Jack Adam Weber ·
Here’s the thing about therapy: in order to heal, you have to be brutally honest with yourself. You have to follow the subtle cues of your body. You have to decipher what lies within and behind sensations. You have to notice the whispers. You have to acknowledge what happened to you in the past and how it shows up in the present.
This is all really tough work and requires gradually loosening your defenses to let your pain rise to the surface. Then you get to be present with it, to feel what you haven’t had access to, to release what you’ve been carrying around for years and decades, and may not even have known it.
This is to be humbled, at your core, in contrast with trying to act humble.
Profound humility of this kind is not only linear, but often paradoxical. You end up being honest enough to give others opportunities to crack open, which is to feel bad for a time in order to feel enduringly good. If they are not ready, they will report that you make them feel bad about themselves.
But as Jung said, when you show someone their darkness, you show them their light
Honest therapy prepares you to be honest in the rest of your life, especially in intimate relationships. It equips you to recognize when others are likely dishonest, don’t own their shit, defend, and project their shadow onto you—because you developed that barometer from working on yourself. Your body will alert you, in the same way it alerted you when you were in your own trenches, to the truth, supported by objective evidence. The same way you came up against your own resistance, and let yourself break open instead of defend.
Who has not initiated to this process of radical self-honesty, and has no interest in doing so, will continue to defend against the truth of their being. They will gaslight and attack you to protect their pain, the same pain you chose to face and work through to liberate yourself. Your depth of presence confronts them with their own hidden shadow. Ironically, they will feel “attacked” or “upset” when you’ve actually given them the opposite—a gift to open and heal.
There are no inroads into deeper honesty with those who have not chosen (consciously or not) to do the work. They don’t live in the same paradigm you do. They don’t have the tools or wisdom you do, because they haven’t taken this path less travelled. This pivot—the decision to be painfully honest, to choose facing your pain instead of denying it—makes all the difference and sets you apart from others who haven’t gotten to the gold at the other end of the transformational rainbow. This doesn’t make you superior, it makes you fortunate and hopeful others can experience what you live.
Sometimes, the only hope for another is for their heart to break open to a degree they can’t turn away, and they finally have to face themselves. They can’t be forced or coerced; all we can do is join them when they have entered this crucible of strange salvation.
Image: Alchemical Crucible of Transformation
(Forwarded by Larry Lawhorn)