Healing is A Return to Wholeness
- olivierbranford
- 2 days ago
- 26 min read
Updated: 4 hours ago
The etymology of the word 'healing' is 'to make whole.' Without an approach that includes recovery of our true Self, our physical and mental health (including the effects of trauma), are compromised. With it, we are made whole, and this is the basis of true healing.
We can learn what natural laws govern healing. Healing can be helped along: You cannot force Nature, only nurture it. An essential aspect of healing is to welcome certain qualities back into our life, in order to make us whole again. Carl Jung talks about re-integrating our fractured psyche. This article outlines how to do this. These are timeless principles that, as a society, we seem to have forgotten or suppressed, and which seem to be elusive to modern medicine, to its detriment.
Spirituality and medicine
Seventy-one percent of Americans believe in a Universal spirit or God, according to The Pew Charitable Trusts. The Harvard Catalyst symposium explored how spirituality may affect our health. At the symposium Dr Alexandra Shields, HMS associate professor of medicine and director of the Harvard-MGH Center on Genomics, Vulnerable Populations and Health Disparities, said that when it comes to spirituality that "For those of us interested in reducing health disparities, this may be particularly important." She continued that "We can’t afford to ignore the potential effect of spirituality on health." One goal of the symposium was to begin building bridges between the Harvard medical faculty already engaged in this kind of research through discussion with the epidemiologists, spiritual leaders and guides (for examples Buddhist monks who had science PhDs), public health researchers, psychologists, and sociologists who were in attendance. The national and Harvard-wide experts in attendance included researchers who are tackling the challenges of measuring spirituality and those who are investigating the biological pathways through which spirituality, like stress-management and mindfulness techniques, may operate. They found that many patients who practice spirituality as part of their healing may feel “A surge within — a profound sense of power, a force beyond themselves.” Speaker Gloria White-Hammond told how she was a practicing paediatrician at the South End Community Health Center in Boston when, 20 years ago, she felt a calling to learn about spirituality. “I’ve learned a lot about myself as a spiritual BEing through my medical practice,” White-Hammond said. White-Hammond described a 5-year-old girl with leukaemia whose example became a powerful reminder that healing is about more than saving lives. Sometimes, she said, it simply involves exercising compassion to alleviate pain. Researchers from Duke University, the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health, and the University of Liverpool described the survey instruments they have developed to measure improvements in health as a result of incorporating spiritual approaches. Perhaps the benefits are not measurable using the tools used by modern medicine? How can one measure the degree to which you choose to have conscious contact with your Higher Power?
Andrea Baccarelli, the Mark and Catherine Winkler Associate Professor of Environmental Epigenetics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, proposed that spirituality be looked at through the lens of epigenetics. DNA methylation is one epigenetic mechanism that changes the way genes perform. When methylation goes awry, it contributes to disease. Bacarelli said that he found that a history of child abuse is associated with higher methylation levels in the glucocorticoid receptor pathways in the hippocampus. “The effect was attenuated somewhat in women with emotional support during childhood,” Bacarelli said. “Does spirituality modulate methylation too? This should be studied," he added. There is also increasing evidence that mindfulness techniques — including the relaxation response pioneered by Herbert Benson, the HMS Mind/Body Medical Institute Professor of Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, as well as repetitive prayer, yoga, and meditation — can cause physiological and psychological changes. Towia Libermann, HMS associate professor of medicine at Beth-Israel Deaconess Medical Center, described his team’s multiple studies on the effects of mindfulness techniques on gene expression in immune system response pathways that are also related to stress.
More than 3,000 studies indicate that spirituality has a potentially beneficial effect on health, said speaker Neal Krause of the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Belief in a Higher Power engenders hope, which has been linked to positive physiological changes, Krause said. Tracy Balboni, HMS associate professor of radiation oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, cited the results found in a national Coping with Cancer Study, led by Dana-Farber. “Patients receiving any form of spiritual support reported a higher quality of life at the end of life than those who didn’t,” she noted.
Spirituality, the Soul, consciousness, and healing
Dr Gabor Maté is a well-published author, physician, and a foremost world expert on childhood attachment, trauma, and addiction. He states that we have lost our essential nature and we are disconnected from Self, and that this both causes physical and mental illness and also impairs our recovery from it. In his book ‘The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture’ by Dr Gabor Maté, which is in my ‘Suggested Reading’ list, Dr Maté says that society has told us who we are, and that means that we are not authentic. Carl Jung, the brilliant psychiatrist, father of analytical psychology, metaphysical philosopher, and spiritual Master, wrote that "The world will ask you who you are, and if you don't know, the world will tell you." Even though the authentic Self, our Soul, is covered by many layers of limiting beliefs (which are derived from our fears acquired during childhood) and conditioned behaviour, it is never obliterated. It continues to speak to us through the body. We can learn to heed the messages that the body sends by learning its language. This is well described in the book, which is the 'Bible' on trauma, 'The Body Keep The Score' by Bessel van der Kolk, which is also in my 'Suggested Reading' list.
Modern medicine, according to Dr Maté, fails to incorporate healing approaches that make us whole. These approaches, historically speaking, the search for the true Self under the limiting beliefs, layers of mind, and conditioned behaviour, long predates modern society. The recovery of one's essence, making us whole is essential to healing.
When you are practicing spirituality, you are changing the physical plane using a power that is beyond the physical plane. This is not mystical. It’s simply that we don’t know how to measure it. This is metaphysics. Scientists are approaching being able to detect it using large Hadron Colliders and quantum physics, which shows that we are all made of energy. There is no matter, simply energy when you look in close enough. There are minuscule wavelets in an omnipresent field. This is the quantum field. This makes everything, including all our organs and even natural selection, and is how we evolved biologically. Yogis didn’t have Hadron Colliders. They went into caves and found the same thing through meditation as they wanted to know about their inner world. This is what builds everything that we perceive through our senses. The Yogis realised that they were being distracted by their senses and also their thoughts. So, meditation is to quieten the mind. Man minus mind equals God. Through deep meditation, ancient Yogis also found an underlying omnipresent field, consciousness. Could these fields end up being the same? Consciousness and the quantum field? The key to exploring this for your Self is to realise that you are not your thoughts, emotions, or experiences-you are the consciousness observing them. To remain seated in this state of awareness, you must learn not to be distracted by these objects of consciousness. You can be a hostage to your ego or host to God, becoming whole: It’s your choice. Scientists cannot even tell you what consciousness is or what your thoughts are. It’s who you are. You are a BEing of light and energy. But we are so focussed on the lower part of our being, our frightened ego, in a state of reduced consciousness. When we raise our consciousness through spiritual practice we emit energy. Spiritual evolution is key to healing.
Consciousness is the highest power in the Universe, which is made from consciousness. It’s the highest state that we can attain. As you are one with the Universe, your BEing is both the result and cause of all energetic vibrations. Mantras are all ego. They just keep telling how great you are. The thing is, that you are, you just must not think that you are. Humility is power. You have to die (an ego death) to be reborn as the infinite. The key to manifestation, including healing, is who you are BEing. In the Bible in Matthew 6:33-34 it states “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: For the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.” This is the place of miracles. You just need to get you (your ego) out of the way to allow your Soul (your BEing) to shine. Our ego is spoilt and does not have gratitude for what we have. This is why our prayers should be of gratitude rather than supplication. Believe that all is well and that all shall be well. The ego is so unappreciative and throws a tantrum if it doesn’t get what it wants or if it gets what it doesn’t want. The entire spiritual path is letting go of your ego and becoming whole. The real you is an emissary of the Universe. Use your power as a very great BEing to accept the way that the Universe is. We are fractured as we have been living as our ego, which thrives on separation. That’s all we focus on. That is what all our thoughts are about. As Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote “We are spiritual beings having a human experience, not human beings having a spiritual experience.” If you don't have a sense of Self and you fail, that is extraordinarily damaging to your psyche.
My experience
I have learned through my research, coaching clients who are also having psychiatric treatments and psychotherapy for mental health issues including addiction, and in my own recovery, that unless one addresses wholeness, that medical treatments will be less effective. A spiritual dis-ease requires a spiritual solution. How can those who don't believe in the Soul be expected to treat it? And, as they say in 12 step groups, medical treatments for depression and anxiety often have no effect unless a return to wholeness, in other words, healing, is addressed. I found during my healing that many psychiatric and psychotherapeutic approaches (I have tried them all - trauma therapy including EMDR, CBT, REBT, psychoanalysis, and psychodynamic therapy) did not even touch the sides of my emotional pain and my healing unless the psychiatrist or psychotherapist included spiritual solutions as part of their treatment. I found that many practitioners were totally ignorant of these approaches, and even 'poo-pooed' them. I have often found that my coaching clients, and indeed myself, only began to heal when spiritual approaches were incorporated alongside purely medical treatments.
Dr Gabor Maté's 'Four A's and Five C's'
Dr Maté has summarised the process and principles of making us whole, and therefore healed, as his 'Four A's and Five C's', which are authenticity, agency, anger, and acceptance, and the five levels of compassion. No-one can plot someone else's course of healing, because that's not how healing works. For example, no-one can make someone else authentic. There are no roadmaps for something that must find its own individual arc. We can, however, sketch out the territory, that has long been ignored by 'modern' medicine that allowed, for example, Stephen Hawking to live for 55 years after being diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as Motor Neuron Disease (MND), at the age of 21. Doctors initially gave him only two years to live. He passed away at the age of 76, defying the initial prognosis. ALS is a progressive neurological disorder that affects the brain and spinal cord, leading to the degeneration of motor neurons. Dr Maté gives many other examples of incurable diseases in which full recovery or remission was made, as documented in peer reviewed articles, by adding in healing principles to modern medicine.
The 'Four A's'
Authenticity This is the most important of all the principles governing spiritual approaches to healing. To put it bluntly, authenticity is a quality more often marketed than manifested. In our culture, even Coca-Cola is sold as 'the real thing'. We find ourselves surrounded by the rampant phenomenon of ersatz authenticity. Someone is performing realness for the crowd or the camera, but it doesn't convince. Maybe the words don't match the cadences, or there's too much defiance and bluster in the delivery. Authenticity is hard to pin down, while synonyms like genuineness, truthfulness, originality, and so on come to mind. Authenticity itself eludes any precise definition that could fully capture its essence, like its fellow natural state, love: Authenticity is not a concept, but a lived experience: You know it when it's there. Have you ever tried explaining to anyone what love is in purely intellectual terms? As with love, so with authenticity. The pursuit of authenticity is rife with pitfalls. For starters we have the paradox that authenticity can't be pursued, only embodied. By definition striving for some idealised Self-image is incompatible with being authentically who one is. We have to begin with accepting our Selves fully. I'm not afraid of what I used to think of as my ‘negative’ qualities. I realised that they're just the other side of being who I am. One of the most direct approaches to authenticity is noticing when it isn't there, then applying some curiosity and gentle scepticism to the limiting Self-beliefs that stand in its way. The lack of authenticity makes itself known through tension or anxiety, irritability or regret, depression or fatigue. When any of these disturbances surface, we can inquire of ourselves “Is there an inner guidance I am defying, resisting, ignoring, or avoiding? Are there truths I'm withholding from expression or even contemplation out of fear of losing security or belonging? In a recent encounter with others is there some way I abandoned my Self, my needs, my values? What fears, rationalisations, or familiar narratives kept me from being myself? Do I even know what my own values are?” The growing capacity to admit to oneself “Ouch that hurts” or “You know I didn't really mean what I just said” or “I'm really scared to be myself in this situation” is the impulse toward authenticity becoming stronger. After enough noticing, actual opportunities for choice begin to appear before we betray our true wants and needs, whereas earlier such awareness would have been clocked only after the fact, we might now find ourselves able to pause in the moment and say “I can tell I'm about to stuff down this feeling or thought, is that what I want to do?” or “ Is there another option?” The emergence of new choices in place of old pre-programmed, conditioned dynamics is a sure sign of our authentic Selves coming back online, after years in the wilderness. For my full article on ‘Authenticity’, click here:
Agency. Agency is the capacity to freely take responsibility for our existence, exercising ‘response-ability’ in all essential decisions that affect our lives to every extent possible. Being deprived of agency is a source of stress. Such deprivation could arise from social or political conditions, poverty, injustice, marginalisation, or the seeming collapse of the world around us. In the case of illness, it's often due to internal constraints. The exercise of agency is powerfully healing. The psychologist Kelly Turner has studied many cases of so-called spontaneous remission of what had been diagnosed as terminal malignancy. Having worked as a counsellor at various hospitals and oncologists’ offices, she reports that “I know first-hand that the patients who listen and follow instructions are considered ‘good patients’ while the ‘annoying patients’ are those who ask a lot of questions, bringing their own research, or ‘worst of all’ challenge their doctor's orders.” Yet these latter ones, she found, are those who find ways to take control of their own healing, and they are the ones likely to do better medically in the long term. In hindsight, Dr Turner notes, all her radical remission survivors wished they started much earlier to be active agents of their destinies, rather than compliant patients in the hands of physicians. There are bogus versions of agency through personal power mantras like “Be all you can be” and “Have it your way”. Personal choice becomes a brand, with no attention paid to the context in which those choices are made. Often the freedom being advertised is the dubious freedom to choose between this or that identity, burnishing product, or service that will not and cannot satisfy us. Nor does agency mean some sort of false omnipotence or ultimate dominion over all happenings and circumstances. Life is so much bigger than us and we do not promote our own healing by pretending to be in control when we are not. Agency does mean having some choice around who and how we be in life; what parts of ourselves we identify with and act from. This often starts with renegotiating our relationship with the personality traits we have so long taken to be identical with who we really are. The ones that first arose in us to keep us safe, but now keep us boxed in. There is no freedom in having to be good, or the most talented or accomplished, or in the need to please or entertain or be interested. Nor can we wield agency when we react with automatic opposition to other people's demands with knee-jerk reactivity. This leaves no room for ‘response-ability’ or ‘response flexibility’, a capacity that childhood trauma greatly impairs. Agency is neither attitude nor affect, neither blind acceptance nor a rejection of authority. It is a self-bestowal of the right to evaluate things freely and fully and to choose based on authentic gut feelings deferring to neither the world's expectations nor the dictates of ingrained personal conditioning from our parents and society during our childhoods.
Anger. What is healthy anger? Here's what it's not: Blind rage, bluster, resentment, or spite. All of these stemmed from an unhealthy build-up of unexpressed or unintegrated painful emotions that need to be experienced and understood rather than acted out. Both suppressed anger and amplified anger out of proportion are toxic. Healthy anger is assertive; calm even. Anger, in its natural healthy form, is a boundary defence. Activated when we perceive a threat to our lives or our physical or emotional integrity, our brains being wired for it, we can hardly avoid it. This is the self-protective rage system identified by Jaak Panksepp. Its full functioning is a standard feature of our wholeness - essential for survival. Think of an animal protecting its turf or its young. The movement toward wholeness often involves a reintegration of this oft banished emotion into our repertoire of available feelings. This is not the same as stoking resentment or nurturing grievance; quite the opposite - healthy anger is a response of the moment, not a beast we keep in the basement, feeding it with shame, or self-justifying narratives. It is situational. It's duration limited. Flashing up when needed, it accomplishes its task of fending off the threat and then subsides. It becomes neither an experience to fear and loathe, nor a chronic irritant. The fact, and some people may need to actively remind themselves of this, is that we're talking about a valid natural feeling that does not in itself intend anyone any harm. Anger in its pure form has no moral content of right or wrong: It just is. Its only desire is a noble one: To maintain integrity and equilibrium. If and when it does morph into a toxic version of itself, we can address the unhelpful stories and interpretations the self-righteous or self-flagellating thought patterns that keep stoking it without invalidating the emotion. We can also observe how our inability to say no fuels chronic resentment that leaves us prone to harmful combustions. Many of us have learned to minimise our anger to the point that we don't even know what it looks like. Like authenticity, genuine anger is not a performance. Anger’s core message is a concise and potent “No”, said as forcefully as the moment demands. Wherever we find ourselves tolerating or explaining away situations that persistently stress us, insisting that “It's not so bad” or “I can handle it” or “I don't want to make a fuss about it”, there is likely an opportunity to practise giving anger some space to emerge even the plain spoken admission that “I don't like this” or “I don't want this” can be a step forward. Research suggests that anger expression could support physical health, for example in those with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which is also known as Motor Neuron Disease, or fibromalgia; two conditions that baffle the conventional medical mind. In ALS, the most agreeable patients are the ones least likely to be in touch with anger. These also had the most rapid deterioration of their condition and of their quality of life. The same is true with fibromyalgia, which many studies have linked to childhood trauma. A 2010 study in the European Journal of Pain concluded that anger, and a general tendency to inhibit anger, predicts heightened pain in the everyday life of female patients with fibromyalgia. Psychological intervention could focus on healthy anger expression to try to mitigate the symptoms of fibromyalgia. The question for most of us is not whether to be angry, but how to relate in a wholesome way to the feelings that naturally ebb and flow with life's tide, anger included. For my full article on 'Anger', click here:
Acceptance. Acceptance begins with allowing things to be as they are, however they are. It has nothing to do with complacency or resignation. Sometimes these can pose as acceptance. Think of the shrugging expression “It is what it is “, just as stubborn egotism can moonlight as authenticity. Rather, acceptance is the recognition, ever accurate, that in this moment things cannot be other than how they are. We abstain from rejecting or condoning. Instead of resisting the truth or denying or fantasising our way out of it, we endeavour to just be with it. In doing so we foster an aligned relationship with the actual present moment. Acceptance also means accepting how downright difficult it can be to accept it may seem paradoxical, but true acceptance denies or excludes no aspect of how it is. Not even our impulse to reject how it is. Anger, sadness, trepidation, resistance, even hatred, with an accepting attitude, these all have room to say their piece. Sometimes accepting ourselves starts with facing that we don't know how we feel or that our feelings are mixed. Rejection of any part of our experience is an unnatural Self-rejection - one that feels normal to many of us. You've made some serious mistakes, you find yourself filled with hatred or resentment or confusion - these too are candidates for acceptance. Underneath them, there is always emotional pain. In fact, hatred, resentment, and even confusion, can be the psyche’s attempt, not to feel pain or sadness, or healthy grief, the jewel so often hidden within ossified grievance frequently waits on the other side of accepting. How things are and have been - that too can be hard to embrace but when we forsestall all the energy of mourning that wants to move through us we only cause it to build up. As Gordon Neufeld puts it, ”We shall be saved in an ocean of tears.” A distinction must be made between accepting and tolerating being with something and putting up with something have precious little to do with each other. Acceptance grants admission to anger if such a present increases our sense of free agency and makes room for whatever our authentic experience might be, tolerating the intolerable. On the other hand, for example, resigning oneself bleakly to conditions such as abuse or neglect, involves rejecting crucial parts of one’s Self, needs, and values that deserve to be respected and integrity that needs to be safeguarded, that is far from true acceptance. The same applies to injustice or oppression on the social level to accept that whatever currently happening is happening. This does not mean conceding that it should happen. To deal with racism, poverty, or any other societal ill, we must first recognise that they are realities of life, in this culture, that they exist. and we must acknowledge our pain and grief that they do. Now we can ask ourselves how we might effectively work to eliminate not only their expressions but their root causes. Accept then take action. We can move on to healthy anger, to agency, to autonomy, and action. For my full article on 'Acceptance', click here:
Compassion: The 'Five C's'
The acclaimed neurosurgeon James Doherty, author of the bestseller “Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon's Quest to Discover the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart” heads Stanford University's Centre for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. There is a subset of people who believe that compassion is soft; that it's not worthy of scientific study. He says that the science we have today demonstrates these practices of mindfulness, Self-compassion, and compassion are some of the most powerful that exist to change your physiology and to benefit you in your own mental and physical health and in terms of your longevity. Compassion, as both salve and salvation, is not limited to the realm of the individual. Dr Maté says that if we are to dream of a healthier, less fractured world, we will have to harness and amplify compassion's healing power. He has distinguished five levels of compassion, that build on and reinforce one another non-hierarchically. Together they encourage, guide, and orient us on the pathway to wholeness. As the playwright and physician Anton Chekhov wrote “It is compassion that moves us beyond numbness toward healing.”
Compassion is the way that we need to show up for ourselves and others as part of our individual and collective healing journey. Compassionate Inquiry is a psychotherapeutic method developed by Dr Maté that reveals what lies beneath the appearance we present to the world: Behind the masks that we wear. Dr. Maté says that "We are all like the rest of us." This is the basis of compassion.
The five levels of compassion, The 'Five C's', are:
1. Ordinary human compassion. Interpersonal compassion necessarily involves, and is the same as, empathy: The ability to get, and relate, to the feelings of another. The word compassion comes from latin, which means 'to suffer with'. This is to 'be' with suffering. We don’t want someone to suffer and ordinary human compassion is an awareness that someone is struggling: It does not register as a neutral fact. Our experience of it may fluctuate, for example depending on how we are feeling. Compassion can be worn down or depleted as compassion fatigue. For most of us it bounces back once we get the rest and replenishment we need. It’s the brain system that cares for others. Even rats have this. Most of us have that care system for other human beings. Otherwise children wouldn’t survive. Not everyone has this. Its absence in anyone, glaring in psychopaths and sociopaths, is always a marker of a non-healed wound to the Soul. In A. H. Almas' words "The suppression of hurt." When we notice such an empathy gap in ourselves, instead of self-judgement, itself a lack of compassion, we could ask "What pain have I not fully felt and metabolised?" We can learn a lot about our own emotional injury history by observing in what situation and toward whom our naturally open and supple hearts tend to harden and shut down. Compassion is not the same as pity, which empowers no-one, and involves looking down on another. Self-compassion just says "I am hurting." Self-compassion also has its unhealthy analogue: Wallowing in self-pity - the muddy trap of feeling sorry for oneself, beleaguered by fate. It undermines evolution and healing, and discourages responsibility for our own point of view. A fellow sentient being is suffering and we don’t want them to suffer. This is not enough. It’s necessary but not enough.
2. The compassion of curiosity and understanding. The first principle is that everything exists for a reason, and that the reason matters. "I want to understand why you are suffering." What happened. WHY are you suffering? Why are you addicted? We ask a person or group - any person, any group – why they would end up being the way they are and act the way they do. Even if we are vexed or perplexed by it. We might also call this the compassion of context. However sincere our desire to help ourselves or someone else. We cannot do so without the holding of the suffering being experienced, including knowing its source, as best we can. It's not enough for example to feel bad for people caught in the coils of addiction without seeking to understand what pain in their lives they have been driven to escape and how that wound was sustained. Without a clear view of the context, one is left at best harbouring inert good wishes and engaged in well but ultimately ineffective interventions. We see this limitation in the woefully inadequate addiction treatment approaches currently in vogue. The willingness to seek the why before leaping to the how is the compassion of curiosity and understanding in action. Though it is called for in every instance of chronic suffering, whether in the personal or social realm, it can be challenging in practice in today's society: We often default to easy explanations, quick judgements, and knee jerk solutions. Questing with clear eyes to find the systemic roots of why things are the way they are takes patience, curiosity, and fortitude.
3. The compassion of recognition. We don’t see ourselves as different from each other. We are one. "I don’t see myself as different from you." We see ourselves in others. I can say “I am a human being who has flaws who struggles. You may be in that same category let's see how we can fix this problem together.” The compassion of recognition allows us to perceive and appreciate that we are all in the same boat with similar tribulations and contradictions. Until we recognise our commonality, we create more wealth for ourselves and others. For ourselves because we increase our distance from our humanity and get caught up in the tense physiological states of judgement and resistance. For others because we trigger their shame and further their isolation. If you are not sure what I mean, the next time you feel intense judgement toward anyone, check in with your body state - the sensations in your chest, belly, and throat. Does it feel pleasant unlikely nor is it healthy for you? The lesson is not that you shouldn't judge since it's not you that's doing it but rather your automatic mind. To judge yourself for judging is itself to keep the wheel of shame spinning. The goal is to inquire into your judgmental mind and body state with compassionate curiosity. Healing flows when we are able to view this hurting world as a mirror for our own pain and to allow others to see themselves reflected in us as well. Recognition paving the way for reconnection.
4. The compassion of Truth. Jesus said "I want you to know the Truth. I am not trying to protect you from the Truth. I believe that the Truth will liberate you." You can ask anything from anybody. Even if it brings pain or sadness. As the Truth is necessary. We may believe it an act of kindness too protect people from experiencing pain. While this is so, when it comes to pain that is unnecessary and preventable there is nothing compassionate about shielding people from the inevitable hurts disappointments and setbacks life doles out to all of us from childhood onwards. Such a mission is not only futile, but also counterproductive, and may even be inauthentic: The seemingly altruistic impulse arising from our discomfort with our own woundedness. Whatever our intentions we do no one any favours by fearing their pain or colluding in their banishment of it. As people work to heal their traumas, hurt will inevitably arise. This is why all of us go into denial, suppression, repression, rationalisation, justification, and varying grades of dissociation in the presence of hurt. When we face all the ways we have numbed ourselves, pain will inevitably emerge - in fact it has been waiting a long time to do so. Of course, the fear of these exiled parts is also natural. When you have a lifetime of emotions that you have been running from, it seems like once they catch up they will gang beat you and leave you crippled in an alleyway. This need not happen. The compassion of Truth recognises that pain is not the enemy, in fact pain is inherently compassionate as it tries to alert us to what is amiss. Healing in a sense is about unlearning the notion that we need to protect ourselves from our own pain. In this way compassion is a gateway to another essential quality - courage. The compassion of Truth also recognises that Truth may lead in the short term to further pain. That some attachments may not survive the choice for authenticity is one of the most agonising realisations one can come to. And yet in that pain there is freedom. It reverses and vindicates the tragic mandatory choices we had to make in the opposite direction as we started in life. It's a journey of ditching people pleasing and not caring what people think. With more and more freedom in authenticity, we may have to find our own pockets of community where we are seen and understood. Truth and compassion have to be reciprocal partners - we are not being compassionate by dumping unwelcome truths in someone's lap, perhaps justifying it on the grounds that “I'm just being honest”. Only when compassion is present do people allow themselves to see the Truth. And without safety, the Truth cannot do its healing work.
5. The compassion of possibility. When you look at even the most rejected person you see them without judgement as the full human being that they are and that can be manifested. You are aware of that possibility. This is the level of compassion that we aim for in Transformative Life Coaching (TLC). I see and speak to the highest version of a person and it brings it to life for them, free of ego. Compassion is the only thing we can actually give anyone. To see another without judgement is the first step to them having Self-compassion and Self-worth. Compassion is the antidote to shame. There is more to each of us than the conditioned personalities we present to the world the suppressed or untrammelled emotions we act out, and the behaviours we exhibit. Understanding this allows for the compassion of possibility. Possibility as a present, alive, ever available, inherent quality. Possibility is connected to many of humanity's greatest gifts. Wonder, awe, mystery, and imagination. Qualities that allow us to remain connected to that which we can't necessarily prove. It's up to us to nurture this connection because the day-to-day world will not always provide us with reassuring evidence. This deepest aspect of compassion recognises that the seemingly impossible only seems so. And that whatever we most need and long for can actualise at any moment. Staying open to possibility doesn't require instant results. There is more to all of us in the most positive sense than meets the eye. The same applies to whatever seems the most real, solid, or intractable in us or others. In a famous story the Buddha saw the universal potential for the humane self to emerge in a notorious criminal who accosted him with murderous intent. The man became his humblest and most gentle follower. In order to gain possession of ourselves, we have to have some confidence and hope. And in order to keep that hope alive, we must usually have some taste of victory. The compassion of possibility I would say is that door we keep open so we can see that victory coming. If we didn't mistake ourselves or one another for whatever personality features and behavioural traits appear on the surface, good or bad. If in each person we could sense the potential for wholeness that can never be lost, that would be for us all a victory worth savouring.
For my full article on 'Compassion'; click on the following link:
Namaste.
Olly
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Hello,
I am delighted and enchanted to meet you. I coach men with 'Deep Coaching', 'Supercoaching', and Transformative Life Coaching (TLC). Thank you for reading this far. I very much look forward to connecting with the highest version of you, to seeing your highest possibility, and to our conversations. Please do contact me via my email for a free connection call and a free experience of coaching on Zoom or in person.
“Transformative life coaching uniquely creates and holds the space for you to see your self afresh, with clarity, and step into new ways of BEing, which will transform how you perceive and intuitively create your world. My work is to guide you to raise your own conscious awareness to the level that you want to achieve.”
I have a Bachelor's degree in Natural Sciences from Trinity College, Cambridge; a Master's Degree in Philosophy from Trinity College, Cambridge; a PhD Doctorate in Scientific Research from University College London (UCL); a Medical Degree (MD/MBBS) from The Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, London and have been a doctor and reconstructive trauma and cancer surgeon in London for 20 years. I have a number of other higher qualifications in science and surgery. I have published over 50 peer reviewed PubMed cited scientific journal articles, have been an associate editor and frequent scientific faculty member, and am the author of several scientific books. I have been awarded my Diploma in Transformative Life Coaching in London, which has International Coaching Federation (ICF) Accreditation, as well as the UK Association for Coaching (AC), and the European Mentoring and Coaching Council (EMCC). I have been on my own transformative journey full time for over five years and I am ready to be your guide to you finding out who you really are and how the world works.
I hear you. I see the highest in you, and I will continue to do so until you see it for your Self. I have ultimate compassion for you I will never judge you. We will fulfil your dreams and discover your purpose and what gives your life meaning. We are dealing with infinite possibility here. Together, we will lead you to remembering the light that resides in you. I have written 400 articles for you and an eBook to guide you on your transformative journey, which are all available for free on my website - click on the link below:
Please let me know if you would like to join our 'VOICE for men' VIP community: 'Vulnerability & Openness Is a Choice Ensemble', 'Visibility Is Power', where men can find their strength, courage, and authenticity, by dropping their egocentric fears and instead communicate openly with vulnerability. We are co-creating this space. It will change your life. It will empower you. This community is a safe space for men to connect and discuss philosophy, spirituality, positive psychology, awakening to Self-realisation, wisdom and timeless Truths, to share our experience, strength and hope, and to find solutions to our pain and fears. Our meeting is free to join. There is no script, just sharing.
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