Forcing our preferred methodology, belief, or view upon someone because we think it is “right,” or “more advanced” when they do not possess the resonance, interest, or capacity to engage that practice is unkind, aggressive, and even potentially violent.
It is one thing to honor another’s innate higher capacities—and to never forget the brilliance of their true nature—especially in the face of profound suffering. But it is another to push this realization upon them as a result of our own misattunement and failure of empathy, where we fall out of right-brain to right-brain synchronization.
May we meet the other with a wild sort of caring (the external other as well as the lost inner other within us) and push them a bit if this is our agreement, but always remain aware of the tendency to send them spiraling outside their window of tolerance into overwhelm and shame, spinning into an unsafe place where they come to deeply mistrust their own experience.
We must never forget that trauma unwinds only in an environment of safety. While this work is not always going to feel safe, a basic ground of safety is required for it is from this foundation that the wounds of a lifetime can untangle and we can metabolize in the body that which has become dissociated and shut down.
In this field of co-regulation where our nervous system is soothed and we are compassionate, creative, and attuned—not pushing our own agenda, view, or technique—together we can access, articulate, and integrate that which longs to return home, and in this discover it is love that is truly the ultimate medicine.
My latest book – The Path Is Everywhere: Uncovering the Jewels Hidden Within You – is now available
The next book, The Unfolding Heart, will be published by Sounds True in early 2020, details to come
My next event:
The Great Befriending: A Five-Day Journey of Self-Love, Deep Rest, and Coming Alive (with Jeff Foster), September 21-26 in Loveland, Colorado
