A friend said to me, "If I had your job" (alluding to the work of psychotherapy), "I'd just build sandcastles with my clients all day."  

I think there is a deep capacity for healing, for movement, for permission, for allowance, for experiencing shifts, for growth - when there is presence.  Presence for self.  The felt presence of another - whose attention is tuned, or perhaps synced, to the inner world of another.  To yours perhaps.  I wonder.  How often has my life really felt the attuned interest of another?  When have I felt the kind of listening that I didn't have to "earn" or "deserve"?  I ask these questions of myself but also of you - in part, because I think they embody human dilemmas we all carry, perhaps just in different ways - or at varying levels of awareness.  But really though:  ask yourself.  When was the last time you truly felt heard, listened to, received?  And how do you know this?  Maybe it is not something that can be known, at least intellectually.  I think it is probably a question that lands somewhere in between the spirit and the body on a feeling level.  These are just my thoughts though.  To be listened to on a level deeper than existence and one that transcends time - it requires a mix of forces.  A willingness to open.  To step into the vulnerable places in one's life - that perhaps have not always felt deserving of light.  Of being held with the softest of hands.  Like cupping cool water from mountain streams that don't appear on any kind of map.  At least not one you can purchase or google.  How does one come by this kind of trust?  To let in.  To show oneself?  For exposure.  To be listened to and seen with and without eyes, I must be in contact with those things I am partially afraid to greet within myself.  There are so many culprits to this - so many mazes of feeling and uncertainty.  How do I traverse them all - especially if I'm alone in the absurdity of all that not knowing.  I can list some of them.  Can you?  Maybe it's connected to the stories I have chosen to believe about parts of my life where pain seems to pulsate, sometimes, outside of my knowing.  The possibility of shame, depending on my silence for breath, demanding a cold world of dark places where no one can enter.  I imagine lifetimes of this before one can step out into the warmth of supportive conditions:  the faintest inkling of something safe.  Perhaps a person.  A relationship.  And also, something inside of you, telling you, it's safe (enough) within, too.  

And then to step into the wilderness of your past, and all the feeling that lives there.  All the dormancy of your animal-like interior, raging, without your noticing.  Because of all the sophistication in our systems of protection.  You know they are there.  Some you may even say are unhealthy.  Some are likely too difficult to imagine living independent from.  So, we turn ourselves toward so much justification.  Because we need it to stay alive...to function...to feel okay.  And yet, this kind of need can cost so much - many times, a life.  And within that life, the possibilities of connection, love, warmth, attention, soft hearts to hold your aching.  

To be listened to demands so much.  Of the listener, yes.  But perhaps more from the listened to.  A relationship can offer a catalyst for so many possibilities.  Letting oneself be tended to in this garden that is your life.  What's growing there?  What isn't?  What's taking over?  What is unwanted?  What is needed?  What (who) needs taken care of?  I sense you're not too far from the edges of answers to these questions.  You're here aren't you.  

Ground yourself with breath.  Inhale.  Exhale.  There's no way to do it wrong.  Listen to yourself.  To all that beautiful wisdom that runs deep within your aquifer.