Category: Holistic Divorce

Holistic Law and the Emphasis on One’s Relation to Experience

Mike

Traditional law practice overlooks unique opportunities for clients to truly improve their lives and the lives of those around them.  The narrow focus of traditional law practice fixates on objective facts to the virtual exclusion of ways in which the parties, and others impacted by conflict, relate to those facts.  The ways in which we relate to our unfolding life experience are largely a function of learned conditioning – the result of accumulated past experience – together with genetic predispositions.

Typically, when a client comes to an attorney for advice, they do so because of some real or perceived loss or threat of loss in their life.  This loss may be economic, physical, or ego-related such as feared loss of community standing or identity.  The reality is that an objective fact or set of facts have arisen in the world of which the client has some awareness.  What will widely differ among individuals is the layer or multitude of layers of meaning that he or she will (usually unconsciously) impose on these factual events or scenarios.  These predispositions, to the extent they remain unconscious, largely dictate the ways in which we relate to life experience.

Because legal conflict so often gives rise to these layers of unconscious relation to experience, it presents an ideal opportunity to explore a client’s conditioning and habitual ways of relating to experience.  The failure to explore these tendencies at particularly challenging times is likely to result in these tendencies becoming increasingly solidified in the client’s life.  Because traditional law practice largely ignores these underlying dynamics, clients far more often than not look back on their “legal problems”  with disdain, representing just one in a long series of frustrations resulting from their habitual relation to experience in more or less unconscious ways.

Holistic law practice stresses the transformative potential in conflict.  The holistic lawyer acknowledges and explores with the client his or her ways of relating to past and present experience that may have brought about or exacerbated the “legal problem.”  Often, when these previously unconscious orientations are explored, clients become able to let go of these tendencies and see more clearly the nature of what has happened and what is happening, and deal with it in a far more compassionate and less reactive manner.  More importantly, the client comes to realize that his or her future behavior need not be dictated by conditioned thinking and habitual reactions.

To learn more about holistic law practice, contact Licensed Psychotherapist and Attorney Michael Lubofsky by calling (415) 508-6263 or by visiting https://therapyforlawyers.com.

Legal Conflict and Inherent Unsatisfactoriness

Mike

To a significant degree, our counterproductive reactions to most situations involving conflict are a function of the extent to which we cling to inaccurate views of the nature of life.  A primary Buddhist teaching relates to the truth of suffering and the inherent unsatisfactoriness of existence.  This “unsatisfactoriness” is often manifested in the impermanence, pain and perpetual incompleteness intrinsic to all forms of life.

In modern American society, most of us have lived with decades of pervasive conditioning that life should provide us with lasting “happiness.”  In order to successfully promote goods, services, ideas, etc., the idea of happiness continued in these messages promises some perpetual state of bliss devoid of pain and suffering.

Problems begin to surface when we come to internalize this notion of “happiness” to a point at which we unconsciously accept these messages as truth.  Once this misguided idea of the nature of reality has been adopted, we are well positioned for highly charged reactions to life situations that do not square with these internalized ideals.

Almost invariably, situations arise that are painful.  These situations involve loss in the form of relationships, material acquisitions, physical health, and eventually life itself.  One’s refusal to accept these realities of existence will eventually cause one to react to conflict either by simply denying reality inherent in the situation, or by pushing back in a futile effort to manipulate reality so as to make these situations “go away.”

This type of reactionary behavior and denial can be extremely unhelpful and damaging when facing legal conflict.  Defensive reactions aimed at preserving egoic ideals of how life “should be” can effectively sever one from an ability to open up to a wider, more holistic view of the situation at hand.  Viewing the situation from such a constrained vantage point will usually preclude identification of optimal solutions to conflict.

The integration of mindfulness with law practice offers the potential of moving beyond one’s conditioning that life should not include suffering.  In so doing, people involved in legal conflict may become far better able to identify and implement optimal solutions that can serve to fundamentally improve their lives long after concrete legal issues have been resolved.

To learn more about the transformational potential of holistic law practice, contact Licensed Psychotherapist and Attorney Michael Lubofsky at (415) 508-6263, or visit https://www.lawyertherapist.com.

Moving Beyond Divisiveness

Mike

In the current U.S. election, Donald J. Trump has campaigned on the slogan “Make America Great Again.”  The policies espoused by Mr. Trump as a roadmap to this “greatness” largely pit one faction against another, implying that his vision of “greatness” is necessarily dependent on the exclusion of others from this vision.

In addition, Mr. Trump has projected an immorality largely oblivious to the rule of law.  For example, when questioned on business practices that may have allowed him to avoid the payment of personal income taxes, perhaps for decades, he blames loopholes in the system, as if the system should be a dictator and enforcer of morality.

Stepping back from the candidates, however, what can become apparent is the energy with which a majority of the U.S. population is rejecting Mr. Trump’s underlying message.  The goal of this message appears to be to instill fear in as many people as possible as a means of garnering support for his divisive plans.

When we are in fear, our world becomes small, and our vision narrow.  We are triggered to acquire and even hoard what we can, even at the expense of others.

But we are on the cusp of a new consciousness that recognizes the importance of letting go of fear as a necessary precursor to building a sustainable, healthy society.  As a result of heightened mindfulness, increasing numbers of people are becoming experientially attuned to the reality that fear-driven behavior usually precipitates a downward spiral that destroys relationships, societies, and even life itself.

This fear-driven dynamic is also perpetuated by adversarial litigation.  When enmeshed in narrow fears, litigants clutch for whatever award they might realize.  This myopia operates largely to the exclusion of the interests of a much more broad circle of stakeholders.  Any decision made or action taken on such a basis is likely to be far less than optimal and actually harm relationships and society as a whole.

Holistic law practice, by rejecting the underlying notion of divisiveness inherent in adversarial litigation, is moving in step with our heightened societal mindfulness that has fueled much of the opposition to Mr. Trump’s divisive messages.

To learn more about how holistic law practice can help identify optimal solutions to conflict, please contact Psychotherapist and Attorney Michael Lubofsky at https://lawyertherapist.com, or by calling (415) 508-6263.