Leonard Cohen

We are not mad. We are human. We want to love, and someone must forgive us for the paths we take to love, for the paths are many and dark, and we are ardent and cruel in our journey.

Takanini

Have you been to Takanini recently?   If you haven't then it is worth putting it on your weekend must visit list.  Takanini is changing so fast, its unbelievable. When we came here...lets just say a wee while ago... was more rural than anything else. Paddocks full of race horses keeping the race track, that was then, immediately across the road from us, very busy.  5am in the morning you could hear the horses clip clopping in through the gates.  The Auckland Herald amongst others have taken some beautiful images the track on a misty morning, the horses with their mounts going around the track... very special.

Also immediately across from my home is the memorial to the Walsh Brothers; the spot where the first powered controlled and sustained flight took place in New Zealand on the 5th of February 1911.  103 years ago. 

Yeats: the pilgrim soul in you

We do not allow others to control us once we are healthy, but we do understand and feel their pain when we realize that control is a compulsion.  Most controlling people cannot help themselves, they are not in control of the controlling.

   
Yeats the poet wrote about the special person who “loves the pilgrim soul in you.” Mirroring freedom means encouraging the liveliness and passion in others rather than squelching it for our own good or safety.  The “pilgrim soul” also implies going. True allowing also means letting someone go. To allow is to stand aside when someone needs space from us or ever leaves us.  

You instinctively seek the full range of motion and emotion in the course of your development, yet you can feel in the psychological air of your home a heartfelt permission to be yourself, to have your own thoughts and to express them without punishment, to make your own choices, even to step out of line.

Lance Morrow

This is an Essay written by Lance Morrow,  Time,  April the 29th. 1991.  I have held on to it since reading it; would have been that weeks issue.  It is a thoughtful and inspiring peace of work....

"We have rafts we cling to in bad weather - consolations, little solidarities, numbers we dial, people we wake up in the middle of the night."  Somehow it is not much fun to wake up to the television set.... the medium is a micro wave.
Television news, when it flies in raw and ragged, can be lacerating.  The medium destroys sequence. Reading restores to the mind a stabilization of linear prose, a bit of the architecture of thought. First one sentence, then another, building paragraphs, whole pages, chapters, books, until eventually something like an attention span returns and perhaps a steadier regard for cause and effect.
War (and television) shatters. Reading, thought reconstructs. The mind is reading is active, not passive - depressive.
Writers make universes. To enter that creation gives the reader some intellectual dignity and a higher sense of his possibilities. The dignity encourages relief and acceptance. I like writers who have struggles with a dark side and persevered. Samuel Johnson, for example; his distinction and his majestic sanity both achieved the hard way. Henry James/Grace Norton wrote, "Remember every life is a special problem which is not yours but anothers and content yourself with the terrible algebra of your own...  We all live together, and those of us who love and know, live so most," he told her. "Even if we don't reach the sun, we shall have at least been up in a balloon." 

Why Relationship Counselling?

I had it brought to my attention recently as to when it comes to issues concerning relationships, and how reluctant we are to share with our extended family and friends,   and understandably so. 

For one, we usually don't want to burden family and friends with our issues as this could cause them distress. Or we might feel that neither parties will be supportive, or they will support one partner but not the other, or be too negative, or will want to give advise. Another reason given is that relationship issues are very personal. There is someone else, another human involved, and their right to privacy it too has to be respected, that is unless they give you the authority to share with others.

 I recognize that when we are angry and beside ourselves with stress our head space does not always allow us to think things out in a reasonable manner.  I think in general terms we do, and when we don't, then the likely hood is we will be disappointed in ourselves for not being more considerate, or for letting our emotions run away with us.  For these reasons, and there are many others, It is extremely important to consider a neutral person, and a neutral space; where being heard, for both parties, is not going to be tainted with a bias. 

Counsellors are not there to guide you as to a decision, they are there to assist you explore and examine your situation. To manage the process, so that what ever the outcome is, it is your outcome, your decision. That you have had the opportunity to put all the different ideas, experiences, history of your relationship, the good and the bad, out there to examine and reflect on.

Counsellors can also offer tools to assist couples in all different scenarios.  We live in a fast changing world. Relationships are such, not that the issues are necessarily more complex, just the array of tools that a Councillor needs to have access to, do need to be much broader than they once were.  Once upon a time a couple was defined as being two people who were married.  Counsellors were called Marriage Councellors.  Today we work with 'Relationship' married and unmarried, same sex, de facto, partnerships, blended families, good friends even, partners who are separated but who have children together and need the assistance of Counsellor to work through issues concerning their children.

Relationship in the context of every day living, it is everywhere, what we look at, our environment, what we feel, what we do, what we are at one with... 

This represent a tiny snippet of what needs to go under the heading of 'Why Relationship Counselling'.

From my Counselling Room Window

Quotations and other bits and pieces

“Whenever you want to achieve something, keep your eyes open, Concentrate and make sure you know exactly what it is you want. No one can hit their target with their eyes closed” Paulo Coelho

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people are so full of doubt." Bertrand Russell 

"It is the truth we ourselves speak rather than the treatment we receive that heals us." O. Hobart Mowrer

"Once you have flown, you will walk the Earth with your eyes turned skyward; for there you have been, there you long to return." Leonardo De Vinci
I found this on page 1 of the book "A General Theory of Love" by Thomas Lewis. MD., Fari Amini, MD., Richard Lannon, MD.  Wont take too much thought as to what the authors of the book were referring to :)

A couple of interesting quotes I found: all anonymous,
unfortunately, means I can't give them due credit. 

"Time decides who you meet in your life.
Your heart decides who you want in your life
And your behavior decides who stays in your life."

"Don't  beg anyone to stay in your life.
If they want to be in your life, they will stay."

"If I cut you off, the chances are you handed me the scissors."

"First they censored the porn sites, and I
did not speak out as I did not watch porn.
They they censored the dissident sites, and I
did not speak out as I was not a dissident.
They they censored the alternative media sites, and I
did not speak out as I got my news from the main stream media.
They they took control of the main internet, and I
could not speak out as freedom of speech was made illegal.
It is never about protection, its always about control."