In their training, therapists learn that common sense is not always useful in counseling others. Human life is full of paradoxes and contradictions.

Here is someone who needs to learn better how to let others have some power and influence over her without her feeling too dependent.

Rule Number Two: some things have to be healed. When people gather, there are many emotional wounds caught up in the discussion of social issues. You can see the pain on people’s faces as they desperately argue on behalf of their own needs and beliefs. It’s difficult to sustain a creative and happy society when the need for therapy is so strong and when little therapy is being offered.

You not only have to know your limits, but also if you want to be a good therapist, you may have to expand your tolerance. You may have to stretch yourself to be available to more people.

In learning to meditate, albeit from some of the best teachers I could find, I came to appreciate that once I understood the basics, I had to teach myself how to do it. I had to take what I had learned, in terms of the formal techniques, and then make it real from the inside. Only then could I begin to appreciate what meditation could and could not accomplish.