Girl Friends – Bela Kontuly. Wikioo.

“I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.”

Rainer Maria Rilke.

I know some secrets. Well, not total secrets, for there are others who know them too. I did not invent them, for they are old, wise secrets that can be discovered over and over again throughout life, and especially through gaining self-awareness and thinking psychologically.

These are secrets that have some magic about them, for you can only hear them when you are ready. Such secrets can change one’s worldview, and the way we see ourselves, but unless a person is ready to change, they cannot ‘hear’ insights offered to help them to do so.

“Why do we resist the mystery that change brings?”

Dennis Merritt Jones

Have you ever tried, perhaps in a therapist role, to share an insightful thought or idea with someone who is not open to it or cannot take it on board?

Often, the attempt  to ‘divulge’ the secrets of change is met by a dismissive denial and rejection from a person who is not ready to hear, is threatened by your words, or is not in touch with their unconscious self.

“All the secrets of the world worth knowing are hiding in plain sight.”

Robin Sloan

The secrets in this post are not, I hasten to add, about other people; they are not gossipy bits of tittle-tattle, hearsay, idle talk, rumour. They are deep and meaningful secrets about the world, about the human race, about us…. and about life.

John William Waterhouse – Consulting the Oracle

“The oracle’s mirror
waiting for the earth to unveil her
The wolf’s howl over snow
The quiet place inside you –
the vast knowing of the soul”

Tamara Rendell

Whilst I know a few, there are many such secrets that I do not know; I have yet to learn them during my own continuing process of becoming more enlightened about myself and the world.

I am happy and willing to share the secrets I have been able to discover so far, for they are available to all. However…. you have to be open to receiving them, these nuggets of truth and wisdom.

Although these secrets are, logically, not difficult to work out, emotionally they can feel complex and sometimes quite challenging to absorb into ourselves.

Anastasiya Markovich. Illusion of Reality. 2008. Wikimedia Commons.

“Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

What does this rather enigmatic statement mean? It means that sometimes we might choose to live in a ‘fool’s paradise,’ rather than face awkward and difficult realities about ourselves and the world.

I remember my therapist saying things that I did not understand.  She urged me to wait and see what happened inside me in relation to these wise interpretations she had made.

Her words did begin to make sense to me as time passed and therapy developed. I had not been ready to hear them, but they were stored inside me, waiting until the ‘right’ moment.

Below, printed in red, are some secrets that I know….secrets you learn from and about life, perhaps through therapy, that become apparent only when you can risk hearing their truth. If you are not open to such secrets, they will drift into the air and be lost to you, for now.

They will be meaningless. You can only understand their meaning if you are psychologically at the stage where you can receive their message.

I hope the secrets below will ‘speak’ to you. If not, wait a while and perhaps they will make more sense in time.

Presents with Secrets – Charles Arnoldi. 1980. Wikioo.

“Secrets could never be rushed. They had to come of their own accord, on their own schedule. That way, when they came, they offered themselves as a gift.”

Donna Jo Napoli

Invisible world – Rene Magritte. 1954.  Wikioo.

• We can search the world over for answers to our life issues, but the answers are there inside us, within our inner world,  if only we would dare to try to find them.

“If we go down into ourselves we find that we possess exactly what we desire.”

Simone Weil

We can look for a guru, a therapist, a parent or friend to give us the solutions to our problems in life, but ultimately, we know these deep inside. We may need help to find them, but no-one knows the way for us to move forward in our lives, except ourselves. Advice from others will come from their own frame of reference, not ours.

We live in two connected worlds, the inner and the outer.

Within our minds, we all have an internal landscape, a vast and complex world of our creation, both conscious and unconscious, a blend of many aspects, including memories, dreams, beliefs, imaginings, experiences, fears, thoughts and feelings. These inner and outer worlds are inextricably linked, forming a complex network of connections.

Interior Exterior – (Roger De Grey) Wikioo.org

“Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”

Carl Jung

What does Jung mean in the above quotation? He is asserting that the only way we can see clearly and wake up to reality is if we look inside at ourselves, into our own psyche, and not only at the world around us.

Unless we know ourselves, we will see others, and the outside world, through a lens clouded by our own imaginings, projections and distortions. In addition, we will be unaware of this bias, if we have not examined ourselves psychologically.

Looking for the solutions to one’s problems outside the self can be a fruitless search.

“But deluded people don’t realize that their own mind is the Buddha. They keep searching outside.”

Bodhidharma

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• Reaching maturity and achieving self awareness does not mean that we will always be happy. It does mean that we can cope better with the inevitable contradictions and paradoxes of life. This also applies to psychotherapy.

It is important to remember that there are no absolutes, that we can never be totally happy.

‘Only the paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of life.’

Carl Jung

What did Jung mean by this statement about paradoxes? What secrets did he know about them?How can they actually help us to understand the world around us and improve our life?

Paradoxes are seemingly contradictory statements, or images, where both sides of the contradiction can be true. They present us with so much to consider, so many opposing aspects of life to think about. They teach us that reality and truth are complex issues, that two contrary views can both contain the truth, that nothing is as it seems.

Paradoxes embody valuable lessons, ‘secrets’ that can only guide us well on our path through life.

“Take the road to contradiction, it’ll lead you, I promise, to the palace of wisdom.”

Frank Lentricchia

Unless we consider and balance contradictory arguments, different views and ways of thinking, we will never see the whole picture in life. Unless we accept life’s ambiguities, we will always have a partial take on the world inside and around us.

 “The purpose of therapy is not to remove suffering but to move through it to an enlarged consciousness that can sustain the polarity of painful opposites.”

James Hollis

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• Nothing lasts, not joy, not sorrow. Impermanence is woven intricately into the very fabric of our lives. If things go badly, it will not last. If things are good, that will not last either. Life is a journey, and we will travel though many different episodes and experiences, which change all the time.

Everything is impermanent, except uncertainty and not knowing what will happen next. Traversing the path of life is inevitably going to give us a bumpy ride. Life itself, as we all know too well, can present us with many harsh ups and downs along the way. 

There will also be times when we travel through life and find places of peace, people we feel happy with, oases of calm and healing. These we must treasure, as the memory of them can nourish us during the hard times.

Primroses And Birds’ Nests On A Mossy Bank. 1882. Oliver Clare. Wikioo.

“Well I know the secret places,

And the nests in hedge and tree;

At what doors are friendly faces,

In what hearts are thoughts of me.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Life is amazing. And then it’s awful. And then it’s amazing again. And in between the amazing and awful it’s ordinary and mundane and routine. Breathe in the amazing, hold on through the awful, and relax and exhale during the ordinary.

L.R. Knost.

Time and Tide. 1874.  – Alfred Thompson Bricher. Wikioo.

“All of us are creatures of a day; the rememberer and the remembered alike. All is ephemeral—both memory and the object of memory. The time is at hand when you will have forgotten everything; and the time is at hand when all will have forgotten you. Always reflect that soon you will be no one, and nowhere.”

Marcus Aurelius.
Quote by  Irvin D. Yalom, ‘Creatures of a Day: And Other Tales of Psychotherapy.’

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Happy are the gentle, for the whole world will belong to them – Corita Kent. 1960’s. Wikioo.

• If we treat others well, then we will be rewarded with love and respect. Attempting to dominate and being hard-hearted and rigid will create only fear and mistrust in those around us. There are many people who do not know this and this makes it harder for the people who have to deal with the attempts to control them.

Trying to control others can end in resentment and rebellion, as people gain the confidence to refuse to be dominated. Such dominating behaviour can rapidly become abusive, and, for everyone who experiences authoritarian, bullying behaviour from another, it creates a very unhappy life all round.

A controlling leadership style is very likely to incite anger and resentment, which will, inevitably, rebound back to the dominant person. The Hindu and Buddhist principle of Karma is related to how we act in the world. If we do bad, hurtful things, there will be consequences for us.

Equally, good energy will come back to us if we do good deeds. It is a matter of action and reaction. Whether or not you believe in Karma, there is no doubt that, if we constantly send out bad vibes and negative energy, we may get this boomeranging back at us in the future.

“The best leaders are gentle. In our culture, we have been misled to believe that the tougher we are, the more respect we will gain, but that is simply not true. What we gain by being tough is fear, and fear is not respect. Respect is gained by giving it away.”

 Rebecca Eanes, The Newbie’s Guide to Positive Parenting

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• Lifelong learning and maintaining a sense of wonder are crucial to our well-being. We can never know it all; as we discover more and more of the secrets of the world around us, there are always further mysteries yet to be found and understood.

Throughout life, our attitude to learning is paramount; it is important that we continue absorbing new things from the world, at all ages and stages of life.

Hands and Head – Jennifer Murray.2006. Wikioo.

Mysteries, Yes
by Mary Oliver

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds will
never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.

© Linda Berman.

It’s no secret that I’d feel very encouraged and supported if you would become a follower of my blog!