From My Grandfather's Blessing

But I know that if I listen attentively to someone, to their essential self, their soul, as it were, I often find that at  the deepest, most unconscious level, they can sense the direction of their own healing and wholeness. If I can remain open to that, without expectations of what the someone is supposed to “do,” how they are supposed to change in order to be “better,” or even what their wholeness looks like, what can happen is magical. By that I mean that it has a certain coherency or integrity about it, far beyond what any way of fixing their situation or easing their pain I might devise on my own.

So I no longer have many theories about people. I
donʼt  diagnose them or decide what their problem is. I simply meet with them and  listen. As we sit together, I donʼt even have an agenda, but I know that something will emerge from our conversation over time that is a part of a larger coherent pattern that neither of us can fully see at this moment. So I
sit with  them and wait.

--Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.