Burn wood

Burn wood

As cold as winter may be at the time of writing this blog post, it has NOTHING to do with a warming fire. On the contrary!

The term "burning wood" comes from Arnold Mindell's process-orientated psychology. Figuratively, it expresses how much I have already worked on my own inner personality development and healing.

Imagine you meet a person. You stand opposite each other and begin to interact.

Behind each of you there is a pile of wood, dry, easily flammable and very flammable. The less inner work someone has done, the more wood there is behind them, the easier it is to ignite. The other way round: the more inner work, releasing patterns, consciousness, transformation has been and is being done, the smaller the pile and the more difficult it is to ignite.

Now your interaction becomes more intense, more heated and the proverbial sparks fly. As soon as the first spark touches a pile: Wum! The whole pile is ablaze!

Something that was not even in view has caught fire, suddenly and supposedly unpredictably, as if out of nowhere.

This pile of wood symbolises my own past, or rather the unprocessed experiences, patterns and imprints that I still carry with me in my "rucksack".

And it is important to reduce this pile - and not to negate, despise, disregard or ignore it! The latter only makes "it" burn all the better! I can burn this pile myself piece by piece, in a controlled manner, by sensing, processing and thus transforming the issues.

So mindfulness, servant work, inner child, shadow, disentanglement, etc. are very important gifts that we can give ourselves. And they all go to this core: recognising our own, current Needs in the NOW make me aware. That's what the model of GRP and helped me to get into a position from which I recognise my needs more and more naturally. I also recognise the needs of the other person, because my wooden bed no longer catches fire so quickly, and if it does, not as quickly. I can usually put it out again in a very short time and am once again able to devote myself to the other person and their needs instead of getting stuck in the judgement of "you set my wood on fire". GRP burns wood for me in a controlled manner.

So with more burnt wood, we become less "vulnerable", we become more permeable - as if the wind were blowing straight through us. So I am grateful that as a trainer, seminar leader, coach and therapist I have more and more holes! My log pile is smaller than it used to be and I always try to be aware of when I have put another log on it. I also try to burn the pile continuously and in a controlled manner.

Since I've been doing this, "it" no longer reacts with me. I have started to act. Self-empowered, self-effective. For me, this results in a feeling of calm, clear power that I no longer want to do without.