transforming

oh – this seems horribly anti-social – but these days i am most content when i am alone. this is not to say i don’t enjoy being around other people – but i feel a lot more balanced and in myself when i am just doing for me what needs to be done. i have lately been quite happy just to be reading, listening to the radio, cutting wood, doing yardwork, working on my car, doing schoolwork… without too much interaction.

i never used to need this solitary time like i seem to at the moment – and i suspect this is likely a phase related to moving and taking stock of where my life is going. i have found myself lately asking a lot more questions of myself about what i am doing and where meaning may be sought outside of chaotic situations (the creation of chaos bringing the illusion of movement – but no enduring fulfillment?).

i am reading a book right now about incorporating taoist principles into psychotherapy that provides many small examples of how a counsellor might center therapy around the practice of mindfulness (as it is called in buddhism, detachment in taoism) . there is a whole school of body-centered therapy called hakomi which rests on these principles – which i think lends itself nicely to the ecopsychology and land-based healing practices i have been pursuing intellectually for the past year. in any case, it seems to me the task of becoming a therapist who employs these techniques (mindfulness) must first become that way in the core of their being – for this is not a way of being that one turns on or off depending on there being a client present.

this is certainly the state i am attempting to work towards (not because of this book, but because of the unfolding of many events over the past couple of years) but i am frustrated at times by how difficult it is to truly transform aspects of myself into becoming the who i wish to be. i believe the anti-social phase i am in is a result of that inner search – trying out new ideas and new ways of being is often best experimented with in private before being made a part of one’s external projection. as well, the individual quest for change is by necessity isolating as transforming journeys are not easily shared with others in any real sense.

there is motion in my life but i am unsure about exactly where it is taking me – and although i can impose direction (and have by enrolling in school and moving to the sunshine coast), i also wish to have trust in the natural direction of things by listening to my heart and the land and the sea around me. when i am alone i can hear those things, but other voices tend to crowd them out – when i was younger i could only hear those other voices and had trouble hearing myself. i need to learn to hear all of the voices without judgement – allowing myself to learn from those which ring most true and set aside those who would dissuade what i know in my being.

there is a certain amount of becoming a counsellor that is daunting to me because of these things – not that i have to be a perfect human in order to effectively work with people – but that there is a requirement (in my mind) that i do work to become a better human each and every day – less judgemental, more attuned, more intuitively connected to the other. that seems like a lifetime of work from where i sit at the moment.

(when i started this post i certainly didn’t intend for it to go in this direction – but now that it has i am quite pleased to be thinking through these things….)