When all your familiar frameworks in your life fall apart, you can experience a feeling of despair, hopelessness.

But there is another side to it, and I have discovered that side myself.

That changed my view of the world and life, but certainly of people.

I have increasingly ended up in not knowing and I rediscovered myself in 'not knowing anymore.'

The English mystic Eveline Underhill says the following about this.

"The best thing we can do for those we love is to help them escape from us."

That means not holding on to the person, with our judgments or condemnations and that also has to do with 'not knowing'.

Knowledge is good, but you should not impose it on the other.

NIVEA = Not Filling In For Another, that is a good item for this.

I also notice a few things in the psychic world where psychiatrists impose labels.

First of all, as an expert, you declare people bankrupt.

“You don’t matter anymore, because you are marked, what use are you to me with your labels or illnesses!”

Eveline Uderhill says the following about this:

“The best thing we can do, for those we love, is to escape them from us.

Assume that life, including that of man, is infinitely more mysterious and has many more nuances than we can think."

In Greek, psyche means not only soul but also butterfly.

It is best to assume that the soul of man has an elusive side, just like a butterfly.

Do not sweep man away, but try to recognize the elusiveness of man and you will see that prejudices and prejudices are not the way, not for you and not for man.

Things that are not right may be said, that is necessary.

When I delve into the soul of another, I encounter a vast black abyss, not in that of the other, but first and foremost in myself, that is the mystery and the great power of the suffering that lies behind this.

Here you also see that 'looking into the soul' can be completely understandable in the first place, but on closer inspection, the soul appears to be completely elusive, that you start to wonder whether it can have any meaning.

In this bottomlessness of that black gaping abyss of the intangible of the soul, a suspicion of a deep hidden meaning can grow.

Exactly, there in that bottomlessness, where our deepest destination can be found, something completely different can light up, than I learn in my psychology studies.

Knowledge is good, but you cannot know everything, there remains a mystical space that no one can reach.

Look, as a patient or client you can fall into a lament, "Everyone is busy with a good life and I am sick or I am in debt restructuring and can no longer participate."

Then two things are possible, you can remain in your lament, listlessly hanging in your chair, drinking coffee and smoking.

Or you can look around you and be grateful for what you still have.

Happiness has to do with perception, seeing what is and as it is, with loving the things around you.

William Blake expresses this beautifully.

"If the windows of your perception were cleansed, everything would appear to people as it is, namely infinite, but man has closed himself in and sees through the narrow chinks of his cavern."

That means that our windows are smeared, they are covered with cobwebs of our thoughts, prejudices, our cowardice and laxity and therefore we do not really see the world as it is, but we live in a limited world, in which our own needs, moods and preferences are central.

The material for a more intense life, for a sharper consciousness and a deeper understanding of our own existence, is all ready within ourselves and you can grab it.

We are separated from that sharper consciousness and you see a new disease in the present time, namely.

"The pathology of the eye," which is more central than your mental illness.

It is a way of looking and the unrelenting frustration that your illness brings with it can become an Eye-opener.

How are you going to look at things, is there a way of looking that does not lead to frustration.

You cannot change your condition and everything that it has brought with it, that cannot be tampered with, but perhaps you can shift your own boundaries.

Imagine that you have lost everything at home in your lowest point and that you are in the pit.

Suddenly you hear a blackbird singing, or a child laughing, that can give you a feeling of happiness and a feeling of renewed confidence.

When you are face to face with possible death or social death, such small things can suddenly give you a liberating realization.

In this you see that this suffering is going to bring about a simplification in you.

If you are in debt restructuring, then this simplification can be very useful, so that you start to see things differently and truly.

 

You can then identify with the poverty in which you find yourself and the richness of the small things that you will discover.

In your lowest point of suffering, forces of beauty, wonder and love work.

It can also happen so spontaneously that you discover these forces within you.

Plato with his famous cave, shows that we live in a cave with the shadows of our own thoughts and hardly notice the vibrating living movements of the world outside.

André Zegveld has a simple image for this.

“A child running through the corridor experiences the length by running and the height by screaming, while we adults remain at the door, and know how to express the length in dry, meaningless meters.”

Look at that child running and screaming and then we see that we have lost something of that.

You could ask for the eyes and the softness of a child back.

I have thought a lot about these kinds of things, while I also continue to study psychology, but I also remain aware of that child in me carefully picking a beetle out of the grass with his little finger and lovingly placing it on a leaf.

Our vision is clouded and our senses are blocked, which means that our way of perceiving is no longer pure.

If you are in a terrible impasse and are suicidal, this discovery can be or become a liberation.

What do you benefit from your labels, if you would rather go to the great unknown death.

What is there still to pick up when faced with death?

What is there still to know?

We are powerless against suicidal thoughts.

Why is euthanasia such a difficult phenomenon for the mentally ill.

Our brains and hands can no longer grasp anything and we are completely naked before ourselves.

I hope that you can answer these questions yourself about how you can free yourself from your negative thoughts, feelings and habits.

It is not easy and that is a long path of training, with great self-discipline and structure, and without this strength and effort it is not possible.

The path to reality runs through a training process and that demands a lot from you.

The goal is that you learn a different way of perceiving.

Put your own needs, moods and preferences in brackets.

There is work to be done, certainly for yourself.

It is the art of falling and getting up, until you suddenly stand up in amazement and realize: "hey, I am walking!"

You no longer know how you did it, but it happened inside you and that affected you in a positive way and the result is visible.

December 2014

Marianneke Beurskens