What Is The Connection Between Psychotherapy And Spirituality?
Living in the modern world fuelled by rolling news, endless social media and the after effects of a global pandemic is proving difficult for many of us to navigate. We’re over stimulated and highly anxious and many of our deep rooted past traumas have found their way from the depths of our inner sanctum to the forefront of our consciousness. We’re dealing with a plethora of heightened emotions and it can be difficult to know how to make ourselves feel better in the face of rapidly changing circumstances. Here Oxford-educated Transpersonal psychotherapist and author of ‘Gateways To The Soul’, Dr. Serge Beddington-Behrens, MA (Oxon.), Ph.D., K.S.M.L. explores how we can use both psychotherapy & the principles of spirituality to heal our inner selves and live a more centred, happier life amongst the chaos.
Traditional psychotherapy deals primarily with a person's ego identity or with their personality or ego self. Here, the name of the game is not to help a client evolve as a human being, i.e. try to grow out of their problems, but rather to feel better, not feel so traumatised, become more confident, be less narcissistic, work through one's difficult relationship with father and mother, etc.
There is nothing ‘wrong' with this approach per se, and it would be untrue to say that no advancement occurs. However, I believe that what is achieved is limited and for me the meaning of ‘healing' is not just ‘feeling better' but also advancing one's understanding of what it means to be human. For me, Psychotherapy needs to be aimed towards the creation of a new, higher order human being who has more love in his or her heart, more courage and more capacity to help heal a broken world and replace it with a society that works for all.
Soul work
The traditional therapeutic approach does not see that a client with problems also possesses a higher soul self which needs to evolve - which may need assistance to ‘come out of the closet' - and that if this occurs, it may be possible for the client to grow beyond their problems which may also be connected to the narrow three dimensional time-space reality in which they primarily operate in. In a word, the world view of the traditionalist is narrow and is more concerned with the idea of ‘fixing' someone as opposed to helping them ‘evolve'.
A spiritual perspective is very different. When I work with someone, I recognise that who I am and who the client is, is much more than just our egoic or our personality identities. Who we are is a soul, a timeless being, who also has an egoic side and both these aspects of ourselves, or both ‘selves' need to be worked with in the light of each other. Working spiritually, therefore, means that I bring many more dimensions to the table. My ultimate goal is not just to have a person feel less anxious, although certainly that is something, but ultimately to help them live with more compassion and balance.
A lack of joy or deep love
I often recognise that what ‘holds' some of a person's problems in place is that there is a lack of real joy or a deep love (both spiritual qualities) in their lives and therefore, I may need to help them work at developing these qualities. I also recognise that the reason a person may feel a lot of conflict is not simply because of a tussle between different parts of themselves wanting different things, but also because they do not meditate and so bring inner harmony into their lives. Thus, I regard it as very therapeutic if they would learn to meditate. Similarly, if we fear having a transcendent or sublime experience, we may be denying ourselves the ability to access realms of being which could be profoundly healing for us. It is well known, for example, that if someone touches into a higher level of consciousness, be it naturally, via meditation or even through a hallucinogenic substance, that this can have a profound effect on them and can heal certain problems that they've been struggling with all their lives. Indeed, many people's problems today emerge from a tendency to deny, or disassociate from their spiritual nature. As Carl Jung put it: ‘when soul is neglected, it doesn't just go away. It appears symptomatically in obsessions, addictions, violence and loss of meaning.'
More than ego
So what is the antidote? For me it is soul. Indeed, as I argued in my book, at one level, we can put most of the bigger psychological problems we have in the world, i.e., alienation, depression, racism, violence, down to the fact that our soul realm is never let out of the closet. Truly soulful people do not feel violently towards their fellow human beings or experience feeling separate, as they know that it is only their ego identity telling them that and that who they truly are, is much more than their egos.
Darkness to light
When I work with a client, I work with the same issues as a traditional psychotherapist, only I bring a greater range to operate from. Not only can I, dimensionally speaking, take them ‘higher' but I can also take them ‘lower'. Many people today are in very dark places inside themselves and can only do deep shadow exploratory work if they have first been introduced to spirituality. When soul is activated in someone, they can begin to look at a problem which, if only seen from an egoic perspective, appeared horrendous, now looks much less severe. It may even shift from just being a problem and morph into becoming an evolutionary opportunity. For example, why it is so important to view this current pandemic through a soulful eye is that it ceases solely to be a terrible scourge and may even be regarded as a harbinger of change. Death, which, from ego's viewpoint, is only seen as ‘bad', may become, when soul enters the picture, the creator of rebirth.
I distinguish spirituality from religion. Many religious people are spiritual but many who are highly institutionalised and in the case of the evangelist, are full of resentments and prejudices, are the very opposite.
A powerful perspective
There are many stages in the evolution of our soul self and its unfurling needs to happen gradually. One must never think that if one transcends or bypasses all one's ‘lower, personality problems', that they will go away without being worked through, as this is not the case. It is the mistake made by many who go to ashrams and sit with gurus. Our personality issues always need working through, and if the psychotherapist is a soul-oriented one, this can occur from a deeper and more powerful perspective.
This is why the spiritual and the therapeutic processes need to occur together and be seen in the light of each other and very much need each other. For me, the best spiritual teachers are those who are also therapeutically trained, and the best psychotherapists are those who also have a spiritual practice. The fact that I work spiritually with people does not mean that I talk about God and prayer and soul all the time. God forbid! It is all about subtlety. It means that I come from a deeper level, resonate a strong ‘soul field', and because I can see my client from a much broader perspective - be aware of their deeper issues, which they may not yet be aware of or have even voiced to me - I can thus create a whole new, higher-order context which we can work together from.
About the book
A guide on how to live more soulfully and, in so doing, transform yourself and the planet
Explores the connections between healing your personal wounds and healing the planet.
Explains how embracing unitive qualities such as love, friendship, joy, courage, forgiveness, and truth, as well as facing your Shadow sides and confronting world evil, enables you to move through important gateways leading to soul.
Offers a variety of transpersonal exercises, meditations, and guided visualizations.
Humanity is in a great crisis of soul today, but there is also much good will around. As a species, we are challenged to start embracing a new story, one that enables us to be less greedy and materialistic and to espouse peace not war, kindness not cruelty, and heart as opposed to indifference. What we need is to bring more soul into the world. In this guide about engaging in inner work to bring change into the world, Dr. Serge Beddington-Behrens reveals how the healing of our personal wounds combined with the growing of our soul life leads us directly to the addressing of world problems. Sharing inspirational stories from his own personal journey of becoming a transpersonal psychotherapist, shaman, and activist, he shows you how, by transforming your inner world, you begin creating important positive ripples that reverberate around all areas of your outer one. The exercises and meditations he has devised will not only help you heal and become more fully human but also enable you to bring a very different kind of awareness—a sacred awareness—into all areas of your everyday life. Not only will this enable you to experience more joy and meaning as you increasingly disconnect from the clutches of the system, but you will also find yourself opening your heart, reclaiming your personal power, bringing in new myths for humanity to live by, and gradually shifting away from being part of the problems in the world to becoming a core part of their solution.
About the author
Dr. Serge Beddington-Behrens, MA (Oxon.), Ph.D., K.S.M.L., is an Oxford-educated Transpersonal psychotherapist, shaman, activist, and educator, awarded an Italian knighthood twenty years ago for services to humanity. For forty years he has conducted spiritual retreats all over the world. In the 1980s, he cofounded the Institute for the Study of Conscious Evolution in San Francisco. He is the author of Awakening the Universal Heart.
#Inconversation - Podcast Series
This week Natalie is joined by her former co-star actress & author Samantha Giles as they talk about the highly anticipated launch of Samantha’s debut children’s novel ‘Rosemary & The Witches of Pendle Hill’. Reflecting on how Samantha’s children inspired the original concept of the book, they also discuss Samantha’s interest in spiritually, the practices of Wicca and the detoxifying effects of the lockdown.
