Here is the test of wisdom,
Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,
Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it to another not having it
Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof.
-- Walt Whitman
Several years ago, a newspaper reporter who was writing an article on psychotherapy called and (somewhat skeptically) asked, "What is psychotherapy all about?" My reply was simple and to the point, "It is about removing the blocks of giving and receiving love." The way to begin is for you to clarify that your most important values are honesty and self-honesty. Honesty and self-honesty sound noble but are actually very difficult to achieve. However, it is living these values that evolve you into emotional and spiritual wellness. Usually spirituality is associated with religion. However, I view spirituality as an integral part of intimacy and communication. In fact, this whole paper is an exploration of the relationship of emotionality - that is the experience and expression of your feelings-to spirituality. I believe there is a sequential relationship. Specifically, the honest and intimate speaking of your deepest feelings will open you to spiritual experience. To be spiritually minded is in fact quite practical because it does not require any special time, place, or circumstance. What is spiritual is just a reorganization and reinterpretation of what is already present. It is simply a change of perspective from a more closed, fear bound, narrow one to a more appreciative, expansive, open one. Full sharing of feelings is a process by which consciousness is awakened, attitude is transformed, and the infusion of new spiritual meaning takes place.
One way of organizing the world is to look at it through the lens of "needs." I feel we have Physical Needs, Intellectual Needs, Emotional Needs, and Spiritual Needs. These are hierarchical and in ascending order of importance. If you put the accent on "Physical Needs" then you want to feel body sensations. You want the adrenaline rush -the excitement of sports, sex or other sensation seeking behaviors. If you put the accent on the Intellectual Needs then this touches upon "ego" in the good and bad sense. In the good sense, there are truly better and worse ways of being competent, and better and worse ways of achieving success. With the accent here then one wants to make good grades, good money, and achieve power or status as a part of that desire to be competent. It becomes "ego" in a bad sense when you confuse "what you do with who you are." Your self-esteem becomes based in your achievements or notoriety as opposed to a solid sense of your core self. This can easily slide into "the desire to have more" which is related to greed, lust, anger, competitiveness, and selfishness. If you put the accent on the Emotional Needs - and it is rare that anyone comes to my office until this is the issue, then you want a clarification of value. There is the desire to answer the always present background question, "Who am I really, how can I find happiness, and what is love?" To rid yourself of the confusion, it becomes necessary to focus and clarify your real feelings. Finally, we have Spiritual Needs. As vague as the term "spiritual" is, most people have a desire to find, be connected to, and live in the unchanging and eternal aspects of life as opposed to the ever changing and impermanent ones. What is spirituality? This is hard to define and somewhat individualistic. I conceive of the soul as our immutable Essential Goodness (and/or Essential Godness) at our core. Spirituality then is the unfolding and the liberating journey of the soul. Spirituality has qualities of timelessness, changelessness, and of the eternal and infinite. There are also qualities of acceptance, love, compassion, goodness and kindness involved. My witness is that spiritual progress is not a process of accumulation from without but rather a process of an unfolding from within. What is spiritual in you is already present in latent form. You do not have to go out and buy it or learn it. You simply have to unlearn the blocks to it. Speaking the truth of your feelings is the most powerful unfolding process I know. Psychotherapy is just advanced common sense. To the skeptical scientist, I say evolution has been a push towards consciousness - the most distinguishing feature that humans have over other life forms. Psychotherapy is a process of further evolving consciousness and awareness. This awareness seems to leap to the conclusion that there is a spiritual unity of all souls and the inviolable unity of all life. What does a "talk therapist" do? I help people help themselves. Truthfully, I no longer distinguish between principles of therapy from principles of living. People come to me sometimes with the diffuse complaint that they are not as happy as they know they could be and they are determined to understand themselves and feel better. Others come with more specific complaints of depression, anxiety, or even traumatic events. To me talk therapy is just a clarification of values. The highest value becomes self honesty. This of course, is also good counsel for everyday living. However, this means if you are going to tell me everything that you really do, really think about, really feel, and that you really fantasize about - because those things are the honest truth of what you think, feel, and do then you will have to tell me about your shame, your smallness, your woundedness, your fearfulness, your insecurity, and your despairing, humiliating, and secretive thoughts and feelings. While the commitment to self-honesty is noble, the practice of it is difficult! Tremendous courage is required to speak openly because you find yourself having to "speak of the unspeakable." This can be a very dark, lost, lonely, depressing, and confused emotional state. Unless you grew up in a family where the whole family sat down at 6:00 dinner and your parents talked about the "good and bad and ugly" of their feelings -- especially and including the description of their doubts, fears, insecurities, and wounds, you are unlikely to know how to communicate these feelings well. Talk therapy -- and useful everyday communication of feeling -- then is really just focusing on the importance of self-honesty. This will lead you to your vulnerability and genuineness. While this is the point where most of us get scared and want to change the subject, this is the exact spot that, as a professional, I urge you to persist. I am asserting that having an emotional experience by truthful communication of your feelings can evolve into a spiritual experience. The sequence is important. Psychotherapy is more concerned with the inner realities of life rather than their outward expression. As emphasis shifts from the external to the internal aspects of life, there is a deepening of consciousness that is directed towards the deeper and truer aspects of yourself. This demands greater integrity of thought and feelings. Caught up in this deeper awareness of self is a concurrent deepening of perception into the workings of the world. This refocusing of consciousness is far reaching. The sincerity and the concentrated purpose of this effort give new meaning and understanding and form to your life. It is not what you believe but What You Are that ultimately counts. Your genuineness is invaluable. In order to be fully genuine you must be emotionally honest. Psychotherapists are among the few who really get to know people. It is our witness that when you speak stark emotional honesty, feelings of intolerance, pride, and selfishness are shed and feelings of acceptance, tolerance, openness, inner calm, and love arise in their place. Thus you end up, in the name of genuineness, finding what is spiritual in you and in the universe around you. It is our witness that this process results in improved self-esteem and improved relationships as well as increased serenity in your soul. In this educative, wisdom-producing, and clarifying process there are a few key understandings that will greatly assist you: 1. The Meaning of Suffering
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,
The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,
And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama
And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away
Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations
And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about,
Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing, yet there is faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
-- T S. Eliot
Emotional suffering has psychological and spiritual meaning. It is the only way your soul has to communicate to you. This communication is like the childhood game of "you're getting warmer, you're getting colder." The further you get away from the balanced center of your soul, and your Essential Goodness, the more emotional pain you get. There is no limit to how lost and far away you can get from your center and there is no limit to the amount of suffering you can experience. Your soul is crying out for you to change something. There is something in your life you must accept and don't want to or there is something you must change and have avoided it. While it is true the more you speak of these feelings, the more aware you will become of your pain, there is much greater solace in the knowledge that you have been honest. Speaking the truth moves you closer towards your goal of inner calm, clarity and freedom. Great suffering can awaken great understanding. There is some kind of relationship between human fullness and human sorrow. Suffering leads you to a deep preoccupation with an intense search for lasting value in some sustaining permanent principle. Finding the meaning of your suffering is just a way of finding your way home. There is a deep connection between emotional and spiritual wellness. Very often what gets presented to me as an emotional issue is also a spiritual issue. Spiritual crisis usually presents as emotional crisis, and often emotional crisis requires a spiritual solution. Usually adapting to the change or transformation is the most pressing issue. For example, what is usually called a mid-life crisis I experience as a spiritual concern. By mid-life you usually know how the external world works, especially how to have a job and raise a family. So what comes next is questioning and a process of involution - who am I really? What is the meaning of my life? What is happiness? In essence without naming it, what you long for is a fulfilling spiritual life. Your soul is communicating to you through your emotional pain. It is this very suffering that will put you on the spiritual path by coming to understand and reconciling the conflicting feelings.
2. Fearfulness
The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of men when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka, and that the center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. This is the real peace, and others are but reflections of this. The second peace is that which is made between two individuals, and the third is that which is made between two nations. But above all you should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is first known that true peace, which, as I have often said, is within the souls of men.
-- Black Elk
To be successful with this process of intimacy and communication, it is necessary to understand what a pervasive and powerful force Fearfulness is. It is fearfulness that intimidates us from being the Essential Goodness that is the core of our being. Most of us live as if our worst fear is an impending reality. We are afraid of what others may think, we are afraid of feeling stupid or insecure, we are afraid of feeling rejected, we are afraid of our neediness, we are afraid to ask, we are afraid to receive, we are afraid of our anger and we are afraid in our silence. If we committed to self-honesty we confess our doubt, our interior places of loneliness, isolation, and emptiness, our hurts, shame, and our smallness. This has often been secret - even to ourselves. When we are afraid, our souls and our hearts are constricted. We become more closed instead of more open, harder instead of softer, judgmental instead of accepting, selfish instead of compassionate, indifferent instead of kind. Next to the commitment of being honest, in the process of psychotherapy or living, comes the commitment of getting fearfulness out of your life. You can see how the emotion of fearfulness curtails the spiritual qualities of acceptance, compassion, openness, and kindness I just mentioned. By not cowering to our fears, we speak the absolute truth of what we feel. We then see what we need to let go of or be in acceptance of or where we need to assert ourselves to change. Once fearfulness is overcome then speaking honestly leads to a centering and serenity that allows us to go through problems with a greater equilibrium. We relax, we soften, we open. We give our best to ourselves and others. If we are consumed by our problems, our best selves are muted and our souls are constricted and encumbered. We are suffering from a spiritual dysfunction. It is crucial to both intimacy and spirituality not to be held hostage by your fears.
3. Vulnerability and Intimacy
Whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected tears, it is well to pay the closest attention. They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are, but more often than not God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and is summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go to next.
-- Fredrick Buechner
The most vulnerable position is the most empowered position! This is not what most people think. However, if you say what is most vulnerably true, you are no longer held hostage by your fears. The most vulnerable position is also the most intimate one. In fact, intimacy is a vulnerability - to - vulnerability connection between people. To be more vulnerable means to be better at communicating your private feelings. Therefore there are tremendous advantages to being vulnerable: (a) your communications are based in honesty, (b) your spirituality and soul become less constricted, (c) your self-esteem goes up, (d) your empowerment makes you a powerful presence in your own life, (e) your intimate relationships improve, and (f) your emotions begin to take on the spiritual qualities of changeless, timeless, connected and permanent feelings.
Alcoholics Anonymous has honesty as a principle of its foundation. Meetings begin by members introducing themselves by name and admitting that they are alcoholic. This is in the face of a history of denial and minimization of their drinking problem. They know that their denial and minimization will easily start again unless they stay completely honest about their desire to use. Years ago, I met a physician who was a long standing member of Alcoholics Anonymous. He told me that he was very interested in computers early in their development and that he signed up for a week long study of them in a conference in California. At the opening session he realized he was very much out of his league at this 200 member meeting. The master of ceremony asked every member to stand up and say who they are and what they want to get out of the conference. He became paralyzed in fear and quit breathing as soon as the first member stood up - "My name is Lee Iacocca, I am President of the Chrysler Corporation, and I am here to see how computers can further both the quality and the profitability of my company." With each successive introduction he got more panicked. The next speaker arose, "My name is John D. Rockefeller. I am the principal stock holder in the Rockefeller Bank and I am here to learn how computers can transform the banking industry." When it finally came his turn he breathlessly stood up. He was so terrified only an automatic and well patterned response could come out. "My name is Bill and I am an alcoholic." Humiliation set in as silence swept the auditorium full of people. He wanted to disappear he was so embarrassed. After a lengthy silence the next person just stood up and continued the introductory process. To his surprise and delight, at the first break 12 people came up to him and stated that they were also recovering alcoholics. They took him under their wings, and as a result he said he had the best week of his life. When in doubt, tell the truth. This was a public forum with strangers, yet the Universe provided. This is exactly what happens in talk therapy. I do both individual and group psychotherapy. This principal applies equally in both settings - you confess what your genuine truth is and you are rewarded with understanding and acceptance.
4.Emotions And The Intellect
What you are is God's gift to you.
What you make of yourself is your gift to God.
-- Nurse Joan Harker
Internalizing (the act of making the process and the result a fundamental part of yourself) which is the agent of change should not be confused with the purely intellectual discovery that there can be an inner life. Just intellectual understanding leaves a "dryness of being." In the absence of the illuminating wisdom of the heart and the clear intuition of the spirit, intellectual perspective gives only a relative truth. The creative process of spiritual involution of consciousness is a felt experience that results in increased spontaneity. Spiritual experience has a grip on deeper truths that are inaccessible to the intellect alone. Intellectual explanation can never be a substitute for spiritual experience. At best it can only prepare the ground for that experience. If two people have headaches they can use their intellect to discuss their experiences but if one has never had a headache, no amount of explanation can give them the experience of one. The same can be said for emotional and spiritual experiences. Love and happiness are important values but they are absent in dry and factual intellectual knowledge. Spirituality is not intellectual knowledge of honesty and love but the realization of it. This knowledge of felt inner realization is worthy of being called Spiritual Understanding which is far more dependent on the heart than on the mind. Only when the mind accepts its values from the deepest prompting of the heart does it contribute to the life of the spirit. Thus the mind which works in cognition has to work within cooperation of the heart. Factual knowledge is to be subordinated to the intuitive perceptions and the heart is to be allowed full freedom in determining the ends of life without interference from the mind. The mind has a place in practical life but its role begins after the heart has had its say. Our minds are accustomed to certain habits and responses that have considerable inertia. The process of readjustment brought about by clarifying values, the giving up of our negative fear based impressions and superstitions is fundamentally a creative process. Therefore, spiritual progress is a process of replacing lower desires (anger, lust, fear, greed) by higher ones (tolerance, acceptance, understanding, kindness, and honesty). Real change happens when you trade up for higher desires. For example, an alcoholic that is going to quit drinking because "it's bad for me" is not likely to have as much success as the alcoholic who gives up drinking because they "want to be their more wholesome self." The pursuit of having a higher more positive desire has a more powerful largesse of energy than trying to "stop a negative." The best approach for understanding the spirit is through the heart and not through the mind. Trying to understand the problems of the spirit through the intellect is like trying to see through the ears or hear through the eyes.
There is often conflict between what you honestly think and what you honestly feel. There is an important relationship between "confusion" and "clarity." The method of the mind has its foundation in sensation and precedes through inference, proofs, and conclusions. The heart is more direct, since it intuitively grasps values of spiritual and emotional understanding. For most people the mind and the heart are in conflict which creates confusion. Within the context of psychotherapy, confusion is usually a good sign and a stepping stone towards clarity. I know you are speaking the emotional truth when you can admit many truths at once with a minimum of two in direct conflict. However, as you persist, you discover that you really do have priorities and an anchoring clarity begins to emerge. The whirlpools of confusion provide real forward motion. I have never seen anyone change for the better until they become confused first. Spirituality is a fabric that is made up of the warp of confusion and the woof of clarity.
5.The Healing Nature of Love
She came down a vine-covered walk to meet me, like a glorious angel. She took me in her arms and her wonderful eyes beamed upon me such love and tenderness that I found courage from the radiance of her eyes. She used to rock me in her arms, consoling my pain, but not only consoling, for she seemed to take my sorrow to her own breast, and I realized that if I had not been able to bear the society of other people, it was because they all played the comedy of trying to cheer me with forgetfulness. Whereas Eleanora said, "Tell me about Deirdre and Patrick" and made me repeat to her all their little sayings and ways, and show her their photos which she kissed and cried over. She never said "Cease to grieve " bid she grieved with me, and for the first time since their death, I felt I was not alone.
-- Isadora Duncan
Back to my original point. Therapy - and life - are about removing the blocks to giving and receiving love. Love and life are inseparable from each other. While the expression of love varies according to the capacity of the giver and the receiver, to deny love is to deny your true being and is a self-betrayal. Love is self-communicative. Those who are blocked from it are opened when they connect to those who give it. One burning candle can start the flame of another. Not only do those who do not have it get it from those who do, but it is not possible to absorb love without making a response. The urge to love back is a natural gesture of love responding to love. Love is contagious in effect. Since intimate communication is a vulnerability-to-vulnerability sharing, attachment, bonding and heartfelt connection result. There is an old joke that says if you ask five psychiatrists what they think love is, you will get twenty five opinions. There are many different colors and nuances of colors in the spectrum of light and likewise there are many different varieties of love. Does love mean infatuation, bonding, connection, affection, lust, desire, possessiveness, greed? There are many different categories of love such as romantic, motherly, fatherly, sisterly, brotherly, and Divine. In its most global form love is about the affinity and cohesiveness between and among people.
On balance, we are under-developed in our feeling side which leaves the mind and the intellect top heavy. What you get through the mind is the Theory of Love but not love itself. It is the felt experience of love, understanding and acceptance that is transformative. Corresponding to the hierarchy of needs I mentioned earlier is a hierarchy of qualitative love. The lower needs and the lower Self are more concerned with physical needs and bodily gratification. The higher needs and the higher Self are more concerned with honesty, values, ideals, love and spirit. In lower forms of love, you are as much concerned with what you are getting as what you are giving. In higher forms you are more concerned about what you are giving and less concerned about what you are getting. The expression of the heart is vitally needed for the health of the spirit.
Higher love "loves for love's sake." However, it is often difficult to ferret out true motive. When most people say "I love you" there is usually some self-motivation or expectation buried within it- i.e. "And I want you to love me back." Higher love is giving without wanting anything in return. In infatuation you are under a spell of being in love with the idea of being in love. In higher love there is an active appreciation of the intrinsic worth of the other. In lust there is a subordination of the soul to the senses. In love there is a feeling of unity and joy. In greed there is a desire to possess another or those things (fame, power, money) that could attract another. In love, there is a desire to respect and appreciate.
As our intimate communications become increasingly more honest and vulnerable there is a natural ascension to increasingly higher forms of love. The physical and intellectual desires gravitate towards separateness. The emotional and spiritual desires gravitate towards unity.
The reverse is also true. Blocks in intimate communication become obstructions to giving and receiving love. The negative emotions such as fearfulness, shame, insecurity, anger and jealousy are significant obstructions to the expression of love. Most of the negative emotions arise when the lower desires are thwarted or are threatened to be thwarted. Blocked communication favors a myopic separatist "me and mine" focus. Likewise, an overemphasis on the physical and intellectual (ego) needs functionally restrict access to the fulfillment of the emotional and spiritual ones. Good communication creates more balance among these needs.
"To love for love's sake" is a lofty goal. Many religions assert this is the nature of Divine Love. It is unconditional. Of course, we can't love unconditionally, but the very effort of trying to do so raises us from our Lower Selves to our Higher ones.
The special situation of psychotherapy has extraordinary advantage over ordinary relationships because of its unique structure. The therapeutic contract creates an atmosphere where the therapist is present in an unconditional love, acceptance, and understanding position. The emotional needs of the therapist are minimal thus creating maximal opportunity for vulnerable and self honest examination of the patient. Psychotherapy is a process of living discovery with illuminating principles that gradually transmute the inner most core. As you become more comfortable with the honest expression of your feelings there is an increase in your spontaneous expression of voluntary love both in the therapeutic session and more importantly in your life. As you are increasingly connected in love, you cross a threshold into the spiritual dimension where your relationships take on the timeless and changeless qualities that no longer depend on time, place, or even life.
In successful therapy, there always arises a question about the nature of the feelings between therapist and patient, or in the case of group therapy between patients. "Is this love?" The answer is "yes," but it is not social if the therapeutic boundaries are kept. (It is beyond the scope of this paper to address therapeutic mistakes and failures.)
After many years of reflection I have concluded that love is the real healing force in the therapeutic endeavors. However, it is not the love you get as the patient but the love you give! This principle is equally true for everyday living. My love for my patients, or the group members love for each other creates a sanctuary of trust and acceptance where they can begin to discover themselves. Love coming towards you can only penetrate so deeply - you may be closed off to it. But if I ask you "where does your love come from," you could answer "from the center of my center." Then the only love that can gum up the gap between us is the love that comes from your center. The reason you will overcome your fear, shame, or other emotional blocks is because of your desire to honor the heart-to-heart connection. To be honest and honorable you must overcome your own problems. This applies equally in all relationships. For example, to be able to say "I'm sorry" means you have to see where you caused an unwelcomed block and you want to re-unite by claiming responsibility for the problem. When it comes to something pliable, there is nothing more pliable than water yet water is also capable of eroding away the hardest of substances,. By analogy love is soft and pliable but capable of eroding away the hardest of blocks.
While we could have long and interesting discussions about "what is the definition of love?" and "what is the definition of spirituality?" I think we could agree there is some fundamental relationship between them. Love is a force of cohesion and affinity and is therefore central to both mental and spiritual wellness.
It is common sense to not confuse someone's appearance for their personality. Likewise, do not mistake someone's personality for their Soul. Your increasing ability to discriminate leads to increasing amounts of clarity and awareness. The more spiritually minded you become the more you see how we are alike than how we are different. Love is a cohesive force that favors unity. The more cohesive a person, relationship, family, group, organization, community or nation is the more functional it is. The less cohesive it is, the more dysfunctional it is.
6. The Clairvoyance of Grief
I saw grief drinking a cup of sorrow
and called out,
"It tastes sweet,
does it not?"
"You've caught me,"
grief answered,
"and you've ruined my business.
How can I sell sorrow,
when you know it is a blessing."
-- Rumi
Loss often clarifies what is important. It forces our attention to shift towards appreciation. The death of those we love impacts us this way. Grieving is an emotional process that both focuses us on what is important (because we miss it) and connects us to a spiritual dimension -that which is changeless and timeless in our relationships. People die but our relationships continue forever. Grieving which is a healing process, honors the enduring heart-to-heart connection. While this takes time, it does end in fruitful result. Healthy grieving requires communication. The touching excerpt from Isadore Duncan's diary illustrates the power vulnerable intimate communication has on healing.
Arrested grieving signals that love was unbalanced and weighted towards lower desires. In this situation, the love we were getting (what it does for "me and mine") was more valued than the love we were giving. Therefore we were left more with a sense of loss than a sense of love. There is an accompanying fearfulness to get deeply attached again. In a healthier grieving, we are very aware of our loss but have a sense of "I am glad I loved and want to love like that again."
Loss can clarify what is important but you don't necessarily have to lose in order to apply the principles. Several years ago my then seven year old came into the kitchen while I was fixing dinner. He asked to help with preparing dinner. This was unusual. With enthusiasm, he offered to set the table. I noticed he was setting the table with cloth napkins instead of paper ones. Next thing I know, he is standing on a narrow ledge in an attempt to get out of the cabinet some rarely used but pretty glasses. I told him that I would help him because I did not want him to fall and that the glasses were special and required special handling. I made a point of having him pass them down to me one at a time. I then lifted him on to the ground. I returned to the sink. A few seconds later I heard the crash and shatter of glass. I turned around and he had all the glasses gathered in his arms. First, I helped him put the other glasses down and then because he was barefooted, I had him stand on the other side of the kitchen while I swept up the glass. I then noticed he was pulling paper cups out of the bottom of the cabinet. I asked him what he was doing and he said "Dad let's use these cups that won't break." I said "No, I want to use the blue cups. You had a wonderful idea about setting a beautiful table with the cloth napkins and the pretty cups, and I want to stay with your good idea." The enthusiasm returned to his face and we had a nice connecting moment.
Throughout this whole process I was aware that my equilibrium came from the notion I call "the clairvoyance of grief." If I were to die the next day or if he were and this was our final interaction, I am comfortable with it. I am not obsessed with death but rather use this concept to orient me in my interactions.
7. Surrender and Grace
Our lives are ordered for us by the Divine so that nothing is too much. We are never given more than we can handle; but nothing is too loose, either. We can always breathe, yes, but at times the water is up to where the wings of the nose barely touch. And as we grow? As we grow, the water rises. Still we are preserved from drowning. And that is providential, because our nature needs a situation that reminds it. You are always at the beginning. In the life of the Spirit, you are always beginning.
-- Dr. Alan Anderson
Alcoholics Anonymous and the twelve step programs, which I consider to be one of the most important spiritual (and practical) movements of our time, are unrivaled in their ability to teach, demonstrate and live surrender. I learned this when I began treating alcoholics and addicts. Part of their disease is to be an effective denier, minimizer, and blamer. It was frustrating to try to treat people who denied their problems and were so clever in avoiding responsibility for them. So I became curious about those who successfully overcame these issues. When I concluded that it was a result of Alcoholics Anonymous I began to attend AA meetings to see if I could understand the source of their success. After a few meetings I began to appreciate the utter genius of their organization. Basically, they say that the most profound problems an alcoholic has is a spiritual disease because their compulsive desires to use distort their values and separate them from their Essential Goodness as well as from a loving sense of unity. Put another way, they believe that their compulsive and repetitive energy is so intense that the only way to deal with it is to be in complete Surrender. Accept your helplessness and powerlessness over your addictive compulsion and admit there is a "higher power" in the universe. For most of us "higher power" translates as God and God's love or grace. I once had a patient who was a committed atheist. A new comer (new to recovery) came to her and asked "what is all this business about the higher power?" My patient stated quite confidently, "there is only one thing you need to know about the higher power ... you're not it."
AA was started by Bill W. who was an alcoholic unable to contain his drinking. Finally one night he was in such misery and suffering that he could no longer bear it. In his hotel room he got down on his knees, confessed his utter powerlessness and prayed to God. Reportedly he had an intense spiritual experience in which his very act of Surrender resulted in what I would call a moment of grace. He, along with others, started AA and formulated the 12 Step Program, which begins with the Step I admission that "we are so powerless over alcohol that our lives have become unmanageable." I discovered that AA groups contain tremendous practical street wisdom available to all who are willing to attend. The serenity prayer - "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference" is wonderful counsel for the best way to live your everyday life as well. The moment that most impressed me was when at the end of an AA meeting, one person quietly said that he wanted to give gratitude to AA because at a party he had seen an old friend that he hadn't seen in 2 years. His friend was drunk and he thought " But for the grace of God there go I." It wasn't so much what he said but the way he said it. There was an utter gratitude and serenity in his eyes. He had the kind of feeling that we all long for and the kind of clarity that only comes from honest admission of one's suffering.
After a while I began to realize that alcoholics and addicts were like the rest of us only because their problems are so visibly obvious they had to get to the conclusions more quickly. All addictions have the same fundamental spiritual problem. This would include the process addictions such as work-aholism, approve-of-me-aholism, control-aholism, avoid-aholism, as well as food and sexual addictions.
Moments of grace are extremely profound and intimate moments. Unfortunately, people rarely speak of them. I run many psychotherapy groups but some of the most poignant groups I have run have been on Moments of Grace that were open to the general public. These were groups for anyone who wanted to talk about their touching and usually life changing moments. Everyone was extremely honest, revealing and personal which is not expected when a group of strangers get together for the first time. For the most part, something profoundly spiritual happened to them that was similar to Bill W's experience.
8. The Importance of Small Groups
There is a tribe in East Africa in which the art of true intimacy is fostered even before birth. In this tribe, the birth date of a child is not counted from the day of its physical birth or even the day of conception, as in other village cultures. For this tribe the birth date comes the first time the child is a thought in its mother's mind. Aware of her intention to conceive a child with a particular father, the mother then goes off to sit alone under a tree. There she sits and listens until she can hear the song of the child that she hopes to conceive. Once she has heard it, she returns to her village and teaches it to the father so that they can sing it together as they make love, inviting the child to join them. After the child is conceived, she sings it to the baby in her womb. Then she teaches it to the old women and midwives of the village so that throughout the labor and at the miraculous moment of birth itself, the child is greeted with its song. After the birth all the villagers learn the song of their new member and sing it to the child when it falls or hurts itself. It is sung in times of triumph, or in rituals and initiations. This song becomes a part of the marriage ceremony when the child is grown, and at the end of life, his or her loved ones will gather around the deathbed and sing this song for the last time.
-- Jack Kornfield
Small communication groups in which you are known and understood approach the kind of intimacy that Jack Kornfield wrote about in the story about intimacy in the East African tribe. Communication of your feelings to another individual is valuable and communicating your feelings in a small group is even more valuable. I find group to be the most useful forum for change and transformation to take place. Small group is the fundamental building block of our society. I see groups everywhere - at work, in church, on sport teams, in clubs, etc. In a talk therapy group, our primary task is communication and intimate relating. In these other groups, the primary task has a different purpose. For example, the primary task in a business group is to produce work and in a school group, learning. However, even in these groups what is always present (although less visible) is the emotional group. Unfortunately, more often than not, this is ignored. Probably most derailments in a work group are due to poor communication or lack of emotional cohesiveness. I am speaking about the principles of group life. This is most visible in a group psychotherapy which creates the ideal condition for communication, intimacy, cohesion, and the emergence of spirituality. However, a similar effect is achieved in a self-help group of 6 to 10 people who agree to meet weekly to talk about feelings. Usually intimacy is achieved more quickly if all the members are of the same sex. An all women's or all men's group is less complicated than a coed one.
Communication groups are an emotional and spiritual enterprise intended to discover what life can be at its best. Group is a natural phenomenon because love is a natural phenomenon whose affinity pulls toward the unity of life. A communication group demands natural adjustment and understanding in order to have a sense of unity with another. Group creates an optimal environment in a both fun and serious atmosphere that invites both introspective curiosity and collaborative learning. It becomes apparent that there are many layers of meaning to life. Truth cannot be grasped by skipping over the surface of life and multiplying superficial contacts. In group interaction you see how to generate deeper meaning in your own life. You learn the art of discrimination especially as it applies to higher and lower values and higher and lower selves. The richness of this type of honest communication issues forth an open intimacy that allows others to weave into the fabric of your life.
In my mind there are gradient levels of effective communication:
Level I
You are unaware of your feelings and you have neither a language nor a willingness to express them. Your communications are relegated to a behavioral "acting out."
Level II
You have an awareness of your feelings but no language or expressive ability and no willingness. You act out.
Level III
You have an awareness of your feelings and even some ability to express them but choose not to. You may or may not act out.
Level IV
You have an awareness of feelings and you express them in a reportage fashion but laundered of their true emotional coloring. The content is accurate and correct.
Level V
You are speaking accurately of your feelings and you are showing the appropriate emotional coloring.
A. The listener knows that you have feelings and that you are communicating well but also has the sense that you are talking either to the center of the room or to a point in front of them.
B. As above but the listener feels you are talking to them and in such a truthful and vulnerable way that they are feeling what you are feeling.
Level VI
You are emotionally and affectively sharing at level V but also have the simultaneous awareness of how and what is being shared impacts on the listener. If you sense the listener doesn't quite understand you, you change to a language, as effortlessly as shifting gears in a car, that uses analogies, metaphors, and descriptors that are personal to the listener thus highly individualizing the communication.
As group members practice communication, the group itself evolves into a spiritual culture that pierces through differences to produce sustaining unity.
I once had a patient who came to me to work on his communication skills with the hope of improving his marriage. He was a walking contradiction. He was a dyed-in-the-wool Bible thumping I-have-the-answer-and-you-don't fundamentalist Christian but he also had a very large heart. He had very strong opinions that homosexuality was biblically and morally wrong. So I put him in group with two gays - a man and a woman. When the topic of homosexuality would come up he would argumentally present his beliefs but the presentation sounded like a pre-recorded diatribe or press release. Over time he came to really love, care about, and feel close to both of them. Then one day he began his usual critical attack on homosexuality when the gay woman began to sob. She sweetly, affectionately, and kindly called him by name and said "I feel like you beat me,...and beat me,.., and beat me,.., and beat me". Each "beat me" got softer and quieter as it was so hard for her to speak through the hurt and tears. He began to sob when he realized his abstract ideology had caused injury to someone he loved. Today if you asked him what the Bible said about homosexuality, he would say the Bible says contradictory things but Love Thy Neighbor As Thyself is the most important directive.
9.Reflections
What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous.
-- Thomas Merton
As a psychotherapist I have learned that there is a close relationship between emotional and spiritual wellness. Both are concerned with inner non-material realities. Our lower needs and desires are concerned with the physical and intellectual (ego) ones and these favor separateness and a "me and mine" preoccupation. Our higher needs and desires are concerned with emotional and spiritual values of honesty, self-honesty, and love. These favor unity in relationships, groups and community. I believe that self-honest intimate communication leads us to our more mature and higher selves and brings about greater balance to all of our needs. The principles of psychotherapy can help evolve quality intimate communication. This results in more love and cohesion. Human love is troubled by a number of obstructive factors that can be best dissolved by improved communication and relatedness. Intellectualizing and fear feed deceptive imagination. Intimate communication encourages the presence of love and spiritual expansion. As your ability to honestly communicate your feelings increases, your sustaining self begins to reveal itself. Honesty is the light on the inner path. Love and understanding never condemn, but seek to help and encourage. How do we begin to "cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves?" By practicing intimate and vulnerable communication -- talk therapy and talk matters.
Keith Auerbach, M.D., is a psychiatrist and long time supporter of the Wayne E. Oates Institute in Louisville, Kentucky. He is also an award-winning photographer and the author of The Photographic Humor of Keith Auerbach.
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