Healing Oneself

I am reading a rather marvelous book entitled, Zen Therapy by David Brazier. Toward the end, in the chapter entitled, "Coming Home", Brazier relates the following story:

I remember a client who would come to me each week with an unending catalogue of personal disasters about which, it seemed, she could do next to nothing. Nonetheless, through the window of the room where we met there streamed sunshine. Sometimes I would draw her attention to it and we would enjoy a few moments of silence together. It was springtime. "When I go away from here," she said to me once, "nothing has changed in my situation at home, but somehow I feel I have been turned around, so that I do not see it in the same way." I really had nothing to offer this woman except the sunshine, but through our being together she healed herself."

What Brazier was describing was not "positive thinking" (as might be assumed) but mindfulness. When it would have been easy to ignore the sunshine, they noticed it. Noticing brought the client into the moment and gave her the ability to cultivate a perspective on her situation that was different from the one she brought with her into the consulting room.

Stop. Just look and be aware. Just listen and feel and taste and smell. Let yourself be in the moment. What can you use in your environment that will be a prompt for such mindfulness? Through mindfulness, faithfully practiced, through being together with others who practice mindfulness, we can indeed heal ourselves.