Expanding the relational field

I’m reading a new book by Franklyn Sills, the craniosacral guru of Karuna Institute and worldwide renown. It’s called the Breath of Life, and gives deep insight into ways of working with our own suffering and the suffering of others in the context of what is known as ‘biodynamics’. Here is a quote:

“In the biodynamic context, it is seen that suffering is eased when the human mind-body system truly aligns with the deeper universal forces that support life. It manifests as an alignment to something beyond the conditions and contingencies that organise our mind-body system and our sense of selfhood, to an innate Intelligence much greater than our human mentality. This occurs when the conditional forces of our past experience are reconciled within us, in states of balance and stillness. In the stillness, know only in this present moment, something else can occur beyond the suffering held.”

Foundations in Craniosacral Biodynamics: The Breath of Life and Fundamental Skills (p.3: Starting Points)

Interior solitude connects us to others

There is no true solitude except interior solitude. And interior solitude is not possible for anyone who does not accept their right place in relation to others. There is no true peace possible for the one who still imagines that some accident of talent or grace or virtue segregates them from other people and places themselves above them. Solitude is not segregation.

 Thomas Merton. New Seeds of Contemplation. (New York: New Directions Books), p 56.