and clarity beyond the words from Mina here will be well recognized..

Patricia Hemingway wrote: Well - it cannot be imagined for one moment that a contented 'self' will be going anywhere but further into its own contentment. :) Good luck there to you both!

Well dear friend. If imagination is what you got to discern the true from the false I guess it will be safer for you to say goodbye and good luck right here..

Yes Patricia, you are right. What you point at is clearly seen and recognized. Problem, as it looks from here, is that your smartness seems to block your understanding..

The question in scoop was how, and if so, to what, the living experience of Being is limited? - Self made self set aside! Let be your comprehension - share your understanding! The monkey´s death is not the end of Being, or is it?