spiritual guidance - your escort for the inward healing journey.
Today I’m going to *touch* on what is a pretty big topic. At least it is for me personally, and seems to be big for the people that come to me for therapy, guidance or healing. And while I’m flagging this as if it were a new conversation, I feel like it’s one I keep circling around, and underlies or is threaded through every thought, idea and exchange I’m having right now.
While it’s often emotional pain and overwhelm, triggered by everyday events and situations, and underpinned by long ago hurts and traumas that bring people to therapy, … what is entangled in the angst are feelings of being lost, purposeless, and without aim. That is, once the more obvious issues are discovered, explained and explored …. Beneath all that lay the bigger cosmological questions … “Why am I here?”, “What is my purpose?” , “Who am I?” … and all the variations of.
It’s becoming more apparent to me that psychology on its own is ill equipped to deal with these questions. And the last year has not so much created but accelerated this problem. I’ve had many both angry and grief filled conversations with other therapists lately, about how our books are full for months ahead, many of us have stopped taking new clients, and how we have to turn away people wanting support. WTF! What to do … What to do … What to do? Caroline Myss has declared for some time that “we aren’t just in a psychological crisis but a spiritual crisis” and if this is true, and I feel it is now more than ever, … psychology as a panacea has failed us to the degree that, as Myss continues, “it has asked us to go into our wounds unescorted”… That is, we are trying to deal with cosmological issues with logic and science, and what is needed is to be escorted - spiritual guidance - in addition to the trauma work. People are turning to psychologists to heal wounds that are emotional, mental, but also inseparable from the energetic and spiritual. That physical and psychological issues are indications that soul is suffering, that energy is suffering too, and they are not separate. My sense is that science and psychology are starting to realise this.
But in the mean time and again, what to do? Asking a predominantly secular society to consider spiritual matters is either a leap – as it’s a completely foreign concept, or risky – where traditional structures around spirituality, - ie orthodox religion – have failed people through corruption, discrimination and abuses.
As a therapist and psychologist I’m in a bind, because I did just mention “we” as a profession are ill equipped to deal with this. I’ve certainly felt like I’ve been straddling 2 divergent paths. At the same I’ve spent almost all of my life seeking, and on my own spiritual quest; starting off by thinking psychology has the answers to the deep questions, but finding out more and more that it is a doorway, and there is a beyond, and a beside, and an above, and I must be willing to go further, higher and deeper.
So that I feel is the key. Yes, be willing to address the hurts, to tend to and deconstruct the trauma, and construct new physical, emotional, mental ways of being in the world. At the same time, ask those big questions and listen for the answers. It’s a mistake to put all attention and preference to the trauma. It is a mistake to also think that when symptoms of anxiety and depression ease, that means you’re ‘cured’. It is a boon of course to have ease. But to really heal, the psychological work and the soul work happen at the same time. And they circumambulate each other for the rest of your life. Michael Meade says that “transformation is the secret aim of all the troubles we experience in life”. We don’t need to avoid our hurts especially if we go in “escorted”.
So what are ways you can be escorted … start on, continue on, get back on your spiritual track?
Acknowledgement:
That you’re not just a physical-emotional- thinking being, but an energetic-soulful-spiritual being too. Be curious about what a spiritual life looks like or could look like for you. Is it connecting to nature? time for quiet reflection? being mentored by someone older and wiser? being mentored by a spiritual teacher? committing to rituals and practices such as meditation, yoga, singing, chanting, dancing, art, music …? is it a more traditional approach to spirituality like going to church or temple? You need these moments to slow down, so that your deeper soul’s message can come through.
It is a bidirectional enquiry:
Be willing to ask not just “why am I wounded and how do I heal”, but also having the intention of … “as I courageously go through this wound as a doorway, let’s make it worth it so that I come out the other side aimed and directed”. So self-enquiry sounds like “What am I thinking and feeling about that?” and “How does my soul feel about that?” , ”Am I living a life of purpose?”, “What would spirit-soul have me do?”,“Are my actions, words and spirit aligned?”
Pray:
Ok that’s a risky, loaded word, right? Hear me out. Myss calls these cosmological – who am I and what am I here on this planet to do? - questions ‘prayers’, as they are not ordinary questions, and can’t really be answered in a logical way. Don’t even expect to get a cut and dry “answer”. The spiritual world is by design a sacred one and a symbolic one, so learning it’s language, interpreting the glimpses and glimmers received, and being willing to have silence, patience and faith are core qualities. This doesn’t have to be praying to or having a conversation with “God” (although it can be). You can pray to the Universe, Greater, Creator, the Earth, your highest Self, your inner God/Goddess, Spirit, … It is essentially a deep conversation with the Divine. I like the quote by Angles Arrien that “prayer is when you talk to God and meditation is when you listen to what God has to say”.
As I started the conversation today, I know have just touched the topic. People of course want to know how to hear and understand the answers to those cosmological questions (or prayers!). The simple answer is, to keep listening, responding to what arises, even if is not clear. Keep paying attention. Practice. Seek guidance. Let’s keep this conversation going.