SILENT SOUL, SENTIENT SOUL

By Helen Borel, R.N.,Ph.D.

BEING REAL. BEING YOU.

The unspoken speaker who runs Your Life is the Prime Actor in your life. Your Silent Self.

This profound “Speaker” (Your Real Self) is silent to the world outside your physical boundaries,
usually lying silently, in wait, for your inner world to grow fully conscious before it reveals its deeply
sentient essence. Even to You.

Even to You, Your Very Self is Silent.  Paradoxically, profoundly influencing your whole life, all
your choices, your every experience.  But in muffled, rarely and barely recognizable undertones.

Still, the innate thrust, that pulsating aliveness of this all-encompassing Life Force surges to the
surface every so often.

Impelled by its own universal power to speak a breath of human life into You, to seek exposure
to Your Awareness.  It is at these momentary fleetings of Otherness that you can catch a glimpse
of Your Sentient Soul, that feeling entity that creates and pilots your life whether you are aware of
it or not.

Our Goal in Your Therapy is to access this sentient being which contains 
ALL Your Experience, ALL Your Passions, ALL your Creativity on a regular, 
less evanescent agenda.

Self + Empathy = Your Sentient Soul

Empathy for Self First is Essential in order to Truly Care about Others

Just how does this unpredictable Experiential Soul become manifest?  Self manifests in waves of
good feelings, unaccustomed joy, deep compassion for others, overwhelming caring about the
world and all its inhabitants, exquisite longing for artistic expression, embracing love, appreciation
for the works of other artists, respect for cultural and religious icons, awe at expressions of diverse
traditions, and a passionate sense of responsibility to contribute your gifts of Self to others.  And:

~ In Sudden Joy in seeking new and advanced learning
~ In even more along these profoundly human paths of empathy
~ In Depth acknowledgment of Self, then Others

For that fleeting sense of Otherness, sometimes felt in a moment of strangeness, tingling eeriness
coupled with a feeling of familiarity sometimes glimpsed in a flash of recognition, is Your innate
knowing that we are them.  That You are the other.  That the other is you.

Releasing Your Feelings from the Prison of Silence
To emerge your Sentient Self more fully, more often, there are simple practices to master.
These are the stuff of rapid-feedback interactive interventional psychotherapy that I invented
(in my opposing response to what I call “The Silent Treatment,” that old-fashioned analytic
stance of just letting the patient talk without ever intervening with any help or feedback or honest interpretations that the patient can use to alter his/her thinking, feelings and behaviors right now).

The blessing of “free association,”saying whatever comes into your mind without editing, is that
wonderful tool from the Old Master Psychoanalyst.  However, “The Silent Treatment” prevents
any growth on the patient’s part.  He/She may just as well talk to the wall and save therapy fees.

On the other hand,  giving rich, relevant feedback and disabusing patients of pathologic thoughts
that screw up their feelings which dictate inappropriate behaviors is the absolute professional duty 
of Your psychotherapist...allowing you to enjoy improved emotional states and emboldening you
to try new behaviors that get you more of what you really want out of your life more often.

This kind of psychotherapy is imperative to your full participation in your life.  It simply requires
 you to diligently open Your Self to this kind of exploration.  To trying on new ideas to compete
with the old ones that have been holding you back in Your Life.  It requires you to try enjoying
the wonderfulness of life by first finding out and acknowledging the wonderfulness of You...from
Your Sentient Self.

Otherwise, the You who exists is not fully alive.

And when you fully engage in your own life, happiness comes easily to you.

For a dormant, mostly unawakened Self is stoically silent – protecting itself from perceived ex-
ternal assault by what it experiences as the impurities of negativism, toxic events, difficult prob-
lems, impossible challenges. This silence is pervasive and persistent.  Only when this silence
becomes more unbearable to Your Core Being than do the threats of damage from external
forces – real or imagined – does Your Sentient Soul (Your Very Self) break through from its
shadowy depths, exposing itself to the Surface of Your Being.

You can learn to evoke feelings, conversations, love, creativity out of the depths of You.  From
now on, to accomplish the emergence of Your Valuable Self, You will emerge out of the depths
of that fear-driven soundless state.

But be forewarned!

When your whole Sentient Soul grows ecstatic upon integrating into your 
Daily Conscious Life, your Emotional and Behavioral gains will expand to 
the outer reaches of unnamed galaxies.

No more, from then on will Your Unbound Self be able to squeeze back into that
prison of the unknown, that tiny, hidden “tragic lamp” from which the silent one sprung, from
which Your New Awareness Practices have released it and coaxed it out into the sunlight of
Self-Knowledge,  Self-Awareness, Self-Expression, Self-Giving, Self-Acceptance, Self-Love.

No longer silent, Your Sentient Soul is Self with a capital S.

And now that Your SELF Feels Fully, you can Live Fully.
Silent no more. Awake! Alert! Conscious! Now able to face the world and all that
comes at you with the Sentient Soul of Your Self Emerged.

Now able to know Who You Are, what You Want in Life, Who You Want in Your
Life, What and Who you must let go of to move forward and upward. Now free of
that gnawing silence about Who You Really Are.

Sentient means Alive Every Moment and bravely handling what distresses come your way
and Shamelessly Elating over the joys you experience.

Sentient means FEELINGS. When You’re Feeling, You’re REAL.  
When you’re Real, YOU ARE SELF.  And SELF IS BOUNDLESS.

©  copyright 1999-2015 Dr. Helen Borel. All rights reserved.

For permissions and rights, email me: medical-healthalerts@earthlink.net

For Interactive, Interventional, Creative PsychoTherapy - by this author of
Journey Into Self: Holistic Interactive Integrative Psychoanalysis -
that gets your life, your career, and your love relationship away from
suffering and on to fulfillment, contact me: emotional_health@earthlink.net

...and You can call me Dr. Helen