Marley effectively used the hypnotic sounds of reggae laced with poetic lyrics to protest injustices, creating an entirely novel philosophical discourse through music. Brown’s aggressive funk, which became the backbone of Fela’s Afrobeat, placed the reviled, feared black body and features on the map of the world in a positive, sensuous light. But neither Brown nor Marley tried to organize popular resentment into a political party, as Fela did. Neither went as far as Fela in identifying in unmistakably graphic terms the elites that were responsible for the oppression of African peoples all over the world.

Jung said that every time you serve as a therapist, you always have to deal with your own issues. In Jung’s words (1966), “The doctor must change himself if he is to become capable of changing his patient. We have learned to place in the foreground the personality of the doctor as a curative or harmful factor; and that what is now demanded is his own transformation—the self-education of the educator” (p. 73).

If I am dealing with a particularly shaken person, I keep the boundaries strict and firm, but with most clients I make a point to be present as more than the therapist. I talk a little about, my life. If the client asks about how things are going for me, I tell him. I may bring up an experience of mine that seems apropos. I do all this thoughtfully and minimally, just enough to be present as a person. My purpose is to serve the soul of the person I want to help. I hold back my own needs for a different occasion.

He was talking about the mind revealing itself, about the vivid and transparent thing

hidden within the twisted shards of our individual personalities. Did I see that freedom in my patients?

While it took Ram Dass to express it for me, I recognized the truth in what he was saying. I do see my patients as already free. The seed is in them already, just as the Buddha’s joy under the rose-apple tree was there within him. My challenge in being a therapist has been to stay true to this vision even when my patients, like my mother, object.

We all cling in one way or another, but as Hakuin reminds us, if we are searching for freedom, we must learn to lift up our hands. Early trauma like Jack’s cannot be healed by simply pointing out its origins. Understanding that he was not the cause of his parents’ anguish will not relieve him of the burden of it. But by working diligently to offset his mind’s tendency to repeat itself, Jack can become compassionate toward his childhood predicament rather than identifying exclusively with the pain of it. This was the deeper message I was trying to convey.