Recently I (R) met a clinical psychologist (Q) from England and the discussion we had was so stimulating I thought I would record it. Here it is in verbatim form.

Q: What are the outward signs of inner development, of spiritual development?

R: You will appear more as yourself, not in a flimsy, superficial sense, but more like you are in the truth of your inner nature. You will manifest your true character with less compromise, less need for personal attention and probably less self-importance.

Q: Why probably?

R: The outward signs of inner change don't necessarily conform to our idea of what a spiritual or an inner-orientated person should look like. The inner path, or the spiritual path, is fundamentally the way of paradox, which in itself is a controversial statement. And also a statement that demands an explanation.

Q: And the explanation is?

R: That human awakening takes place through a process of contrary challenge; whatever you are comfortable with must be radically countered until the opposites of attachment and unattachment -- to character, behavior, habits, familiarity, really anything you identify with as the separative I-Me-Mine -- are shed, enabling you to reach the state of non-attachment. Everything will appear in relation to its opposite, to its counterpart. As you persist in the inner journey your world is seen as a mass of conflicting, contradictory urges and impulses for some time.

Q: Can you bring that down to earth for me, or express it in plain language?

R: You have to face everything which you have denied or repressed in yourself in both the inner and the outer worlds.

Q: But why would you even want to do that?

R: First, whether we know it or not, we all have a deep desire to realize our potential. That potential is real and to realize it we must become whole, which entails owning our repressed selves. Second, because reality is really rounded, rather than flat! Reality is rather like a sphere, so to be in it, you yourself must be rounded. The way most of us live is as partial human beings, by presenting and believing in ourselves as a certain identity we define ourselves through limitation and since everyone's doing it, it doesn't seem odd, until you wake up to the fact that your potential is way, way more than that.

Q: What is the relationship between human failings, imperfections and limitations and the divine, which by definition must be absolute, perfect and pure?

R: Your imperfect human condition is the vehicle, or the means, to your realization of your true self. Only by means of the unique faculty of self-reflection may a human being experience him- or herself as absolute and in their true nature. That's the inner journey.

BLOG entry #90

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. ‘Therapy Meets Spirituality: A Psycho-Spiritual Discussion – Part 1: The Inner Journey’ was first published in 2011.

Therapy, psychotherapy or even personal growth - in the seventies sense of the term - seem to have moved over for a new wave of psychological approaches headed by life coaching, positive thinking, motivational lambasting.

This makes me feel uneasy. You might say that since I am a psychotherapist, of course it does. But I am not an analyst, a behaviorist or particularly aligned to traditional schools of psychology and psychotherapy. Not that many years ago the discipline I was involved in - humanistic psychotherapy - was considered a 'new therapy', mostly because it challenged 'the expert approach' and gave clients back a sense of responsibility for their well-being.

Today with the modern tendency to write off the old in favor of the new, the waves of fashionable therapeutic approaches have turned fast and hard. People are more inclined toward newness. But newness may sometimes be a retrograde move. Quick fixes may not always be integrated or stable, particularly in the inner world of human psychology.

For example, positive thinking suffers from a basic flaw, which has been conveniently glossed over by its adherents. Positive thinking undoubtedly has positive results in a culture that is as negative as ours. I am wonderful, the world is good and so on are surely to be welcomed in place of I hate myself and they're all out to get me. But since thoughts do provide a conceptual framework for our experience of life, it is crucial that we know and understand what we are thinking before we begin to change it.

Merely floating positive thoughts in our consciousness often means denying or pushing away deeply held negativity. Masked by life enhancing positivity, negative patterns of thinking and experience suppurate and toxify in the depths of the unconscious. There can be no knowing how damaging the process of positive thinking may then be. It is like painting over a damp wall and being surprised when a little later the damp patches come through and the new paint job is seen for what it is - a waste of time, an insufficient solution.

The strain of positive thinking can be seen on the impossibly alive and optimistic adherents of its philosophy. It is a kind of psychological botox. Who can be that positive all the time? Or want to be? Without detracting from the health benefits - both inner and outer - of positive thought, let's not forget that we sometimes have what are called breakthroughs, insights, spiritual revelations even, after a bout of depression, struggling with inner conflicts or a dark night of the soul. Who would want to forgo these for a lifetime of Stepford wife behavior?

Solutions to deep-seated problems are never easy. The problems of the human condition, viz. depression, anger, frustration, anxiety and jealousy, call for a mature, intelligent response that is both realistic and undaunted by the depth of the task.

The process itself is the practice that heals, rather than a quick fix or cure. In facing ourselves honestly and squarely we learn to savor life in its abundance of challenges and rewards. Life is not just something to manipulate or get out of. Positive thinking is balanced and defined only in contrast to negative thinking; both together comprise a total process of mature evaluation.

The person who has learnt to evaluate clearly and objectively is one who can live with a sense of deep respect for all aspects of life, knows what he or she honors and cultivates reverence for all aspects of the human condition. From this reverence a lifetime of meaning and significance is born: a mature interrelationship with the world and to others is possible, one that transcends judgment, criticism and sometimes even personal preference.

From the acceptance of things as they are, rather than wishing or hoping that things should be some other way, we learn to grow and cultivate one of life's greatest treasures, which is gratitude.

BLOG entry #89

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. ‘Personal Growth Today: Positive Thinking and Gratitude’ was first published in 2011.

Personal growth workshops provide a milieu where we can meet the thresholds of life. Workshops are a shared healing space, which answers a deep inner question arising out of the individual’s experience of life. We have learned to defend ourselves against our emotions, to cope with them by ourselves, and we believe that to be strong we must deny our vulnerability.

Over the journey of a lifetime we face many diverse difficulties and dilemmas. Today the location of the human thresholds of initiation is internal, not external, and personal growth workshops provide a milieu where we can meet the thresholds of life, by exploring anxieties, dreams, repressed desires and unresolved personal issues, through the practice of shared reflection. 

In growth groups we meet a new paradigm, a model of caring cooperation that can bring out the best in us, through pooling wisdom from learned experience for mutual benefit.

Why people come to personal growth workshops?

People come to personal growth workshops for a variety of reasons. Some seek a sense of belonging, a sanctuary from feelings of alienation and loneliness. Others feel the need for contact, relationship, intimacy and nourishment. Still others come out of despair and disappointment with their life or some aspect of their life. Some seek a sense of self or meaning that will empower them to meet the world successfully. Some are searching for authentic relationship. Most people commonly share feelings, some of which may have been repressed for a long time, in a safe and supportive place free of judgment and criticism.

The workshop environment creates a temporary community of souls searching for one or more of these things. Each person has a need or at least a curiosity - and some trust that his or her needs could be met. Workshops are a shared healing space, which answers a deep inner question arising out of the individual’s experience of life. 

Defending our isolation

People today feel isolated, separate from and rigidly defended against each other, very distant from a sense of cooperation and sharing and remote from their own feelings and emotional life.

We defend ourselves against each other because our needs are great and many and we often feel ashamed to have them. We may crave love and intimacy, friendship and familiarity, to know that we are not isolated and alone and perhaps that the world is, or could be, a happy place where our fulfillment and satisfaction are possible.

In the West we have learned to defend ourselves against our emotions, to cope with them by ourselves, and we believe that to be strong we must deny our vulnerability.

These defenses leave us alienated from each other and ourselves. Therapy workshops create a microcosm, a temporary community where closeness and intimacy can thrive. They bring us closer to ourselves and each other by accepting who we are, both inwardly and outwardly.

The dynamics of group work

The dynamics of group work are powerful in several ways. 

First, personal issues can be stimulated by group interaction, a certain individual or an exchange in the group. A look, a remark, someone you like or dislike may be enough to re-stimulate repressed emotional reactions. 

Early family relationships are commonly projected onto the group and individual members. People see someone that looks like their sister or their mother, or reminds them of their father or brother, and they transfer the dynamic of that relationship onto a group member. 

This can lead to examination, re-experiencing and healing of deep emotions like rejection, betrayal and jealousy. In a workshop there is a tacit agreement that we are here to heal and to talk about issues that we can't talk about elsewhere. 

Second, the group provides emotional support and encouragement; you get the feeling that you are not the only one grappling with inner work and its challenges. You can see that your struggles are shared by others and you learn from each other’s experiences and share in each other’s successes. The group intensifies relationships; through open and honest sharing, people can become close in a short time. 

Third, the group provides acknowledgment and a testing ground for new insights. With a group of like-minded souls you can expand in imagination and vision, and risk thinking in new conceptual frameworks. All of this is integrally connected to healing, change and transformation.

Relationships that encourage us to grow

The depth and breadth of emotional experience in groups is wide and varied. In friendships, relationships and intimacies of all kinds we are often invested in the relationship being firm and stable, so we maintain it in ways that become personally limiting. In groups, the relationship is subordinate to our desire to grow and change. So relationships can be uncertain because everything may be risked and surprisingly it often leads to accelerated intimacy and emotional connection. 

The natural inclination to heal

The therapist’s role is to facilitate the process. He or she creates an encouraging, compassionate, nurturing space through awareness and acceptance. The facilitator-therapist holds the boundaries to enable positive interactions and encourage the participants’ natural inclination toward personal, emotional, mental and spiritual healing. The therapist meets the group participants where they are in a collective, mutually growthful process.

BLOG entry #88

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. ‘The Anatomy of Personal Growth Workshops’ was first published in 2011.

Over the last fifty years, we have seen a widespread interest in ideas of self-development drawn from Western psychology. Not all of the practices that evolved from these ideas have been effective, but then it is hard to quantify or measure individual or collective growth and development in this field. The contemporary exploration of the inner world has been championed and derided, met with enthusiastic advocates and equally passionate detractors. Have the Western attempts at self-awareness and raising consciousness failed or is the evolution of collective human consciousness underway? First, let us look back in summary.

The Promise of the Human Potential Movement

In the 1970s, therapy and personal growth were in their bright infancy. The idea of freeing oneself by expressing repressed emotions and shedding conditioned behavior patterns was exciting and liberating. The counter culture - the sexual revolution, recreational drug-taking and 'progressive' pop music, all mixed with Eastern mysticism - had promised a lot and fallen short of its dream. Personal growth seemed to be the flowering of that cultural upheaval, the fulfillment of the dream, the keeping of the promise.

The new therapies, collectively known as the Human Potential Movement or simply, the growth movement, proposed a new paradigm of individual well-being and collective consciousness-raising. They elevated therapy above the traditional psychoanalytic concern with mental illness. Not only the casualties of society, but everyone, could benefit. The growth movement promised a glorious world of vibrant, unselfconscious, self-regulating people motivated towards change and self-transformation.

Personal growth focused on the individual, but personal freedom held implications for society. Therapy could lead to an emancipated future for humanity, a collective transformation and a new paradigm of depth, authenticity and caring. Inner work would usher in a new era of peace and compassion, ending conflict and facilitating new understanding through honoring diversity. Therapy was in the vanguard of a pioneering movement that seemed destined to bring about radical change.

Personal Growth meets Commercial Enterprise

But the growth movement failed to change the world. On all inward paths, both psychological and spiritual, many begin and many falter along the way. So once the heady excitement of the honeymoon period was over, many people relinquished their ideals and got on with the everyday challenges of career and family.

The integrity of the growth movement was compromised as it met with commercial enterprise. In-depth spiritual journeying was simpler when it took place behind the walls of the monastery or the ashram. Lured by the material rewards of the modern age, superficial self-help books, self-styled gurus and flimsy trainings sprung up. The deeper benefits of thorough inner exploration were lost.

Many pioneers of the growth movement sought regulation and accreditation, aligning themselves with the modern trend towards rules and accountability, a process that stifled the freedom of innovative practice and sucked psychotherapy back into the mainstream. Eventually, the cycle came full circle and psychotherapy became once again primarily associated with mental illness.

The Spirit Lives On

However, for a minority who had experienced the deep benefits of inner work, something iridescent and real had happened that would not be threatened by the fickle tides of modern trends. These practitioners steadily developed their practice founded on self knowledge, diverse trainings, wisdom and intuitive guidance, and sought to share and teach others.

An ancient Taoist story tells us of the useless tree - a big old tree so distorted and full of knots that a straight plank cannot be made from it, the branches so crooked that they cannot be put to any practical use. The useless tree is left to grow while other trees are chopped down for their usefulness. But it is precisely because it is useless that it survives and people come to rest in its shade. The useless tree is likened to the Tao - the primordial reality, the source of all things. Authentic self-discovery has become like the useless tree of the Tao - the genuine article which no one has any use for. No one wants it and it is therefore left alone. But we can still rest in its shade.

The inner revolution of the 1970s growth movement heralded a noble impulse towards growth and change but its golden promise was never fulfilled. Now it is an almost forgotten path. But for those whom it truly touched, life changed irrevocably and, like the useless tree, the spirit lives on. Despite the watering down of therapy, the authentic fire still burns and is, perhaps, wisely hidden. It is still worth looking for, because it burns within us. If we can find that fire, we will discover it offers a blazing path to fulfillment, a radiant path to fathom and unfold our individual selves, our 'I'.

BLOG entry #87

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. ‘Whatever Happened to Personal Growth, Meditation and Enlightenment’ was first published in 2011.

The first step to practicing forgiveness is admitting that we are attached to vengeance. This means owning our feelings of anger and resentment, which often have their origins in the distant past. We must admit that we feel angry and then find out what it is that we are angry about before we can work on our attachment to revenge.

The second step is exploring the complex emotions that prevent us letting go of blame and anger and keep us feeling vengeful. Denying or concealing our deeper feelings binds us to the acts and the people we are unwilling to forgive. Our sense of offense, indignation and outrage may be so powerful that we are unwilling to let them go, even when they cause us great suffering. Our sense of self and our self-importance conceal our victim stance and hopelessness and self-pity are the adverse byproducts.

The third step is becoming aware of our reaction: how we dealt with what happened to us and working with our desire for vengeance. We may fantasize about a series of acts which those who have hurt us would have to perform or ordeals they would have to endure to deserve our forgiveness, of course, we do not really intend to forgive them, whatever attempts they might take to make amends.

The fourth step is discovering our investment in blaming and letting go of it. We may feel self-importance and be unable to see our part or take responsibility for what we did to the other. Or we may feel justified in our vengeance. Or we may not want to take responsibility for our life and seek justification for revenge in our suffering. Or we may feel grief, anguish and it is easier than joy and the challenges of living happily and fully. The question at the fourth stage is, 'What is my investment in blaming the other?' and it is a hard question to answer honestly unless we take deep responsibility for our negativity.

The fifth step is finding out who is suffering most from our not forgiving and the answer, of course, is ourselves. We see that we have become our own worst oppressor. The voice inside us, modeled on our mother, father, grandmother, teacher or whoever it is that rakes over the events of the past, is our own. It is only we who prolong and feed it, so it is within our power to stop it. If we reach this stage of forgiveness we begin to be empowered to truly forgive.

The final step is the 'juggling stage'. We must hold all these levels of enquiry together simultaneously - knowing more, feeling more, revealing more, letting go of more, seeing more. Then we see that our sense of ourselves, our feelings of presence, exist only in the present and that this is the one thing that is constant in our lives. One fact becomes startlingly clear: we cannot let go of the past unless we learn how to forgive. So we cannot be who we truly are. The insight dawns in us that we have traded our self, the present moment and our life for the dubious comforts of anger and revenge.

As we deepen in the 'juggling stage', the past gradually peels away and separates from the present. We have been living as if the wrongs that were inflicted on us in the past were happening now. This sense of distance has not previously been there because we have replayed the tape of our past oppression, kept the memories alive and superimposed the past on the present. Now we know that was then and this is now - and distance grows between us and what is unforgiven.

This gives us one of the most crucial insights of inner work: No one but ourselves causes our distress or is responsible for our problems. The present issue is always within our power to do something about. This insight empowers us to change.

BLOG entry #86

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. ‘Six Steps to Freeing Yourself from Anger and Blame’ was first published in 2011.