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| The Transpersonal Spirituality in Psychotherapy and Counselling |
About the book:
For me, the explanation of how 'intuition' manifests at each stage of ego development was a revelation, something I had never considered before. Raised in a culture where the Heart Sutra is read during death rituals, I had always thought of 'wisdom' as something deep within the sixth sense of cognition.
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The occurrences at the subtle level mentioned throughout the book align significantly with my own mysterious experiences. Recently, after reading Wilber, Tolle, and Cook-Greuter's stages of development, I am now convinced that I am indeed at the next stage of development.
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Also, the book aptly warns about a seldom discussed aspect: that self-actualization through self-transcendence can go against societal expectations.
Self-Actualization Through Self-Transcendence:
Before entering the transpersonal stage of development, society poses obstacles. We might lose our jobs, partners may leave, or we might face serious accidents.
This was a source of immense fear for my former self. The anxieties that awaited me afterwards felt too real, too tangible to ignore. However, in reality, they were not as overwhelming as I had believed.
It's not a simple ascent on an escalator; rather, it's about taking responsibility for growth.
My Experience:
At that time, I was in such a state:
- The language used to express emotions with others seemed so different in terms of definitions and concepts. For example, the difference between trust and expectation.
- I was surrounded by people who wielded power through emotion rather than logic.
- While I could understand others' values, others met mine with bewilderment.
- I found myself immobilized within the double bind of pretentious individuals.
In such a situation, I resigned myself to the thought that 'the solution might lie in the direction of hell.' One reason I refrain from interfering in others' journey of self-transcendence is the weight of this responsibility. I don’t believe one should abandon their current values without being mentally, physically, and situationally ready.
- Living a life concerned with what others think
- Striving for economic and material goals like status and fame
- Engaging in activities that meet societal expectations
All these are good. Of course, it is also good to move beyond them. In any case, I think it’s difficult to control oneself to stop.
Surrendering the Ego:
Regarding the part in the book that says, 'To love is to surrender the ego. By emptying one's own ego, the client also becomes empty,' I had a unique experience. During deep meditation, I felt as if another version of myself, emerging from the inside of my left side, was about to be born, resembling a child of mine.
Feeling that I had already accomplished what I wanted in life, I spoke to this left-sided self, saying, 'You can use the rest of my life as you like,' feeling a calm and peaceful surrender. There was compassion and joy. It felt like passing the baton of the future to a real child. It was an emotion similar to staring at a closed-eyed baby without words or responses. Although it wasn't a dialogue in the traditional sense, it was a conversation between me and myself.
Self-Acceptance:
The book discusses negative emotions and phenomena, stating, 'To be complete, we must fully own what is hated and feared within us. What appears as evil must be accepted as part of oneself,' 'We learn the most from our most difficult clients,' and 'Evil is part of the good, ultimately transient and to be overcome.'
My Experience:
I believe shadow work and subsequent resignation through self-acceptance were crucial. It was about acknowledging fear, evil, sin, weakness, and everything I disliked in others as present within myself. Through meditation and dream analysis aimed at finding these aspects within me and resigning to accept them, the person I had been became a memory of the past. It's a sensation I've experienced several times in life. The person I was in my second year of middle school seems the polar opposite of the adult me. The younger me, who judged based on numbers like income, consumption, specs, or price, has become the past me since I found my purpose. The me who prided in unique achievements compared to others, living life concerned about others, has become the past me for the next version of myself within.
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Introspection:
"The great book is the self. It opens up to reveal many surprising discoveries. "
"The teacher appears when the student is ready.' This reminds me of the description of Enneagram personality type 4, which says, 'Their creativity often turns highly personal experiences into something of universal significance."
I believe that reading one’s inner self well and being prepared leads to realizations, growth, meaning, value, and happiness.
Creativity and Drive:
The book emphasizes that 'creativity is about confronting difficulties in a world where good and evil, despair and hope, destruction and regeneration coexist, not about avoidance.'
As organized in Wilber's great nest, and as Nietzsche and Schumpeter also perceive, there is a sense of 'creativity' in transcending conflicts. Even if this is the truth, I believe there are still phenomena that remain unnoticed and overlooked. These include the limits of developmental and cognitive stages, things too ordinary like breathing, the dynamics of male-female relationships and marriages, the phenomenon where 'I' and 'you' are included in 'us,' and concepts like empathy and communication that are confused and not yet differentiated.
The quote, 'In the realm of the spirit, we are not driven. We are the propellers and decision-makers,' introduces the sense of owning one's life in the stage of self-transcendence. I have often felt that when I exercise my will, there is a deeper self within me. Surely, when my current self becomes my past self, when I become the 'object,' when we can say 'we are not driven, we are the drivers,' it's a sign that I have moved on, something I seem to have repeated often.
'We always have unresolved challenges. They are the driving force of goodness.'
Whenever the topic of transcending shadows and conflicts through creativity comes up, I think of the diagram of electromagnetic wave rotation. While feeling a centrifugal force directing towards a destination, I never head in that direction, but rotate towards the unresolved issues. Though it seems like progress, it's not quite so, feeling stagnation and repetition, yet moving forward in a spiral.
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This driving force seems fittingly described as 'love.' Furthermore, in this law that could be called the will of the universe, I am reminded of the Chinese fable 'Sai Weng Shi Ma,' signifying that the nature of events is unpredictable.
参考:【塞翁が馬 - ウィクショナリー日本語版】 https://ja.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%A1%9E%E7%BF%81%E3%81%8C%E9%A6%AC
My Religious Background:
The book, citing Wilber, classifies beliefs into realism and idealism, humanism and transpersonalism, atheism and theism, and mysticism. Born and raised in the Soto Zen (a form of Zen Buddhism) region, facing archetypes with Jung as a guide, and having my experiences organized by Wilber, I might be considered a mystic.
To me, the Heart Sutra sounded like a teaching for wisdom and liberation, not like a set of commandments imposing specific restrictions. It seemed to teach the laws of humanity, implying that one should not be bound by commandments. In other words, it pointed me towards a direction of emotional freedom. This freedom is overwhelming and can be crushing in my suffering, but it remains freedom nonetheless.
The explanation 'At the Subtle level, it becomes polytheistic, finding everything in all. Between the Subtle and Causal levels, there is monotheism' also resonates with me.
I came to know Buddhism in this order: as a child, I perceived it as monotheistic with a single Buddha statue; in my twenties, like polytheistic Esoteric Buddhism; and then the atheistic or mystical nature of Soto Zen (Zen Buddhism). If Zen's 'emptiness' is expressed as a higher form of monotheism, then it could be perceived in that way.
Differentiating Within Myself:
Four Levels of Breathing:
- Physical: An organizational process of taking in oxygen and expelling carbon dioxide.
- Emotional: Changes emotions. Deep breathing relaxes, while shallow breathing heightens tension.
- Intellectual: Breathing becomes shallow or stops when thinking begins.
- Spiritual: Connects all levels of existence, like connecting chakras.
'The area below the diaphragm represents the world of lower animals.'
The author argues that the categorization into physical sensation, emotion, intellect/thought, and beyond is simplistic and often misunderstood. However, for those who have not differentiated these four categories and confuse them, I think it can be quite enlightening. This ties into the routine of starting meditation with a body scan, separating emotions below the diaphragm from those above, and distinguishing them from random thoughts. This progression from confusion to differentiation to conflict to integration contributes to growth.
I practice conscious breathing, thinking it connects conscious and unconscious, voluntary and involuntary aspects. Through the act of breathing, the two selves within me seem to find a common ground in body and purpose. The images and sensations that seep into my brain during this time are a dialogue with myself. Both myself and my deeper self manifest in my brain, heart, and physical sensations.
This phenomenon also occurs during important one-on-one interactions. My interest in 'psychological boundaries' stems from experiencing strange phenomena between myself and others, similar to what happens within me.
Since I started meditating with awareness of my visceral touch below the diaphragm, focusing around the solar plexus, I've become able to detect subtle changes in body sensations as indicators of situational changes. It's like gaining an extra sensor for detecting environmental shifts. This includes contagion of fear-based emotions from others, unconscious fears deep within me, and messages from what could be called my lizard-like self through involuntary bodily reactions. I live harmoniously with my pet dog, but communicating with my lower abdomen is more challenging than conversing with them. It's like communicating with a pitch-dark, silent space. I speak to it linguistically, but the response is a change in bodily sensation. I experiment with playing music to my lizard-like self, among other things.
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Psychological Boundaries:
The book states, 'Self-transcendence means the disappearance of boundaries. The expansion of self-awareness extends to others.' What I can only describe as a profound empathy, a mysterious emotional contagion, is precisely about these blurred boundaries. It's a strange experience where experiences of others seep into my unconscious, similar to emotions in dreams. The concept of self becomes ambiguous. What is the self? How far does it extend? These boundaries have become unclear."
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After reading the book:
In the final conclusion of the book, it states, 'The best attitude for a transpersonal psychotherapist is "I don't know".' Recently, I asked GPT whether Socrates' 'knowledge of ignorance' could have been a knowledge born from understanding 'nothingness.' Approaching nothingness intensifies the sense of 'not knowing.' This represents life's queries, and I'm reminded of Viktor Frankl, who chose to respond to them. This accumulation might be the evolution of humanity, an unstoppable direction.
the idea that 'self-transcendence' means the dissolution of 'boundaries' stayed with me. My interest lies more in the space between mind and mind than between mind and body. It's about empathy, communication, and the interaction between individuals and organizations. Like existentialism and religion, which delve into the individual's inner world, and natural sciences that study material objectivity, the interference between one person's inner world and another's remains largely unknown. How far do individual contours extend, and how and to what extent do areas overlap with others?
Just as the space between mind and body, and me and material, is 'unknown,' so is the space between minds. Perhaps in an evolved future, we might develop cognitive and intellectual abilities like telepathy, and whether we will continue to identify ourselves with our bodies is 'unknown.' Maybe some people already communicate in such ways somewhere on Earth, or perhaps evolution is occurring right now through our interactions with AI. If evolution is predicated on conflict and transcendence, then everything is impermanent, and no matter how finely we dissect it, it remains a still image of the past.
