Looking out to look within
The mental health paradigm has, in my opinion, somewhat lost its way. In the advancement of science, the inclusion of all people, and the recognition of all emotions, we have somewhere lost a relationship to that which is also outside of ourselves. The mind, the world of feelings, and each person’s unique experience on this planet is something that deserves reverence and patience. As a flower unfolds its petals, so too do humans gradually move toward wholeness. Yet, in the midst of this journey, and in the development of therapeutic models and technology aimed to assist the person on their path—call this healing—we have, to some degree, forgotten our proper order of relationship to that which harmonizes the person. Nature serves as a witness to these patterns of being. It expands itself ever more fluidly into cyclical patterns of order, structuring its creativity within an established order. Gravity foretells the way by which we find our grounding, just as the sky orients us to that which is above. Within each circle of order exists an already established pattern that we mostly unconsciously operate within.
It is my contention, then, that in order to heal most fully, we must develop a conversation between the subjective world of feelings, thoughts, and perceptions, and the world of order, symbiosis, and meaning. When we gaze at the night sky, it tells us something; as we gaze into our mother’s eyes, she tells us something. When we are safely guided and nurtured in our original womb through those earliest years of development, we order our lives toward curiosity and exploration. We learn to trust and know we have a home to return to. In the same way, we gather information within through the gaze of that safe home. We are told implicitly, pre-verbally, that we matter, that we are held and supported in our most basic needs. And as we age, that same witness comes forward to reflect back to us our goodness, the uniqueness and specialness of our spirit, our personality, our beautiful body—all rooted in security and safety. This internal cosmic story is originated in our childhood through our parents most notably. In the most ideal scenario, we are given a healthy masculine and feminine model: parents who created us through their own unique harmony and love and then bequeath us with that same dance of love through nurturing kindness and safety into our hearts.
Now, with this framing, we also then see that we know ourselves through others. We are given life through someone else, and that process of discovery comes through their gaze and attention. Finally, as we arrive into our later years of life, we step into a bigger world of being and continue to explore life and meaning in this cosmic egg beyond the original womb. We gaze without to know ourselves within.
That said, therapy that focuses only upon the inner without a relationship to the outer becomes a recipe for anxiety and fear, for we were not born to be in isolation. Our subjective states are immensely valid and real, and yet it is these states that are experienced within the world of being that exists as we come into it—not yet fully formed, but awaiting our arrival. This symbiotic relationship of outer to inner is the healthy dance of mental health. Order exists first; then within that order we discover meaning and feeling. We live into a yet-to-be-formed model of identity, and yet that identity is not a vacuum by which we came. It is not ex nihilo; rather, it was formed as a certain set of possibilities within a framework given. We discover ourselves through looking out and allowing the outer to inform the inner, through the loving gaze of another or the body we inhabit. The relationship was always meant to be harmonized and therefore cohere.
Subjectivity is valid. We have real emotions and thoughts and sensations and being. Identity is formed not as a thing to be associated with, but as a matter of being—what is. From that foundation, we recognize the inherent worth of that being without question and allow ourselves to find ourselves in relationship to nature. A flower blooms in spring and knows its place as a flower. And we too, as living organisms, allow this same kind of synchronization to occur. Then that flow of information allows for the infinite potential of being that we are. The galaxy is part of something larger, and so too do we recognize this pattern in ourselves.
It is my purpose as a therapist to allow for the harmony of the inner and outer, objective and subjective, to develop a conversation over time that permits the union of being. In a therapy world that has overemphasized the subjective, the world of feeling as the determinant, it has become imbalanced. And yet before, the world was only forced upon one from without, which too felt destructive. Imbalance in either direction creates chaos, and within chaos it is hard to find peace. Yet with a harmony of being—the masculine and feminine, the outer and inner—we find that we allow room to be told who we are as we simultaneously discover who we are.
It is this, then, that creates wellness. Our being is meant to be known from within as we gaze outside and gather data from a sensory world full of information. If we are willing to submit to this order, then emotional harmonization begins its own journey home as well. Together, these worlds collide to give meaning, structure, and purpose. As above, so below.
