TF: What kinds of tools or methods have you found effective for working with difficult
feelings and relational issues?
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JW: I’ve developed a process I call “unconditional presence,” which involves
contacting, allowing, opening to, and even surrendering to whatever we’re
experiencing. This process grew out of my practice in Vajrayana and Dzogchen,
as well as my psychological training. It presupposes that everything we
experience, even the worst samsaric things, has its own intelligence. If we meet
our experience fully and directly, we can begin to uncover that intelligence and
distinguish it from distorted ways in which it manifests.
For example, if we go deeply into the experience of ego inflation, we may find a
more genuine impulse at its core—that it’s a wounded way of trying to proclaim
our goodness, to remind ourselves and affirm that we are basically good.
Similarly, at the heart of all the darkest human feelings and experiences there is a
seed of intelligence which, when revealed, can point in the direction of freedom.