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Spiritual Self-Inquiry
Leslie Ihde LCSW, 15 Oakcrest Rd., Ithaca, NY  607.754.1303

The teacher/student relationship

12/14/2014

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This morning I awoke thinking about what it is to be a spiritual seeker.  In other words, if you study with an awakened teacher, what is the best attitude to cultivate in yourself?  I think that this question has many aspects and that it is an important question for anyone who wants to begin the work of studying with a teacher.  It is also important to consider if you are already studying with a teacher but have questions about your way of relating to your teacher.

As a therapist, I am familiar with the many ways that a client can relate to me.  Freud taught that therapists should explore transference and countertransference.  In transference, the patient projects onto the therapist a meaning that he or she needs to see into.  If the patient’s predominant psychic difficulty was manifest with his or her father, for example, that patient might project the meaning of father onto the person of the therapist.  The therapist might then expect the patient to manifest attitudes toward him that resembled the patient’s attitudes toward his or her father.  When you work as a therapist, this attitude can be so palpable that at times it is as if that father is in the room with you and your patient!

Countertransference is the therapist’s projection onto the patient.  Very often, the therapist projects an aspect of him or herself onto his patient.  This projected side might be the therapist’s own inner child, or recalcitrant attitudes, or any other aspect of himself that the therapist has not sufficiently transcended.  For this reason it is crucial that you choose a therapist who has a great deal of self-awareness.  If you don’t, you will be subject to therapist’s projections.  The relationship between the therapist and patient can become a dance of projection.  If projections are seen through, it can be a great asset to both on the journey of self-discovery.  If not seen, the dance of projection ties the exploratory effort in knots.

In the case of the relationship between a spiritual teacher and a student, it is also critical that both be aware of projections.  If the teacher is free from attachment, and by that I mean free from the identification with personality as the sole locus of being, then the teacher should be beyond projection as a sticky and rigid way of experiencing life.  In other words, if the teacher is awake, what the teacher is awake to would be, in part, the meanings and projections that constitute the bulk of most people’s level of awareness in their relations with one another.  An awakened teacher experiences him or herself as both Self and manifestation simultaneously.  At least that is my experience.  For that reason, although projection and meaning still appear, they also ebb away easily.

As a student, your job is to know the dignity of yourself as human consciousness.  You are an invaluable manifestation of Self, precious to the core, even if at this time your life is suffering because you don’t yet know yourself to be free.  When you develop a relationship with a teacher, do not surrender your awareness that your true being is Self coming to see itself.  You will need to be especially careful to notice what you may be projecting onto your teacher.  In psychic terms, if you project your knowing side, or parent side, or wisdom side onto another person, you may be surrendering your power as seer in your own right.  On the other hand, you don’t know in the way that the teacher does.  Or perhaps it is better to say, you don’t know in the way that the teacher is.  If the teacher has not attained a level of freedom greater than yourself, why would you seek the guidance of that teacher?

You must retain the awareness that you are a freedom.  You can’t simply believe or follow a teacher as if the teacher knows and you don’t know.  On the other hand, you can’t proceed as if you know when you do not.  So what is the right attitude?

I like the Zen notion of beginner’s mind.  I also like Toni Packer’s presence to the wonder of the moment.  Cultivating the openness within yourself to stand in the light, and to abandon what is false is a good starting point.  

There are times when a projection onto a teacher becomes so powerful that the student is dominated by what he or she believes is the teacher’s attitude toward him.  Each remark, each gesture is interpreted only in light of how the student believes the teacher seems to see him or her.  If this is happening to you, your freedom to learn has been compromised by your projections.  The teacher doesn’t have the power to free you by his or her relation to you.  The teacher can help guide your practice and point out when you may be on the wrong track.

There may be times when it is a good idea to seek out a different teacher.  At other times it may be best to stay and struggle with a seeming impasse.  It is part of the job of the teacher to help you distinguish these times.  Leaving at the wrong time could injure your chances of a break-through.  Staying at the wrong time might incarnate an unhealthy relationship founded in projection.  These incarnations can be as solid as cement.  Internalizing your projections is critical to solving the problems you have in the interpersonal relationships of daily life.  Internalizing projection is also critical in drawing your different perceptions into the “heaven of one awareness,” as my teacher said.

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False Gods

12/10/2014

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The advertisement tells me that if I buy this dress I will be irresistible to powerful men.  It is not the words that proclaim it.  No, the narrative of the writing is more subtle.  It is the picture.  The woman wearing the dress looks confident and sexy and dangerous.  Imagine a Roman general and then use photoshop to add curves, soften the face and add a gentle smile and you’ll have the woman I mean.  She has conquered everyone, you can tell by her expression.  The neckline is plunging, of course.  If I could just pull together the money to buy this dress, I would be set for life as surely as any king.  The handsome man in the background is there, ready to do her bidding.  His features are a bit blurred, but the ad gives you the idea.  Unbidden an image comes to my mind.  I am wearing the dress and he is offering me coffee on a tray with a croissant next to it.  Alas, if only I had a few more dollars I could just get this dress and my life of struggle would be over.  Aside, of course, from the pleasant struggle of manipulating men.

I turn the page in the magazine.  Now I see an elegantly conceived coffee pot.  This machine will grind your coffee, whip up a froth of milk for your cappuccino and operate on a timer so that your beverage will always be ready for you in the morning as programmed.  Costing not much more than the dress, this machine promises to make my mornings as lovely as mornings in Tuscany looking over rolling hills.  Indeed, to reassure me, the advertisement has the rolling hills of Tuscany in the background.  In the foreground is a cup of coffee so beautifully pictured that I fancy I can smell it.  If I buy this product, I will never again need to arise in a hurry to the drab gray of a rainy morning.  Instead, each morning will be glorious.  Surely I can scrape together the funds to make such a life possible by buying this machine.  It is worth more than the dress that attracts the man because with it I won’t even require a man.

I close the magazine and return to the room I am in.  The sophistication of the ads amazes me.  They are selling false gods.  By suggesting that I can attain self-sufficiency by purchasing their products, these advertisers are appealing to a deep hunger which lies within all of us.  To be self-sufficient is to need nothing.  The fantasy of being self-sufficient is the fantasy of being beyond the perils of time and space.  By suggesting that the purchase of a product can offer freedom from finitude, these advertisers promote false trails to the infinite.

The problem is, of course, that no human, as human, can escape the bonds of space and time.  This is why gambling was once considered immoral.  The casino seems to offer a chance at the freedom from finitude.   Instead of work, freedom could be attained by luck.  Work becomes useless.  From there, life becomes meaningless.  When meaning is separated from work, the individual is merely some unlucky bastard who has to work for a living.

In spiritual life, we use the negative in our lives as a spur to self-development.  Since our time is short, any moment spent pursuing false representations of freedom is “spending” your life foolishly.

What are the false gods that you yourself cultivate?  Do you allow yourself to indulge in fantasies of quick freedom?  Are you a secret gambler hoping to attain freedom by shortcut?  I have been one.  Your every action demonstrates an affirmation of an image of freedom-it reveals your spending choice.  The currency is time.  The store or the casino is the dizzying array of available representations.  Is it a love affair that in your heart you know will come to nothing?  Is it a business venture that has at its core the dream of an “income stream” placing you beyond labor?  Your actions reveal how you place your bets.  

The practice of the one who is self-consciously on a spiritual journey is to turn away from false gods and to spend his time with intention.  Self-inquiry is a true path to freedom.  



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Are spirituality and psychotherapy compatible?

12/2/2014

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This morning I was thinking about the difference between psychotherapy and spiritual self-inquiry.  In some ways they seem compatible.  In both, the person who is on a journey endeavors to discover the source of the negative in his or her life.  Both require honesty, and if one is to make progress, a rejection of false solutions.  So where do the two differ?  Is it at the level of aspiration only?  Does the person who seeks psychotherapy want to solve a more limited difficulty, like getting along with one's wife, or ending a bout of anxiety?  In contrast, does the person who is self-consciously on a spiritual journey hope to find a resolution to suffering?  

If this is the difference, does the difference make sense?  Let's put it another way.  Could the one who wants to improve his relationship with his wife be on a spiritual journey unknown to be such?  Could it be that this person's spiritual question currently takes the form of conflict with his wife?  If the answer is yes, it would suggest that psychotherapy and spiritual self-inquiry are compatible.  

In the rhythms of life, people seem to return to their central questions again and again.  With years and experience, these questions may change octave.  As a child, a person's life solution differs from the solution he discovers as an adult, even if in essence the original problem may be the same.  Was the CEO once the king of the mountain on a snowy mound?  Taking note of this essential similarity, the similarity between the desire to be the king of the mountain and the CEO, or between running around as a happy two year old in wonderful red tights and dancing on a stage in front of an audience, may be useful to both the one undergoing a therapy and to the one on a spiritual journey.  So we haven't yet found the difference.

Maybe the difference lies in the way the teacher or therapist addresses the problem.  The therapist might be more willing to work within the confines of the client's definition of the problem.  The therapist and the client discuss the client's "symptoms," implying that the client is whole and complete aside from some bothersome malady that clear thinking and perhaps medication could remedy.
 
From the vantage point of a spiritual teacher, therein lies the error.  The malady is not superficial.  Alienation from Self is profound.  It is much vaster than any disease.  Medications can't touch it.  The obligation of the teacher is to help the student realize himself as Self.  The obligation of the therapist is to help the client be free of his symptoms.  But both the teacher and the therapist can help the individual see his complaint within the context of a journey of self-discovery.

Affirming this journey with all its ups and downs is the only true way to health.  When you have clarity, even the most difficult experience teaches you.  Without understanding the deeper meanings of your interpersonal patterns, the conflicts inherent to your personality, and the events that trouble you, you can not experience the relief that light can bring.  The unifying theme in the work of teacher and therapist is helping the individual come to see himself.  In the case of the teacher, the disorder he treats is much more severe, but the solution vast and complete.  Like the teacher, the therapist helps the person redefine his problem, but confines his work to a particular manifestation.  The teacher's obligation extends way beyond the brief appearing of the question in a particular episode of time.  

Therapy fails when it encourages a false explanation for the problem.  The language of "patient" betrays one temptation that the culture of therapist as doctor encourages.  A person should not be patient.  He should actively struggle to find solutions for his difficulties with unremitting intent.  He should not surrender his role as seeker nor be passive in relation to a healer.  Superficial explanations for problems are more likely to yield superficial answers.  No superficial answer is ultimately healing.  For this reason, the therapist should help the individual deepen his understanding of his difficulties.  

Facing difficulty can be rhythmic.   There are times when it is appropriate for a person to gather his strength.  During these times yoga, rest, and play can be helpful.  The challenge will remain like a dark but steady friend waiting for the next conversation.   A therapist can help you identify these times.   If your seeing has sufficiently deepened, even during these times you may notice who you are and sense the mystery of human being.

 

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