There is a particular kind of bewilderment that can arise after we have been on a path of healing for some time.
We understand so much.
We can see where the patterns came from. We recognize the old strategies of protection, the places where we learned to abandon ourselves in order to maintain connection, the ways shame and fear took shape in the body.
We have meditated, prayed, gone to therapy, attended retreats, read the books, and done our best to bring awareness to our lives.
And still, there are moments when something in us reacts as though none of that understanding has ever happened.
The same fear. The same contraction. The same relationship pattern. The same ancient feeling of being too much or not enough. The same impulse to leave ourselves just when we most need our own presence.
It can be tempting to interpret these moments as evidence that something has gone wrong.
That we haven't healed enough. That we need another insight, another method, another breakthrough. That there is some final piece of understanding which, if only we could locate it, would release us once and for all.
But I wonder if these places are asking something else of us.
Not more insight or clarity, necessarily, and not more engagement with a seemingly unending project of fixing, changing, and even “healing” ourselves.
But for something more sensual, wilder, less domesticated, more alive.
More unknown. More mysterious.
A new kind of relationship.
Perhaps some of what we carry cannot be resolved through understanding alone because it was never created at the level of understanding.
It was formed in relationship. In the body. In those early places where we learned what could and could not safely be felt, expressed, needed, grieved, or loved.
And perhaps it is there—in relationship, in the body, in the presence of another—that something new becomes possible.
Not overcoming these parts of ourselves.
Not finally getting rid of them.
But learning how to accompany them.
This is some of the territory I'd like to explore in a free live gathering next week:
A Different Way of Understanding Healing
Why insight, self-awareness, and spiritual practice don't always create lasting change
We'll gather live on Tuesday, September 15, at 9:00 AM Pacific / 12:00 PM Eastern / 5:00 PM London.
Together we'll explore why healing often unfolds more slowly than understanding, why certain wounds continue asking for our attention long after we've recognized where they came from, and what becomes possible when we begin meeting ourselves with greater compassion, curiosity, and care.
The gathering is free, and I'd love to have you with us.
[Reserve your free place here]
For those who feel called to continue afterward, this gathering will also open into Shadow Work: A Compassionate Path into the Unfinished Work of Healing, a six-week live course beginning September 22.
But there is no need to join the course in order to attend the webinar. Come simply as you are, with whatever questions, tenderness, weariness, or curiosity you might be carrying.
We'll begin there.
With warmth,
Matt
.png)
