Richard Harvey answers questions about personal problems, therapy and spiritual goals.

I am a long-time follower of psychological and spiritual teachings and I have practiced many methods. But I have not found what I am looking for. My question comes from my intuition that seeking is somehow linked to our inability to be present. Can you tell me how the two are linked?

The first thing to realize is that usually what we’re looking for is right in front of us! Alongside this truth is the fact that usually we don’t see or recognize it, because we are so caught up in looking for it or seeking that it doesn’t seem to occur to us that we might find what we’re looking for! Hence it’s always more interesting to us to cast our mind ahead and aspire to some distant future in which our dreams will be realized.

Now, is the only time there is. This understanding is as old as the Upanishads and as modern as the latest self-help book. But to occupy the moment, we have to rein in our aspirations for an imaginary future time. Once we have done that, we have to “be”. Now, two things are incredibly difficult for us about what seems to be a comparatively simple matter to speak about.

First, we don’t know how to withdraw from the future and, second, we don’t know how to be, in the present or any other time. Our entire life is orientated to the past—modelled on past memories, coated with past assumptions and motivated by past desires.

Nothing, really nothing, is actively present, only the past rehashing itself over and over again. Western psychology has taught us that inside us is a shadowy realm known as the unconscious. It is symbolized in dreams by the basement—a dirty, dingy place we encounter in nightmares which mat be inhabited by monsters or threatening presences. Along with a veritable junkshop of material which we have thrown into our basement is the answer to why we should inhabit our lives orientated to the past.

For here we find all our shameful needs, fears and desires that were unmet, unrequited or unfulfilled when we were too young and helpless to do anything about it. Here in this darkness we dwell in our grief and our shame, too embarrassed and humiliated to face up to ourselves. While we don’t deal thoroughly with these inner dynamics and relationships, nothing will change, including the future, which is merely a reflection of the past.

So, this is why we project ourselves ahead of the present moment, idealizing a future which can never be any different from the past, except in fantasy. Think about it: how much of your time is spent imagining how life can be, wishing for things to be different from how they are. We aspire, by way of compensation for our dismal state of dissatisfaction, to better life conditions, improved relationships, more money or power or standing in the world. Our life moves ahead like a train that never reaches its destination, but is always in-between, always leaving, always arriving, never present.

Reining in our aspirations for an imaginary future is the same as letting go of our attachment to the past. The work is challenging and demanding, but not impossible. It is enabled through deep acceptance of how things are. And we cannot do it alone. We can try, but we will never take ourselves close enough to the edge, never tolerate the degree of suffering that we need to, to bring about the inner change that finally liberates us.

The second point is our inability to “be”. Deep inside, in our essence, we may experience a sense of presence from which being comes. But this subtle sense has not been validated, so we don’t give it value. If we did, we wouldn’t do so much. We would spend more time just being and when we can be, we can allow others to be. Feeling, valuing, communing would be words that described real experiences from our everyday lives. We would be less concerned about distractions that cause us to lose touch with ourselves and our sense of being.

Being is essential to presence, but also to love and caring, to compassion, to truly touching and experiencing the world.

But our experience, from the past, is that such openness caused us much suffering, pain and hurt. At some point, we made the decision to cease to be open and vulnerable to the world. We withdrew from this pure experience, compromised ourselves and concealed our essence to protect ourselves from hostility and insensitivity.

So, this is how we are unable to be in the present—the only place where life is. We are therefore detached from life.

I heard you telling a story about Ramana Maharshi where he was saying that realized beings remained in the forest and someone asked him wouldn’t it be better if they came out and mixed with others. To which he replied, “What others?” Does this mean that the goal of enlightenment, the pursuit of psycho-spiritual psychotherapy is a sort of quietism, a withdrawal, a lack of concern about the outer world?

We have to distinguish between the inner and outer worlds, between the absolute and relative worlds and between inner reflection of a psychological nature and inner reflection of a spiritual nature to answer this.

What Ramana Maharshi said was in response to the question, “Does one person’s realization help others?” And he says, “Self-realization is the greatest help that can be rendered to humanity.” Then he says,“the Self-realized person is helpful even though they remain in forest”, which I take to be a symbolic way of saying in seclusion. His answer to, “Wouldn’t it be better if they mixed with others?” is “There are no others to mix with.”

Now from the point of view of the relative, outer world and of our shared human psychology of perception this is obviously absurd! But he is speaking of beings who are Self-realized, which means that they have merged with the absolute where inner and outer are one. In Zen, the saying would be that they have swallowed the world, in other words they have realized that the outer world is inside them, rather than outside, which again sounds preposterous, until you understand that a Self-realized being is one who is totally identified with consciousness—not individual consciousness in the relative world, but the consciousness within which everything—everything— is arising.

This is very hard to understand from within the constraints of our accepted habitual way of thinking. But it should come as no surprise to people who have even a glancing acquaintance with the methods of Zen or crazy wisdom masters, whose methods are designed to shock us into awakening, that our habitual ways of thinking create the world as we are, not as it is (this is also the nature of projection in the sphere of psychology and interpersonal relationships). In other words Self-realization cannot, will not be proscribed by how we think about things.

So, if you have reached the point where everything is going on inside the consciousness you have realized that you are (you see, it even gets messy and almost impossible to talk about), then you are in relationship to everything all the time, regardless of your physical location (which is merely relative), since everything is going on within the sphere of your awareness, or consciousness. Paradoxically then, now you have the power to “do good” for example, to influence affairs and so forth, you don’t. You simply witness with compassion, devotion and love.

Now you are reminding me of personal therapy that is a kind of witnessing by the therapist without doing anything, a profound acceptance that leads to healing. Even Freud himself, when asked what was the essence of psychotherapy, said it was simply love.

He said, “Psychoanalysis in essence is a cure through love.” And yes, you’re right, because deep acceptance embraces everything in its all-accepting field. One of the lessons of practicing therapy for me has been the absolute power of non-intervention, of simply letting things be, and, without interfering, things change through finding their natural balance.

BLOG entry #76

This article by Richard Harvey was originally published at http://www.therapyandspirituality.com/articles/  and it is part of an ongoing retrospective series of blogs. ‘Interview on Therapy and Spiritual Goals – Part 2 of 2’ was first published in 2010.