Working with Pain and Difficult Emotions

"All neurosis is a substitute for legitimate suffering" ~ Carl Jung

Our difficulties require our most compassionate attention. We will explore in depth our pain and difficult emotions and learn to open to them and to relate to them and be unconditionally present with them in a way that is mindful, wise, compassionate and healing...practicing right understanding, right intention and right effort. Whether of body, mind or heart, ("even the best meditators have old wounds to heal" – Jack Kornfield) our difficulties will become the center of our meditation practice and be a guide and a teacher in our healing and spiritual journeys. We will cultivate qualities of being and healing — among them, beginner's mind, patience, trust and acceptance and compassion. We will contemplate and live the question ...How can we find inner peace and happiness, transform suffering and awaken joy? and come to experience that "in the heart of the pain is the healing."

"Serenity is not freedom from the storm, it is peace amidst the storm"

"When any experience of body, heart, or mind keeps repeating in consciousness, it is a signal that this visitor is asking for a deeper and fuller attention…
Under all the tears, the pain, the fear, and the anger we have contracted ourself around,
we can find freedom, joy, and ease in the face of all life." - from Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart