My Zen teacher once described much of his practice as having been like a dog chasing its tail. I only recently really got how much of my own efforts to heal myself, practice the Dharma, figure things out have been like this too.  Its so ironic that it takes despair (not seeing the connection between cause and effect, as Nisargadattta defines it) to challenge our melodramas about Life, to really stop us in our tracks. Only then can we begin to know what it means to just be the knowing. Its so simple that the thinking mind – which is addicted to liking and not liking, and revolves around a fixed sense of me in here, and the world out there, just cannot get.
 
IFS at its best, can help us listen into the melodrama – understand where its coming from, and disengage from it, so that you can (as the literal translation of the Chinese word for the Goddess of compassion renders it) just hear the cries of the world.