Sometimes we need to forgive ourselves. I worked in therapy with a woman in her mid-fifties who, in spite of many years of inner work, was unable to let go of her feelings about a termination she had in her early twenties. I asked her if she had ever talked with the spirit of her unborn child and, looking surprised, she said she hadn't. I asked if she knew a special place where she could go to do that. She said that she sometimes visited a powerful and beautiful spot on a mountain with streams, great rocks and little waterfalls.

'Could you go there,' I said, 'and talk to your baby, talk to her spirit; ask why she was conceived and whether or not she forgives you? Look at the lives she has affected. See if you can understand the effects and purpose of her brief life.'

She visited her special place, performed rituals and spoke to the spirit of her unborn child. Her questions were answered by an inner voice - the voice of her unborn baby's spirit - and it never blamed her for what she had done. She recalled how her pregnancy had deepened her relationship with her mother and her sister, how her friends and family had reached a more real level of being and awareness from the experience of strong emotions and searching questions. After three or four visits and conversations with her unborn child, she was able to forgive herself and feel released. The results were palpable. She was lighter in her spirit and easier in her mind and body. She said that it was as if a stone had been removed from her heart. Through her communions with her child she had been able to forgive herself.

Sometimes we feel blame, revenge or hatred towards someone who has died. We may think that we have left it too late and that death has robbed us of the opportunity to say what will forever be unsaid, to express what we can never express and clear up the issues that will be left forever. Many of us give up on ever being able to forgive (or be forgiven) and some part of us 'dies' along with the deceased person. Anger and blame create a powerful attachment that we cannot shed, without forgiveness.

This identification with the dead person - the fact that both have died in different ways - holds the key. We can speak with the 'spirit' of the dead person, converse with them just as we might talk to an incarnated person, because the one who has died lives on inside us. While we hold on to the unsaid, unexpressed and unresolved issues that are between us and the person who has died we keep them alive in a limbo state. Unable to let go of the issues, we are also unable to release the person. Our spirit goes out of us and a part of us remains suspended between the worlds.

Speaking to the dead person's spirit allows us to release them from the powerful attachment our negativity creates. Following forgiveness usually a flood of positive feelings fills us when we have let go of our anger, grief or revenge towards the dead person. For a while we hold them in this positive way before releasing them altogether.

Without denying responsibility we reach a deep acceptance of what has been done to us by others. Whatever the deed and whoever the perpetrator, forgiveness enables us to take back the power we have lost. We relinquish our right to reject, blame and hate what happened or who did it. Instead we become aware of how we have grown, not in spite of, but through the experience.

Practicing forgiveness leads us to a profound realization. Withholding forgiveness maintains the illusion of the small self, our separate, unconnected, opposed identity that fights for survival in a hostile world and defends itself with negativity and concealed aggression. When we do not forgive, we separate ourselves from life. Forgiveness is fiction, because there was never anything or anyone to forgive. The presumption of somebody forgiving somebody for something they did is a rational argument riddled with spiritual inaccuracies. At the deepest levels of working with forgiveness, we can see that the idea of a separate entity is transparently false.

Forgiveness provokes the profound acceptance of ourselves. We find that we have been carrying outer forms of madness, blame, anger and grief that merely mirror the shadow forms of our inner world. Forgiveness permeates our inner world with love and clarity.

A single act of genuine forgiveness carries tremendous power. To forgive once truly is to forgive all. Practicing forgiveness frees us from repeating the experiences of pain and outrage, sorrow and grief and empowers us to live freely, joyfully and spontaneously in the world.

Richard Harvey, Psychotherapist, Author and Spiritual Teacher, makes the connection between counseling and psychotherapy and spiritual growth. He speaks particularly to those who are looking for more than they have found in therapy. And offers guidance to those seeking to undertake the inner journey - guidance free of dogma and grounded in what many of us experience as the "messiness" of our personalities.

BLOG entry #85

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. ‘Practicing Forgiveness – The Real Secret Reason Why We Hold on to Revenge, Blame and Anger’ was first published in 2011.

A single act of genuine forgiveness carries tremendous power. Holding on to injustices enslaves us to the past; forgiveness frees us from the past. We conceal feelings of anger and vengeance beneath the virtuous covering of justification to protect us from losing these feelings. Anger can be used as a defense against our deeper feelings of pain and despair. Deep resentment and anger reinforce our feelings of separateness.

Everyone has something and someone to forgive. Guilt and blame are endemic today. Negative emotions like bitterness, frustration, agitation, anguish, vengeance and resentment are all linked to our need to forgive, and yet they may be less conspicuous when everyone shares them. But in spite of our pressing need for forgiveness, we can be reluctant to truly forgive.

Sometimes we don't really want to face up to the complexities and surrender of genuine forgiveness. So we 'fake it'. Denying our feelings of blame and vengeance, we may indulge in 'fantasy forgiveness'. Pretending to forgive is a shallow by-product of superficial thinking: a virtuously intended but misdirected attempt at healing, or simply the denial of our repression.

Often spiritual seekers want to be further on in their process than they really are. Forgiveness has become one of those benchmarks of inner work that confer 'spiritual rank'. Some people practice 'quasi-spiritual forgiveness'. We are impatient to forgive before we are ready. Our spiritual journey is an earthly journey that requires firm grounding. As we develop spiritually, we deepen in our humanness. We honor our feelings without judgment, notice our thoughts without always having to follow our desires and practice awareness of ourselves and others. We should never use spiritual principles like these to hinder our personal process. Our awakening conforms to natural laws. If we try to get ahead of ourselves the results are usually disastrous. Often we want to be somewhere we are not, someone other than ourselves or in a life situation other than our own.

We may try 'wish-fulfillment forgiveness', hoping that, if we wish deeply enough, we will be able to forgive our oppressors, wipe the slate clean and live in a haze of imagined virtue, as if it never happened. Wish-fulfillment forgiveness is an attempt to bypass the process of forgiveness. But however much we wish to forgive, forgiveness is only genuinely attained through certain necessary stages of inner healing.

Alison was a client who had a problem with revenge. She had a dominating, super-critical mother. She had grown up in an atmosphere charged with hate. As a child she had fought against her mother in stand-up rows and open resentment, mirroring her mother's hate for her. Now, as a young woman, she had so deeply repressed this hatred that the inner voice of her mother had taken almost total control of her life. Nothing she ever did was good enough and she nursed an almost total sense of her own worthlessness. When she discovered this in her therapy, it came as a shock. She had read in a self-help book that we should forgive our parents, so she immediately decided to take the easy way out that the book offered. When it didn't work Alison asked me for help. I explained that there is no easy way to forgiveness, because genuine forgiveness is a matter of heart-searching and deepening. Alison's work became my reference point for the crucial stages of forgiveness in inner work. For me, she epitomized the predicament of the modern day seeker who has too much knowledge, too many 'easy ways out' and who is burdened by too much knowledge and too little wisdom. Forgiveness is a dynamic inner process which consists of a number of steps.

BLOG entry #84

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. ‘Practicing Forgiveness – Everyone Has Something or Someone to Forgive’ was first published in 2011.

An intimate relationship - partnership or marriage - is one of the most potent catalysts for wholeness and authenticity there is. Yet relationships can also be the most deathly and least life-enhancing environment for the human spirit. 

Love relationships have the power to re-stimulate the unresolved issues of our early childhoods, because we are at our most open and vulnerable when we are in love. Since most of us didn’t get all we needed or wanted in our early lives, these same needs and desires arise in our relationships and are often expressed inappropriately. 

We may idealize our partner, who can then only fall from grace and disappoint us. We will never find a partner who meets all our historical desires, because these desires belong to the past: they are part of our frozen history. 

But relationships insist that we grow, open our hearts and become authentic. When a relationship is considered primarily as a vehicle for growth, we open ourselves up to profound psychological and spiritual challenges. The journey of human love may be the most profound activity for a human life. Depending as it does on our ability to know not only ourselves, but also to know our partner, a growthful relationship must be firmly founded on awareness, clarity, acceptance - and trust. 

When we meet someone who we are to develop a relationship with, a highly complex exchange happens. Unconsciously we offer denied aspects of ourselves to each other and the dynamics of the relationship are created, which gives the relationship its fundamental form and dictates its unfolding. Through the psychic exchange, each partner now ‘possesses’ a part of the other. Over time the two partners become polarized and resentful, because the other has a part of them that prevents them being their whole self.

Strong boundaries enable relationship. But how do loving relationships turn sour? How is it that the future partner we see across a crowded room and are immediately attracted to turns out, after ‘the honeymoon period’ is over, to be just like the previous partner who we learned to despise?

In the laws of physics, opposites attract, but in interpersonal relationships, the reverse is true: similars attract. The way in which this works is unconscious and mysterious. We meet someone and experience a strong attraction. During that first meeting we establish a contract - a binding agreement in which inner aspects of ourselves are exchanged through the process of projection. 

We may ‘give’, through projection, our beauty, our confidence or our ability to the other. Our future partner unconsciously invites and accepts these inner qualities to compensate for an imbalance or lack that she or he feels inside. This exchange of qualities goes on quite invisibly and unbelievably rapidly, when we meet a prospective partner. The success of this invisible process is so crucial to the emerging relationship that its failure is more common than we imagine. We are usually only aware of this mating ritual as a charged social interaction.

When couples break up because one of them is having counseling and the other is against it, the resistant ones often finds themselves in counseling after a few months doing what they had been so opposed to when they were in the relationship. The end of the relationship has meant that they can retrieve the projected part of them that wants to find out who they are and, without the partner carrying that part, they are now able to do it for themselves and face their own resistance, balanced with their enthusiasm for self-exploration.

Relationships, marriage and intimacy operate like a two-way mirror, reflecting each partner back to themselves. Alongside psychotherapy or counseling, relationships are the most potent way to self-knowledge. 

Our hiddenness, our concealment, our denial and our pretense are all grist for the mill in relationship. And the reason? Deep down we want to be loved - for ourselves. 

It is the radical healing task of psychotherapy and counseling to deal with this unspoken question, because the solution lies less in being loved by someone else than in loving oneself. 

BLOG entry #83

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. ‘Relationships and Marriage Counseling: A Way of Knowing and Loving Oneself’ was first published in 2011.

This short article aims to offer guidance in selecting a therapist or counselor in the psycho-spiritual field. Although aimed at psycho-spiritual therapists and clients much of what is written here applies to seeking a therapist or counselor of other psychological orientations.

If you are seeking a practitioner to work with, you should try to be clear about what you are seeking. Think of therapy and counseling as consisting of four levels: problem-solving or symptomatic counseling, therapy motivated by a presenting life issue (like a relationship or marriage breakdown, career and finances difficulties, facing a change in life or emotional crisis), depth psychotherapy which lasts longer and is likely to be more profoundly life-changing and, finally, the spiritual journey.

In so far as psycho-spiritual psychology is part of the spiritual field a number of misunderstandings have arisen from flimsy thinking. If you are a student, a client or a convert seeking guidance from a therapist, a guide or a spiritual teacher you are entitled to clarity. Just because spirituality is concerned with the in-visible, numinous realms of light, energy and inner reality doesn't mean that we cannot talk about it with precision, grace and vividness.

So, when you are approaching a practitioner of psycho-spiritual psychotherapy do not hold back. Ask challenging questions about their world view, their beliefs and their prejudices. Beware of references to teachers, religions, scriptures, yogis and rishis etc.; if it's wisdom, it should come directly from the practitioner.

Second, be clear about where the practitioner is on the spiritual journey; ask for definition, ask again if anything isn't clear, because you won't go further than the spiritual guide while you are in their care, so you can know immediately how far you're going and if this potential will satisfy you by asking these kinds of questions.

Third, remember this field is full of practitioners who don't know as much as they make out. Flaky ideas about spiritual wisdom, higher knowledge and non-verbal communication are all very well, but they may simply mask the fact that the practitioner doesn't know, isn't wise enough yet or doesn't know how to say it!

One more thing: many practitioners today wear several hats. But a good therapist is not necessarily a good teacher and vice versa, any more then a good author on a subject -- any subject -- is necessarily a good practitioner of what he writes about. So remember the roles of individual therapist, course leader and author reflect independent talents in your potential therapist.

Accolades, accreditation, training count for something, but empathy, presence and compassion are hard to learn in any training. So don't take anything for granted simply because the practitioner is trained and accredited. Well-qualified therapists exist who are mediocre, ineffective or no good at all and under-qualified ones exist who are tremendously gifted and innovative.

The rules are to listen and hear, use your instinct and intuition, and trust your gut-feeling when you are interviewing a potential therapist-guide. And remember that it is you who is interviewing the practitioner, not the other way round; you have nothing to prove to them. Ultimately, offer it up to a higher power, because if it is the right person for you to work with you will know, you will feel it and it will come together.

Richard Harvey, Psychotherapist, Author and Spiritual Teacher, makes the connection between counseling and psychotherapy and spiritual growth. He speaks particularly to those who are looking for more than they have found in therapy. And offers guidance to those seeking to undertake the inner journey - guidance free of dogma and grounded in what many of us experience as the "messiness" of our personalities.

Visit his website http://www.therapyandspirituality.com/ for inspiring ideas and practical help, and see http://www.therapyandspirituality.com/human-awakening.html for an overview of his approach.

BLOG entry #82

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. ‘Finding the Right Therapist or Counselor For You.’ was first published in 2011.

Richard Harvey answers questions about a new model of therapy.

For many people today psychotherapy is associated exclusively with mental illness. The traditional picture of the patient lying on the therapy couch with the doctor writing in a notebook still prevails. But there have been many changes and development in psychotherapy and notably in psycho-spiritual therapy. Could you say something about this?

Psychotherapy, therapy, healing, as I use these terms, may be different from what some people expect. In the sixties, a new model of therapy developed which had its roots in humanistic psychology and transpersonal psychology. The main points of departure were, first, that the client or patient was considered self-responsible, and motivated towards well-being.

Second, the therapist was a facilitator or guide in the service of the client’s (we didn’t say patient) process which is to say that the means by which clients realized their potential was always in their own hands (facilitated by the therapists), rather than subject to the whims, control and interventions of the so-called “expert approach” which had been the case with the previous psychologies (psychoanalysis and behaviorism) as they were applied in psychotherapy.

Third, therapy focused on the individual’s potential and stressed the importance of growth and self-actualization. The fundamental belief of humanistic psychology was that people are innately good, and mental and social problems result from deviations from this natural tendency.

But in spite of this, we will see the psychotherapist as an expert, do we not?

Yes, we continue to think of psychotherapy, like psychoanalysis, in a medical model executed by the, as you say, expert or doctor who will make you feel better, and therapy as a treatment that will make you well.

Psychotherapy is not “a cure”. The course of therapy may take you through a stage of feeling much worse, a stage which is mercifully followed often by a healing, radical change or transformation.

People are still stuck in the notion of psychotherapy as a fix, a cure, a palliative. Short-term therapy or counseling may provide that. But it is the task of transformative therapy to do much, much more: to bring about a second birth.

What is the ‘second birth’ and how is it brought about?

Through healing deeply and thoroughly the wounds of the past, balancing the energies of the body—psychologically, emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually—and facilitating, allowing and guiding people to give birth to their psyche or soul.

This “second birth” is the one that awaits everyone who is born a human being: it holds the possibility of true potential—the realization of one’s true nature. It is therefore without doubt hazardous, difficult and not for everyone. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be able to try.

What about criticisms of therapy and personal growth?

Therapy will always have it’s detractors I am sure. When it works, there are the cynics and when it doesn’t there’s a host of things that therapy takes the fall for. When your friend or relative is in distress and you find it intolerable to allow their suffering without intervention, problem-solving or making well-meant suggestions you are only being human after all. It’s not easy to see someone you love suffer. And yet suffering is not all bad! In depth psychotherapy we put ourselves on the line, by embracing suffering consciously in the name of healing and discovering who we really are.

We respect and validate the suffering and ordeal of, say, mountaineers, sports men and women, and people involved in voluntary work in third world countries. These people embrace suffering for the positive outcome their ordeal promises. But when it comes to inner work, inner processes, psycho-spiritual descent and rituals of initiation we have to refer to primitive cultures, often in the distant past, to find an equivalent sense of honor and reverence for the ordeal of the inner journey .

BLOG entry #81

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: Richard Harvey on A New Model for Therapy’ was first published in 2010.