When Reason Fails

My mother is an inspiration to do the inner work while we can. She herself never did look at any of her issues or difficulties, and as she now slips into dementia it is obvious that what she did not work out, the unresolved issues and traumas, are back to haunt her tenfold.

It is a very painful sight, sound and experience to see her in such terrible constant emotional and mental pain. The physical pain can be numbed out by drugs, but the body and emotions will have their reckoning sooner or later as well.

Growing up in the Age of Reason, many of us tend to have very developed minds and believe that we can work everything out by thinking it all through.

This may help on many matters. But in relation to ourselves, finding our true path, working out relationship issues or health problems, family crises, workplace difficulties, we need something beyond the mind. And we all have it – that which is greater, deeper and far more capable than the mind.

Something that can guide us further than the mind can. Sometimes it may seem paradoxical to stay in the ‘unknown’. To not know. To allow something else to emerge that is not from the mind.

This is the challenge and the incredible magnificence of what is available to us.

The more we cling to ‘knowing’ and put pressure on the mind to work it out (after all, that is what we were promised in school was it not?) the more we often go round in circles or end up depressed or in despair or blocked or stagnant.

The present and future are full of unknowns and we can find our way through – whether it is via process, emotional work, meditation, dreams, letting go – or some other step that gives the mind a break and allows something greater in your to emerge and for you to move forward.

No-one can do the inner work of resolving traumas and issues for us. The answers won’t fully come from outside ourselves. We might shy away from doing the inner work, or avoid it, or repress it, or try to ‘think it away’; but it all affects us and sooner or later we will need to resolve the baggage we have been carrying.

Getting more comfortable with the unknown and tapping into the creative ocean that is within all of us is part of our workshop programs.