Six Kinds of Loneliness
Pema Chodron

To be without a reference point is the ultimate loneliness. It is also called enlightenment.

In the middle way, there is no reference point. The mind with no reference point does not resolve itself, does not fixate or grasp. How could we possibly have no reference point? To have no reference point would be to change a deep-seated habitual response to the world: wanting to make it work out one way or the other. If I can’t go left or right, I will die! When we don’t go left or right, we feel like we are in a detox center. We’re alone, cold turkey with all the edginess that we’ve been trying to avoid by going left or right. That edginess can feel pretty heavy. However, years and years of going to the left or right, going to yes or no, going to right or wrong has never really changed anything. Scrambling for security has never brought anything but momentary joy. It’s like changing the position of our legs in meditation. Our legs hurt from sitting cross-legged, so we move them. And then we feel, “Phew! What a relief!” But two and a half minutes later, we want to move them again. We keep moving around seeking pleasure, seeking comfort, and the satisfaction that we get is very short-lived.

We hear a lot about the pain of samsara, and we also hear about liberation. But we don’t hear much about how painful it is to go from being completely stuck to becoming unstuck. The process of becoming unstuck requires tremendous bravery, because basically we are completely changing our way of perceiving reality, like changing our DNA. We are undoing a pattern that is not just our pattern. It’s the human pattern: we project onto the world a zillion possibilities of attaining resolution. We can have whiter teeth, a weed-free lawn, a strife-free life, a world without embarrassment. We can live happily every after. This pattern keeps us dissatisfied and causes us a lot of suffering.

As human beings, not only do we seek resolution, but we also feel that we deserve resolution. However, not only do we not deserve resolution, we suffer from resolution. We don’t deserve resolution; we deserve something better than that. We deserve our birthright, which is the middle way, an open state of mind that can relax with paradox and ambiguity. To the degree that we’ve been avoiding uncertainty, we’re naturally going to have withdrawal symptoms—withdrawal from always thinking that there’s a problem and that someone, somewhere, needs to fix it.

The middle way is wide open, but it’s tough going, because it goes against the grain of an ancient neurotic pattern that we all share. When we feel lonely, when we feel hopeless, what we want to do is move to the right or the left. We don’t want to sit and feel what we feel. We don’t want to go through the detox. Yet the middle way encourages us to do just that. It encourages us to awaken the bravery that exists in everyone without exception, including you and me.

Meditation provides a way for us to train in the middle way—in staying right on the spot. We are encouraged not to judge whatever arises in our mind. In fact, we are encouraged not to even grasp whatever arises in our mind. What we usually call good or bad we simply acknowledge as thinking, without all the usual drama that goes along with right and wrong. We are instructed to let the thoughts come and go as if touching a bubble with a feather. This straightforward discipline prepares us to stop struggling and discover a fresh, unbiased state of being.

The experience of certain feelings can seem particularly pregnant with desire for resolution: loneliness, boredom, anxiety. Unless we can relax with these feelings, it’s very hard to stay in the middle when we experience them. We want victory or defeat, praise or blame. For example, if somebody abandons us, we don’t want to be with that raw discomfort. Instead, we conjure up a familiar identity of ourselves as a hapless victim. Or maybe we avoid the rawness by acting out and righteously telling the person how messed up he or she is. We automatically want to cover over the pain in one way or another, identifying with victory or victimhood.

Usually we regard loneliness as an enemy. Heartache is not something we choose to invite in. It’s restless and pregnant and hot with the desire to escape and find something or someone to keep us company. When we can rest in the middle, we begin to have a nonthreatening relationship with loneliness, a relaxing and cooling loneliness that completely turns our usual fearful patterns upside down.

There are six ways of describing this kind of cool loneliness. They are: less desire, contentment, avoiding unnecessary activity, complete discipline, not wandering in the world of desire, and not seeking security from one’s discursive thoughts.

Less desire is the willingness to be lonely without resolution when everything in us yearns for something to cheer us up and change our mood. Practicing this kind of loneliness is a way of sowing seeds so that fundamental restlessness decreases. In meditation, for example, every time we label “thinking” instead of getting endlessly run around by our thoughts, we are training in just being here without dissociation. We can’t do that now to the degree that we weren’t willing to do it yesterday or the day before or last week or last year. After we practice less desire wholeheartedly and consistently, something shifts. We feel less desire in the sense of being less solidly seduced by our Very Important Story Lines. So even if the hot loneliness is there, and for 1.6 seconds we sit with that restlessness when yesterday we couldn’t sit for even one, that’s the journey of the warrior. That’s the path of bravery. The less we spin off and go crazy, the more we taste the satisfaction of cool loneliness. As the Zen master Katagiri Roshi often said, “One can be lonely and not be tossed away by it.”

The second kind of loneliness is contentment. When we have nothing, we have nothing to lose. We don’t have anything to lose but being programmed in our guts to feel we have a lot to lose. Our feeling that we have a lot to lose is rooted in fear—of loneliness, of change, of anything that can’t be resolved, of nonexistence. The hope that we can avoid this feeling and the fear that we can’t become our reference point.

When we draw a line down the center of a page, we know who we are if we’re on the right side and who we are if we’re on the left side. But we don’t know who we are when we don’t put ourselves on either side. Then we just don’t know what to do. We just don’t know. We have no reference point, no hand to hold. At that point we can either freak out or settle in. Contentment is a synonym for loneliness, cool loneliness, settling down with cool loneliness. We give up believing that being able to escape our loneliness is going to bring any lasting happiness or joy or sense of well-being or courage or strength. Usually we have to give up this belief about a billion times, again and again making friends with our jumpiness and dread, doing the same old thing a billion times with awareness. Then without our even noticing, something begins to shift. We can just be lonely with no alternatives, content to be right here with the mood and texture of what’s happening.

The third kind of loneliness is avoiding unnecessary activities. When we’re lonely in a “hot” way, we look for something to save us; we look for a way out. We get this queasy feeling that we call loneliness, and our minds just go wild trying to come up with companions to save us from despair. That’s called unnecessary activity. It’s a way of keeping ourselves busy so we don’t have to feel any pain. It could take the form of obsessively daydreaming of true romance, or turning a tidbit of gossip into the six o’clock news, or even going off by ourselves into the wilderness.

The point is that in all these activities, we are seeking companionship in our usual, habitual way, using our same old repetitive ways of distancing ourselves from the demon loneliness. Could we just settle down and have some compassion and respect for ourselves? Could we stop trying to escape from being alone with ourselves? What about practicing not jumping and grabbing when we begin to panic? Relaxing with loneliness is a worthy occupation. As the Japanese poet Ryokan says, “If you want to find the meaning, stop chasing after so many things.”

Complete discipline is another component of cool loneliness. Complete discipline means that at every opportunity, we’re willing to come back, just gently come back to the present moment. This is loneliness as complete discipline. We’re willing to sit still, just be there, alone. We don’t particularly have to cultivate this kind of loneliness; we could just sit still long enough to realize it’s how things really are. We are fundamentally alone, and there is nothing anywhere to hold on to. Moreover, this is not a problem. In fact, it allows us to finally discover a completely unfabricated state of being. Our habitual assumptions—all our ideas about how things are—keep us from seeing anything in a fresh, open way. We say, “Oh yes, I know.” But we don’t know. We don’t ultimately know anything. There’s no certainty about anything. This basic truth hurts, and we want to run away from it. But coming back and relaxing with something as familiar as loneliness is good discipline for realizing the profundity of the unresolved moments of our lives. We are cheating ourselves when we run away from the ambiguity of loneliness.

Not wandering in the world of desire is another way of describing cool loneliness. Wandering in the world of desire involves looking for alternatives, seeking something to comfort us—food, drink, people. The word desire encompasses that addiction quality, the way we grab for something because we want to find a way to make things okay. That quality comes from never having grown up. We still want to go home and be able to open the refrigerator and find it full of our favorite goodies; when the going gets tough, we want to yell “Mom!” But what we’re doing as we progress along the path is leaving home and becoming homeless. Not wandering in the world of desire is about relating directly with how things are. Loneliness is not a problem. Loneliness is nothing to be solved. The same is true for any other experience we might have.

Another aspect of cool loneliness is not seeking security from one’s discursive thoughts. The rug’s been pulled; the jig is up; there is no way to get out of this one! We don’t even seek the companionship of our own constant conversation with ourselves about how it is and how it isn’t, whether it is or whether it isn’t, whether it should or whether it shouldn’t, whether it can or whether it can’t. With cool loneliness we do not expect security from our own internal chatter. That’s why we are instructed in meditation to label it “thinking.” It has no objective reality. It is transparent and ungraspable. We’re encouraged to just touch that chatter and let it go, not make much ado about nothing.

Cool loneliness allows us to look honestly and without aggression at our own minds. We can gradually drop our ideals of who we think we ought to be, or who we think we want to be, or who we think other people think we want to be or ought to be. We give it up and just look directly with compassion and humor at who we are. Then loneliness is no threat and heartache, no punishment.

Cool loneliness doesn’t provide any resolution or give us ground under our feet. It challenges us to step into a world of no reference point without polarizing or solidifying. This is called the middle way, or the sacred path of the warrior. When you wake up in the morning and out of nowhere comes the heartache of alienation and loneliness, could you use that as a golden opportunity? Rather than persecuting yourself or feeling that something terribly wrong is happening, right there in the moment of sadness and longing, could you relax and touch the limitless space of the human heart? The next time you get a chance, experiment with this.

- Pema Chödrön

Said a traveler to one of thedisciples, "I have traveled agreat distance to listen to theMaster, but I find his wordsquite ordinary."
"Don't listen to his words.Listen to his message."
"How does one do that?"
"Take hold of a sentence thathe says. Shake it well tillall the words drop off. Whatis left will set your hearton fire."

Anthony de Mello, S.J.

Creatures without feet have my love,
And likewise those that have two feet,
And those that have four feet I love,
And those, too, that have many feet.

-the Buddha

Re: Can anybody give me information on Russian MA...
Quote:
Out of curiosity was your first teacher in the military? If so is that were he learned all those martial arts. Yes and no. Sergei was an engineer, and this made him eligible for officer training, but in a reservist capacity, i.e. he didn't have to see a lot of action on the front. The implicaion I got was that he used military connections who had connections with chinese miitary connections to arrange the exchange program, so you could say that the military was involved in a way.He also had a job as a sort of debt-collector for *cough cough* genlemen requiring some discretion, which he later parlayed into a detective agency. A big difference between what he did and what you would expect from such a job description over here is that often the collectees were also organized, armed, and often dangerous.He got into that line of work as a result of his rep as a sport fighter. He'd made the papers a few times, gotten some championships, and on the Soviet street, a sport fighter was in demand as muscle, maybe a step below being in spetsnaz for value.I can corrobate this with what my friend Misha who used box during that time said - often street toughs would walk into his boxing gymn looking to boost their reps (and hourly rate) by going in the ring, and fighting dirty. His trainer would tell him "Infidel" (his coach was muslim) "if you do not beat this guy, you cannot box under me anymore." Misha's boxing is pretty dirty if he wants it to be -hidden elbows, cross buttocks that look like hooks, lotta old-school bareknuckle moves this guy knows ...Anyway, one interesting bit of information from my first teach - when he started out collecting, with just the sport background, he would win his streetfights, but would often sustain some injury in the process. However, he then met this guy Lavrov in Krasnodar (if you look on certain websites, there is a series of articles related to RMA, primarily by Pachenko. Most of Pachenko's articles try to discredit the idea of a native RMA, but one article on that page has an interview with Lavrov). Lavrov knew some RMA, and according to Sergei, it made a big difference - no more injuries, and he understood his other stuff better. Lavrov was deteriorating by then tho - too much drinking. Anyway, Sergei sees the writing on the wall, moves to Canada wth his wife and an incredible amouint of liquid currency, teaches at a karate school for pocket money (did I mention he also has a 5th dan in karate?) and hears about Vladimir. He sort of thought it was a scam actually, and he wandered in with a very smug attitude, thought he'd have some fun and show some people up - and then Vlad pounded on him in such a fashion that he realized that Vlad was way more advanced than anyone he ever saw, and he really had a lot to learn. A familiar story for the people in Toronto.Nowadays Sergei runs a resort camp in Eastern Ontario, doing quite well.

There is this traveler in the desert. It's very, very hot, and he is thirsty. In the distance there is one lone tree. He didn't know that it was a wishing tree. He goes and sits beneath it and he thinks, 'this is nice, I only wish I had a cool drink now'. Lo and behold, a cool drink appears in his hand. 'Oh! Terrific!' he says. 'Now if I had a soft bed to lie on and drink this with a bit of a breeze to fan me'. Lo and behold, a soft bed appears, as well as a maiden with a fan, fanning him. 'Oh! This is terrific. Now all I need is a good meal to go with all this and everything would be just right'. Lo and behold, a big meal appears. Then the mind says, 'Hey! What's all this? What's going on? Maybe it's a devil?' And the devil appears. The mind then says 'Oh! He's going to eat me'. And he does!

If all there is is Consciousness, if there is only Consciousness, then why or for what are you still seeking? If there is only Consciousness then right now you must be That and everything else that appears in and as awareness must also be That, including any sense of separate self. Any appearance of mundane, ordinary existence can be no less of Consciousness than any appearance of unconditional love, wholness, bliss, stillness, silence or anything else. Does anything really need to be transcended, found or let go of? - Nathan Gill

Give up mischief.
Be serene.
Leave everything behind you.
Do not take offense
And do not give it.

Want nothing from this world
And nothing from the next.
Be free as the bird who
Leaves no tracks in the sky.

Calmly
Let go of life,
Of home and pleasure and desire.
Let nothing of this world hold you.
Nothing of all creation hold you.

And with great gladness
Know that you are finished.
You have woken from your sleep.

Then in you there will be
No yesterday,
No tomorrow
No today.

Possessing nothing,
Wanting nothing
You will be free.

Without fear, go.
The Deathless is waiting for you."


~The Buddha

If the desire to be honest is greater than the desire to be "good" or "bad," then the terrific power of one's vices will become clear. And behind the vice the old forgotten fear will come up (the fear of being excluded from life) and behind the fear the pain (the pain of not being loved) and behind this pain of loneliness the deepest and most profound and most hidden of all human desires: the desire to love and to give oneself in love and to be part of the living stream we call brotherhood. And the moment love is discovered behind hatred all hatred disappears.

Fritz Kunkel, M. D., The Choice Is Always Ours

There Will Be a Great War
Mercedes de Acosta:
A Search in Secret India (Paul Brunton's book) had a profound influence on me. In it I learned for the first time about Ramana Maharshi, a great Indian saint and sage. It was as though some emanation of this saint was projected out of the book to me. For days and nights after reading about him I could not think of anything else. I became, as it were, possessed by him. I could not even talk of anything else. Nothing could distract me from the idea that I must go and meet this saint. From this time on, although I ceased to speak too much about it, the whole direction of my life turned toward India. I had very little money, far too little to risk going to India, but something pushed me towards it. I went to the steamship company and booked myself one of the cheapest cabins on an Indian ship, the S. S. Victoria, sailing from Genoa to Bombay toward the beginning of October.


In Madras I hired a car, and so anxious was I to arrive in Tiruvannamalai that I did not go to bed and traveled by night, arriving about seven o'clock in the morning after driving almost eleven hours. I was very tired as I got out of the car in a small square in front of the temple [Arunachaleswara Temple]. The driver explained he could take me no farther.

I turned toward the hill of Arunachala and hurried in the hot sun along the dust-covered road to the abode about two miles from town where the Sage dwelt. As I ran those two miles, deeply within myself I knew that I was running toward the greatest experience of my life. When, dazed and filled with emotion, I first entered the hall, I did not quite know what to do. Coming from strong sunlight into the somewhat darkened hall, it was, at first, difficult to see; nevertheless, I perceived Bhagavan at once, sitting in the Buddha posture on his couch in the corner. At the same moment I felt overcome by some strong power in the hall, as if an invisible wind was pushing violently against me. For a moment I felt dizzy. Then I recovered myself. I was able to look around the hall, but my gaze was drawn to Bhagavan, who was sitting absolutely straight in the Buddha posture looking directly in front of him. His eyes did not blink or in any way move. As he sat there he seemed like a statue, and yet something extraordinary emanated from him. I had a feeling that on some invisible level I was receiving spiritual shocks from him, although his gaze was not directed toward me. He did not seem to be looking at anything, and yet I felt he could see and was conscious of the whole world.

After I had been sitting several hours in the hall listening to the mantras of the Indians and the incessant droning of flies, and lost in a sort of inner world, (a devotee) suggested that I go and sit near the Maharshi.

I moved near Bhagavan, sitting at his feet and facing him. Not long after this Bhagavan opened his eyes. He moved his head and looked directly down at me, his eyes looking into mine. It would be impossible to describe this moment and I am not going to attempt it. I can only say that at this second I felt my inner being raised to a new level - as if, suddenly, my state of consciousness was lifted to a much higher degree. Perhaps in this split second I was no longer my human self but THE Self. Then Bhagavan smiled at me. It seemed to me that I had never before known what a smile was. I said, "I have come a long way to see you."

There was silence. I had stupidly brought a piece of paper on which I had written a number of questions I wanted to ask him. I fumbled for it in my pocket, but the questions were already answered by merely being in his presence. There was no need for questions or answers. Nevertheless, my dull intellect expressed one.

"Tell me, whom shall I follow - what shall I follow? I have been trying to find this out for years by seeking in religions, in philosophies, in teachings." Again there was silence.

After a few minutes, which seemed to me a long time, he spoke. "You are not telling the truth. You are just using words - just talking. You know perfectly well whom to follow. Why do you need me to confirm it?" "You mean I should follow my inner self?" I asked. "I don't know anything about your inner self. You should follow THE Self. There is nothing or no one else to follow."

I asked again, "What about religions, teachers, gurus?"

"Yes, if they can help in the quest of the Self. But can they help? Can religion, which teaches you to look outside yourself, which promises a heaven and a reward outside yourself, can this help you? It is only by diving deep into the spiritual Heart that one can find the Self." He placed his right hand on his right breast and continued, "Here lies the Heart, the dynamic, spiritual Heart. It is called Hridaya and is located on the right side of the chest and is clearly visible to the inner eye of an adept on the spiritual path. Through meditation you can learn to find the Self in the cave of this Heart."

It is a strange thing but when I was very young, Ignacio Zuloaga said to me, "All great people function with the heart." He placed his hand over my physical heart and continued, "See, here lies the heart. Always remember to think with it, to feel with it, and above all, to judge with it." But the Enlightened One raised the counsel to a higher level. He said, "Find the Self in the real Heart." Both, just at the right moment in my life, showed me the way.

I definitely saw life differently after I had been in his presence, a presence that just by merely "being" was sufficient spiritual nourishment for a lifetime. There was a change - a transformation of my entire consciousness. And how could it have been otherwise? I had been in the atmosphere of an egoless, world-detached, and completely pure being. I sat in the hall with Bhagavan three days and three nights. Sometimes he spoke to me; other times he was silent and I did not interrupt his silence. Often he was in samadhi. I wanted to stay on there with him but finally he told me that I should go back to America. He said, "There will be what will be called a 'war', but which, in reality, will be a great world revolution. Every country and every person will be touched by it. You must return to America. Your destiny is not in India at this time."

Before leaving the ashram, Bhagavan gave me some verses he had selected from the Yoga Vasishta. He said they contained the essence for the path of a pure life.

"Steady in the state of fullness,which shines when all desires are given up,and peaceful in the state of freedom in life,act playfully in the world, O Raghava!"

"Inwardly free from all desires,dispassionate and detached, but outwardly active in all directions,act playfully in the world, O Raghava!"

"Free from egoism, with mind detached as in sleep,pure like the sky, ever untainted,act playfully in the world, O Raghava!"

"Conducting yourself nobly with kindly tenderness,outwardly conforming to conventions, but inwardly renouncing all,act playfully in the world, O Raghava!"

"Quite unattached at heart but for all appearance acting as with attachment,inwardly cool but outwardly full of fervour,act playfully in the world, O Raghava!"

I sorrowfully said farewell to Bhagavan. As I was leaving he said, "You will return here again." I wonder. Since his physical presence has gone I wonder if I shall. Yet often I feel the pull of Arunachala as though it were drawing me back. I feel the pull of that sacred hill of which he was so much a part and where his mortal body lies buried.

Mercedes de Acosta, Here Lies the Heart

“When the tragedy of the world market no longer exists,
unexpected gradations of being in love with being here will
emerge.”

Walter Lowenfels

Brute force crushes many plants. Yet the plants rise again. The Pyramids will not last a moment compared with the daisy. And before Buddha or Jesus spoke the nightingale sang, and long after the words of Jesus and Buddha are gone into oblivion the nightingale still will sing. Because it is neither preaching nor commanding nor urging. It is just singing. And in the beginning was not a Word, but a chirrup.

D. H. Lawrence

Having died I am here to tell you YES we CAN die and come back to "life" aaaaaaaaaaaand once that's REALLY happened you KNOW there is no such thing as what people think of as DEATH. And that's all, it's simply not an issue anymore. I like most actual NDE-ers had difficulty re-entering a world full of people living in fear of each other, the future, the pas���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������

SRI RAMANA MAHARSHI ON THE ESSENCE OF NON-DUALITY

Discern at every step that I am whatever is beginningless, conscious,unborn, primal, resident in the Heart-cavity, unsullied, and transcendingthe world, whatever is pure, peerless, desireless, beyond sight or otherperceptions or even mental apprehension. Because we think we are in the bodywe also believe that we are born. However, we do not think of the body, ofGod, or of methods of realization in our deep slumber. Yet in our wakingstate we hold onto the body and think we are in it. The Supreme Being isthat from which the body is born, in which it lives, and into which itresolves. We, however, think that we reside within the body. Henceinstruction is given. The instruction means: "look within." Consciousness isnot born at any time; it remains eternal. But ego is born; so also the otherthoughts. Associated with the absolute consciousness they shine forth; nototherwise. . . .Liberation is to know that you were not born. "Be still andknow that I am God."

“Only the hand that erases can write the true thing."
-Meister Eckhart

~

This is the basis of Dzogchen Trekcho: Chogzhag (let be):

1. Riwo Chogzhag: leave the position of the body as it happens to be.
2. Gyatso Chozhag: leave the eyes looking at whatever they happen to be looking at.
3. Rigpa Chogzhag: leave the Mind nakedly aware of whatever mental events occur.
4. Nangwa Chogzhag: Leave ALL external events as-is...as they arise from moment to moment.

This is most important.

"Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the
world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of
the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings."

Soren Kierkegaard

~ ~ ~

"In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be
defined."

Thomas Szaz

"Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied."

- Arthur Miller

nature shouts all the time:
give way, give way,
the new moment is here already!
the show must go on!

Nasrudin went to a sufi master with a friend. The
Master, wanting to test their spiritual egg, gave each
of them a chicken and told them, "Go kill the chicken
where no one could see and then return."
The friend in 5 minutes came to the Master with a dead
chicken. The Master asked what did he do. He said, "I
went behind a fence where no could see."

The Master smiled.

Nasrudin meanwhile turned up missing...a day and then
a week. The Master sent a search party. Finally
Nasrudin was found still carrying his chicken with
him. He was taken back to the Master who questioned
Nasrudin. "Why did you not kill the chicken?" Nasrudin
replied, "Everywhere I went the chicken could see."

- posted to Nasrudin by Herbie King

Commentary from CC: The Coldness of Infinity

THE POWER OF SILENCE is an intellectual review of the thoughts ofthe shamans of ancient Mexico. In their most abstract guise. As Iworked alone on the book, I was contaminated by the mood of thosemen, by their desire to know more in a quasi-rational way. Florindaexplained that in the end, those shamans had become extremely coldand detached. Nothing warm existed for them anymore. They were setin their quest; their coldness as men was an effort to match thecoldness of infinity. They had succeeded in changing their humaneyes to match the cold eyes of the unknown.

Commentary on The Power of Silence(Inner Silence)THE WHEEL OF TIMECarlos Castaneda

Nature of Projection

-- "The entity placed in the body is a projection designed as the carrier of projections. It inhabits the body-construct as a mind-entity that can know and do. It brings with it constructions of threats that would attack or negate its knowing and doing. The goal of projection is to protect an imagined entity taken as self by forming protections to ensure imagined continuity.

-- "The therapy of no-thingness can have no aim that involves a new state for a separable being called the client. ... Such a therapy is nothing other than the opening that is the present as is, which is an opening to and of potential, and the discovery that one's being is this ever-new potentiality as actuality. Problems drop here simply because there is no place for an assumption of a problem-carrying entity."