Wisdom From Within-Holistic Counselling and Healing Centre
2752 Taylor Lane V4A 3H5 Surrey, BC, Canada

When the mind is festering with trouble or the heart torn, we can find healing among the silence of mountains or fields, or listen to the simple, steadying rhy...thm of waves. The slowness and stillness gradually takes us over. Our breathing deepens and our hearts calm and our hungers relent. When serenity is restored, new perspectives open to us and difficulty can begin to seem like an invitation to new growth. This invitation to friendship with nature does of course entail a willingness to be alone out there. Yet this aloneness is anything but lonely. Solitude gradually clarifies the heart until a true tranquility is reached. The irony is that at the heart of that aloneness you feel intimately connected with the world. Indeed, the beauty of nature is often the wisest balm for it gently relieves and releases the caged mind. John O'Donohue Excerpt from BEAUTY Cliffs of Moher / Co. Clare - October 2016 Photo: Ann Cahill

The Zen of an Aching Heart~ When our heart breaksin love, in friendship, in partnershipit is always a very difficult experience. Modern neuroscience has even ...discovered that the emotional suffering we experience registers in the same areas of the brain as physical pain. So when we’re feeling abandoned and rejected, we don’t want to eat, we can’t sleep, we have difficulty breathing, our bodies feel as if we have the flu or we’ve been run over by a truck. So, what can we do when we have to accept the loss of a friend or a loved one? What truth can we find beyond the stories we tell ourselves about how they’re wrong and we’re right, or that we’re wrong and they’re right? What can we do besides spending fruitless hours trying decipher everything they said or did? Can we do something more useful than justifying to ourselves what we said or did, or wishing that we had said or done something else? And what can we do when the story spreads to nearly drown us in despair over feelings that there’s something wrong with us, that we’re unlovable, that we’re the reason things didn’t work out? Like a sandcastle, all is temporary. Build it, tend it, enjoy it. And when the time comes let it go. The first thing you need to do when you’ve suffered loss or betrayal is to find a way to regain your wise heart so that you can let it hold the aching of your heart. The Zen teacher Karlfried Von Durckheim speaks of the importance of the need to go through our difficulties in a conscious and clear way. The person who, already being on the way, falls upon hard times in the world, will not as a consequence turn to those friends who offered them refuge and comfort and encourage their old self to survive. Rather, they will seek out someone who will faithfully and inexorably help them to risk themselves, so they may endure the difficulty and pass courageously through it. Only to the extent that a person exposes themselves over and over again to annihilation and loss can that which is indestructible be found within them. In this daring lie dignity and the spirit of true awakening. Sometimes suffering the losses and the unexpected betrayals and break-ups that befall each of us becomes the places where we grow deepest in our capacity to lead an authentic and free life. Often by working our way through our difficulties, our ability to love and feel compassion for ourselves and others deepens, along with the wisdom that will help us through similar problems in the future. And learning how to survive our present difficulties is one of the few things that will help us to know the right things to say and do when others whom we love suffer as well. ~Jack Kronfield This excerpt is taken from the book, A Lamp in the Darkness: Illuminating the Path Through Difficult Times http://ow.ly/mCr7300cbo

May you know that absence is alive with hidden presence, that nothing is ever lost or forgotten. May the absences in your life grow full of eternal echo. May ...you sense around you the secret Elsewhere where the presences that have left you dwell. JOHN O'DONOHUE Except from the blessing, 'For Absence,' found in his books: Benedictus (Europe) / To Bless the Space Between Us (US) Ordering Info: https://www.johnodonohue.com/store Ruined Cottage / Co Clare, Ireland Photo: Ann Cahill

I imagine that one of the great store houses of blessing is the invisible neighborhood where the dead dwell. Our friends among the dead now live where time and ...space are transfigured. They behold us now in ways they never could have when they lived beside us on earth. Because they live near the source of destiny, their blessings for us are accurate and penetrating, offering a divine illumination not available according to the calculations of the given visible world. Perhaps one of the surprises of death will be a retrospective view of the lives we lived here and to see how our friends among the dead clothed us in weave after weave of blessing. JOHN O'DONOHUE Excerpt from his books: To Bless the Space Between Us (US) / Benedictus (Europe) Ordering Info: https://www.johnodonohue.com/store Cong Abbey, Ireland Photo: Ann Cahill

Today I am celebrating all of the men in my life who inspire me to be a better person. After a session with a wonderful male client a few months ago I got to th...inking that so many of the men in my life also happen to be highly sensitive. In our culture this divine gift of sensitivity is rarely welcomed and celebrated, rather it is more often ridiculed and punished. This breaks my heart because I see how it cuts men off from the core of their being, and that is devastating. Here is a letter I wrote to the brave and extraordinary men in my life who are highly sensitive in nature, and really for all of the men who can relate to this. May they all continue to thrive and grow in their many gifts to offer the world. We need them so much. Dear highly sensitive man, I am writing to remind you of your strength and resilience. To lend you my unwavering support. I know it is heartbreakingly difficult for you to live in our world as you were created. You need to know how important you are. The world needs you. I need you. I know you have faced countless experiences that have made you feel rejected, like an unworthy outsider. In a world of warriors your powers were shunned because they didn’t fit the destructive norm. You were made to feel unmanly, like an outcast in a world of wounded masculine supremacy. From a young age you learnt that to be a man meant cutting off from your feelings. You learnt that crying was a sign of weakness, and that you shouldn’t care so much. Boys and men called you weak, freak, too emotional, faggot, and gay. Girls and women called you too nice and made you feel like you needed to "man up" to be a noble lover. Unable to bare feeling so misunderstood you began constructing walls around your tender heart. Hiding the waves of emotions that caress you so perfectly. You felt the need to shelter and protect your vulnerability from the world, even from those closest to you. Somewhere along the way dear brother you broke. You faced depression, anxiety, despair, uncontrollable rage. Whatever happened to you it hurt you to the core. This breaks my heart. Tears pour from me as I imagine the pain and ridicule you have endured. Not only this but these destructive marks were left for you alone to repair. We have not made it safe for you to seek refuge and support. I love you so much, no matter what your sexual orientation, gender identification, interests or inclinations. I see you. I welcome your tears, your fears, your ever alert wondering mind. Your compassion, how you consider many things at once and can read the energy of a room. Your sensitivity is sexy. It is brave, it invites curiosity about my feelings, it re-wilds excitement in my senses. It is creative, full of depth, captivating my imagination like nothing other. I want to enchant you to come back home to the deeply sensitive man that you have had to repress. He is in you longing to break free. He is the one I’ve been waiting for. The one you’ve been waiting for. I see the wounding that you carry. Yet I am asking you for more. I am asking you to break down the armour that has hid you from the world. To show up as you were intended to be. I need you to awaken dear brother. Your time is now. You have likely been criticized by women. But you must know what you have to offer us is an invaluable gift. We need you. You see my brother we are in this together. We must heal together. There is no other way. Men have likely bullied you with aggression and cruel words. They are wounded warriors. A strong and powerful man remains in his truth and never destroys anyone to try to look better. That is insecurity. You have so much insight and wisdom to offer other men. We must heal together. There is no other way. I want to support you to encourage your sons to embrace their sensitivity, and to help your daughters to know the power of being raised by a confident highly sensitive man. So that my daughter can live in a world where sensitive men are valued and she can be touched by such grace. I want to walk beside you however you may dress, wear your hair or communicate. I want to sit next to you at the theatre, so I can watch your face as beauty lights your soul. Your tears of joy are rivers that have the power to connect other men to their emotions, women to their hearts. Your weakness dear brother is actually your super power. A strength beyond measure. I want to hear your stories of ridicule and pain so that I can hold you in the depths of my compassion. So that you feel heard and validated. Let us embrace our messiness hand in hand, so that together we may rise. Let us spin your stories into invitations that create a passageway for all of the boys who feel different, misunderstood or too sensitive to be accepted for who they are. You see as far as I can remember so many of the men in my life have been highly sensitive. You have been my father, my partners, my uncles, my cousins, and my grandfathers. My dear friends, and my beautiful clients. My beloved brothers I want to change the world so that finally you can feel like it is not you who has done something wrong. You do not have to suffer in silence anymore. There are places my brother where you can unfold your story. I stand with you dear one. You got this and I got your back. Remember the world needs you as you were created to be, in your full spectrum super power of highly sensitive depth. Love, Tanya