52 - Therapy

Most of us struggle in our lives to meet responsibilities, to upgrade our condition including that of others, to do a worth-the-while objective, to partake of the heritage of our civilizations. And sharing in the destinies of our Planet, most of us are to a smaller or larger degree subject to being pummeled and battered. Pummeled and battered in our sensibilities, our self-esteem, our self-confidence, challenged in our values, our philosophies, our beliefs, our performances or skills.

Our targets tend to lead us into a narrow purview. Sometimes they even lock us in a bind, obsessively, masking the relevance or meaningfulness of our motivations in terms of a wider purview. We may reach a point where we realize that we are by passing the major issue: that something went wrong. That which draws our attention to this realization is suffering. One did not realize that one was unhappy with oneself, with circumstances, with one's way of thinking or behaving. One is causing others suffering inadvertently because one is disgruntled, disenchanted. The warning has sounded!

Our good-wishers will say: you're pushing yourself too much, relax, take it easy, give yourself a break, perhaps a holiday, forget your homework while sharing convivial conversations.

One has not realized that the reason that one finds it difficult to be peaceful is one secretly despises that lazy person chronically lying on the beach, compulsively eating chocolate cakes and aimlessly chatting about trivialities.

The therapist will enjoin: get in touch with your feelings are you happy? If not why not? You may repartee: I really have no time to decide whether I am happy or not, nor do I know whether I am or not.

Reader, you have identified the workaholic. Unmistakably! One has become obsessed with one's will at the cost of one's emotions. The personal squeezes one into one's trip at the cost of what it is all about.

Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan makes this clear when, while appreciating the power that one gains by achievement, he points out that the objective that one sets out to do limits the power. The more impersonal the objective is, that is the more dedicated to service, the greater the sovereignty gained. This way of looking at things sets priorities - fulfillment over achievement. Fulfillment defines a broader spectrum and implies that one's being enhances in the pursuit of the objective rather than sacrifices for the objective.

This is where meditation comes in, if rather than pursuing stress reduction, it fosters self-discovery and self-enfoldment. But you may ask: where does therapy come in? Therapists are teaching us to be kind to ourselves. Spiritualists are teaching us to be kind to our soul.

Pain in the body or the psyche is a warning signal. Our programming is drawing our attention to something that needs to be dealt with. First it needs to be acknowledged. It may be telling us that our present course is not proving fulfilling, and inviting us to consider a change of tack. Perhaps our pain spells our response to that of another or others; therefore it is telling us that our present course does not match our need to be of service.

Where there is pain, there is damage; it could be damage to the psyche, which affects our self-esteem, and then our efficiency or effectiveness. Where there is damage, there is a need of therapy. Wherever possible, the patient needs to be protected from the stressful agent; which admittedly is not always easy or even feasible.

Most importantly, one needs to be appraised of that built-in programming with which we are gifted. The cosmic power of regeneration might be trusted, and we might lend ourselves to its therapeutic effect. This is where faith comes in, which has proven decisive in healing. It requires a commitment on our part to avoid letting ourselves into a recurrence of the trauma, or paradoxically, obsessively seeking the trauma, as in an addiction.

No doubt the spiritual contribution to the therapy does consist in balancing the thrust of the personal will by giving vent to an impersonal will, called 'passive volition', as illustrated in meditative practices. There is obviously a place for both, or they may even balance or combine; in fact they are the poles of the same thing.

The better informed strata of the population have learned from an interface between the world's spiritual traditions. The interface points to two complementary solutions that for the sake of simplicity one might find illustrated in (I) Buddhism, (II) Sufism.

The first one evidences the need to shield oneself, protect oneself by as Buddha says: placing a sentinel at the doors of perception. This does not mean shutting the door to the input from the environment - both physical and psychological - but filtering that input including that of one's own psyche.

The spiritual factor highlights the excellence of qualities in our being, which we tend to overlook when dissatisfied with ourselves. The dissatisfaction stems from our underplaying our resourcefulness. Simply overlaying our foibles with pride in our divine excellence would prove to be a clear case of an esoteric school "spiritual by pass". Nor would the voidness of the self, or of the world prove any more helpful.

The operation of the built-in repair system of the psyche is of an identical nature with that of the regeneration of body cells. Unless overstressed, the enzymes governing the replication of the DNA by the RNA and vice-versa will correct mistakes, like self-correcting spelling software. Even so any distortions in our psyche may get ironed out by our faculty of replicating our real being in our personality that remains unscathed by the distortions. Thus our psyche can be restored to its pristine glory if we so decide.

The operative factor here fostering the repair process is confidence and even an intuitive grasp of one's eternal being. No doubt one needs to protect the conviction that one gains by grasping it from the psychic environment, because this is where our self-image is based. Here detachment avers itself a safeguard.

The counterpart is rather than seeking refuge in one's eternal being, to work on one's self-image. This is done not so much by ironing out the distortions, but by positively reconstructing it the way we want it to be. Now that is creativity.

Here rather than unclutching from the environment in an ivory tower, which is often the way of meditation, the creative person fosters the interaction between the perfect model and the environment. This is the art of the composer: capture something of the trend of the time, but add a positive and original lead.

Here the party-line psychological approach would foster building a strong personal self. The spiritual factor would consist in fostering the convergence of the transcendent dimensions of one's being into one's ego consciousness so that one's creativity gains a cosmic stature.

The Sufis say God creates and recreates Him/Herself in and through us in the measure that we reverse our vantage point and grasp the divine operation in us. Clearly these two approaches, rather than contradictory are complementary.
