Temenos location

We are busy updating the website and have being doing some work on the 'Location' page, feel free to drop by and let us know what you think!


http://www.temenos.ac.uk/location.html

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Soul Food

What a day yesterday!

I am not having any thoughts in particular, despite all the amazing stuff that happened, like they have just merged into one big feeling of satisfaction at being connected with others, and at 'being' in a way that feels warming to my soul.

Was a day of controversy as Brian is of course deeply religious and can talk in Counselling language and in religious language and of course he is also talking, or perhaps more accurately he is actually talking about spirituality.

I was fascinated by his encouragement to engage in a discipline of self love to remain well internally as a person and to remain open to others, the idea of discipline can feel restrictive and yet his description was of making time and space to take in the wonders around us, to ingest and digest healthy portions of 'soul food'.

This was particularly of interest to me as I am a person who easily rushes, and struggles to take moments to stop and reflect, the encouragement to engage in a discipline, to have time set aside so that days and weeks don't pass without any 'soul food', feels like a good one.

Wondering how I will feed myself today ...


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Spirituality / Relationship

Been thinking about 'spirituality' in counselling this week as the workshop with Brian Thorne has been getting closer. I think more and more the word 'spirituality' sounds like 'relationship' to me, the relationship that I have with my family, friends, colleagues and of course clients. The connection that I feel and the changes that I experience internally, in my thoughts and feelings feel like a spiritual experience.


Hmmm .... Wondering what I mean by a spiritual experience ....

I guess I feel adjusted,I feel calmer,I feel warmer and I feel more like a whole person, a feeling of doing what I am meant for, a sense of feeling more peaceful towards others and a desire to be with others ...

ooooow! .... That's lots of different things ....

Not sure about 'what I am meant for', I don't think I mean some kind of vocation, but more like this is what this whole experience of being human is geared for. Trying to think of a metaphor ....

Trying to think of something outside of me that is just working smoothly, just purring away, and I get the feeling that it's doing what it does best, that's the feeling I get in relationship. And it feels counterintuitive to me sometimes, when my anxieties are up, when I am tired and want to be alone, when I tend towards alienation. And then I experience relationship, my openness to another and then sense their openness towards me, the feeling is of all the parts inside me working together to do the job that they were meant for.

Feeling less violent, feeling warmer towards other people, seems like qualities that 'spiritual' and/or religious people have searched for and to some extent achieved, and I guess it's something that I have tried to achieve in myself through other means, study, application of myself to certain principles. And while those things are helpful and often worthwhile, I find myself travelling to that place of peace toward another when I attempt to open myself to them as fully as possible in that moment.

Like relationship is a shortcut to what I have strived to MAKE happen in other ways. As I think about the communities I have lived in and the activities I have undertaken, they seem more now like 'something to do' while the relationship develops, perhaps the more anxious we are, the more we need activities around us to engage in while we slowly and very carefully move closer to the people around us.

And here I am bumping into the difference I experience in Counselling, for the most part there isn't another activity to engage in, there is the client, the counsellor and a space. The relationship is not being created while 'doing' something else ...

... or is that the case???

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