We all know the feeling. Something is needed and we don’t know quite what it is. You’re feeling stressed or distracted, anxious or unhappy. Sitting in front of the computer screen, you’re meant to be working and nothing is happening. In the past, it would have been time for a smoke. Nowadays, that’s probably difficult, even if you still want to. So, what to do? You space out for a few minutes, plough on with the work, and whatever it was that was creating a disturbance remains unresolved.

There is another option. Those few unproductive minutes could be used for meditation. What does this mean? Not concentrating on something or meditating over an issue, but taking the opportunity for a few minutes of nothingness. Meditation is taking a little time to encounter that same empty space that we go into in deep sleep. It is here that the deepest relaxation becomes available.

I have recently received this question:

Hello Dr. Hawkes, I found your article by accident and found these forums.

The problem is that no matter what I do, with my wife, everything is wrong. I do the dishes, and there is soap. I try to finish work early, and I didn’t tell her. Every time I do things meant to be nice for her, she doesn’t aprecciate them and instead ends up in a big argument, where she screams and yells. I can’d do things right because I am not careful, I don’t pay attention.

How is it that we are able to heal each other? Who is it in each of us who knows how to heal? In some it becomes a full-blown passion, a life long love affair with the art of healing. In others it is an affair of the moment, surfacing when it is needed. In everyone, it is present at some essential moment. We do not have to be professional healers to know how to heal.

“What you desire you truly are” – Erica Jong