This fall I have done a lot rethinking about the role of God within psychology as I work on my training to become a supervisor-educator within Canadian Association of Spiritual Care (CASC). I remember 15 years ago heading into Pastoral Counselling Education (PCE) through CASC with the hope of understanding better how God’s spirit functioned within the psychological realities of the human being. I was already a trained spiritual direction who had a deep appreciation for the dynamics of God’s spirit within human experience and so I thought pastoral counselling education would help me understand even better the spiritual movements and resistances within the human soul. After 4 years of learning and practicing many psychological counselling techniques, I came away more confused than enlightened about how the Divine interacted with the human soul. Only one model I learned (focusing-oriented psychotherapy) had any notion of metaphysics tied to it. It seemed that the dynamic of God’s spirit and an understanding of the human soul was missing in almost all psychological models, that there was little spiritual connection between God and psychology. For the past eleven years, I have been a member of the Diamond Approach school in Toronto. Unlike other psychologies I had encountered before, the Diamond Approach was a sacred psychology built on the integration of the main religious mystical traditions (Sufi (Islam), Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, etc.) with many schools of psychology for the purpose of spiritual growth and realization. This Diamond Approach does have a psychology of Essence at its centre and a clear understanding of the human soul and how the ego structures studied in different psychological models impact the human soul and our experience of the Divine. This sacred psychology resonates quite true for me as I help people, as a Christian pastoral counselor-trained spiritual director, grow in their ability to express more fully the many spiritual fruits of God’s spirit. In doing so, people grew in their ability to be Christ-like people in the world. It was partly because of this experience with the Diamond Approach that I was invited to become a provisional supervisor-educator within CASC this year. This fall, as I have been part of the teaching team to PCE students, I have asking myself the same question I asked 15 years, “Where is God’s spirit within the dynamics of all these psychological models we are teaching?” However, this time I am seeing something that I didn’t see back in my training days. I am starting to see how the dynamic of Divine is found at the very centre of the theory of change within most counselling models although seldom acknowledged. Let me share my hypothesis. Most counselling models see the primary issue for people as that of attachment in some form. In solution-focused therapy, the attachment is to the problem that we struggle with. In narrative therapy, the attachment is to a certain narrative or story we keep believing and living. In cognitive behavior therapy, we are attached to a certain limited way of thinking. We can become attached to how we view ourselves (self image), others, the world, life, and God. We can become attached to both intense negative or positive experiences from our past. We can become attached to always functioning from our heads (thinking) or always function from our hearts (emotions) or always functioning from our will (doing/busy). We can become attached to behaviors (addictions and compulsions). We can become attached to living for the outside world (pleasing others, making lots of money, achievements, caregiving, etc.) that we lose connection to our centre within our soul. We can become attached to a whole host of life coping patterns. We can become attached to the roles we play in our families. There are so many ways that people can become attached. When we are attached, we are chained to whatever we are attached to. All of these attachments have some common characteristics. Each attachment causes us to have a limited view of life, others, and us. Each attachment is governed by a set of rules that controls how think, feel, and behave. The more powerful the attachment is in our lives, the more the attachment restricts our life and freedom. When this attachment has full control of our life, we have become fully identified with the attachment. It has become the central organizing principle in our life. When this happens, we can’t imagine our life unfolding in any other way. Within the Christian tradition, when we have become identified with our attachment, we find ourselves outside of God’s Garden of Eden of love, truth, and grace in a fallen world governed by sin, laws, judgements, and suffering. These psychological models describe different ways of understanding the fallen condition or nature within the human being. However, these counselling models also have within each of them a theory of change. If you look at each of them, you see that each healing paradigm is seeking to move the person’s sense of self or perspective from their attachment to some place outside that attachment. In other words, the therapist is helping the client create space between their sense of self and the issue they are identified with...like looking down at their life from a balcony. Let me provide some examples to illustrate what I mean. Within solution focused therapy, the client is encouraged to consider how they would experience life beyond their problem if that happened. A narrative therapist helps the client moves to a place beyond their current problematic narrative where they possibly can contemplate a new narrative, one that includes more aspects of life experience. Through helping the client move to the balcony perspective, the client is able to view their family dynamics through the lens of family systems theory which they experience very differently than when they are lost in the experience of their family dynamics. Through the empty chair technique in gestalt therapy, the therapist helps the client create space between herself and the person/issue she is attached to…who is sitting in the empty chair. By helping the client focus on their experience in the present moment, the therapist helps the client create space between themselves and their history (reliving past) or their future (worries/fantasies). If you look closely at counselling modalities, you see similar strategies at work, where the counsellor is seeking to help the client shift their sense of self so that there is space between themselves and the attachment or issue they are suffering from. This space that forms between a client’s sense of self and their attachment is central to most, if not all, theories of change within the different psychological models. It is from this emerging spaciousness that insights and moments of compassion, strength, determination, freedom, resilience, self control, etc. arise leading to our clients experiencing positive shifts, instants of transformation and new ways of being and understanding themselves, others and life. What is the source of these experiences at the base of all these theories of change that these psychological healing modalities depend on? Within the Diamond Approach, this sense of spaciousness or emptiness is how our human soul experiences itself when it is free from the structuring aspects of our egoic personality. The Diamond Approach also teaches that it is from this place of spaciousness that the qualities of Essence arise from and enter our human experience, qualities such as truth/understanding, compassion, strength, joy, love, determination, inner support, power, etc. As Christians, we see these qualities of Essences as the fruits of God’s spirit. This understanding from the Diamond approach explains why, when people experience this sense of space arising in their experience through the help of their therapist, certain dynamics of the human soul become active and begin to influence and minister to our soul and more structured egoic personality. Let me provide a couple of examples to illustrate what I mean. Within family system therapy, a client is invited to take a balcony view of their family dynamics. In creating this space between themselves and their family, they begin to see their family and the roles they play in a different way. Insights come to them. As they see these insights, they may begin to experience compassion for themselves or for the family members they realized they have hurt. They may experience anger-like inner strength that allows them make changes that they thought not possible. They may experience a graciousness toward themselves and others where before they were judgemental. All of these experiences of understanding, compassion, strength, and grace are seen as qualities of Essence within the Diamond Approach for we don’t create these experiences; we are recipients of them and receive them as gifts. True, we have the ability to channel, manage, control and even stopped these divine qualities from arising in our lives and soul, but we cannot create them. We can create imitations of these essential aspects in our lives, but these ego-based acts of love or compassion or strength are experienced by us and others as very different than when these fruits of the spirit freely arise in our soul in response to what we are experiencing in our life. What I have described happening through the space that arises through family system counselling is true of other counselling modalities. When a client experience space between themselves and their problem in solution-focus therapy, that is when insight arises and other essential qualities that makes it more possible for them to imagine experiencing life beyond their persistent problem. This is why when a client experiencing space between their critic voice in their head and their wounded child part that they often experience in their body that a person receives insights to their internal struggle and feelings of compassion and an anger-like strength that makes it possible for them to break the powerful grip of the internal critic in their life. This space that can form between us and our tight limited repetitive narratives makes it possible to see the experiences of difference or exception (insights/truth) that are often overlooked leading to new more truer narrative that capture more fully the experience of our lives and past. Helping clients nurture this space between their attachment and their sense of self is the secret behind most theories of changes in psychology. This space is also the doorway to allowing qualities of Essence, as understood through a Diamond Approach lens, or the fruits of God’s spirit, as understood through a Christian lens, to emerge in our counselling practice when we are helping people. This is why we, as counsellors, often experience our ministry settings as sacred moments for we are truly witnesses to our client experiencing the sacred in our midst. When we compare what happens in a pastoral counselling session to the practice of prayer, we realize that pastoral counselling understood in this way is a form of prayer. When we pray about a problem or issue, the act of effective prayer intentionally creates space between our sense of self and the problem or issue we are attached to. It is from that sense of spaciousness that we experience the spirit of God responding, interacting, ministering to our soul and life. Thanks be to God.
Questions to ponder:
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