Working with Layers Versus Resolving an Issue all at Once

Sometimes I work with clients who have the hope or the expectation of working on something once and for that issue to be done and finished.

Whether in my group meditations or working individually with clients, I will often mention that it’s useful to think of an issue being akin to the layers of an onion. We all want to get to the root of something, but we might have to clear it in layers because we don’t have the capacity or the readiness to reach its core.

Yes, there are times when we’re able to address the whole issue, pattern, etc., because we truly are ready, and we do it and we’re finished with it. And then there are those times when we just have to work deeper and deeper, layer by layer, without judging ourselves or judging as wrong or bad that the work is gradual rather than sudden. Ultimately the pattern or the issues that we’re trying to clear may have served us up to that point in time, either as a self-protecting mechanism, or to create a sense of safety, or to hold us up or keep us alive.

If a beautiful house has rot, we don’t go rooting around and tear up the entire house, because we wouldn’t be able to live in it. The house still serves us and we can’t suddenly judge it as bad when it’s kept us alive and has been serving us. We take care of the individual boards and we maintain them, but we don’t tear everything up.

It’s the same with our healing experience. We can stay in a place of presence and joy and love and compassion, allowing ourselves to live essentially in our bodies without ripping things up or destroying the foundation. We start with an issue, and perhaps we’re able to do a minor repair or perhaps we get the entire issue or pattern all at once. It’s not I who decides what a person is ready for, and sometimes what they want to achieve with healing is greater than their whole being is ready to experience. However much we are able to clear is perfect in that moment; even if it’s a single layer that’s addressed, it doesn’t discount the progress or the transformation. We’re still lighter than when we started, and ultimately we all get to the root in our own timing. We can’t force or rush something that we’re simply unready for, and when there is full healing, we know it, because we feel a deep sense of completion of the process and an integration of all the layers.

Photo credit:   Eddi van W.