Dear Peter:

I think you answered my questions back on April 2, 2018, exactly 7 years ago : “It is an interesting paradox that it takes a strong and healthy ego to detach itself from the Self… The problem arises when we attach our sense of Self to the ego… we unconsciously attach the self and consciousness to our experiences, thoughts and or emotions. “I” (which is a construct of language) becomes attached to a sense of identity… I am my experiences, I am my thoughts, I am my emotions, I am my ego… I am a construct of language… and we end up in knots, a plaything of emotions and manipulations… a consciousness that is fixated on a emotion, thoughts, experience and all the pain that that brings… any letting go evolves a kind of dying. We make space for something else to emerge. It is a leap into uncertainty. A part of the ego that we cling is the idea that we can control the life/death/life process that is LIFE. Letting go of that is scary so we hang on and the more we cling the more we suffer… and the more we cling…. until we let go… Equals “dying” is painful…. There is a time for everything including attaching our sense of self to our ego and the language construct “I” (which is mistaking the map for the territory). As we awaken to the process we develop a healthy sense of self that “knows” when its time to let it go and make room for what comes next.”-

– Your perspective suggests that healing is a process, not an instant shift—that detachment becomes possible only after certain internal work is done. Your words imply that forcing detachment too soon, before the self is ready, isn’t helpful. You acknowledge that processing trauma is needed at first, but ultimately, you see detachment as the final step—a transition that happens when the time is right, not something to rush. In this view, trauma survivors must reach a certain level of self-awareness and inner stability before detachment can truly work.

One part of your reflections stood out to me this morning: “Any letting go evolves a kind of dying. We make space for something else to emerge.”

That resonates deeply with where I am right now.

This morning, as I turned on my computer, I had a strange experience. I thought about doing everything right today, and suddenly, I felt peaceful, optimistic—even euphoric. Then, a memory surfaced: this was how I used to feel growing up. Back then, every beginning day felt like an opportunity to do everything just right, where no mistakes will be made and no criticism will follow.

Before this morning, I remembered striving to get everything right, but I had long forgotten the emotional part—the euphoria itself. This is what I meant when I spoke about abandoned parts of myself left behind in the past, needing to be reclaimed before I can move forward.

Remembering that feeling today was like picking up a lost piece of myself from the side of the road—taking it with me, integrating it, and continuing walking forward on the main road.

processing the above: picking up this memory of emotion is essential for healing because emotional reconnection restores lost parts of the self. When trauma or life experiences cause disconnection, certain emotions—like hope, joy, or optimism— become fragmented, buried, or forgotten. Healing isn’t just about understanding what happened—it’s about reclaiming the full emotional experience that was lost along the way.

Remembering that euphoric feeling from childhood isn’t just a memory—it’s a piece of me that was abandoned, left behind when survival took precedence over emotional wholeness. By recognizing it, I am not just recalling an old sensation— I am reintegrating a part of myself, making space for it to exist again in the present.

Healing is about reclaiming what was lost before moving forward. I can’t let go when too much of me is still left behind. There has to be enough of me intact to make letting go possible—because if too much is missing, I won’t have enough of myself to withstand the release.

Thank you, peter, for making this processing possible for me.

anita

Hi Anita

In 2016 I would say I headed out into the woods gathering information, words in a hope to understand and understand arrive as some imagined something. Information isn’t knowing and not surprisingly I got got stuck. In hind sight I would say I was dealing but not healing. The two years ago I asked a different question. What if I actually believed in the things I learned were Truths?

I am going to attempt to answer your other questions but not knowing what the answers are this may be a mess.

Here’s my question: Does detachment need to be preceded by acknowledgment and emotional integration, or do you see transcendence as an immediate path forward?

This surprises me but Yes I see Transcendence as a immediate path forward. I’ve had glimpses… to be addresed in part two. Yes their will be apart two.

Krishnamurti questioned whether detachment is truly the opposite of attachment, suggesting that if one pursues detachment as a goal, it can become another form of attachment, creating conflict and striving.

That matches my experience of detachment as a goal. Removing the notion of ‘goal’ detachment changes from something one does or seeks but a way of being, an awareness of allowing? Such a detachment is not a denial of trauma, emotions, or the investigation into such things but to paraphrase Millo no longer identifing with it anymore.

Does that mean suffering doesn’t warrant full emotional acknowledgment before moving on? Now I hear Krishnamurti asking what acknowledgment means. If acknowledgment means holding on to what we discovered, then we have just created a different version of what we will suffer from. If acknowledgment means flow and no longer identifying with the trauma then I think we get closer. We still suffer as life in ‘time’ (measurement) – in maya – is suffering but what has changed is a possibility of flow.

Is full emotional acknowledgment a path to healing – Yes
Has it worked for me, no.
Have I observed it working for others not really. But I have a bias

From my earliest memories I have been taught that to get to Love I must do the work and follow the rules, (rules that included full emotional acknowledgement) and then just maybe I would deserve to be Loved.

The experience of maya is real and more imminent grabbing our attention while the experience of the Eternal is real but still…
Neither path cancers the other. My experience is that the realm of maya is more likely to separate us from the experience of stillness and Eternal. While the experience of the Eternal immediately addresses maya.

A note on Love from Krishnamurti
“When the mind is no longer projecting itself, pursuing its particular sensations, demands, urges, hidden fears, seeking self-fulfilment, held in bondage to belief – only then is there a possibility of love.
So, we must be concerned, not with love, which comes into being spontaneously, without our particularly seeking it, we must be concerned with the things that are hindering love, with the things of the mind which project themselves and create a barrier.

My doing the work had only created different barriers. The wisdom traditions all suggest a work that is no work. What if I lived what I said I belived

Dear Peter:

I am looking forward to processing your two posts tomorrow morning. I am excited about it, really.

“Does trauma exists in love/eternal? No.’- this is comforting to read.

anita

y fully embracing my emotions without resistance, I can stop being defined by my suffering, allowing transcendence into peace. In essence, acceptance clears the path for transcendence, while rejection creates internal barriers.

I wonder if your transcendence, Peter, is involved with fully embracing your emotions with no resistance?

* Just as I was about to submit this post, I found out that you submitted a new post in which you reflected on your previous two posts, realizing that you focused too much on methods as paths to understanding when, in reality, the Taoist perspective suggests a pathless path—a way of being rather than a structured approach.

You acknowledge that despite changing the order of his practices—meditation, contemplation, prayer, dance, art— you were still engaging in method-based healing, rather than allowing life to unfold naturally. You contrast two approaches:

(1) Intuitive Flow: Moving through life without fixating on resolving past trauma—instead, engaging in presence through movement and stillness.

(2) Analysis Trap: Letting trauma take attention first, trying to understand it mentally, and then working toward balance—something you liken to overeating chips despite knowing it’ll make you sick (an excess of intellectual analysis without real resolution).

Your short meditation quote seems to summarize this revelation: Movement creates life, Stillness Love → Action and presence coexist; life unfolds naturally when both are embraced.

You suggest that this realization shifted how you engage with past memories—seeing them as just past, rather than something that needs direct fixing. You clarify that you are not promoting your experience as a universal solution, but simply sharing your perspective.

You acknowledge that you still fall into analysis, then remember, then forgets again—implying transcendence isn’t a permanent state but an ongoing shift between presence and intellectual processing.

I will revisit all this later, of course. But for now, as with all things in life, balance is key—stillness and movement, analysis and non-analysis. Just as excess motion leads to chaos and excess stillness to stagnation, too much analysis traps the mind, while too little leaves needed insight undiscovered. All things in moderation.

As to me, all my decades-long analyses of my childhood was fruitless until most recently, and the reason was simply that I perceived the analyzer (myself) as worthless, acutely worthless and shameful. Shame has been the most acute. And the fear too, the fear of the next time I will be shamed. No way in heaven or in hell, that I could have transcended these acute painful emotions+ cognitions without facing this Shame and Fear. I am looking these in the eye right now, so to speak. Strangely, befriending them. Not for the purpose of keeping them, but for the purpose of not trying to escape them, a quest I was never successful at. Wow.. befriending all that I am. All. What a concept.

Developing this a bit further: the more I tried to escape shame and fear, the stronger and more persistent they remained. Accept them, befriend them, and I can almost feel their lack of motivation to stay.

anita

Continued:

Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist who founded analytical psychology, was not a philosopher in the traditional sense. His approach differed from spiritual traditions that advocate immediate transcendence. He emphasized integration—meaning that emotions, trauma, and unconscious patterns must be acknowledged and processed before true transformation occurs. He believed suppressing or bypassing emotional experiences could lead to psychological fragmentation.

Jung’s concept of individuation is the process of confronting and integrating all aspects of the psyche—including emotions, fears, and unconscious drives—so that a person becomes whole rather than avoiding or prematurely “transcending” emotional challenges.

He believed that every person has a “true self” beneath layers of conditioning, societal expectations, and unresolved inner conflicts. The process of individuation is about integrating different aspects of the psyche—shadow, ego, and unconscious elements—so that a person becomes whole rather than fragmented. Transcendence, in this sense, isn’t about escaping the self but fully embracing one’s deepest truth without being bound by social, cultural, or psychological limitations.

He argued that people often live according to false identities shaped by external influences (culture, family, trauma). Transcendence involves breaking free from these limiting beliefs—realizing that one’s identity isn’t defined by past wounds, societal roles, or inherited fears.

A quote by Adyashanti, an American spiritual teacher and author known for his teachings on awakening, non-duality, and self-realization: “A total acceptance of yourself brings about a total transcendence of yourself.”- this means that true transcendence—rising beyond ego, suffering, and limitations—doesn’t come from rejecting or changing yourself, but from completely accepting one’s own flaws, emotions, and experiences. It’s a paradox: accepting yourself completely is what allows a person to move beyond the self.

If I fully embrace my emotions without resistance, I can stop being defined by my suffering, allowing transcendence into peace. In essence, acceptance clears the path for transcendence, while rejection creates internal barriers.
I wonder if your transcendence, Peter, is involved with fully embracing your emotions with no resistance?

* Just as I was about to submit this post, I found out that you submitted a new post in which you reflected on your previous two posts, realizing that you focused too much on methods as paths to understanding when, in reality, the Taoist perspective suggests a pathless path—a way of being rather than a structured approach.

You acknowledge that despite changing the order of his practices—meditation, contemplation, prayer, dance, art— you were still engaging in method-based healing, rather than allowing life to unfold naturally. You contrast two approaches:

(1) Intuitive Flow: Moving through life without fixating on resolving past trauma—instead, engaging in presence through movement and stillness.

(2) Analysis Trap: Letting trauma take attention first, trying to understand it mentally, and then working toward balance—something you liken to overeating chips despite knowing it’ll make you sick (an excess of intellectual analysis without real resolution).
Your short meditation quote seems to summarize this revelation: Movement creates life, Stillness Love → Action and presence coexist; life unfolds naturally when both are embraced.

You suggest that this realization shifted how you engage with past memories—seeing them as just past, rather than something that needs direct fixing. You clarify that you are not promoting your experience as a universal solution, but simply sharing your perspective.
You acknowledge that you still fall into analysis, then remember, then forgets again—implying transcendence isn’t a permanent state but an ongoing shift between presence and intellectual processing. (to be continued)

Is it that I was stuck analyzing shame and fear in efforts to chase them away via understanding that kept them hanging on tight, while trying to understand them with an attitude of befriending them would have made all the difference? In other words, it’s not the analysis itself that kept them strong within me, but my efforts to divorce myself from them through analysis that kept them powerful within me?

I think so.

And strangely, as I am now thinking of befriending fear and shame, I have no desire to analyze them further.

anita

Hi Anita
Thanks for the response. I feel a need to clarify – A need probably linked to some past trauma. At least I’m aware. I know its not necessary but I do enjoy analyses kind of masochistic.

You acknowledge that despite changing the order of his practices—meditation, contemplation, prayer, dance, art— you were still engaging in method-based healing, rather than allowing life to unfold naturally. You contrast two approaches:

The intent wasn’t to contrast two approaches but a unification of a change in order – even though I fall into old habits and temptations. Silence/stillness before analyses vice trying to use analyses as away to stillness.

If I fully embrace my emotions without resistance, I can stop being defined by my suffering, allowing transcendence into peace. In essence, acceptance clears the path for transcendence, while rejection creates internal barriers. I wonder if your transcendence, Peter, is involved with fully embracing your emotions with no resistance?

I am uncomfortable with the wording of ‘your transcendence’. That has a progressive feel, or something set as a goal to be achieved. I need to hold the word lightly…. My sense is that transcendence is a happening vice a doing or willing or achieving.
I’m not sure it matters what comes first, in dance the Lead is follow and follow lead. Does it matter?

You acknowledge that you still fall into analysis, then remember, then forgets again—implying transcendence isn’t a permanent state.

Transcendence as a state implies a something that can be possessed. I would say transcendence transcends the realm of time, measurement, and language and leave it at that.

you see the Eternal as offering immediate relief from suffering—not because trauma doesn’t exist, but because in the Eternal, trauma no longer holds weight or control over the self. Identifying too much with suffering keeps it alive, whereas stepping into an awareness beyond time allows suffering to dissolve naturally. — rather than processing suffering as something to be worked through, you view detachment from the entire concept of suffering as a way to transcend it.

In stillness and silence there is nothing to cling to so yes, no suffering. Perhaps the experience happens at the moment of freefall, weightlessness when the arising transitions to the return and return to the arising of a breath?

To clarify I’m not attempting to address the trauma in the ‘Eternal’ realm that can only be addressed in the temporal. The experience of the Eternal, of being Love, and the composition that arises… provides a kind of foundation to examine the trauma. The memory of the trauma viewed through the memory of the experience of the “weightlessness”

You suggest that this realization shifted how you engage with past memories—seeing them as just past, rather than something that needs direct fixing.

Not found of the word ‘just’ but yes, the realization has shifted how I engage with the life – Life being motion, time, measurement, duality…. Life a playground that calls out to be felt and known.

I have not been particularly good at communicating. I am not dismissing the past or viewing it as only. I am not pretending not to feel what I feel. The notion of fixing has been problematic for me. I don’t always get to healing, but dealing, hopefully with healthy boundaries, is a step forward. Its not a permanent temporal state… question to self – is that what I’ve been trying to do, find a permeant state? – that won’t work life is motion

The habit of analyses is difficult to break but I’m “going to put down the bag of chips now”. Progress! I don’t see a need to identify with that habit, it just is, and enough to be aware.

Is it that I was stuck analyzing shame and fear in efforts to chase them away via understanding that kept them hanging on tight, while trying to understand them with an attitude of befriending them would have made all the difference? In other words, it’s not the analysis itself that kept them strong within me, but my efforts to divorce myself from them through analysis that kept them powerful within me?

I have know that game! With the same results.

As I have gotten older sadly it now only takes few chips to make me feel sick and with that the interval between craving for chips decreases. At the grocery store when I pick up a bag the memory of a future sick feeling arises, and most time I put the bag down.

LOL I see I used the word sadly. I so liked my salty snacks, I miss them, but they don’t like me.