meditation as psychotherapy

[Rajan Arulganesan]

Is it harmful in the long run for one's spiritual development to use yoga and meditation techniques as psychotherapeutic tools? I have always been tempted to seek out a yoga instructor or meditation advisor to calm my psychological and emotional unbalance, but,been fearful that this may simply treat the superficial 'existential' crisis and create a false sense of well being. The doctors are always Prozac happy and I do not want to go down this route. Is it better, in the long run to persevere with the various psychological phenomena that plagues you so that you may eventually work out what you are about? Any thoughts are welcome.

[Mike MacLeod]

I would have to agree with much that has been said here. But it is exceedingly tricky, as we all know well. For example, the ego is certainly an impediment to realization, in the broadest sense. But a teacher may use its mechanistic faculties to make some point that results in a kind of minor realization. Almaas says that the ego must mature to a certain point before it can be worked with successfully - why, I don't remember, but for other reasons than indulging it to the point where the person realizes that indulgence is a dead end.

If, like Ken Wilber or Freud or Almaas, the practicioner has a map of the mind, the process can move back and forth between personal issues and transpersonal issues. Perhaps the idea is to prune the personal problems back to the transpersonal roots that they spring from, then apply a different set of techniques to these.

Throughout Almaas' massive one-volume overview, The Inner Journey Home, he indicates that he has found that a certain phenomena presents at a certain time, as the result of "uncovering" some prior state or phenomenon. My experiences in Scientology suggest that there are interrelations like this, and furthermore that we have "file clerks" that know what needs to be addressed next and serve this up for consideration.

This is not to say that there can't be experiences like Eckhart Tolle's, where he blew away his illusions all at once, and Almaas devotes an appendix in this book to explaining how each teaching school pursues a path through the wilderness with roadmarks peculiar to that school.

[Kareana Kee]

Hi Michael,

The book is by Stephen Wolinsky, called "the Way of the human: the quantum psychology notebooks." I first read his book Trances People live and can say it is one of the best and most helpful books i could recommend, especially if you read "trances" as "veils" people live. To quote from the back of the book "Wolinsky shows us how we continue to recreate those traumas in our adult lives and how to stop creating them. Every uncomfortable emotional state, and many psychosomatic symptoms, are also states of trance. Trance is the "glue" that holds the problem in the present moment. Learning to identify the kind of trance state beneath a problem or symptom gives us the tool that finally dissolves the glue." Woolinsky himself has practiced mediation for 18 years at the time of writing (1991) and lived in a monastery in India for 6.
His theory goes that: our life is organised around core beliefs which he calls the organising principle through which we view life or our version of 'reality'and out of those core beliefs come various symptoms which are held in place by a 'deep trance phenomena' or type of hypnosis, such as when we are triggered into a regressed child state at the age of 50. The idea is that as you work with deep trance phenomena you come closer to the organising principle similiar to "untying the knot of the heart" in yogic literature. It is through freeing a person or untieing the knot that a psycho-emotional death takes place and and the old foundation is completely removed. "in other words, the "I" that believes that "Life is painful and bitter" dies or dissolves and a new "I" free of symptoms and limiting tance states, is formed. The person begins to allow an ever expanding awareness that includes in tis embrace the jewels of human life: new experiences of compassion, love, and oneness."

I must say, sometimes I feel confused about the Sufi path. One of the reason's I was attracted to it, was the claim to be about "becoming more human"...this had a very strong appeal, as therapy had been also about learning to accept who I was. This sat in direct contrast to a lot of people around me at the time who were all trying to be "enlightened" and were behaving very surgically with themselves and others trying to live up too this ideal....and believe me everybody sufferred for this! I still am not sure if it is sufism that encourages me to see the ego as bad or perhaps it is my own tendency to see myself as bad, that gets brought to the surface. Im remembering one of my last conversations with James (missing him) regarding the revelelation that everyone has an ego....for some reason that makes me feel so much better and human and normal. Perhaps a prerequisite to doing the work?

[Michael Larkin]

Mike,

On a personal note, I often find your posts affecting; on the one hand, your sense of alienation comes across strongly, and one wants to find some comforting, or still better, effective words of response. On the other, your sense of common humanity is infectious and also comes across strongly; one experiences gratitude for some of your observations.

Perhaps the two seeming opposites aren't unrelated. Maybe you feel so alienated precisely because you are so truly human. Ever thought about that?

[Michael Larkin]

Despite this, I am not completely debilitated by this, its just confusion I don't think its clinical and I am going to try and be calm and observational.

Glad to hear this, Rajan. The observer may start off as an intellectual construct, a conscious attitude of mind. In time, it can become more than that, something with what you might call heart intelligence, something in which you can remain centred, or if you occasionally leave it in moments of stress, soon rediscover it and return. I think it may be the proto-essential self.

[Michael Larkin]

...whereas, just putting on the pants and shirt, though it may make us feel a bit better, doesn't solve the underlying existential issue. Most modern treatment seems to be about making the mad prince look pretty normal in his clothes, eating human food and uttering human words, though he still lives under the table and thinks his chicken thoughts.

[Michael Larkin]

Kareana,

Nice to see that someone else agrees with me about the need to differentiate one thing from another, but at the same time, honour the different aspects of what is essentially the same substance. Who was it said it, incidentally?

Pedro,

A lovely story. I recognise the underlying structure of the process being described; I think it goes on inside us, with one part playing the mad prince, and the other the wise man. For me, the wise man is, once again, the observer. It gets to know us more and more intimately, and challenges our self-perception. We're all mad princes playing at being chickens in a mad, mad world. As we put on the pants and shirt, and so on, we gradually evolve, become that bit more human, and that's where I think the therapeutic by-product arises - allegorised by feeling warmer, etc.

[Kareana Kee]

Maybe this is a case of all paths lead to Rome? I sought therapy through having no where left to turn, somewhere along this path I came to understand a 'reality' beyond me and my ego and for the first time it seemed possible there was some meaning to all this sufferring or maybe more accurately all this sufferring was largely self imposed. It is interesting for at the time many of my friends were following a Buddhist path and were a little bit scornful of my self indulgent therapy. We often laugh about it know, because they have all hung up their robes are in therapy and im following a spirtual practice. There can be no doubt somehow these things are inter related. It seems to me the psychological issues we have to deal with do impact on our ability to be present with the One, and meditation will bring all of that to the surface. yet it also seems that being present with Allah, or at least the intention of it, seems to somehow have a healing effect. Some how grasping our human situation in it's entirety and remembering who we are changes everything. It is an interesting dilemma thought. I am a big fan of a guy who writes in the way of being human, that we must be careful not to collapse the various realms, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual etc that each dimension needs to be dealt with in that dimension and that becoming fully human is about embracing all theses parts of ourselves. I will include an exert here:

In order to understand the “self” and its connection to the underlying reality, I realized that “we” must first acknowledge that we are human. Understanding first and foremost our full human nature becomes important if we wish to stabilize our awareness of the void which is the underlying unity of our Quantum nature.

All too often in the past, i first sought my quantum nature by following psycho-spiritual disciplines, only to be “pulled out” or “forward “into and by my human nature. In fact, many paths of knowledge suggest it is our human nature that gets in the way of discovering and experiencing the underlying reality of our quantum nature. In Yoga-land for instance, emotions such as anger, jealousy, greed, lust and hatred are referred to as the five enemies. According to Buddah all pain arises because of desire. The dilemma seems to be that it is human nature to desire. In fact more pain is caused by resistence to desiring. After all what is desire but an impulse that comes as the EMPTINESS or underlying unity pulsates and contracts to become something. Quantum psychology sees pain as being caused by substituting biological desires, which are “have to’s” for psychological ‘wants’.
However in many spiritual systems, the body’s myriad emotions and basic human experiences (which are wired into the bodies flight/fight nervous system) are seen as undesirable, even bad and something to be gotten rid of, transformed and healed, thus implying they take us further away from our universal nature, commonly called God, the VOID, UNDIFFERENTIATED CONSCIOUSNESS or the SELF.
What i discovered however was the opposite. Emotional and psychological states are part of being human. States of compassion and unconditional love are qualities of our ESSENCE. This understanding led me to see that within the underlying unity of Emptiness there are different dimensions of manifestation, with different functions. And although each dimension is connected to and can influence other dimensions, each has its own function.
Briefly these eight dimensions are: One the external world, two the thinking world, three the emotional world, four the biological or animal world, five Essence, six, the no state of I AM, seven archetypes of collective UNCONSCIOUS, and eight the not I I.
How are some problems created? Unfortunately our awareness of the different functions of the dimensions becomes confused. When this occurs, we confuse one dimensions function with another dimensions function. This causes confusion and pain. For example attempts to change the thinking or emotional dimensions: trying to make them more unconditional loving, compassionate and forgiving, confuses the function of these dimensions. Rather these are the qualities of ESSENCE. Therefore we must understand the different dimensions of consciousness and their functions.
In this way we can allow each dimension of humanness to have its function, without trying to change, override, overcome, or trade in favour of the other. To illustrate it is the function of my hand to write, my mouth to take in food. Obviously my mouth and are connected as they are part of my body but have different functions. In the same way we often try to reform our animal nature (lust) or emotional dimension (anger) by being celibate or unconditionally loving. We can see that it rarely works. Why not? Because being unconditionally loving is not part of our animal or emotional nature, rather it is a function of our essence.
No dimension can be overcome or gone beyond in favour of another.....
Quantum physics has shown us beautifully that everything is made of the same substance. With this knowledge, how can anything be inherently bad, something to be gotten rid of, or something that can lead us away from our true nature? We must therefore appreciate all of our dimensions of being human with the understanding that each dimension has a function, and let each dimension work according to its nature. This means not substituting or trying to overcome one dimension, like using ESSENCE to overcome the emotional dimension. This is the way of the Human, to understand and allow all the dimensions to function, without resistance, they way they were meant to function. This can be called the development of a FUNCTIONAL AWARENESS. FUNCTIONAL AWARENESS can be defined as the ability to place awareness on any one dimension, all dimensions simultaneously, or no dimensions, until awareness itself disappears in the VOID, rather than having awareness habitually fixated on only one or two dimensions.
Nisargadatta Maharaj once asked a man: “Why are you coming to see me?” “Because the guru takes away the negative and gives us our true nature,” he said. Maharaj replied: “There is nothing anyone can take away from you or give to you which you are not already since there is only THAT ONE CONSCIOUSNESS.”
All this considered I am proposing that as humans we have an animal nature, a thinking nature, an emotional nature that contains feelings, and an ESSENCE with its essential qualities, etc. Awareness “unfortunately” seems to get fixated on one or two dimensions. These dimensions need to BE without interference in order to liberate awareness which might help to discover who you are. Stated another way, Quantum psychology defines spirituality as the realisation that there is only ONE substance, then true spirituality must include everything from emotions, to thoughts and from fantasies to the physical body – since there is only THAT ONE SUBSTANCE.

[Michael Larkin]

Mike,

I suppose there may be individual differences, but in my case, therapy in the psychological sense has been a by-product of my spiritual seeking. If you seek therapy with a bone-fide therapist, I suppose you might get it, and I'm not denying that. But if you seek therapy whilst kidding yourself you're seeking spirituality, you seem to get neither. On the other hand, if you truly seek spirituality (or maybe Truth is a better word), you sometimes get therapy without understanding how or why you got better.

This is my one reservation about Almaas. He seems to place quite a lot of emphasis on what appears essentially to be a psychotherapeutic approach. Maybe that works for some, I can't say, but for me, it seems it could possibly be putting the cart before the horse, at least when one's ultimate aim is spiritual rather than therapeutic.

[Michael Larkin]

For those who like to think of themselves as being “a seeker”, there is a subtle trap, and one that I admit to having fallen into in the past. We may not like to think that our problems are psychological, but that they are spiritual. We aren’t just encountering a psychological issue, such as a neurosis, but a significant spiritual challenge. So what do we do? Maybe we hie ourselves hence to yoga classes, meditate or read self-help books or whatever. Whilst seeking therapy, we kid ourselves we are seeking nirvana.

Trying to fix a problem in itself is fine, but we can’t cure the nose with a remedy for the ear. There is no substitute for discerning what the problem actually is. Having said that, let’s not lose sight of the fact that the problem, whether it’s psychological or spiritual, needs attending to. And here’s one thing: even if we tackle a problem in the wrong way, it may not be entirely useless. At some point, there’s the chance one will realise the diagnosis and remedy is wrong. It may take years, but it can happen. And it’s through this process of finding things out the hard way that we may learn the art of discernment. It may sometimes be the only feasible way, in fact.

If I sound sometimes like I have long been in some lofty state where I can clearly see what is what, that’s not the case. I’ve spent years and years learning the hard way to discern one thing from another. Looking back, I see that that was more or less inevitable. We all start off with the particular hand we are dealt with, and have little choice but to play it. It doesn’t help that our societies are as clueless as we are about things. No two experts in the fields of psychology and psychiatry will entirely agree. In religion and spirituality, there is also much diversity, much that seems diametrically opposed.

With doubtless a few exceptions, in the end, only we ourselves can come to discern what the real issue is and hence how to deal with it. We may have a friend, physician or guru who can tell us in so many words what it is, but the words may never really sink in until we verify them through experience. We all have to make our own mistakes, and there’s no way round that.

Very occasionally, it does happen that someone will say the right thing to us at precisely the right time, and all of a sudden the scales will fall from our eyes. But more often than not, when the scales do fall, we realise belatedly that words spoken (or even thought by ourselves) years earlier, had we truly been able to listen to them, would have been able to liberate us.

In the end, I think it’s a spectrum. Physical, psychological and spiritual are on the same continuum. However, like the electromagnetic spectrum, it’s very useful to be able to differentiate the regions - visible, infra-red, radio, microwave, ultra-violet, and so on. Very useful, as it were, to be able to sit inside a isolating chamber with an aperture over which we can place different kinds of filtering device to determine the nature of incoming radiation and deal with it appropriately. This is one very crude analogy of the still centre, the observer or witness. We are always there, but the aperture is large and everything enters unfiltered. No wonder sometimes we are confused!

[Mike MacLeod]

Hi Kareana,

I agree about the dehumanization. It's reached an appalling level in the USA.

I agree that groups are not therapy; it's more that therapy is the pre-group work necessary to be able to work in that environment.

In all these years I have yet to get to that level. I simply can't interact with other people, which was the root of my problems at work all these years. What is even stranger is that I don't understand why this is. To me, human relationships are often laced with cruelty, lies, arrogance, and other poisons. I have never been able to shake these off, or recover easily from them, though I return to more or less normal in hours or days rather than years, as was the case up until I was about 40.