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Navigating modern life in a way that reduces distraction and fosters depth, meaning and connection has become a challenge for all of us. The multitasking techniques of work, the amount of perpetually renewing information available to us, the multi-directional method required for our minds interact with computers – many aspects of modern life lead to short attention spans, short-term gratification and a mildly (or not so mildly) ungrounded stressed experience of our everyday lives with a sense that we are being pushed along into the future without a sense of why or of developing a life that is deeply satisfying.
Inner Experience
In a society that has become increasingly externally focused we often look for ourselves by looking to others for our reflection and value. This search in the external world for what lies in our deeper, inner experience will always fail to satisfy us and, ironically, will maintain a distance between ourselves and others, as an external search for self can only experience the external world as a mirror. While therapy can elicit our deeper, inner experience, it is from this experience and the satisfaction that comes of knowing this aspect of ourselves that we are able to look outward and feel the satisfaction of knowing the world and the people around us.
Inspiration
In creating a space outside of the functional narratives of our daily lives, one of my goals is to focus both on immediate, visceral experience and on the grand, mythic narratives in which we often forget to place ourselves. We are beings who create, who question, who follow curiosity and passion, who fall in love, yet from our functional modes we tend to focus on o
ur concerns and anxieties around what we do. This happens because our experience is optimized to focus on functionality and survival, but it is not our only option. We have all had inspiring moments in which we found ourselves surrounded by both more immediate and grander senses of life. We often assume that these moments will be few and far between, but this assumption is based on our daily experience of consciousness. Through good therapy I believe it is possible to elicit states beyond this functional, daily experience. Ultimately, both our inner lives and the functional aspects of our lives improve from our increase in creativity, perspective, problem solving abilities and inspiration.
