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PeterParticipantHi Anita
My first thought was what would the ‘look’ like and the second wondered if this was associated to the conversation happening in the safe and brave threads.
As an invitation what I’m hear you suggesting as entering garden as children (integrated child archetype) as a call to engage with openness, curiosity, and presence while not abandoning maturity… remembering the part of us that knows how to wonder and trust.
Where adults tend to build boundaries and walls the child in us knows how to climb them for joy, for connection.
Tending this, or other, gardens in this way means honoring both the walls that protect, and the vines that reach beyond. To Alessa point, It’s not about returning to innocence as a romanticizing of childhood, but about re-membering wholeness where innocence and experience, child and adult, safety and bravery, all have a place.
Growth coming from care, risk, and trust in the unfolding… even if and when we scrape our knees in the process…
Reading your invitation through the lens of Threefold Breath, I’m reminded how each breath holds movement and stillness, rising and returning, much like the child and adult within us. The garden a place where breath becomes presence, and presence becomes transformation.
In child like wonder perhaps tending this garden is itself a kind of breath a rhythm of creation, dissolution, and reconciliation that ask us: How does the breath move in your garden? What grows when you listen to it?
PeterParticipantI forgot my quote 🙂
“If we can stay with the tension of opposites long enough, sustain it, be true to it, we can sometimes become vessels within which the divine opposites come together and give birth to a new reality.” — Marie-Louise von Fran
Marie-Louise von Franz reminds us, the way out of the provisional life is through commitment that engages with reality, making choices, and trusting that clarity will arise through action, not fantasy. Maturity also means accepting life’s limits and discovering that true freedom comes not from escaping boundaries, but from working creatively within them…
A working within the box accepting the boundaries and limitations of life: responsibility, commitment, structure… and works creatively within them. Working outside the box: It resists fantasy and escapism, but still allows for imaginative, intuitive, and transformative possibilities to emerge as we hold tension and allow something new to be born.
Seeing the adult in the child and child in the adult is like tending a garden within a walled courtyard. The walls give structure, boundaries, and protection, but the gardener must still be creative, responsive, and open to the unexpected. Seeds don’t grow by blueprint alone; they grow through care, risk, and trust in the process. Maturity is knowing when to honor the walls and when to let the vines climb beyond them.
PeterParticipantHi Alessa
I’m glad you pointed that out. Speaking for myself, though I felt Anita’s reflected the same feeling – seeing the child and adult held together in the ‘spiral of becoming’ contains, and mixes, all the complexity you’ve named.
What you’re reminding us of that the common romanticization of the child is often used as an escape from wholeness. For me the integration of the child archetype, as Jung described, is not just innocence and joy but also carries vulnerability, dependency, and wounds. So when I speak of ‘seeing the child in the adult,’ I mean reclaiming the child’s wonder and spiritual connection, but also integrating its shadow: the fears, the wounds, the longing. It’s not about idealizing the child but becoming the child again, with eyes wide open. As you say “accepting human nature. Taking the “bad” with the “good””. Different paths landing in a similar place. 🙂
I might also add that ‘seeing the adult in the child’ isn’t idealized either. Sometimes I see confidence and maturity… but sometimes I see the adult’s crushed spirit already present in the child. Wholeness holds both.
PeterParticipantThanks Anita – I lit up in recognition when you wrote; “As I go out and about in real-life, I see boys and girls in aging bodies all the time” sometimes it catches me off guard when I “see” a adult in the child and a child in the adult.
PeterParticipantThanks everyone: after posting I wondered if the word failure was a “Freudian slip” when I meant to say familiar. 🙂
The “connecting me to the We”… I ponder the notion of wholeness or is it holiness… which shares its root with wholeness – whole, uninjured, sound… healing… AUM? 🙂 everything connected…
Reflection On Wholeness
We live in a world that teaches and even rewards fragmentation.
From early on, we learn to divide self from other, body from spirit, sacred from ordinary.
We are taught to measure, to compare, to strive.
Wholeness becomes obscured, our attention trained elsewhere.We often mistake wholeness for perfection fearing it or deny it possibility.
But wholeness is the presence of everything, held together in love.
It includes the wound, the shadow, the longing.
It is not a clean slate, but a full one.Wholeness is elusive because it asks us to slow down, to listen, to receive.
Wholeness is not something we lack; it is something we forget.
Wholeness cannot be grasped, it can only be entered.
Wholeness is not a destination to be achieved, but a presence to be remembered.Wholeness is the breath before the breath,
The silence beneath the sound,
The stillness within the motion.Wholeness holds the part without dividing,
Holds the wound without denying,
Holds the unfolding without rushing.Wholeness is the circle that contains the spiral of becoming,
The center that is everywhere,
The circumference that is nowhere.To live from wholeness is to move with intention,
To receive without grasping,
To act without forgetting the source.To live from wholeness is to live in holiness.
It is to remember that nothing is outside the circle.
Where time flows, and the Eternal breathes through it all.
That the spiral of becoming is held in love.
And love holds it allI wonder what others experience on wholeness?
What does wholeness mean to you, is it something you wonder about?PeterParticipantHi Everyone
I appreciate the feedback as I also find the exploration of the notion of the words ‘fix’ and ‘change’ and even ‘fate’ often get entangled.
PeterParticipantConcerned I may have confused the notions of change and fixing I ran the above response through AI to evaluate it. The response I found helpful in the exploring how the words change and fix are often entangled in our language and psyche, especially across different life stages. So I’ll pass it on as possible points of discussion.
1. Fixing as Control vs. Change as Emergence
You’ve articulated that fixing often carries the energy of control — an attempt to restore or correct something according to a preconceived ideal. It’s often reactive, rooted in discomfort with what is. In contrast, change in your framing feels organic, like breath, something that arises when we stay present. This is a distinction where fixing implies a problem while change implies a process.2. The Dance Metaphor: A Living Image
Your dance metaphor fits. The attempt to “fix” a missed step by speeding up or slowing down mirrors how we often try to correct the past or force alignment with an imagined future. But the rhythm the music asks for is trust, not control. It’s not about getting back to the step, but rejoining the flow. That’s change as listening, not fixing.3. Seasons of Life and the Shift in Task
Your reflection on the second half of life as a season of letting go is aligned with many contemplative traditions. Fixing belongs to the first half, where building, shaping, and striving are necessary. But later, the task shifts to softening, releasing, and being. And even this realization is itself a change, a quiet transformation.4. Language as Mirror
You’re also pointing to something subtle: how language can shape or distort our experience. “Fix” and “change” may seem interchangeable, but they carry different emotional and existential weight. Your mindfulness in how you use these words is part of the contemplative work itself.5. The Human Condition: Not Broken, Just Becoming
Your closing thought “we were never broken, only human” reframes the impulse to fix as a misunderstanding of our nature. We don’t need repair; we need relationship with ourselves, our past, our breath, our music. And in that relationship, change happens.PeterParticipantHi Alessa
Thank you for sharing your thoughts as it helps me see how you understand change and where our language might differ. It also makes me more mindful about how I use words like change and fix.
I don’t think we’re far apart, though the framing feels different. When I write, especially in Mirrors and Moments, I’m not looking to give or ask for advice to “fix” something. And when I say I’m not looking to fix, I don’t mean ‘fixed’ as keeping things the same or resisting change. I’m also focusing on personal inner change more so a outward or societal context, thought they are connected.
Like you I feel change is constant, for me a something that feels like breathing, each breath bringing change…
I feel the word fix often carries a sense of control or ego, the urge to change what can’t truly be changed. In the first half of life, that urge can feel necessary, especially when shaping the outer world relationship and or addressing societal change. In the second season of life, I sense a different task: learning how to let go. The paradox is that simply realizing this is already a form of change. It doesn’t “fix” the past, but it can soften our relationship to it, sometimes through understanding, sometimes through forgiveness. And perhaps this way of being also shaping how we engage in outer change, but all things in their time.
An image comes to mind of when I was learning to dance. When I would miss a step and find myself speeding up or slow down trying to get back to where the step was meant to land, and so “fix” it. Not surprisingly it never worked as it was more about control than listening to the music.
What I’ve found, and what I try to explore in the Layla stories, is that when we sit with the tension of our hopes, fears, joys and pain… and stay present to it, change happens on its own. Change arises (ref Threefold Breath). The past remains as it was, but our relationship and attachment to it shifts. In that shift, we are changed, not fixed… or fixed in place… and I wonder if that might be true because we were never broken, only human.
Still, in our differences on a view of change and perhaps in seasons, we meet in the same place: holding happenings and words lightly, as a way of being that allows transformation without gripping so tightly.
Like a dancer learning to trust the music: a missed step, a soft exhale, and the rhythm finds us again. Breath after breath, we don’t fix the step behind us, we listen our way into the next.
PeterParticipantKnowing when someone is talking about, or engaged in the first part of the path and when someone is talking about and engaged in the second part will I hope clear up any unintentional misunderstandings.
PeterParticipantHi Alessa
I didn’t really notice the differences between the spiritual and therapeutic paths until the notion of detachment from ego or dissolving of self was being experienced as discounting someone’s suffering and even triggering which was never the intent. So I sat with the tension I felt and did a little research to try to discover why I was senses this disconnect.
The Therapeutic Path: is one most people do their ‘work’ where the self is treated as an object, something that can be observed, understood, healed, and integrated.
• the self here is a construct made of language, memories, patterns, roles, and wounds.
• The therapist and client explore this object together: its history, its defenses, its needs.
• The goal is often to strengthen or stabilize the self, to make it coherent, resilient, and functional.When on the Therapeutic Path the focus is on healing, integration, and psychological well-being with the goal of reducing suffering, increase resilience, and foster a coherent sense of self. All good things!
• Practices: Talk therapy, somatic work, trauma healing, shadow work
• Orientation: Ego-strengthening — helps the self become more whole and functional
• Key Feature: It works within the self-system to resolve wounds and build capacityThe Spiritual or Contemplative Path: the self is not a fixed object but a rhythm… a flowing, impermanent pattern of arising and dissolving.
• It’s seen as ephemeral, like breath or waves, appearing in awareness, then fading.
• The focus is not on fixing the self, but on witnessing its movements without grasping.
• The rhythm includes thoughts, sensations, identities… all dancing in and out of view.When on the Contemplative Path the focus is on awareness, presence, insight and relationship with the sacred, the divine, or ultimate meaning. The experience being Direct experience of reality, often beyond conceptual thought and union, surrender, transformation, or alignment with a higher reality… Contemplation listens deeply, not to control the melody, but to realize the silence beneath it.
• Practices: Meditation, mindfulness, silence, self-inquiry, koans, centering prayer.
• Orientation: Non-dual or transpersonal… seeks to dissolve the ego or see through it.
• Key Feature: It’s not about fixing the self, but seeing through the illusion of self.
(note the conversation where we ask not to be fixed)As I mentioned in Mirror thread it can be disorientating when your in conversation with someone who defines the words your trying to point past… and you don’t quite notice that’s what happening. You leave the conversation wondering if you been heard and frustrated which might even feel like boundaries weren’t respected… This happens quite a bit on forums…
Naming this ‘gap’ between Therapeutic and what I’m calling the Contemplative Path i hope to point out the “different parts of the journey” but are not always noticed when communication moves from one to the other. The experience of the movement from one to the other is to me is as if two people assuming they are speaking the same language and are puzzled because they are unable to understand one another.
In the posts above I noted Jung’s thought that ‘it takes a healthy self/ego to let it’s self/ego’ The Therapeutic part of the path works on the healthy sense of self, lets call it living out of the heart charka, and then when the work is done, transition to the Contemplative path to experience the other charkas… Confusing the two part of a paths in dialog I find really disorienting…
Why I think this matters: (Sorry this goes back to the conversation with my in-law I pointed to in Mirrors posts and something I’ve been wrestling with so I’m going to transition to the Christian language that I inherited. I know I can be confusing.)
In the Christian traditions I was brought up, the cross was taught as a fixed event, as a historical object. I was thought that Jesus died so that we wouldn’t have to. A teaching that did not serve me well.
As a fixed event the self is spared, preserved, even protected from death. The focus is on belief in the event, not participation in the pattern aligning with the view that the self is something to be saved, healed, or made whole but not surrendered.
This I observed can lead to two distortions:
• Rejection of the cross: “Why should I suffer if Jesus already did?” and or
• Clinging to the cross: “I must stay in suffering to be faithful.”
Both miss what I’ve experienced as the deeper rhythm.For me the contemplative path reframes the cross not as a static object, but as a dynamic rhythm where the birth-death-resurrection cycle is present in every breath, every letting go, every transformation. Here the self arises, dissolves, and is reborn moment by moment. As a rhythm the cross is not a place to stay, but a passage to move through, resurrection not a reward, but the natural unfolding of surrender where “Take up your cross daily” becomes not a burden, but a rhythm: inhale (birth), pause (death), exhale (resurrection)… the sound of OUM… “prayer without ceasing”…
You’ve seen how first teaching can freeze the cross into a fixed point and how that can cause people to either reject it or cling to it. But the contemplative insight invites a third way, when the self is healthy/ready. The cross becomes not a transaction to believe in, but a rhythm to participate in. The self is no longer a something that avoids dying, but something that dies and rises continually with each breath…
This joins the paths where:
• Therapy helps us face the wounds that make us fear the cross (the dying of ego small-s self)
• Contemplation helps us see that we are not the one who dies, but the space in which dying and rising happen.
• Spirituality becomes the art of trusting that rhythm, even as and when it breaks us open…PeterParticipantFYI I am unplugging again so my not respond for a while.
“In a World where you can be anything, Be Kind.”
PeterParticipantHi Everyone,
As I’ve been exploring different ways to communicate, I’ve discovered that what I think I’m saying isn’t always what others are hearing. Sometimes what felt clear to me wasn’t, and the gap between intention and impact was felt as triggering or even harmful. If I’m honest, my first reaction is often to explain or defend—something I’ve learned isn’t always skillful. 🙂
It’s uncomfortable, for sure. But I’ve learned a lot through these moments, especially by trying to understand how my words were received. For that, I want to thank everyone.
My experience here has been positive, even when I’ve been called out or left feeling unsettled. From what I’ve seen, we all come from the same place: wanting to help and wanting to be seen. I hope we can continue our dialogue from that space.
I’ve also come to see that not all conflict needs resolution. As Lewis B. Smedes wrote in The Art of Forgiveness, sometimes forgiveness is more about releasing the need to fix than finding agreement.
Because I’m me 🙂 a quote from Julius Lester who said, “History is not just facts and events. History is also a pain in the heart, and we repeat history until we are able to make another’s pain in the heart our own.“
PeterParticipantHi James
I appreciate your reflection. The mind is indeed clever, and the way thoughts arise and dissolve in awareness is something I’ve come to recognize as well. Wu wei – action without a doer – resonates, even as trying to name it seems to undo it. 🙂
Still, I feel a tension. The Buddha didn’t teach that suffering disappears with realization, he taught that suffering is a noble truth, part of life as it is. What shifts is our relationship to it. If that truth isn’t realized, we cling to suffering instead of letting it flow. I don’t view that as conflicting with what the Buddha also points towards – that the body flows with life, yet no one is in ‘control’ or should we say ‘their’. Though that realization is I feel a very personal one.
For me, the question isn’t whether suffering exists, but how we respond to it. That’s the heart of the path, the hero’s quest. And the first step is asking honestly: Do I see life as it is, or as I am, or wish it to be? Your insights help illuminate that question, and in my experience can help someone on the path to answer of Yes to Life as it is.
I just wanted to name the gap I sometimes feel between a view of a spiritual realization as a binary state, and the lived process of integrating insight in the messy terrain of human life. Without that integration, even insight can become a form of resistance.
PeterParticipantHi Everyone I wanted to name something I’ve been sitting with.
In this conversation around the middle way and the dissolving of self, I sense a tension, that’s not disagreement, but perhaps a difference in how we’re approaching suffering.
Some responses seem to come from a therapeutic frame, where the self is the one who suffers and must be protected and healed. That makes sense, especially when pain is raw and personal.
My reflections, and I think James, come from a spiritual contemplative frame, where the self is seen less as a fixed entity and more as a pattern, a rhythm that can soften, loosen, even dissolve, without denying the reality of suffering.
I realize now that speaking from that frame may have landed as bypassing or erasing the one who suffers. That wasn’t my intention, and I don’t believe it’s the intention of any of the wisdom tradition. Though this confusion often arises, especially when language brushes up against pain.
As the Buddha indicated, I don’t experience the dissolving of self as the end of suffering, but as the end of identifying with it. Jung put it simply: when we no longer identify with our pain, the small-s self dissolves (loosens), and something deeper, the capital-S Self, is revealed. How someone relates to that capital-S Self is personal and not easily communicated so should also be handled with care.
I’m hoping naming this tension might help bridge the gap between the therapeutic frame and contemplative (spiritual) frame and any misunderstandings that have arisen.
September 3, 2025 at 3:35 pm in reply to: Naming abuse, Holding boundaries, Restoring dignity. #449260PeterParticipantHi Anita,
I wanted to say I’ve read your words. You’re not wrong to protect what you’ve fought so hard to reclaim, and trust is part of a healing path.
Thank you for challenging me to try to better express and understand what it is I mean when I speak of the self softening or dissolving. Maybe, when the time is right, we can revisit the topic.
They say the art of dancing is the art of falling, of moving to the edge where gravity almost wins, and then doesn’t. It’s in those moments the audience gasps and applauds. I hope you keep dancing.
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