One Week to Go for the October Nondual Therapy Training: Reflections in Awe and Gratitude
All we need to do to release the suffering quality of a concept is to realise it is one, whilst simultaneously feeling the real. Then, we can see that we were already and always dancing freely and harmoniously as life’s masterpiece – without fixing a thing.
As we approach our first five-day Reclaiming Wholeness Nondual Therapy Practitioner Training, Nic and I have been flowing with some pretty immense waves of inspiration.
Our intention was for this training to come to life in a way that reveals the depth, clarity, and fullness that bringing the nondual understanding into spheres of healing and well-being offers.
We are clear that we want to keep this clear – to keep the nondual recognition at the heart of the work – offering a felt psychology that is fully inclusive and simultaneously never leaves the ground. Simply because that’s what this is, right?
We are committed to illuminating within an applied psychology that there is, in actuality, no conflict between meeting and exploring needs in relation to well-being and psychology whilst staying true to the fact of the seamless nature of experience and this inherent wholeness that needs no cultivation.
Indeed, to say that there is conflict between the absolute nondual recognition, and the appearance of duality – and the experience of suffering that can emerge within life’s play – is quite simply to ‘camp out’ in one half of the recognition. Unceasing Availability & Radical Inclusion is a cornerstone of the training, and one that blossoms into a recognition that is full, flowing, and meets the mystery and miracle of this here that we call ‘life’!
What a stunning potentiality – right here, already unfolding – that meets human suffering as this beautiful mystery, deep seeing, and open-ended compassion.
Compassion is pointed to in our training as a core facet of the work – but not in a simply ‘be compassionate’ kind of way. We have ‘operationalised’ the healing field as pointers to life’s nature in a model of ‘Compassionate Attunement’.
‘Compassionate Attunement’ is an alive enquiry tool that supports a radical empiricism in the face of suffering – fully inclusive of knowledge and understanding of human attachment needs.
This goes way beyond modelling qualities of positive regard and attuned listening as an individual. Rather this is the unceasing self-attunement, self-interest, and self-love of life’s inherent aliveness. When attuned to through therapeutic and relational dyads (both within us and with others), the self-healing and self-revealing fact of wholeness corrects core misperceptions and misunderstandings about the nature of life, self, and what we experience as problems.
This is The Radiant Parent.
It doesn’t teach – it lives!
An Infinite Reflection
As we have been working with the Radiant Parent and Compassionate Attunement facet of the programme more deeply over recent weeks, I have been feeling the awe, beauty, and immense gratitude that it reveals to me in real time. This work has arisen out of my experience of working with Nic as my mentor and therapist over the past four years. It’s what has emerged out of two humans’ being together as the one, in guidance, care, clarity, and groundedness.
This is what I really needed. When I first met with Nic, and for much of the time in the following years, there was a lot of struggle, confusion, and suffering. I had been experiencing periods of acute psychosis, panic disorder, depression, and anxiety over a period of years – accelerated by (and simultaneously cared for by) the nondual recognition.
‘My life’ was falling to pieces – work, relationships, home. Not only did I not know ‘how to do human’, but I had also no clue how to do my work as a Psychologist anymore.
Nic never left out my experience of being human, everything has been embraced and enquired into – and I can confidently say, as this awe, that nothing has ever been fixed. I don’t know how to describe the warmth, love and majesty that arises here for me out of experiencing this fact. Compassion in the seat of clarity is way more powerful and intelligent than we can ever think it to be.
Throughout these years of working with Nic, there have been moments – waves – of this gratitude and awe, upon seeing in a very direct way ‘what has been happening here’ – in the space together. I remember one time in particular, a few hours after one of our sessions together, where I experienced a kind of ‘seeing’ and deep knowing that was accompanied by the thought ‘oh my goodness – we’ve been reparenting as presence’. I cried. Lay my hands on my heart – and thanked life for what was unfolding.
To now be coming together in developing this training – I don’t know how to bring to words what this is like for me. I have faith though – that in sharing in the training with us, it will itself show you what I can’t articulate.
So, this is a beautiful time – and to know that some of you reading this are already booked to be joining us is an absolute delight. For those of you remaining curious, whether you are a practitioner or simply enquiring more deeply into life’s mystery – please do get in touch with us if you want to explore more, or book your place for our October 16th training – only one week to go, and all are welcome!
