From:.Steven VanWagoner <wagoner@GWIS2.CIRC.GWU.EDU>

"The human being's universal conflict is that one strives to be an
individual, and yet being an individual requires that one endure a
frightening isolation."  -Irvin Yalom

------------------------------

From: Roberto y Betty Mitelpunkt <rsimon@mofet.macam98.ac.il>
 

"IF YOUR DREAMS ARE FULL WITH COLOURS, WHY SHOULD YOUR DAYS BE GREY"
(Si tus suenios estan llenos de colores, porque tendrian que ser grises
tus dias)

------------------------

From: David Brazier

TERAPIA ZEN

WHERE WERE YOU LAST YEAR

Breath deep
Breath deep

The air fills my lungs and then?
My blood receives
This grace by which
I live a few moments more
My every cell replenished.
With every breath
A part of me departs
And something new
Is put in place.

The rice I ate yesterday,
Where is it now?
In my muscle, in my bone.
The juice we shared,
Where has it gone?
In our arms and legs and all.

Last month
The rice waved in the sunshine
In other lands:
In the low flood plains
Of the Mississippi
Or Irrawaddy;
And the fruit hung
On trees in Cyprus
Sicily or Spain.

And before that?
Before that their substance
Was in the soil,
Was in the air,
Was in the seas.
Was in the seas
Waiting to be gathered up
Waiting to soar up into the highest reaches of the sky,
Waiting to become rain.

You and I
Are mostly water.
Last year
Most of each of us
Was in the ocean.
We circulated together
In the Atlantic
Or the Pacific perhaps,
For we are mostly water.

And that water was lifted
By sunshine heat
By the impact of photons
Cascading down
Beating upon the ocean's face.

And every photon
Comes from the sun,
From the belly of the star;
You and I were stars last year.
We chased each other
In the turbulent heart of the sun.

So who was it that lived in your house last year?
And where will you be next week?
Who is your true friend and who your foe?
And who will you be next year?
Breathe deep
Breathe deep.

This air is me.
This air is you.
This air we share.
I give my substance to you and
You yours to me.

With each breath I am linked
In a single orbit
With the great forests.
My out breath is their food,
Their's fills my lungs.
Last year
I was a tree
And the tree was me.

Each day
We gather up substance
And continue the task
Of endlessly
Remaking ourselves
From one another.

Each day
We discard a portion
And continue the cycle
Of endlessly
Returning ourselves
To others.

Day by day we change
And become one another,
the substance of the universe,
Stardust and all,
Passing through us each
And we through it.

Where were you last year?
Breathe deep,
Breathe deep.
 

***********************************

WE ARE ONE
 
Alone in silent time: a single wave
  Upon the deep; a single leaf within
The forest which, though brave, could never stave
  Off autumn, but will, with the fall, begin
Its transformation: Say not that we die,
  But will be scattered midst all our mothers,
    Each so fragrant in their most true moment,
Yet no more real than we
  Save that we bloom in one another's
    Fleeting flowering wherein we find content.

How proud we seem; how hard it is to know
  That you are I and I am you and all
The separations that do plague us so
  Show how our light is hid beneath the pall
Of fear. Say not that each must go alone
  For loneness is of our own sharp making
    Not a doom by nature dreadfully decreed,
But just our broken bone,
  The painful fracture made by our foresaking
    Compassion's ear that hears the cries of need.

With mind's keen knife all nature's seams seem loosed
  And briefly we rejoice in cleverness
And all our science, by which we hope to boost
  Our dismembered single souls, born of distress,
Of sensed rejection. Say not that we live
  While other things inanimate are, or that
    We are souled while other beasts are meat,
For we can simply give
  Away this cold and futile fiat
    Of exile when a kindred universe we greet.

For we are part of one another and
  There is not one who is beyond our touch,
Nor is there one who cannot reach my hand
  Nor any whose suffering is really too much
For me to understand. Say not that life
  Is lived for self alone, for that is but
    A dream from which we wake, as does the leaf,
When autumn ends our strife
  And bids us see there is none now cut
    Off from us; nor need to live in grief.

**************************************************

WE MEET

I meet you in my therapy room,
Just the two of us.
What has this to do
With the threatened extinction of life on earth?
When we are both gone
Evolution will go on.
When humans have made themselves extinct
Other species will arise
Happier for our departure.
We meet in this room
Separated from the outside air.
Only human concerns will be talked of here,
And yet something bigger is touched.
Before you cry
You tell me of your grief
The strife in your family
The painful accidents of life.
I know you now.
I am supposed to know you
As one to whom a service is delivered,
Packaged and coded.
But, alas,
I must confess
You have touched my heart,
And so now I know you
Not in that cold, procedural way,
But in the warmth of life.
Could this brief meeting
Contribute to preventing
The extinction of life on earth?
We meet in the therapy room,
We meet, we meet.

David Brazier <amida@amida.demon.co.uk>

----------------------------

From: Terenzio Formenti

 In Moreno's words:

    "A meeting of two: eye to eye, face to face.
     And when you are near I will tear your eyes out
     and place them instead of mine,
     and you will tear my eyes out
     and place them instead of yours,
     and I will look at you with your eyes
     and you will look at me with mine."

------------------------

From:Margot Woods - New Zealand

I WANT TO KNOW WHO YOU ARE
Oriah, Mountain Dreamer, Indian Elder

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.  I want to know what you
ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are.  I want to know if you will risk
looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being
alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon.  I want to know
if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or
fade it or fix it.  I want to know if you have touched the centre of your
own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals, or if you have
become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own.  If you can dance
with wildness and let ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, or to remember the
limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true.  I want to
know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself, if you can beat
the accusation of betrayal and not betray our own soul.  I want to know if
you can be faithful and therefore be trustworthy.  I want to know if you
can see beauty even when it is not pretty every day and if you can source
your life on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon
- "YES!"

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here.  I want to
know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink
back.

It doesn't  interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.  I
want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.  I
want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the
company you keep in the empty moments.

Margot Woods <margot.woods@XTRA.CO.NZ>