May our friendly hands hold more firmly and our heart get nearer! Psychotherapy can only be partially or temporarily helpful if it does not acknowledge what is actually most true. Psychology has been built on the belief in a separate, individual self, which is not essentially true. Traditional psychotherapy works from the premise that the individual self requires to be changed or improved. However, all lasting change comes out of genuine acceptance and this acceptance comes when we discover our true nature. It cannot arise from an imaginary self that is believed to be independent. The imaginary self can try to accept that which it finds unacceptable, but it cannot succeed. Only love itself has no resistance to what is. Your charm, maturity, and wisdom will grow as you learn to love yourself.  Many people think that is they accept things as they are, they will never change. Yet the acceptance or surrender that I am speaking of here is the power that truly transforms. That is why I put an emphasis on direct experience when it comes to truth. This truth cannot be fully understood by the mind; it can only be revealed through direct experience. And so, when people relax their impulse to get rid of painful sensations or feelings and simply be present with themselves, they discover that their discomfort effortlessly dissolves or transforms over times. It is the first light of morning of my highest hope to get your sacred friendship. Do you hear my praying faraway in the night? May your life be full of joy, happiness, and satisfaction.  

When it comes to healing trauma, however, additional skills may be required. Trauma is the inability to be present with what is here and now. When we have experienced trauma, it tends to pull us out of here and now into there and then. It returns us to repetitive re-experiencing or re-enactment of the past trauma. Trauma actually destabilizes the nervous system in a way that disrupts our natural ability to be in the present moment. Paradoxically, healing trauma requires being here and now. Not worrying about the past, nor the future. Therefore, healing trauma usually requires a skillful method that can facilitate being presents with the nervous system’s experience of trauma in the body. This process is greatly enhanced by the conscious recognition of awareness. By its nature, awareness is present with whatever appears within it. When we are conscious as awareness, and our trauma arises, we are not identified with it; we are not fixed and therefore no longer at the effect of it. There is naturally a being present with, or letting be, which allows a relaxation of the contracted, traumatic energy. Thus there is a synergy between the conscious recognition of awareness, which facilitates a skillful method, and the method, which facilitates being present with trauma. This synergy results not only in the healing of trauma, but can also result in liberation from suffering itself. Let us listen to the blessings of the Earth in this beautiful and warm World. I wish you a happy life and a successful study in this promising Summer.  

Inclined as we may have been to ascribe to savage and semi-savage races uninhibited and remorseless cruelty towards their enemies, it is of great interest to us to learn that with them, too, the killing of a person compels the observation of a series of rules which are associated with taboo customs. These rules are easily brought under four groups; they demand reconciliation with the slain enemy, restrictions, acts of expiation, and purification of the manslayer, and certain ceremonial rites. The incomplete reports do not allow us to decide with certainty how general or how isolated such taboo customs may be among these races, but this is a matter of indifference as far as our interest in these occurrences is concerned. Still, it may be assumed that we are dealing with widespread customs and not with isolated peculiarities. The reconciliation customs practiced in this community, after a victorious band of warriors has returned with the severed heads of the vanquished enemy, are especially significant because the leader of the expedition is subject to heavy additional restrictions. As the solemn entry of the victors, sacrifices are made to conciliate the souls of the enemy; otherwise one would have to expect harm to come to the victors. Some hear voice, suffer financial ruin, or spend their days hating people. As part of the forgiveness ritual, a dance is given and a song is sung in which the slain enemy is mourned and his forgiveness is implored: Be not angry because your head is here with us; had we been less lucky, our heads might have been exposed in your village. We have offered the sacrifice to appease you. Your spirit may now rest and leave us in peace.  

Why were you our enemy? Would it not have been better that we should remain friends? Then your blood would not have been split and your head would not have been cut off. Similar customs are found among the Palu in Celebes; the Gallas sacrifice to the spirits of their dead enemies before they return to their home villages. Other races have found methods of making friends, guardians, and protectors out of their former enemies after they are dead. This consists in the tender treatment of the severed heads, of which many wild tribes of Borneo boast. When the See-Dayaks of Sarawak being home a head from a war expedition, they treat it for months with the greatest kindness and courtesy and address it with those most endearing names in their language. The best morsels from their meals are put into its mouth, together with tidbits and cigars. The dead enemy is repeatedly entreated to hate his former friend and to bestow his love upon his new hosts because he has now become one of them. It would be a great mistake to think that any derision is attached to this treatment, horrible though it may seem to us. Observers have been struck by the mourning for the enemy after he is slain and scalped, among several of the wild tribes of North America. When a Choctaw had killed an enemy he began a month’s mourning during which he submitted himself to serious restrictions. The Dakota Indians mourned in the same way. One authority mentions that the Osaga Indians after mourning for their own dead mourned for their foes as if they have been friends. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.