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.

...‘live in a house of language,’ as the philosopher Martin Heidegger said that humans do.

And in the very act of attentive witnessing, you can be released from the grip of their automaticity.

Awareness is our foundation of freedom and growth.

Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle. Some things are within your control. And some things are not.

Epictetus, Discourses