This a space where I am compiling writings by myself and others, all centred around my deepest fascination: the healing and awakening of human consciousness.
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The Limits of the Intellect (A Quote by Carl Jung)
“We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore, the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy.”
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Morality as Self-Transcendence
When we use the word ‘morality’ or ‘ethics’, it seems we are really referring to our underlying unity being reflected in our actions. The more our actions seem to display a care primarily for the collective (or the Unity), the more moral or ethical we consider them. This would explain why the process of healing and awakening generally converges with becoming a more ‘moral’ person: because our deepest identity, so the great spiritual traditions teach, is identical with that of the universe itself (Atman=Brahman), and so every layer of self we shed bring us closer back into deep relationship with others and thus with our innate care for their well-being as inseparable from our own. This also explains why we can heal and awaken through selflessness (eg. karma yoga), and we can become more selfless through healing and awakening.
All reasonable moral systems or philosophies are based on this transcending of self-concern. What they often miss is the metaphysical grounding for this principle. This grounding becomes clear when we consider existence as a single Organism experiencing itself through an illusion of separation, akin to the mental condition we call dissociative identity disorder (DID), aka. split personality disorder. Suddenly, it makes perfect sense why we are rewarded emotionally and spiritually for transcending narrow self-concern (as distinct from healthy self-care/self-love), and why it feels like there is something deeply, cosmically correct about doing so: in transcending the self, we are tapping into our deeper nature, and our moral action becomes an expression of our ultimate unity with that nature.
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On Being Seen and Known
We want to be seen because we wan’t to be known. We wan’t to be known because we need to be for our connections with others to not feel shallow. And want deeper connection because this is part of what makes life worth living, and what keeps at bay things like anxiety
This explains why talk therapy is healing. Why pay a stranger to sit and listen to us talk about things we don’t want to bore our friends or family with? Is it so they’ll present us with solutions to our worries? Teach us methods for releasing what no longer serves us?
Often not. We know, if deep down and unconsciously, that we want to be known deeply by others, but we have developed also a great fear of being known deeply by others . And so in therapy we are retraining ourselves, with a highly trained professional who (ideally) knows how to be a reliable, patient, non-judgemental and compassionate witness to our experience. Over time, we learn that it is safe to be known. It may seem to defeat the purpose that this is a financially manufactured relationship – and yet the effect on the nervous system is the same, because we are learning something that is fundamentally and universally true: it is not inherently unsafe to be known deeply by another, even in all our pain, confusion, inconsistency, idiocy, and superficiality, judgement and ugliness. If we commit to this process, we find that simply being known and accepted by our therapist may be more healing than any insight or method they may hand us.
But, since our ability to connect with others in the world is dependent in part on our ability to reveal ourselves authentically to them (hence why constant masking is so draining),
Our ability to connect with others requires not just that we spend time with them, nor merely that we share common interests, value or beliefs. For real, nourishing connection, we need more than this: we need to be truly known by them.
Something goes off balance in us when we are not seen or known enough by others. We seem to need to achieve some balance in life between knowing others and being known by them.
But, in my experience, so many people do not seem to have received sufficient attention as young children, leaving many of us with a difficult relationship with being seen and known in general.
Most of us learn that some of us is safe to be seen and known by others — and some is not. Some of us have our sadness Our intelligence or our athleticism too will generally be met with praise and pride. But our anger, our sadness, our nervousness – these are among the things we are more likely to learn that it is unsafe to reveal to others.
We may even, as a result of our upbringing, learn generalised fears of being seen. We may simply conclude that being truly known by another is to be sure that they will abandon us, having seen our essential flaws, those things that surely disqualify us from connection.
And so even in our closest relationships, many of us hide a great deal — and our connections suffer for it.
Most of us, I believe, do not realise how essential is our need for human connection, and our capacity to be seen and known that is so essential to fostering really nourishing human connection. If we did, we would make more of a practice to ourselves, over and over again.
My life has changed dramatically since I learned to speak more openly and with greater vulnerability to others. Where once I feared their disapproval, rejection or outright disgust, now I see that, as an adult, the occasional uncomfortable reaction is a small price to pay for movements in the direction of deeper connection. Because I see that, more and more, it is human connection that sustains me as much as the food I eat, the water I drink or the sleep I get.
I recently learned that most people go to therapy because they are having trouble forming and maintaining relationships with others. I was a little surprised: don’t people go to therapy because of things like addiction, anxiety, depression, burnout, or to help them grieve and acclimatize to the loss of a loved one?
But reflecting deeper, meaningful human connection is a solvent for almost any mental condition, implying that our ‘psychological immune system’, i.e. the health of our minds and that which keeps at bay these kinds of conditions, is maintained partly by human connection.
In fact, why is it that talk-therapy is many people’s first point of call for such issues?
West can’t easily be disconnected from the quality of our relationships. Where people have diminished ability to form and maintain meaningful human connections, perhaps because they have less time to . Many people have friends — and many people nonetheless have shallow friendships, with people who they don’t really know deeply, and who don’t really know them deeply. But of course, we fear being too much by suddenly asking for more.
It is an enormous problem hiding in plain sight everywhere that we deny ourselves so consistently, even the mere acknowledgement that we want our relationships to nourish and fulfil us more than we do.
Perhaps we imagine it is ungrateful. And yet surely we can be grateful for what we have and still ask for a life that does not leave us quietly aching for more, especially if and when our status quo keeps us in loops of loneliness, depression, anxiety and addiction.
To be seen and known more by others is to make ourselves more available to the connection that is offered there. It increases our ability to see and know others in return, and thus deepens our capacity to be a good friend, partner or family member. But we cannot increase this capacity without finding the courage to take small risks:
“What would it be like to answer completely honestly the next time someone asks me how I am?“
“What would it be like to admit to someone that I am feeling sad, anxious, or afraid the next time I sense the familiar urge to pretend like I am fine, and seek to distract or numb myself instead?”
“Is there someone in my life I could dare to let a little deeper into what it’s really like to be me? “
We often learn as children that when we feel a certain way, we will be alone in it. This is considered to be an essential aspect of the formation of trauma: that no one is able to make us feel safe enough to process what has occurred at the time of its occurrence.
We can only unlearn this by recognizing the extent to which our circumstances have truly changed, — that now, maybe, someone is willing sit with us as we meet the more uncomfortable parts and feelings inside of us. In this way, being seen and known is a gateway to real healing.
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Catharsis Hunting (1st July, 2026)
I have finally arrived at a conclusion that I am sure for many is an obvious conclusion: human healing is not exclusively about catharsis.
18 months of intense kriyas (spontaneous energetic releases, ranging from contractions of the stomach and chest to full body shaking) built up in me a very strong belief that healing is catharsis; that the only thing that really resolves any psychological blocks, hang-ups or neuroses, and the only thing really moving me closer to a deeper awakening of my being, are these moments of emotional fireworks: rage, grief, fear, shame, guilt, resentment. ‘We must feel pain to heal pain’ I told myself, over and over again.
This created a massive tendency to compartmentalise my life. I am healing when I am on the meditation cushion, or lying on my bed, feeling emotions — and the more intense the better. And the rest of the time – when cooking, cleaning, exercising, socialising – I am merely biding my time before the next big release.
This bias was created in me partly because I spent a number of years before that unsure how to feel my own feelings, and therefore I felt like I was remaining exactly as anxious, inward and self-conscious as I had been since a teenager. The kriyas changed everything for me. But they baked into me even more deeply the idea that the state of my bedroom, or the quality of my cooking, or the overall balance of my life was merely some kind of optional sidequest, rather than an essential means of creating the container for my life, my vessel and my healing.
Now I am strongly considering the possibility that the deeper wounding seeing glimpses of, some of the really foundational stuff from when I was a baby, simply will not arise unless all the conditions are right; that perhaps there are in me inner children so young and so fragile that even some slightly callous lifestyle choices can be enough to make it feel that I am not a safe space for it to bear its true pains with.
So I am pleased to say, my catharsis hunting days are over. I am ceasing to compartmentalise my life in this way; ceasing to imagine that weeping is more important than washing my clothes, or that meditation is more important than maintaining the balance of my life, in a holistic way.
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