The difference between Therapy and Spiritual Practice?

[freeform]

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Edited October 23, 2019 by freeform

[DaoWaDiddy]

PS I didn't even mention the amount of psychic garbage that pyschotherapists accumulate from having people unload all their gunk on them...

There's a semi-standard NLP psycho the rapist - er, psychotherapist - joke in there somewhere...

[sean]

I don't think the desire for healing has an intrinsic "away from pain" orientation. Wanting to heal can be wanting health, a more pleasurable state. Also, wanting to avoid pain itself can just be wanting a more pleasurable state while temporarily focusing on your obstacles, a more or less effective strategy depending on the context. And even wanting pleasure is, at least subtly, a wanting less pain, no? Wanting at all presupposes lack, Buddha went so far as to define desire itself as the source of all suffering.

 

What I like about therapy (in it's broadest sense) is that it can go "all the way down" and at least attempt to deal with severely troubling situations that we new agers seem to prefer sweeping under the rug. "God can only appear to a starving man as bread". For good reason some modes of therapy focus heavily on "getting the shit off the fan". There are people stuck in varieties of complex, intense sufferings that a nice crystal, some herbs, a book on NLP, and a Tibetan Lama are not going to pull them out of. I doubt that changing a single alcoholic mother of three with a history of physical trauma, living paycheck to paycheck in a gang-filled ghetto to a pleasure-seeking focus is going to make her significantly more functional. It's not glamorous or esoteric, but I think AA and a good cognitive behavioral therapist would help 1000 times more. Then, after healing this woman's legitimate, serious issues, helping foster the self-esteem necessary for her to stop drinking, find a new job and a new neighborhood, we can start fine tuning with meditation, NLP, chi kung, etc. Any good therapy will have the ability to heal the "away from pain" fixation itself and naturally transition into a "toward pleasure" focus and then maybe beyond. In this way I am tempted to believe that therapy can theoretically move "up the ladder" and begin to behave no differently than what we tend to call spiritual practice.

 

Sean

[freeform]

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Edited October 23, 2019 by freeform

[DaoWaDiddy]

yeah, that's called a 'phonetic ambiguity' - one of the originators of NLP, Richard Bandler constantly takes the piss out of psychotherapists. He often uses phonetic ambiguities: psycho-anal-ysis, Fraud instead of Freud etc.

Richard learned from one of the best. Milton Erickson often used phonological ambiguity - he used to call Bandler and his partner (at the time) John Grinder "Bandit and Swindler"

 

---

 

I think that the comparison between Therapy and Spiritual Practice is very much like the difference between Tragedy and Comedy. On the one hand the previous sentence made sense. However, even if you limit the range of Therapy to those with psychotherapeutic roots you will have things that range from Fraudian to Jungian to Reichian - and my understanding is that the experience of these can be as broad as the difference between Zazen, Tai Chi and Osho's chaotic meditation. And even the sentence before this one took fairly broad ranges of experience and lumped them as Fraudian and Tai Chi.

 

"How many therapists can practice spiritually on the head of a pin?"

 

Charlie

 

PS If an NLPer met the Buddha in the road he would ask him "How - specifically - do you know that suffering ... did you not?"

Edited January 20, 2006 by DaoWaDiddy

[DaoWaDiddy]

I don't think the desire for healing has an intrinsic "away from pain" orientation.

[snip]

What I like about therapy (in it's broadest sense) is that it can go "all the way down" and at least attempt to deal with severely troubling situations that we new agers seem to prefer sweeping under the rug. "God can only appear to a starving man as bread". For good reason some modes of therapy focus heavily on "getting the shit off the fan". There are people stuck in varieties of complex, intense sufferings that a nice crystal, some herbs, a book on NLP, and a Tibetan Lama are not going to pull them out of. I doubt that changing a single alcoholic mother of three with a history of physical trauma, living paycheck to paycheck in a gang-filled ghetto to a pleasure-seeking focus is going to make her significantly more functional. It's not glamorous or esoteric, but I think AA and a good cognitive behavioral therapist would help 1000 times more. Then, after healing this woman's legitimate, serious issues, helping foster the self-esteem necessary for her to stop drinking, find a new job and a new neighborhood, we can start fine tuning with meditation, NLP, chi kung, etc. Any good therapy will have the ability to heal the "away from pain" fixation itself and naturally transition into a "toward pleasure" focus and then maybe beyond. In this way I am tempted to believe that therapy can theoretically move "up the ladder" and begin to behave no differently than what we tend to call spiritual practice.

 

Sean,

 

I tend to agree - somewhat - but I think that the key phrase is "what we tend to call spiritual practice." What we tend to call spiritual practice may be "a nice crystal, some herbs, a book on NLP, and a Tibetan Lama" and "glamours or esoteric" (and I realize that you were setting up a straw man) but spirit breaks through all up and down the ladder. For example, my understanding is that AA has a strong spiritual component - "giving ourselves to a higher Power". It's a little strange to think of someone going to AA and discovering their True Will.

 

The classic conversion experience - Saul on the road to Damascus stuff - may or may not make you more socially functional but it usually changes the quality of your life in interesting ways.

 

Charlie

[sean]

The pain/pleasure mechanism is not really based on wanting - it's more of a driver, a motivator. You may want to get better, so that you get away from the pain that you suffer. This mechanism is a very deep-rooted unconcious behaviour, it's known as a 'metaprogram' (a program that runs many other programs) in NLP - if you are generaly motivated to move away from pain it's very difficult to understand what it would be like to be internaly motivated to move towards pleasure - you would have to change a core part of your personality to be able to see this a different way. Metaprograms are the very basic filters you use to experience the world around you.

IMO behavior, thought, emotion ... even our sense of "I" all arise from a battle/dance between many many many processes. But I don't think any of these processes has the type of self-reflective volition you are suggestion ... where they are thinking "gosh, I think I'll just exclusively avoid pain". Maybe higher-level programs arise (from bundles of process interactions) that have orientations toward safety over fun, or warmth over excitement. And I tend to agree with the NLP belief that all "parts" can ultimately be considered to have a positive intention for the whole (just some are ignorant, limited, immature, etc. and creating "bad" results). But the distinction between pleasure seeking vs. pain avoidance programs has always struck me as kind of arbitrary and overly digital. Like taking a dozen glasses that are filled to varying levels, each with a different colored juice in it and labelling them as either half empty or half full.

 

I tend to agree - somewhat - but I think that the key phrase is "what we tend to call spiritual practice." What we tend to call spiritual practice may be "a nice crystal, some herbs, a book on NLP, and a Tibetan Lama" and "glamours or esoteric" (and I realize that you were setting up a straw man) but spirit breaks through all up and down the ladder. For example, my understanding is that AA has a strong spiritual component - "giving ourselves to a higher Power". It's a little strange to think of someone going to AA and discovering their True Will.

Agreed. I think it was part of my point. Cognitive behavioral therapy can be seen as "spiritual" too ... in the sense that you are unravelling false thoughts, approaching "right view". So I was placing AA and CBT on a the spiritual/therapeutic continuum and saying that a lot of what is labelled as spiritual may not be the best tool to use for the job, and many approaches called materialistic or even beneath spiritual approaches might actually be more effective tools for some people's spiritual path, at least at first.

 

What do we even mean when we say "spiritual" anyway? Of or pertaining to the spirit? I'm really asking.

 

Sean

Edited January 20, 2006 by sean

[freeform]

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Edited October 23, 2019 by freeform

[sean]

I definately agree with that - the pain/pleasure thing is imposing verbal constraints onto something far more complex than words can describe - the only question to ask is "by putting those verbal constraints onto subject x do I get something usefull out of it?" - so in the case of the dozen glasses, if it was usefull to know whether there is more space or liquid in them (with the accuracy threshold being half/half), then the verbal constraints of 'half empty or half full' may be usefull. Personally I found the pain/pleasure distiction quite usefull - in fact although this may seem like a heated debate with opposing arguments, I've learnt a lot both about myself, about you and about healing and spirituality - so thanks for that .

Naww, not a heated debate freeform, just hashing out different viewpoints. I've learned a lot from the discussion as well.

 

The reason I'm so interested in the pain/pleasure instinct is because all psychologists have identified this stage of development in humans: Timothy Leary called it "Oral Bio-Survival Circuit", Freud simply called it the "Oral" satge of development, Jung called it "Sensation", Berne (from Transactional Analysis) called it "Natural Child" and Gurjieff called it "Movement Centre". These distinctions are not 'real', they're just usefull.

Hmmm... in this context I can see how it could be useful to identify an overall strategy as a way of clarifying what stage (or circuit) you are at in your development. Been studying Ken Wilber's distinction between states and stages, very good one and I've always dug Leary/Wilson's circuit work.

 

More relevant to the topic though, you've just named basically five psychologists that have apparently helped shape your spiritual path significantly. What do you feel is the relationship between what you see as the pain-avoidance strategies of their therapeutic models and the pleasure-seeking strategies of spirituality? Do you think these teachers transcended therapy and became spiritual teachers? Or did they take therapy to it's logical conclusion and become what is known as a spiritual teacher? What do you think is the difference, if any, between spirituality and long range hedonism?

 

Sean

[freeform]

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Edited October 23, 2019 by freeform

[sean]

Great post freeform. On some level I think I hear you saying that spiritual practice is work done with the skillful desire to merge with the Absolute and that while it can sweep therapy and any other field it touches into it's current, those fields can also also be lost or at least something completely different when the single-pointed spiritual intention is missing. So in that sense the only difference between spiritual practice and therapy or spirituality and cooking eggs are wether the proper devotion consciousness (Bhakti) is present. And also, in the same sense, making breakfast can be more of a spiritual practice than sitting in zazen or doing chi kung forms depending on the Bhakti. Would you agree with that?

[Simon V.]

I don't think the desire for healing has an intrinsic "away from pain" orientation. Wanting to heal can be wanting health, a more pleasurable state. Also, wanting to avoid pain itself can just be wanting a more pleasurable state while temporarily focusing on your obstacles, a more or less effective strategy depending on the context. And even wanting pleasure is, at least subtly, a wanting less pain, no? Wanting at all presupposes lack, Buddha went so far as to define desire itself as the source of all suffering.

 

What I like about therapy (in it's broadest sense) is that it can go "all the way down" and at least attempt to deal with severely troubling situations that we new agers seem to prefer sweeping under the rug. "God can only appear to a starving man as bread". For good reason some modes of therapy focus heavily on "getting the shit off the fan". There are people stuck in varieties of complex, intense sufferings that a nice crystal, some herbs, a book on NLP, and a Tibetan Lama are not going to pull them out of. I doubt that changing a single alcoholic mother of three with a history of physical trauma, living paycheck to paycheck in a gang-filled ghetto to a pleasure-seeking focus is going to make her significantly more functional. It's not glamorous or esoteric, but I think AA and a good cognitive behavioral therapist would help 1000 times more. Then, after healing this woman's legitimate, serious issues, helping foster the self-esteem necessary for her to stop drinking, find a new job and a new neighborhood, we can start fine tuning with meditation, NLP, chi kung, etc. Any good therapy will have the ability to heal the "away from pain" fixation itself and naturally transition into a "toward pleasure" focus and then maybe beyond. In this way I am tempted to believe that therapy can theoretically move "up the ladder" and begin to behave no differently than what we tend to call spiritual practice.

 

Sean

 

 

I agree with the spirit of this, but also think that as meditors we can address the 'deep shit' aspect of ouselves using a more focused and 'willing to suffer' intent, akin to what sometimes (but not always) seems to be the kind of intent brought into therapy. Chogyam Trungpa calls this 'leaning into the sharp points'. But there can also be the danger of 'exaggerating what you focus on'. That's why I like to emphasise, in my own practice, thorough and repetitive philosophical focus/study/contemplation.

Working with dreams can be very effective in this regard, but it takes some doing.

 

Simon

[Trunk]

Chogyam Trungpa calls this 'leaning into the sharp points'.

That's a memorable phrase!

[Simon V.]

That's a memorable phrase!

 

My favourite (not his, but he liked to quote it--a standard masochistic buddhist saying) is 'Samsara is like licking honey off of a razor'...

[freeform]

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Edited October 23, 2019 by freeform

[sean]

Found some cool quotes today on this subject:

 

Via BuddhaNet

"Most psychotherapy tends to work with the contents of consciousness, with the aim of reducing pain and conflict and enhancing the capacity for love and work. This can be characterised as working on the content of the dream, exchanging nightmares for happier, more peaceful dreams. Ideally, spiritual practice is aimed at waking up and becoming aware of the nature of the dream and who the dreamer is. At its best, transpersonal psychotherapy aims at doing both.

 

Both psychotherapy and spiritual practice contribute to psychological health and spiritual growth. Unresolved psychological issues can impede healthy developments at any stage, and sometimes such issues surface only after much spiritual practice. The seeker must beware of the limitations of both therapists and spiritual teachers. Expertise in one domain does not make one an authority in the other, and few individuals are well trained in both. Psychological and spiritual development are inextricably intertwined, and both continue throughout life. In practice both psychotherapist and spiritual teachers do what they can to relieve suffering and help people grow in consciousness."

 

Via Ken Wilber

"The true part of the recaptured-goodness model is that at any of the stages of growth--purple to red to blue to orange to green to integral--the potentials of those stages can be repressed, oppressed, alienated, fragmented. 'Therapia' then involves a recontacting, a releasing, a liberating of the repressed potentials--a regression in service of further growth. The main 'problem' with the Enlightenment was not the emergence of rationality (orange)--that, in fact, was one of its extraordinary accomplishments--but a rationality that was captured by empiricism and positivism and thus reduced to instrumental rationality (monological, not dialogical): what we at IC call 'flatland.' The other potentials of reason (dialogical, communicative, moral, practical) were thus buried, became atrophied and withered. The 'therapia' for this is not regression to red or purple--recommended by Romantics and eco-primitivists--but recontacting the lost potentials of reason and carrying them forward into second-tier integral embrace. See The Marriage of Sense and Soul and Sex, Ecology, Spirituality."

[sean]

Came across this today.

 

Via Ken Wilber's Spectrum Psychology

by Stanislav Grof, M.D.

 

"According to psychoanalysis and ego psychology, psychogenic disorders can be adequately understood in terms of postnatal biographical events and related psychodynamic processes. Different psychopathological syndromes are explained as resulting from problems in specific stages of postnatal libidinal development and from the difficulties in the evolution of the ego and of the object relationships. Psychoses thus allegedly have their origin in early infancy while neurotic or psychosomatic disorders are anchored in later childhood.

...

In experiential psychotherapies using [non-ordinary states of consciousness] NOSC, people working on various forms of depression, psychoneuroses, and psychosomatic disorders typically discover that these disorders have a multilevel dynamic structure, In addition to their connections with traumatic events in infancy and childhood, as expected by traditional academic thinking, these disorders have important roots in the perinatal domain and also beyond that in the transpersonal realm (Grof 1985). Therapeutic work on psychoneuroses and psychosomatic disorders, guided not by the therapist but by the spontaneous healing mechanisms activated by NOSC, will thus typically take the clients beyond postnatal biography to the perinatal and transpersonal domains.

 

Under these circumstances, the therapeutic process does not follow a linear trajectory. If it is not restricted by the strait-jacket of the therapist's professional convictions, it will freely move between the biographical, perinatal, and transpersonal levels, often even within the same session. For this reason, effective work with emotional and psychosomatic disorders requires a therapist who uses a framework that is open to all the bands of the spectrum. The idea of breaking the therapeutic process into stages during which he or she is seen by different therapists, each of whom is a specialist in fulcrum-specific treatment modality, is thus highly unrealistic. In addition, since both the perinatal and transpersonal experiences have the quality that C. G. Jung called "numinosity," it is impossible to draw a clear line between therapy and spiritual evolution. With an open approach, the process that initially began as "therapy" will often automatically change into a spiritual and philosophical quest."