March 2026 – Joseph Mauricio

Posted on March 30, 2026March 30, 2026 by joseph mauricio

IN THIS TOGETHER

The Power of a Self-Healing Community

A basic premise of recovery and healing is that isolation incubates pain, expanding it into suffering. On the other hand, communication, community, and connection allow space for healing.

It is true that when we are triggered, wounded, or overwhelmed, crawling into our protective space is often needed in the initial stages of healing. There is a wisdom to retreat. Sometimes the first act of sanity is to step back, become quiet, and allow the nervous system to settle.

But more quickly than we might find comfortable, isolation begins to have diminishing returns. At some point, if healing is to continue, we need to open up and connect with others, or the wound begins to fester.

Part of the reason is that the isolated mind reflects only itself. In that closed loop, it begins to feel different, separate, unique. We suffer in a way that seems as though no one else could ever understand. When we try to communicate we may feel as though no one gets us. And while this is true to some extent—no one knows the exact particulars of our experience—we are, as Maya Angelou reminds us, “more alike than we are different, my friend.”

By sharing our private pain with a trusted community, we allow ourselves to see it from a different perspective. We also give others the opportunity to empathize, often because they have lived their own version of something remarkably similar. We may begin in isolation until we are strong enough to reach out. And this makes us stronger. The stronger we become the wider our community is likely to become. At some point, our community may include those with differing opinions and points of reference. But, as the Buddha instructed the soldier, take the arrow out first. This is akin to the “putting your gas mask on first” trope.

HEALING.

When we are wounded—frightened, defeated, antagonized, or simply exhausted—it feels personal, as though we are being attacked by the world itself. It is reasonable that our immediate reaction is to strike back, assign blame, or clench our fists against the forces that seem to be victimizing us. But our reactions are not really the point. Blame blocks healing. Healing comes from feeling. Or, as is said, “feeling is healing.” Blame is something that happens in the head while feeling happens in the heart.

And it is our heart that has been wounded. The heart doesn’t have the same logic or language as does the mighty brain. The heart paints in abstract colors. We can only listen in and hold space for ourselves with loving patience until the infection abates.

The point is that we have been hurt and we need to acknowledge this. It’s not about who did what. It’s about what is. And what is, is pain.

The first step in working with hurt is to acknowledge it. Not what caused it. Not what it says about our personality or our place in the world. Not the story. Simply the hurt itself.

Can we face it directly?

Once we face the hurt, acceptance becomes the next important step. In time, we can train the mind to experience pain without immediate elaboration—psychological, social, or philosophical. We begin to see what is there without rushing to explain it.

Then acceptance opens into inquisitiveness. We become interested. Where is this pain happening? How do I feel it in the body? Is this pain being amplified into suffering or finding the space to heal?

COMMUNITY.

At some point, we may be to turn outward and speak it aloud to others. This is a brave step in the healing process. To let go our healing and begin to feel with others. This creates more space for the wound to continue to heal. There are many ways to do this: therapy, spiritual friendship, meditation communities, recovery groups, or simply trusted friends.

Sometimes just allowing someone to speak their pain exactly as it is—without fixing, changing, or judging—gives them the opportunity to hear themselves more clearly. In that simple act of being heard, something often softens. And when others respond not by solving but by speaking their own truth in a way that resonates, the person may feel less lonely, less cut off, less singled out by life.

Of course, each modality has both strengths and shadows.

Therapy can be profound, though there is always the risk of dependency on the relationship itself. Community spaces that discourage crosstalk can offer a neutral and nonjudgmental container, though at times they may feel emotionally distant. Informal conversations with loving friends can provide warmth and support, though sometimes those closest to us may only echo what we already want to hear.

To me, an ideal healing community contains something of all of these elements. Warmth. Heart connection. Support. Space. Camaraderie. A sense of being understood and a willingness to understand. One of my mentors, Michelle Killoran, introduced this to me as “the self-healing community.” We are seeking a community, built on empathy and understanding, that allows the next stage of our healing journey.

We are more alike, my friends, than we are different.

How can we help one another without adding further confusion—either through subtle judgment or through over-support of each other’s neuroses? How can we help one another see our own minds and our own path toward healing? And just as importantly, how can each of us become clear enough within ourselves to communicate what we truly need from the group, ourselves, and each other?

Sometimes we need simply to be held, physically or metaphorically. Sometimes we need clear advice and instruction. Sometimes we need silence. Sometimes we need witness. My hope is that this community can become a place where all of that is possible.

We are more alike, my friend, than we are unalike.

Posted on March 23, 2026March 23, 2026 by joseph mauricio

CARING FOR THE CRAZY

Awakening Our Loving Kindness

Our minds are huge—larger than we understand—capable of being incredibly sane, clear, and beautiful. But at times, quite the opposite. We can get lost in cul-de-sacs of unresolved reasoning, like a kid in a hall of mirrors distorting and reflecting upon itself.

Today I want to address the circular, repetitive, sometimes violent thoughts that bang around our minds from time to time. Often at the worst times. Perhaps on the eve of a busy day while trying to get to sleep our brain instigates an imaginary dialogue, as if trying to resolve an unresolvable equation.

I should have said this. I could have said that. Why didn’t I just get up and leave?

One particularly curious part of this game is when there seems to be a false resolution. We roll back toward slumber, but after a moment of peace the mind shoots up again: Waiut! I could have said this! I should have told them that …

When this happens, we are too focused on trying to sleep. And that’s a problem. Each time we look at the clock, we calculate the remaining hours until the alarm rings, we are focused on something that is not the issue. The problem isn’t that we can’t sleep. We sleep almost every day. The issue is that we can’t stop our brain. We can’t let go of something.

When I get stuck with something after I’ve been triggered, I can feel how compromised my inner world becomes. My thoughts, my feelings, and my concerns around the issue stop being trustworthy. I am trapped in a self-referential world, trying different experiments to free myself, only to arrive at the same unhappy result. A crazy person once said this was the definition of insanity. I am flagellating myself, desperately fixated on what I can’t resolve.

But what is actually happening?

Let’s look at the particulars. This endless, expansive, extraordinary mind of ours was originally developed as a defensive organ. As humanity evolved, we lost our fangs, our claws, our venom—but we gained cerebral processing power. In early times, when we were threatened, our minds had the ability to strategize and escape. Likewise, we could strategize ways to increase sustenance for ourselves, our family and our clan. The mind became the great problem-solver. And to this day, it will try to solve problems—whether or not we have a problem. All it needs to initialize is to be triggered. And then, although the lions our ancestors ran from are no longer here to chase us, we are still running. We are still strategizing. We are still trying to find a release from danger.

Unfortunately, when nothing is actually happening—when we are not facing a tiger but simply a feeling of being threatened—the mind can’t find the culprit. Without a real object to land on, it spins freely, unable to find what isn’t actually there. Sometimes we’re trying to find a way out of a problem we can’t find.

So how do we work with this? I have come to think of it in five stages.

The first stage is knowing that it will leave.

This matters because when we are caught in the cycle, it feels permanent. We are in pain, and we are desperately trying to find a way out. But even in the most intense moments, there are gaps—moments of forgetting, moments when the deluge softens, when the mind is calm, even for only a moment.

This stage is about recognizing that those moments of peace are not accidents. They are evidence. When the storm returns, it is not because the temporary storm is stronger. It is because the calm, which is the mind’s true nature, is trying to break through.

The second stage is recognizing what is happening now.

If we trace the experience backward—looking for causes and conditions—we can quickly open a Pandora’s box. Whatever is happening now likely connects to past wounds and future fears. But this stage is about cutting through all of that with Occam’s razor, or the sword of Manjushri. What is actually happening?

Not what we wish were happening. Not “I’m not getting enough sleep.” Not “I’m driving myself crazy.” No judgment, no speculation. Just simple recognition: This is what is happening. We can’t stop our mind. That’s what’s happening. You might call this “facing the crazy.”

But stop calling it crazy.

The third stage is

Instead, look at what’s happening without judgment or speculation. Allow it to be as it is. There is a basic law here: until we accept something we can’t discover how to work with it. And until we do that, we’re kind of stuck with it. So, before we do anything, we have to stop labeling it as broken and simply say: This is what’s happening.

Acceptance does not mean approval. It means we stop fighting. It means acknowledging reality.

The fourth stage is beginning to work with it.

This is usually quick up to this point, but here’s where the work begins. Once I have recognized and accepted this experience, and once I have stopped judging or trying to fix something I don’t yet understand, I can turn toward it with care. Maybe even respect. Damn this is some powerful shit.

I can ask: What is this really about? What does this need?

Usually, the surface story is not the whole story. Anger may be covering fear. Fear may be covering hurt. But beneath all of that, something more immediate is happening.

This stage is about listening rather than solving. We are not trying to fix anything. That fixing impulse can be aggressive—a kind of inner patriarchal clampdown. Instead, we are opening to something sensitive and delicate inside us, something that may be wounded. We need to proceed with caution. We’re holding space and listening in. And by doing this we’re accessing a larger part of the mind that sees and cares for the spinning.

A mind that can navigate past the defensive layers, and without triggering them, touch that wound directly. And that does not need words, language, prescriptions, or explanations. It needs to be felt, acknowledged and held.

Why can’t the wounded child go to sleep?

The fifth stage is loving-kindness.

Rather than struggling to change anything, we can recognize, accept, and work with the experience through love and kindness. By taking the time to do this with love and care it becomes clear that we are not the turmoil. We are the love. Rather than being victimized by the torrent of mind, we access the greater mind of loving acceptance. We are that mind. We can rest in her arms.

When a child runs into the room because it fears monsters, it does not need a clinical explanation. It does not need a scientific breakdown of why monsters do not exist. It does not need to be yelled at or pushed back into bed. It needs to be held. Comforted. Assured that it is safe.

Even as adults who know there is no danger, something inside still needs to feel that safety before it can rest. Before we send the child back to bed, we might ask: Are you okay to be brave now? Are you brave enough to sleep? We are not speaking to logic. We are speaking to feeling. We are taking the time to find the tenderness, to feel it, and to listen. If this process robs me of sleep, it will have been worth it—because I have learned how to work with something I cannot control.

The tigers of mind and the monsters beneath the bed are not what’s real. What’s real is the power of our love, and the truth of our suffering—that we have been hurt, that we have been shaped by experience, but that we can learn to care for ourselves.

And sometimes we’re late for work.

________________________

Can’t sleep?

Can’t still your raging mind?

Can’t find serenity in the storm?

Turn your attention away from the clock

To your heart

Let the anxiety remind you

You have access to a heart so big

It can hold a screaming mind

A heart so strong it can ease your panic.

A heart so steady it can still the storms we all endure

The brain screams loudly

And loving kindness is quiet

so it needs to be awakened and engaged

Awaken loving kindness

And let that hold you

Posted on March 16, 2026March 17, 2026 by joseph mauricio

THE JOY OF SADNESS

The Experience of Feeling Human

In the promotional clip for AMC Theaters, Nicole Kidman settles into her seat and says, “Even heartbreak feels good in a place like this.”

There is something about the comfort of a darkened theater that allows us to open ourselves to difficult emotions. We follow the hero into danger. We feel fear as the villain approaches. We fall in love with characters we have never met, and we feel the ache when that love breaks.

Stories are valued when they make us feel. Even painful emotions serve a purpose. In the theater we allow ourselves to cry or feel afraid because the experience is being held. The darkness, the screen, the story—together they form a container for our emotions. Yet while we will gladly pay money and sit shoulder to shoulder with strangers just to feel heartbreak on a screen, we often avoid those same emotions in our own lives.

We like heartbreak in a movie, but when emotions such as sadness appear in our own lives we feel overwhelmed or victimized. We cover the experience with shame and guilt, feeling we are the only ones who have ever experienced this. And, well, while we are the only ones experiencing our feelings everyone feels human. And as the comedian Ruby Setnik says “I find the experience of being human profoundly uncomfortable.”

But pleasant and unpleasant emotions are part of being human. Why would we rob ourselves of that, when we can work with them. Learning to accept them gives our lives a wider palette. But many of us cling tightly to the edge of sadness. Perhaps what frightens us most is not sadness itself, but the unknown. Even in the darkest movie we trust the story will eventually resolve. However painful the narrative becomes, we believe the final girl will be alive at the end. We know we will walk from the theater back into our life.

Sadly, real life offers no such assurance for the final girl. All she can do is face life one frame at a time and feel all there is to feel. And personal struggles can feel endless. A moment of sadness may appear to open the door to a despair we cannot handle. And so we tighten ourselves against the possibility of feeling too much.

But sadness itself is not the enemy.

Sadness is a deeply human emotion. In fact, it may offer one of the clearest windows into our own hearts. When we feel sadness, we recognize loss, longing, tenderness, and love. Sadness is said to be the most genuine emotion because we are not cranking anything up. We are just being how we are.

Sadness is often dismissed as a bad mood or a downer. But if we allow ourselves to feel it without judgment—simply experiencing as it arises—we may discover that sadness is a gateway to a deeper experience of ourselves. Accepting sadness loosens our defenses which opens us to the world, but also allows us to feel more exposed.

This might not be practical in every moment of life. But in meditation, in solitude, or among people we trust, we can create something like Nicole Kidman’s theater—a space large enough to hold whatever emotions arise. Meditation practice can train us to hold ourselves in order to hold space for what we are feeling. In meditation we sit quietly and observe experience without trying to control it. Thoughts come and go. Feelings rise and fall. Awareness itself becomes the container.

We might even warm the awareness up a bit with loving kindness. Doing Loving Kindness practice regularly will help us to feel the space around us as loving.

Rather than trying to eliminate sadness, we allow it to rest within loving awareness.

Chögyam Trungpa described this as placing the mind of fearfulness into the cradle of loving-kindness. In the Sacred Path of the Warrior he wrote:

‘Through the simple practice of sitting still and following the breath, we begin to develop genuine sympathy toward ourselves. We discover that our emotions—even the difficult ones—are part of our humanity.”

Trungpa spoke of what he called the genuine heart of sadness. This sadness is not a mistake or a defect. It is something already present within us. In this sense, sadness is basically good. When something is basically good, it is genuine rather than contrived. It is simple unless we complicate it. Sadness does not require explanation. It is part of the ocean of feeling that moves through us.

Sometimes sadness rises to the surface and eventually it moves back, just as other emotions do. If we can resist the urge to judge it, fix it, or push it away, we may begin to see that sadness is not shameful or dangerous. It is simply human.

Emotions are not “for” or “against” us. They are like the weather. It’s not our fault it’s raining. Although it may be our fault for not having an umbrella. In the same way, it’s not our fault we’re sad. It may be inconvenient. But it provides an opportunity to work with it. Not to push it away, but to slow down and feel it. Something in your heart wants to be heard.

Meditation invites us to work with our situation exactly as it is. And when we begin to rest with sadness in this way, something surprising happens. Instead of becoming heavier, sadness often softens. It may begin to feel tender rather than overwhelming. The sharp edge of resistance dissolves, and what remains is something vulnerable and open.

This tenderness can be uncomfortable at first. When we open ourselves without our usual defenses, we may suddenly notice how sharp our feelings are. But tenderness is not weakness. So the work is to open to it, and stay with it until its ready to shift. Haha. That’s like saying the brain is not the boss of me. There are other parts of us that likely don’t have words, but still need to be heard. And those parts need a part of us to be fearless enough to hold space.

Remaining present with sadness without running away from it gives rise to a quiet courage. Pema Chödrön describes this simply as learning to stay.

Just stay.

Feel the sadness without turning away from it. Allow the tenderness and remain open. Like every emotion in the ocean, sadness eventually moves on. When we allow the world to touch our hearts—our raw and vulnerable hearts—we begin to discover fearlessness.

Fearlessness does not mean the absence of fear. It means the willingness to remain open even when we’re fearful. Even when life is uncertain or painful. From that openness we become more capable of sharing our hearts with others.

The genuine heart of sadness, it turns out, is not the opposite of joy. It is the doorway to it. Genuine Joy is a feeling larger than happiness. Happiness is dependent on not feeling sad. But joy is large enough to hold space with sadness, fear, doubt and all the feelings we would push aside to feel happy. Joy is big enough to feel sadness.

And sadness, when we allow it to rest within loving awareness is true enough to feel the soft and tender joy of being human.

Posted on March 9, 2026March 9, 2026 by joseph mauricio

HELP

Finding the Strength to Feel

1965 was a frenzied year in the already frenzied career of The Beatles. In a short 3 years they had gone from a punkish collective playing to handfuls of basement denizens to the largest public stage music had ever seen.

The “Fabs” gave up their leather and donned coordinated business-boy outfits, breaking every record the industry currently held—including holding the top five slots of the Billboard Hot 100 at the same time, a record that has never been broken. At Shea Stadium they presented what had been the largest concert in history, up to that time.

The lightning fame, and the demands it made upon them, saw their career moving more quickly than technology and social norms could follow. Their inadequate and outdated concert equipment was drowned out by the cheering, screaming and sometimes even peeing, fans.

By 1965 John Lennon had also written two books, and the band had already starred in two hit films, A Hard Day’s Night and its follow-up Help.

Though they were the most scrutinized and documented group in history, did anyone—including themselves—stop to think how been beneath the offhand quips and cheerful faces how frightening this might have been? As the group’s lead guitarist George Harrison later said, the fans “gave their money, and they gave their screams. But the Beatles gave their nervous systems.”

Lennon later said that the song “Help!” was, in fact, a cry for help.

Over so much of his career Lennon wrote songs that spoke to fundamental human experience. Help! marked the point where simple love songs became deeper and more personal. And by becoming more personal, his songs became universal.

What this story reveals is how touching in with ourselves makes us more relatable to others—and how all of us, at some point, feel overwhelmed and may need to ask for help. “When I was younger, so much younger than today, I never needed anybody’s help in any way.” The lyric traces a journey into adulthood, one that begins to surrender obvious defenses and says, simply: help me if you can.

I’m writing this now because aspects of my life are reaching critical mass. And yet I keep soldiering on, somehow believing that surviving is the same as thriving. But inside a part of me feels squeezed, buried and unseen.

When my life becomes overwhelming I’m often at a loss for how to find the end of a thread that might unwind the chaos. Where do I begin? I need to do this, but I can’t until I’ve done that—and I certainly can’t do that until I’ve done the other thing.

Do you know that one?

My coaching brain would tell me to find the simplest place to start. Avoid trying to leap beyond the present moment. In order to swim we need to stop splashing in panic. But we also need to avoid the other extreme—simply giving up and waiting for someone to rescue us. There is a middle way: trusting that the first stroke will be followed by the next.

Unfortunately, I have always been a terrible swimmer.

Whenever I tried to join friends and swim across what seemed, to them, a very easy distance, I would somehow reach the middle and realize there was nothing beneath me and I would panic.

In every case someone came to help me. And in every case I felt embarrassed and ashamed. Growing up in a very male-oriented environment it wasn’t just embarrassing to fail like that—it was deeply uncomfortable to have to relax into the arms of another man.

Once panting on the shore I felt alone, incapable, overwhelmed. What I needed then—and what I still need now—is the bravery to accept help. The willingness to let go of preconceptions about what “real adults” should be capable of.

As I’ve grown older, success in certain areas of my life has been rewarding, exhilarating, even admirable. But often that success has come at the expense of hearing the inner voice crying out for help. The stronger I’ve appeared in some ways, the less those cries were heard.

Years ago I sketched the bones of a play called Winter. Its protagonist, Susan, comes home for the holidays to visit her family. She has been successful in college and seems poised for success in her career. As the oldest child she is admired and looked up to. Her family demands much from her because of her potential. Her friends envy her.

And yet, despite being loved and admired, she has no one who truly listens.

I never finished the play because I didn’t know what it was that Susan wanted people to understand. But now I’m drawn back to her with a different awareness. Of course she didn’t understand either. Before we know how to ask others to listen, we might learn to listen to ourselves first. What is it we want when we feel broken or overwhelmed? If we ask for help, whom do we ask? And what kind of help would actually help?

We all have people in life who would fix us. But we don’t really want to be fixed, do we? How can we trust anyone to fix us who hasn’t even heard us.

I understand this as a coach, as a teacher, and hopefully as a friend. I try to be open, accepting, and available to the people I care about. But I have not created a world where I allow people to reach back to me.

My career—such as it is—rests partly on the idea that I am the adult, the grown-up, the one who has their merde together.

But the truth is, I do not. Not always. Maybe not ever.

Perhaps the many tasks I imagine must be completed before clarity and peace can arrive actually begin with a simpler step: admitting that I am lost and do not know. Just as I didn’t know how my play would move forward.

Maybe I simply wasn’t listening. Maybe I need Susan to tell me. Maybe we all need to uncover ourselves and discover what we need. And maybe then we may find the strength to ask for help.

I didn’t know how my play developed, but I always knew how it ended. I could see it clearly on stage.

Susan sits beneath a single spotlight. The lights of the stage slowly draw in slowly until she is alone under the spot beam as snowflakes begin to fall, visible as they pass through the light.

One of the themes of the play was that, despite the holiday season, there had been no snow—and that absence had broken her heart. Just before the play’s end, we learn Susan has taken sleeping pills.

We simply watch her sitting alone as the snow begins to fall.

______

Posted on March 2, 2026March 3, 2026 by joseph mauricio

Red Light, Green Light

Navigating the Traffic of Life

In my coaching I use the analogy of traffic lights to illustrate how we might move through life with grace.

Some people rush through life as though red lights were a personal challenge. They think they’re outrunning danger by never slowing down — like someone racing home before the consequences catch up. Others never take their foot off the brake, as though they’ve forgotten the point of being in traffic in the first place is to move toward a destination. They inch from red to cautious yellow but never relax into the open, fluid travel that makes for a joyful life.

Neither approach is particularly graceful. Neither is mindful.

If we want to travel through life with fluidity, we need both mindfulness and awareness. Mindfulness pays attention to what we are doing right now. Awareness senses where we’re headed and what lives at the edges of our experience. The cooperative interplay between the specificity of mindfulness and the expansiveness of awareness is exactly what we train for in meditation practice. And it’s transferable to life.

Mindfulness without awareness can become narrow and dutiful. We focus so closely on the task at hand that we lose sight of the larger landscape. Awareness without mindfulness can become ungrounded — expansive but drifting, easily pulled off course.

What we’re cultivating is balance. A cooperative relationship between grounding and spaciousness. I like to think of their union as mindful awareness — attentive to the point we occupy while conscious of the flow surrounding it.

We often talk about developing flow in life. But what about danger?

When something feels off, that’s often a yellow light — not red. Yellow means slow down. Pay attention. For example, if someone we’re dating is harsh toward children or animals, that’s a signal to pause and look more closely. A red light would be something unmistakable — physical abuse, clear harm. Red means stop.

Yellow is different. Yellow is dropping into a lower gear while climbing a steep hill. You’re still moving — just carefully, consciously, with heightened awareness.

The problem is that some of us live as though every light is red. Or we forget to shift back up once the hill has leveled out.

Traveling carefully through perceived danger requires discernment. But when the road opens, we must allow ourselves to move freely again. Green means go. It means trust the conditions. It means flow.

This is especially true in relationships. Sometimes we need to slow down, let go of our personal momentum, and resynchronize with our partner. But we cannot live forever in repair mode. We cannot make a home at the yellow light.

A common pattern I see in clients is that their relationship becomes a series of red lights. All complaint. All caution. All obstruction. So they go elsewhere to find green — work, hobbies, friendships, even fantasy. Inside the relationship, they believe there’s no open road left.

But there is almost always some way forward. The question is whether we can find it together. That may require slowing down first — synchronizing — before gently pressing the gas again.

This is true with our relationship with ourselves. We may find places in our body, heart and mind that we are stuck. Places we just don’t want to go. Shadows in the mind, create blockages in our body, that manifest as limitations in life. Sometimes the red lights in life have their roots from red lights in our mind. We can run the lights, pushing past our doubts, with eyes on a supposed destination. But this is a disregard for our actual experience. The experience we need to learn.

Patience is so important. Finding the gentle perseverance to keep moving forward one step at a time, one day at a time, and stopping to synchronize as we need. But always remembering to allow ourselves to move forward.