For me, meditation had come to mean being with my own mind no matter what state it was in. In this way, it was closer to psychotherapy than I had initially thought.

Staying with the feeling is key,” I declare. “Most people go straight to what is wrong with them rather than staying with the feeling.” David’s eyes fill with tears. I can see that he is following my logic. “I’d like to believe it,” he says quietly.

Reflecting on this session, I am reminded once again of the concept of the mind object, both Beth’s and my own. By focusing too much on the particulars of Beth’s food issues and trying too hard to make a change in her behavior, I was getting drawn back in to her closed world instead of helping her break out of it. I had lost track of Michael Vincent Miller’s essential point and was therefore, not surprisingly, sacrificing innocence for experience.

Rather than clearly seeing what was wrong, and laying the responsibility on her parents, she had remained vague, telegraphing her pain to those around her while simultaneously taking the burden upon herself. “You had to shut yourself off,” I tell her. “To protect yourself, but also to protect your parents. You loved your father,” I reminded her. “His behavior didn’t make sense. You took it on yourself instead.

We are full of preconceptions about ourselves and are limited by them. The actuality of our being is not something we have an easy time making room for.