The approach

A new perspective

This is a completely new way of looking at what is holding people back and causing them to suffer, and what it really takes to fully and permanently resolve their obstacles and emotional suffering.

What are we facing?

If your goal is to solve a problem completely and permanently, it is very important to define and understand exactly what the problem is. Without that understanding, it is very easy to go in the wrong direction and use the wrong tools. At best this can be totally ineffective, at worst it can make the problem worse or even create more problems.

The root cause of the problem

The common view is that our blockages and our emotional suffering are caused by emotional wounds that have occurred in the past as a result of painful experiences. And so, the solution to our blockages and suffering is to heal the emotional wounds from the past. This viewpoint is only partially true. It is not the whole story. Yes, it is true that pain originated in the past, in our childhood, but the real reason why we suffer is because that pain has disconnected us from our natural state, from our authentic state of being. So, this viewpoint misses the most central element in our suffering namely: the loss of connection with our natural state, with our authentic state of being. This is the root cause of our suffering. The emotional wound is the result of this disconnection. The wound, the hurt expresses the pain of this fundamental loss. This reveals to us that true healing cannot just be a matter of healing the emotional wounds from the past.

The real solution to the problem

If our goal is to completely resolve our suffering and what is holding us back in life, then the only real solution is to return to our natural state. After all, we suffer and feel held back because we are not in our natural state. Our obstacles and our suffering are symptoms that indicate that we are cut off from our natural state. When we are in our natural state, then the obstacles and our suffering dissolve. Our suffering actually points us in the direction of healing. Therefore, rather than trying to get rid of our obstacles and sufferings, we see them as opportunities to reconnect with our natural state. And reconnecting with our natural state is the only true healing.

This is a profound and transformative insight on how to resolve obstacles and emotional suffering. In the following paragraphs, I will delve deeper into how and why our defense against pain disconnects us from our natural state, from our authentic state of being. This will help you to understand why this disconnection is the root cause of our suffering.

How do we defend ourselves against pain?

We humans are intimate beings. Our natural state is openness. When we are fully ourselves, our heart is open and we are in touch with everything. We are intimate with everything. That also means being open to all our experiences, whether they are pleasant or painful. When we are fully ourselves, we cannot help but experience whatever is there. This is also how we learn and grow.

However, some experiences were too painful, too overwhelming or too threatening for us as children to allow. And the only way to protect ourselves from those painful experiences was by closing our hearts, by becoming insensitive, by being less open. We had to give up our openness. And we did that by pulling ourselves together, by contracting ourselves. By contracting ourselves we made ourselves hard, impenetrable and insensitive. In this way we have created a protective shield around ourselves. So, this contracted state that we have created protected us by cutting us off from our openness, from our natural state. And because of this we also lost connection with ourselves and with the world around us.

This survival mechanism was activated so often that it eventually solidified into a chronic self-contraction that now limits our lives and causes us to suffer. We feel physically constricted; our bodies feel tense, not open and flowing. And we feel constrained in our thinking, feeling and acting. We experience and see everything from the limited perspective of this contracted state. This defensive state, this self-contraction, has become our usual way of being.

Our self-defense becomes our personal cage

Even though we all end up identifying ourselves with this contracted state of being. It is not our natural state. Our self-defense, the self-contraction, is an active gesture. It is a doing. It is a reactivity that has become so chronic that we consider it to be normal. We are no longer aware that we are defensive, that we are in a contracted state. We feel and think that something is holding us back, but we don’t realize that we are constantly and unconsciously holding ourselves back. We only notice this when we are in our natural state of being. Looking back, we then realize how we have held ourselves captive all the time and how painful and limiting that has been for us.

Healing is present in every moment

So, we ourselves always and constantly create the state we are in. This is a very promising insight, because this means that freedom is also possible at any moment. It means that when we stop defending ourselves, when we stop reacting, we naturally reconnect with our natural state, with our openness and freedom. And once we get in touch with our natural state, limitations and suffering melt away and we feel at ease, relaxed and free. Freedom and openness are present in every moment. And so, the possibility of healing is also present in every moment. Every time we choose to stay present with what is instead of reacting, we choose for openness and freedom, we choose for healing. I have experienced it in my own life and I have seen it happen to so many people I have worked with over the past 14 years. The solution is relatively simple, and that is to reconnect with your natural state, but it is not so easy to do it all by yourself. The self-contraction that keeps us from being in our natural open state has protected us from pain, and it will not let go until what it is trying to do is fully and compassionately understood.