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

In my beginning there were deep wounds inherited from those who brought me here

For a long, long, long time those wounds and the way I dealt with them colored every experience, every ray of sun, and the light from every distant star

But now I see deeply

And I choose to transform with understanding, humility, caring, and kindness those old wounds that lit my path with dark hues of black and grey

So I may abide calmly and walk freely through the dark watches of the night, and in the dappled light of day

- Anonyme

It is often said that in today's modern and postmodern world, the forces of darkness are upon us. But I think not; in the Dark and the Deep there are truths that can always heal. It is not the forces of darkness but of shallowness that everywhere threaten the true, and the good, and the beautiful, and that ironically announce themselves as deep and profound. It is an exuberant and fearless shallowness that everywhere is the modern danger, the modern threat, and that everywhere nonetheless calls to us as savior.

- Ken Wilber, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, The Spirit of Evolution

Perhaps never before has humankind been so alienated from so many of its normal feeling states, as it is in the twenty-first century. Never before have so many human beings been so emotionally deadened and impoverished.

The disease of emotional emaciation is epidemic. Its effects on health are often euphemistically labeled as stress, and like the emotions stress is often treated like some unwanted waste that must be removed.

Until all of the emotions are accepted indiscriminately (and acceptance does not imply license to dump emotions irresponsibly or abusively), there can be no wholeness, no real sense of well being, and no solid sense of self esteem. Thus, while it may be fairly easy to like yourself when feelings of love or happiness or serenity are present, deeper psychological health is seen only when you can maintain a posture of self-love and self-respect in the times of emotional hurt that accompany life's inevitable contingencies of loss, loneliness, confusion, uncontrollable unfairness, and accidental mistake.

The human feeling experience, much like the weather, is often unpredictably changeable. No "positive" feeling can be induced to persist as a permanent experience, no matter what Cognitive Behavioral Therapy tells us. As disappointing as this may be, as much as we might like to deny it, as much as it causes each of us ongoing life frustration, and as much as we were raised and continue to be reinforced for trying to control and pick our feelings, they are still by definition the human condition, largely outside the province of our wills.

- Pete Walker, MFT, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving