Buuttherapy: Learning through healing

I'd like to share an experience of my significant other who has gone back to his graduate studies. He describes it, unexpectedly, as it turned out, to be a unique educational and personal summer experience with his professor, Dr. Vicente J. Igot:

On our first day of class, thinking that like any other usual graduate classes that the professor would adjust the time since it's a long day of academic rigor, starting on time was far from what I thought. Believing that a 7 o'clock start would be thirty minutes or an hour later, reaching the classroom, I was surprised that there were already people inside. Another thought was that of a typical classroom seating arrangement where all students just face their professor but here students were arranged in circular.

Another mistaken classroom due to rushing? I gasped. More so when I saw a familiar face. Delighted, I approached and asked who then our professor was. And he answered, "Me." "What? My former classmate is my professor!"

My class with him was so unusual in various regards: For one, he gave us countless opportunities to share. Enthusiastic to share our answers because there is no right or wrong answer was genuinely a liberating experience. After all, life is unique and personal. And because of this, the class was indeed a venue to vent out our thoughts and feelings. The subject, Advance Educational Psychology, made us realize how we can apply in many areas by first knowing and understanding ourselves.

Our relationships with others are enormously affected by our preconceived ideas, perceptions and biases that are formed in the course of interactions with others. How we interact with others is extensively affected by how we perceive them. Our environment, depending on how we look at it, fair or otherwise, has contributed widely to the way we associate with others.

But the concept of Buuttherapy has indeed helped me to understand that each one of us has a "buut"–the very nature of me. The "buut" (state of one's mind/mental discernment) is by nature, good. But because of our interactions with others, it has been coated with a lot of pretensions and biases. But freeing ourselves from all these ill-feelings, only then we realize that indeed we are basically good.

I was particularly impressed when he brought in class a whole banana plant when he illustrated the concept of buut. He peeled the plant one layer after the other. He told us that the outer, rough layers represent our biases and ill-feelings. But when he reached to the inner layer of it, the white and unblemished, he analogically highlighted that was already our true selves, our very own nature-sincere, pure, and innocent.

In dealing with present realities, we get inspired from a plain water lily that despite its harsh environment, it exudes calmness and elegance. Yes, it depicts an image of purity, peace, and pleasure. Serene, unaffected, and innocent in a harsh surrounding, pure and delicate in a polluted environment, that's water lily. Symbolizing new spirit and new wish, these water plants in common are optimistic symbols of delight and happiness.

Another wonderful illustration that he gave us was about the hermit crab that is transferring from one shell to the other. As it grows in size, it must find a larger shell and abandon the previous one.  It continues to find its place until such time that it can fit and eventually finds its true nature, and home.

Each one of us was so open and willing to share stories. There were no hesitations and pretensions. That some even have shared their domestic and marital affairs. The entire summer class was indeed a therapy session, a therapy for someone whose unresolved issues have long been bothering.

I asked him one weekend to be excused from a group session so I can attend a family reunion, an opportunity to resolve some personal issues. And his class has helped me a lot on this quest. Now, I'm healed. I thank him for being in his class, a therapy class.