skillful means

How do we begin to know ourselves in a way that will be transformative? Perhaps we will find if we practice approaching ourselves with kind contemplation as a skillful means we will begin to discover the penetrating truth of our experience.

When inward tenderness
Finds the secret hurt,
Pain itself will crack the rock
And, Ah! Let the soul emerge.

- Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, more popularly known simply as Rumi, a 13th-century Persian poet, Islamic scholar, theologian and Sufi mystic