Mindful intelligence is a form of “feeling intelligence” about who & what we are…

A core psychological wound, so prevalent in our modern world, forms out of not feeling loved or intrinsically lovable as we are. These are early internalized messages or complexes surrounding our sense of “secure attachment”- and a deeply rooted sense of being & feeling “ok” with one’s “self”. Inadequate love or attunement  not only damages our capacity to value ourselves, it is also the basis for valuing others. Early  “secure attachment” with our caregivers has a powerful impact on our human development. It can have a tremendous effect on many dimensions of our health, wellbeing, and capacity to function effectively in the world: how we handle emotions, how our nervous system functions and handles stress, and how we ultimately relate to others, etc (J. Welwood).

Today, there are many of our fellow beings fraught with pervasive and profound suffering from symptoms of insecure attachment including self-hatred, lack of grounding, ongoing insecurity and anxiety, overactive minds, inability to deeply trust, and a deep sense of inner dis-ease & deficiency (J. Welwood). Many of us manifesting this human condition try desperately to overcompensate for a significantly deep sense of “lacking nature”…  a series of highly layered and webbed internalized messages deeply rooted in our psyche of conditioned patterns and beliefs.

The “relational wounding” (J. Welwood) we carry into our adult lives is problematic for developing and sustaining healthy relationships both intrapersonally and interpersonally. We often suffer from unconscious tendencies to be disconnected and alienated from the essence of a mind that is hard-wired to be socially attuned. Within our practice, we need to examine and embrace these tendencies with openness, kindness, and understanding. Waking up is only part of the process in our unfolding, healing, and expanding quality of “humanness”. Our psychological health and well-being depends upon our fundamental capacity for embodying relational skills that support genuine bonding and connection.

Cultivating stable, grounded, and close emotional ties with others is interwoven deeply into the essence of our spiritual and developmental being. What is unhealthy in psychological terms is insecure attachment, for it leads either to fear of close personal contact or else to obsession with it. Interestingly, people growing up with secure attachment are more trusting, which makes them much less likely to cling to others (J. Welwood). With awareness, we need to recognize the critical role of attunement and of embodied connectedness in our lives. Throughout our practice, we need to look and listen deeply to our “feeling states” as they communicate vital insight into our needs for loving and accepting connections.

With a greater sense of grounded inner attunement, we can more easily reach out to others- and to better understand others who share in this similar human condition. To truly heal and to grow, we need to “feel” the rawness and tenderness of our relational wounds, vulnerabilities, as well as the accompanying reactionary tendencies. We need to use our naked awareness and sense of fearlessness to give this condition openness and space to reveal itself in our experiences.

It’s important to see that everything we react to in others is a mirror of something we’re not acknowledging in ourselves (J. Welwood). Clearly recognizing this could help us work more skillfully with communication, bonding, and trust deficiencies we have fostered in our own relationships.

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