It’s All in the Walking

So, if enlight­en­ment is a goal to be sought after, if “Being Here Now” is the focus of our quest, how do we know what method, teacher, guru, (fill in the blank) to fol­low? Well, before we ask that ques­tion, it might be bet­ter to say a word or two about how to tell what’s NOT working.

Dis­com­fort is a pretty clear sign that something’s amiss. That’s what usu­ally brings peo­ple into ther­apy. Some­thing doesn’t feel right. There is no more reli­able indi­ca­tor that the path you have cho­sen sim­ply isn’t work­ing. (This also might indi­cate that you haven’t picked a path at all.) At the level of the work of the soul, noth­ing can be less help­ful than ignor­ing such warn­ing signals.

Clearly, paths are avail­able that bring dif­fer­ent peo­ple to dif­fer­ent lev­els of enlight­en­ment and open­ness. Many, many paths. With but one des­ti­na­tion. Reunion with the Ground of our Being. The end of sep­a­ra­tion from God and from each other. The rea­son for many paths is sim­ple. Dif­fer­ent words and dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences are nec­es­sary because peo­ple process infor­ma­tion in dif­fer­ent ways.

Which means that it is not unusual for peo­ple to have to look around to find a sys­tem or teacher or ther­a­pist that can speak or teach in a way that works for them. Once again, the way to deter­mine where to stop look­ing and which tech­nique to try can only be based upon an intu­itive sense that the per­son teach­ing has your best inter­ests at heart; that the teacher has no ulte­rior motives in mind. If you have that sense, then you can take this a step fur­ther and trust the tech­niques taught, even though what is sug­gested can be, and often is, painful.

I have a client who came to see me while I was writ­ing this. As I needed an illus­tra­tion at this point, he, of course, pro­vided me with sev­eral. My client has an issue he has needed, for a long time, to deal with. Many ses­sions ago, I sug­gested he write a let­ter to the other per­son involved, a let­ter he would not nec­es­sar­ily do any­thing with. The mere process of writ­ing the let­ter would be enough. Because this issue was a pro­foundly painful one, my client resisted writ­ing the letter.

This time, the let­ter was pok­ing out of his shirt pocket. Since writ­ing it, he had begun to feel a sense of inner release around his issue. It’s not over yet, but it is on the road to being over. Because of this inner heal­ing, my client also found the time and energy to reach out and sim­ply be with another per­son who needed his friendship.

The point here is that in order to move along a heal­ing and there­fore spir­i­tual path, you have to actu­ally do some­thing. All the talk­ing and ratio­nal­iza­tions world change noth­ing. There must also be a change of heart. Paul wrote: “Do not be con­formed to the world but be trans­formed by a com­plete change of heart.” To change the heart is to imme­di­ately act differently.

New under­stand­ing comes ini­tially at the level of the head. Then, there seems to be required a pen­e­tra­tion to the level of the heart, cou­pled with a new behav­iour or activ­ity. Intel­lec­tual assent is not enough. It almost seems that some­times what is nec­es­sary next is sim­ply to fol­low the direc­tions of some­one you trust. In the act­ing out of the new under­stand­ing, you see a glim­mer of how it could be, and that seems to allow the thought to reach the level of the heart, where trans­for­ma­tion takes place.

What this boils down to is a uni­fi­ca­tion of the mind and the body and the spirit. It is a coöper­a­tive effort. The path, the tech­nique for assist­ing this to hap­pen is not as impor­tant as is get­ting the mes­sage as a total per­son.

One more time around, from the Phoenix per­spec­tive. I tend to look for the meta-issue that is block­ing my client. Through in-depth dis­cus­sion we ver­bal­ize the issue and dis­cuss pos­si­ble alter­na­tive ways of look­ing at the sit­u­a­tion. This approach allows the client the oppor­tu­nity to reshape their entire world and self view. This is not prob­lem solv­ing. This is a change of being.

We then look together for ways of act­ing out the new cog­ni­tive under­stand­ing. Usu­ally, because the way of act­ing out is new, there is the pain of the loss of the old, dys­func­tional way of doing things. There are also the reac­tions of oth­ers to con­tend with. And there is the pain of con­fronting the issue head on. This is, in a sense, activ­ity at the level of the body — an act­ing out.

At the same time, I teach my clients to pay closer atten­tion to the warn­ing sig­nals their body is giv­ing them. Once again, the mind focuses on the body in a coöper­a­tive venture.

As the change in behav­iour takes place, almost always the client is filled with a pro­found sense of won­der and joy. In the ini­tial stages, this is fleet­ing, but this is the soul talk­ing. And that soul is say­ing, “It’s about time you noticed me!” The soul must then be addressed — and this from the per­spec­tive that the ther­a­peu­tic ven­ture is not, ulti­mately, about prob­lem solv­ing. The ther­a­peu­tic process is about reach­ing a state of whole­ness. This is the place, as my friend and teacher Glo­ria Tay­lor used to say, where you “Be it, not do it.” In other words, the change is incor­po­rated into the core, the total­ity of the person’s being.

At this point, as a clos­ing project, I often rec­om­mend Body­work, med­i­ta­tion, or some method of bring­ing about direct con­tact between the body-mind and the spirit.

How you do all of this is up to you. The path is not as impor­tant as the walk­ing. Next time, more on why all of this is so very nec­es­sary. Peace for now.

Again, I am struck with find­ing the seeds of my present thought, along with the colour­ing of being one year out of the Min­istry. I have become more and more con­vinced over the years that approaches to find­ing one’s self (which deeply involves find­ing one’s soul) is a solo act. Each one of us is on a unique path. As my friend David Raithby put it, “It’s like being lost and alone on the sea, sit­ting in a small boat. The best we can hope for is to run onto some­one pad­dling in the same direc­tion. Then, we can pad­dle together. We still don’t know where we are going, but at least it’s less lonely.”

One of the keys to suc­cess­ful ther­apy is the will­ing­ness to “sit at the feet” of the ther­a­pist. I’m using that lan­guage because most peo­ple find it offen­sive. Back when I offi­ci­ated at Debashis and Adrienne Dutta's wedding, one of the Hindu ceremonies was pronams. This involves the younger person kneeling down and touching the feet of their elder, while the elder touches their head. The Hindu folk present of course felt quite a home with this - many of the Caucasian folk were clearly uncomfortable. It's a cultural and religious thing. And something we need to get over.

I amaze myself when people come into therapy and list off their problem. Then, as we talk, no matter what I say or suggest, they say, "I know that," or "I've tried that," or "My other therapists said the same thing and they were wrong too." It seems to me that the whole purpose of therapy and "self development" is to let go of what isn't working. If the person were capable of figuring their issues out totally alone, why are they com­ing in for ther­apy? (Of course, the sim­ple answer is that they are will­ing to pay some­one to tell them how wise and won­der­ful they are — never mind that there is no evi­dence in how they live their lives.)

Pick­ing a path and a ther­a­pist is per­haps one of the most impor­tant choices any­one ever makes. Mov­ing along a path requires ded­i­ca­tion and com­mit­ment. And, as I said above, a yield­ing to the learn­ing. (This is not a yield­ing to the per­son, but to the need for guid­ance along a seg­ment of the path. Gurus take advan­tage of the for­mer; good ther­a­pists never con­fuse them­selves with gurus, and offer only the lat­ter.) No mat­ter what polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness tries to stuff down out throats, friend­ship is a meet­ing of equals; ther­apy and spir­i­tual direc­tion are impos­si­ble between (per­ceived) equals. Plain and simple.

I notice my ref­er­ence to com­bin­ing the body-mind with spirit, and my brief men­tion of body­work. I was a baby Body­worker back then, but was clear that steady body­work was a require­ment for health and whole­ness. My chief style back then was a com­bi­na­tion of acu­pres­sure and myother­apy. For the last decade I’ve been work­ing with Reichian body and breath work (as is described on my web­site,) I’ve watched sev­eral clients, over the years, find amaz­ing insights, good health and a pro­nounced increase in chi flow. On the other hand, peo­ple who dab­ble at body­work, like peo­ple who dab­ble with ther­apy, often find them­selves in worse shape than if they had just stayed stuck and hadn’t dab­bled in the first place. Start­ing down a path is not enough.

The trans­for­ma­tion of the heart is a way of say­ing, as I did in the arti­cle, a change of being. Peo­ple of faith often call this state “new being.” Notice the last word. This is a “being-ness” as opposed to a “doing-ness.” Many, many peo­ple con­fuse the two. They describe their expe­ri­ences — the work­shops they attended, the trau­mas they expe­ri­enced, and con­fuse all of this run­ning around for an actual expe­ri­ence at the heart or cel­lu­lar level. Being is an inte­gra­tion at all lev­els of, well, being. Doing is run­ning around and run­ning one’s mouth. Big dif­fer­ence, and an obvi­ous one.

Body­work does indeed bring the realms of Body­Mind­Spirit together ele­gantly. Noth­ing, at the body level, means noth­ing. Every ache, every colour shift in the skin, every hard­en­ing, stiff­en­ing, infec­tion, sys­temic slow­down is sig­nif­i­cant. (It’s get­ting so I can “feel” the block­ages, ill­nesses and trau­mas in the bod­ies of oth­ers, as well as in my own. The jury is still out as to whether I “like this,” as it is some­times painful, both phys­i­cally and men­tally, to “pick up” on this information.)

Com­mit­ment to a path is not pre­cisely what we’re talk­ing about here. In the end, as I noted in the arti­cle, it’s all about com­mit­ment to the jour­ney. The path, in the end, is the tool. The jour­ney is the point. Not for atten­tion or show. For being-ness. In the end, the jour­ney is all that there is.