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In the Meantime: Trusting the Process

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It is often said that we have to hear something at least twice for us to remember it. There is a lot of truth to that. It goes into our short term memory, and if we don't repeat it or use it, we also lose it because the new information didn't have enough time to be integrated into our long term memory. There is another factor I find to be true. If we aren't fully engaged or interested in what we are learning the new material also doesn't stay with us. Sometimes even if we are genuinely interested, it is just too much for us to absorb. I find that dynamic often happens when we engage in deep personal work or a therapeutic environment. There is only so much we can take in at a time. I frequently get feedback after a session where much inner territory was covered that they can't remember much of what we talked about. I sense that, often, in those periods, we enter an  IN THE MEANTIME zone. This is a zone where we consciously remember a little of the session, and ou

In the Meantime: Old Traumas and Wounds

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I don’t know if any of you watch television, but I saw a show the other day which spoke to me. The show is actually one that is filled with melodrama, but I view it anyway as I love medical shows. There was an episode recently where a psychiatrist heard the inner story which kept a young woman captive. The show is called Chicago Med. The psychiatrist is my favorite character in the show. He is at once very human with his own fallible and also very wise and intuitive and gentle. In this particular show, a young woman was brought in who her mother thought was possessed by a demon. She had scratches all over her, was out of control and so was restrained and was dehydrated and spoke in gibberish. The young woman’s father also came in enraged about how his ex-wife was treating his daughter. The psychiatrist interviewed the mother and father separately and received their stories and perceptions.  Here we are IN THE MEANTIME again, as he figures out what is going on with this young

Venus and The Art of Love

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As I was sitting up in bed and meditating the other morning, I tuned into my stomach area; my gut. It seemed to be talking with me by feeling stiff and wooden. I attuned myself to that area and got a sense that for me, the stiffness was a general feeling of a baseline fear I carry which is related to a fear of rejection. This understanding led me to realize that our guts, where many of our neurotransmitters live, have to break down and digest many things beyond food. Digesting a fear of rejection is a difficult task. It doesn’t digest well or easily. In fact, it shouldn’t digest it. Many of us try to digest feelings, emotions, beliefs, and ideas which are not ours or are not digestible. Digesting means to break things down so that we can absorb what we take in. Do we want to consume someone else’s feelings, or food that is not good for us, or someone’s ideas, etc.? I would say, probably not. Upon making this realization, for me, it is important to accept myself, so that even

In The Meantime: Learning New Things

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I love to learn new things. As a result, I have had the training for four different careers. Life is too short to find myself uninterested in what I do. I have to keep things interesting, or I lose my enthusiasm for life. We all spend most of our waking hours doing some sort of work. To me, it is therefore so important to at least like what I do and gets engrossed in my work. Learning something new though involves not only taking the time, or time out of my daily life to learn something new, but also the time to integrate the work into my knowledge base and then to integrate it into my work in some way or to initiate new work and services I offer. That becomes quite a lot of time and effort I expend without knowing the outcome in terms of how I can incorporate the new information into my existing work or start new work, etc. When I engage in learning new material, I take a significant risk as to how I can use this in my life. At those times I begin to enter that zone of time I call

Poem: What I See With My Eyes Before Me

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What I See With My Eyes Before Me What I see with my eyes before me, I see me, Between the trees Staring out at me Begging me to please just be Put away my crazy desires and bigger than life aspirations See me peaking out Ready to seize the day  By just being me in all my glory and my foibles Seeing me clearly and truly Loving me with soft wide eyes Peaking out at me Asking me to be. . . me My soothing words of wisdom from last week are about the things you do not like about yourself:

In the Meantime: "Insignificant Moments"

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Recently I met a friend for lunch, and we were talking about our different projects. As we were sharing, I realized something I had yet to have expressed, even to myself, regarding this magic period of time, in the meantime. I realized that when we say, IN THE MEANTIME, we speak of it as a throwaway time period. It seems to me that we speak of it in the same throwaway way as we might say, whatever, or but. We don’t count that time as having importance. It is almost as if it doesn’t exist. In the meantime is a transitional period of time in which the little pieces of life come together. If we really think about it, many parts of our days and weeks involve what we may term, in the meantime. I could say something like, I am writing a book, and in the meantime, I... Or we could say, I am getting ready for work, and in the meantime, I... Or we could say, I am getting ready to go to the store, or to cook something, and/or until I go, there is a period of time w

Poem: Fall Promises πŸπŸ‚

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Fall Promises It was an unusually warm fall. Summers’ days lingered quietly protesting Fall's progress. Trees stayed leafy green, with just a topping of Fall’s colors making a muted display. Only the birds knew it was fall. Where are the birds, are they silently tucked away for the coming winter? I sit patiently waiting for the bird’s morning calls as I stand on my back porch. I sit listening and watching for the bird’s calls by my morning window shrouded by trees. I watch as an occasional bird makes its more subdued presence known, flying by. Winter is coming, they are saying as they make their winter nests. Squirrels flit by, playing and mating and searching and digging and climbing. I look upwards and see a squirrel in his nest high upon a tree. Cooler breezes suddenly pop in bringing a refreshing change to the malingering heat. Fall’s promises are coming at last. The bird’s know what time it is; the birds know.