Healing seems impossibly simple when juxtaposed with the sophisticated mental edificies the human mind crafts in order to squirm away from the realities of emotional pain. But the reality is simple. No thought, no grand leap of the intellect is required for a cut to seal or a bruise to heal; one needs only to acknowledge the pain and avoid agitating the wound. Healing emotional wounding requires this same acknowledgment, compassion, and gentleness. However, when the mind is conditioned to hold an adversarial disposition to one’s emotions and act as an affective commissar who arbitraily decrees that the acceptable range of feeling is less then our authentic reality, we venture into bizarre realms of denial and rationalization akin to a man with both legs broken refusing to acknowledge the connection between his fractured femurs and his inability to walk.

“My leg’s not broken. The ground is unstable.” Has the same ridiculous energy as “I’m not upset. I’m just tired.” If only we had the wisdom to acknowledge our emotional worlds hold an ontological existence that is not contingent on our mental precepts, and exist as objective element of the physical reality of our beings. Instead of recognizing that our minds are intimately blended with our emotional states such that the two are inseperable, conventional behavior is to place the two into dialectical opposition where a cold, emotionless intellect seeks to impose an abstract order based on extrinsic ideals onto a chaotic rebellious emotional body that seeks only to overthrow that same tyrannical order and replace it with impulsive gratification.

However, this dialectic is only an illusion masking the true dynamic at play. Beneath the apperance of conflict, the mind is working overtime to protect the emotional self from more pain and the impulsive behaviors are all being fueled by the hurting affective body desperate to avoid experiences that compound on the seemingly unprocessable backlog of pain. The two aspects have been working in harmony all along. Anger covers up the hurt and the mind weaves stories of righteous indignantion. Longing covers up fears of inadequacy and fantasies of an ideal future grant an escape from seemingly insurmountable defects of character. Fear hides the pains associated with vulnerability and behavior is altered to avoid intimacy. Devaluation. deflection, and denial are wielded with surgical percision to slice away emotional experiences that are deemed off limits, operations made at the request of fear and distress.

There is not conflict between the emotions and intellect, not war between body and mind. The schism occurs on the level of learned behavior; the battle is between the authentic self and the distortions caused by repeated exposure to emotional pain. This is complex trauma. When the self has been repeatedly battered with painful experiences that interrupt the natural processes of healing and repair, instincts shift to protection against further distress. There is nothing inherently wrong or flawed about the indivual, they have the same innate intelligence for healing found in all living creatures. However, those healing patterns are suppressed, and unfortunately the very same awareness needed for compassion and forgiveness of self is rendered inaccessible by these behavioral patterns.

So then, what is required for healing? A necessary precondition is stepping out of the false dialectic between intellect and emotions, body and mind, and acknowledging the spiritual totality of the human being. Look at life outside of man and see there is no tree the desires to abandon it’s roots, limbs, or leaves. No cat is determined to defang or declaw itself. No dog is ashamed of it’s tail no matter how ferociously it wags. Living beings were not created incomplete. With the exception of tragic genetic defects that distort the innate pattern of life, we are born a complete being in mind, body, and soul. Only from here can we open ourselves to integration and the healing process of separating our authentic reality from the distortions -like wheat from the chaff. Here we begin to acknowledge the parts of ourselves that are hurt and in pain.

From this foundation of awareness and openess, space begins to form to safely experience the once verboten emotional states and the heavy and distressing feelings that have been repressed and denied. The feelings surface and bring light to the distorted patterns of thought and behavior that were formed to govern these emotional states. With delicate hands and a compassionate heart, the tangled threads of the trauma response are unwound and the innate energies of the individual are gradually freed.

Now at the final stage of this process, the freed aspects of self are guided to their authentic, desired expression. The spiritual light that has been denied is allowed to shine in and reveal the beauty of the uninhibited human soul. The disintegration gives way to integration and the unsolveable false dialects are replaced by a synergistic union allowing the soul to step into it’s wholeness -it’s birthright.

There are no theorems or proofs needed in this process. No empirical analysis or peer-reviewed papers are requested. No great metaphysics or ontology must be grasped. No grand plans or systems are required now or ever for life to express it’s essence. The beauty of emotional healing is in the simplicity of accepting human nature in it’s wholeness