Meditation or Therapy - Which one do I need?

13th September 2016

---

What is spiritual awakening?

Taking a spiritual journey is a truly courageous act. To some degree a true spiritual awakening is not a choice – it’s something that comes to the soul at the right time. It’s true it may coincide with a major life event, loss or dark tunnel or often it might start to happen of it’s own accord during significant transitions. Many people will judge you for taking that journey but what they don’t realize is that it’s often not a decision but a calling.

So the first couple of years of awakening may be (but are not always) really quite incredible. It could be as if one is lifted up from the mundane into new realms and levels of consciousness and a huge burden has been lifted from your shoulders. I experienced it as if I had the eyes of a child once again and all I could see was beauty everywhere I looked. The experience was just like falling in love but this was a very deep love the kind of love that could easily make human relationships seem less significant than they were before. Spiritual emergence can totally throw your life upside down for that very reason – it is powerful, more vivid than reality and like nothing you’ve ever experienced in your life. It is for that reason that people going through it need the right support and to stay grounded.

My experience was that at a time of my life when I hit rock bottom the light found me. This led to several years of experimentation with a variety of meditation techniques ranging from Tibetan Buddhism, Hindu chanting, Raj Yoga and Mindfulness. I was drawn to the mystical and transcendant traditions that typically take you beyond your body into regions of light and silence. I can say now years later that those years of practice changed my life. I learned about stillness, simplicity, the power of the mind and the responsibility we all have to enter into a deep journey of self-compassion and acceptance that has become my life’s work. The reason it can be so life changing is simply because it involves a shift in identity from seeing oneself as a body to seeing oneself as a spiritual being inhabiting a body. It sounds simply but actually to realize this is profound.

There are many therapists though who are very cautious about spiritual practices because they believe that by choosing to transcend you are choosing to avoid or by-pass your pain and it is by going through your pain that you get to the light. This was Jung’s belief and experience and I have no doubt that was his truth. However not all transcendent practices are totally avoidant. I remember sitting in silence many a time witnessing and allowing my tears to flow as I released some old tears and feeling a greater sense of ‘aliveness’ and integration as a consequence. I believe meditation is absolutely about facing oneself and with the right guidance you can learn to let go of a lot of pain but the difference is that you learn to let it go without collapsing into a heap of suffering. For me the purpose of spiritual practice is to learn kindness, compassion and love for oneself which can then be extended out into the world.

The tricky thing is that many spiritual practices are not very well held nowadays or adapted adequately to the Western lifestyle. People also carry a lot of pain from dysfunctional childhoods and trauma that they don’t even know they have inside until they start to look at themselves. It is for this reason that spiritual organisations need to clean up their acts and deal with their own dysfunction so that they are safer and responsible places to be. Unfortunately in the name of transcending many of them have major blindspots and as a consequence their focus is so much on the light they deny their darkness and therein lies the problem.

We are light and dark – if you are human you have human side and you carry some vulnerability and wounding. When I did my spiritual practice I found myself collapsing into this frequently because the ideals I was aspiring to were so high and I had such low self-esteem anyway and so typically what happened is I would experience a blissful high followed by a low and then would feel the unworthiness eating me up from the inside. I know I’m not alone there.

What happens in therapy?

So this is where therapy comes in. Therapy is a place to learn to be with and witness all of me……..and trust me there’s a lot to ‘be with’. We are complex human beings with multiple layers and the human side and our bodies are also an important part of living on this planet. If our focus is too much on the light unfortunately the shadow only gets bigger and so as I see it now the broader journey is to acknowledge all aspects of who we are and reach a place of loving acceptance with all of it……..the warts and all approach. A therapist is a witness, an aly and someone who can ‘see’ all of you and be in relationship with you. Therapy is about being relational and human whereas spiritual practices are about moving the focus more on the light and breaking attachment to the people and things of this world.

For some therapy does mean collapsing into their wounds and feeling them instead of splitting them off or denying they exist. For others they’ve done enough of that and what they need is to know that there is an existential holding space or ‘light’ that can hold them when they are feeling like giving up or the pain of a loss so great they just don’t know how to be with it.

My experience is that the spiritual communities fear therapy because they think that it takes people away from their practice and ultimately people who go into therapy leave spiritual organisations. On the flipside Therapeutic Institutions are fearful of spiritual organisations because they meet so many casualties of cults and people who have been brainwashed to such an extent that they have very little sense of self beyond their spiritual identity. I guess you could say they are polar opposites because therapy is all about cultivating a stronger sense of ‘self’ and spiritual practice can be about letting go of the ‘I’ and surrendering ego. So in one camp ego is good and in the other it is bad.

So which one is right?

In my view now 25 years later. Both are right. If your ego is too weak and you struggle to even function in the world you probably need therapy and if your ego is fully formed and you’ve lived a life and something is missing or there’s a search for meaning then maybe you need to explore your spirituality. However there are many many ways to do that. Ranging from the fully grounded Buddhist practices to the very un-grounded transcendental journeys. I think the key point here is timing. Is it healthy to follow a ‘full on’ spiritual practice when someone is very young? In my view now – probably not. I’ve not met anyone who was raised as a child into a spiritual practice who has come through it unscathed. There has to be a balance of living and being in the world, forming relationships, experimenting and finding a sense of self before one tries to let it all go.

Take both therapy or spiritual practice very slowly and make sure that whatever you do – you include your body in some way. Learn to keep your feet firmly on the earth and use your body as a resource through breathing and bodywork. Finally and most importantly everyone is human – even and especially spiritual teachers. Don’t mistake spiritual power for true spirituality. If anyone tries to get you to be subservient to them in some way – then walk away. True spirituality is about ever-increasing freedom and wholeness and never about giving your power to other people.

All great therapists understand that they too are flawed and wounded and never put themselves into an advising or guiding role. If your therapist is influencing your decisions too much……it’s time to find a new therapist. Spiritual practice does have a lot to offer that many people in the therapeutic world are simply missing out on and cynically dismissing.

I would welcome a coming together of these two worlds and I believe that some of the greatest therapists also value some kind of spirituality in their work. In truth spiritual organisations are in desperate need of therapeutic intervention and those that have it are definitely healthier for it and therapeutic institutions need to realize the power of a stronger existential holding for their clients and therapists.

---

More blog posts

---