THE FIELD OF SPIRITUALITY IN GESTALT THERAPY

“How can you go forward?

There is no place to go;
How will you leap?
You have no foot!
No one knows how far it is…

From nothingness to God.

As long as you cling to yourself
You will wander, right or left
Day and night, for a thousand years;
And when after all that effort,

You finally open your eyes
You will see your Self, through inherent defects
Wandering around itself like
The ox in the mill;

But if, once freed from yourself,
You finally get down to work
This door will open to you within two minutes.”

Hakin Sanai (11 cent)

This ‘reflection’ now, seems to me, very fitting for the December and January months because of the coming Christmas celebrations and New Year events. This celebration has a history of more than 2000 years.

Whatever we may think about Christmas, it is an important event of the birth of a Soul. The soul comes into incarnation with a purpose, with certain imprint (like a seed is implanted with a future tree). We can call it the destiny of the Soul. Then, the Soul aspires to enter the right environment to live out its destiny (purpose) that brought it to this world.

Fritz Perls, in his final years at Esalen CA, wanted to work primarily on dreams. He felt that dreams are the path to healthy integration of the Body-Mind-Soul. He knew that his own purpose in life was to develop a theory of healing that was Existential and integrating all the aspects of ‘holes’ in the personality in order to gain a fully mature individual.

Fritz died before his time (the soul went) and left a legacy that included aspects of Spirituality in the therapeutic work. However, his work in this area of therapy did not reach a full bloom.

The meaning of ‘Spirituality’ has many definitions; all depending on what orientation you are coming from or what introjects you have swallowed whole as you were growing up. However, the most simplistic definition of Spirituality would be the possibility of every human being to be able to find (access) an authentic contact with his or her full Being, commonly called GOD.

The Tree of Life

C.G. Jung spent all his life working on this phenomenon about how to integrate Mind and Spirit. He stated: “the intellect does indeed harm the soul when it dares to possess itself of the heritage of the Spirit. It is in no way fitted to do this, for Spirit is something higher than the intellect since it embraces the later and includes the feelings as well. It is the guiding principle of life that strives towards superhuman capacities” (Jung 1991, P. 338) He often advised his clients about the loss of Spirit during alcoholism (spirit) and the harmful consequences as a result.

In my own experiences as a therapist and educator, I found that the dynamic interrelation between BODY, MIND and SPIRIT are essential to enable people recover from any kind of life encounters and difficulties. I disagree with those who comment that Fritz Perls avoided spirituality in his development of Gestalt therapy. They say that he spoke about God as a great projection of Man’s omnipotent wishes. On the other side of the story is that Perls was ‘programmed’ against spirituality due to his violent and ultra conservative Jewish-German father and punishing mother. That led to his quick rebelliousness in his youth and a disdain of all authority. He observed that the various religious institutions focus mainly on preventing people from growing up and be authentic and free. Religions created beliefs based on faith that there is a “Great Father” in the sky who will reward the good (those who obey) and punish those who sinfully disobey.  

Working with dreams, Perls discovered that natural imagery, a sense of beauty, the flow of images without rationality that promoted wholeness and integration of the person leading towards the whole individual (individuation) and this, in his view, was a spiritual aspect of all human beings. Therefore it is a mistake to define Fritz as a denier because at the end of his life he declared himself as an Existentialist. He travelled around the world (looking for a place to settle) and met many great masters. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Allan Watts, Will Shutz and spent almost a year at a Zen meditation centre in Japan. He also was very aware of the work of Martin Buber. Perls developed his famous ‘hot seat’ method of working with clients based on Buber’s theory of I-Thou vs I-It relationship.

Born in Vienna, Buber came from a family of observant Jews, but broke with Jewish custom to pursue secular studies in philosophy. In 1902, he became the editor of the weekly Die Welt, the central organ of the Zionist movement, although he later withdrew from organizational work in Zionism. In 1923, Buber wrote his famous essay on existence, Ich und Du (later translated into English as I and Thou), and in 1925, he began translating the Hebrew Bible into the German language.

In 1930, Buber became an honorary professor at the University of Frankfurt am Main.

Perls’ wife Lore (Laura in English), was a student of Buber and visited him frequently and Fritz also had meetings with Buber when he was in Frankfurt.

Fritz hinted at the notion of Spirituality early in his work as a psychoanalyst, for example, he stated:

“By far the most important extension of man’s potential has been the discovery of Rationalism, including logic and maths. Also the use of and misuse of fantasy; inventions put to constructive (medicine) and destructive means (wars). Art means to enrich and also to debase man’s relationship with beauty. Religious and moral codes to free and restrict man’s interaction appear to be a mixture of fantasy and rationality. The absoluteness of good and bad has to be categorically denied.”(Garbage Pail 1970.) We may guess that here Fritz is evolving the concept of the ‘Fertile Void’ where the idea of spirit is contained and the idea of God is an intellectual abstraction. Spiritually God is mentioned often in his writings as ‘Elan Vital’ or life energy.

These concepts were and still are often misinterpreted by many, as if Fritz had no idea of Spirit. However, he would agree with Buber that talking about God and thereby about any form of man’s spirituality does not get us very far in understanding the truth. People can carry on an endless debate (like the old philosophers did about ‘how many angels can fit on a pin of a needle’), or whether the idea of a God is a human need to have a ‘saviour’ thus introjecting some outside mystery to bring about goodness and punish the bad and so on and so on.

 I believe that Fritz would agree with Osho who said:

“Meaning comes through participation. Participate in Life; participate as deeply and as totally as possible. Risk all, for the sake of participation. If you want to know what dance is; don’t go to see a dancer – learn dancing, be a dancer; if you want to know (discover) anything- PARTICIPATE!”

Participate!

Those who trained in Gestalt therapy since it begun some 45 years ago are aware that Gestalt is a holistic approach. It is an approach that encourages the individual to experience fully. Not just intellectually or rationally but include Body, Mind and Spirit and become that experience!

Whatever happens in a therapy session (or any human encounter) is clear that we are relating on a deeper spiritual level and that is where the healing happens. We learn about Awareness, here and now, liberation from defences, discovery of self in the world, presence, authenticity, all of this is concerned with deep spirituality.

Every human being is a combination of three energies: Instinctual, intellectual and intuitive. Energy has a fundamental principle about its functioning. It has to move – movement is its nature. However, instinct is infallible; the heart beats, the breathing goes, all essential life is unconscious because it has to function without the intellect(thinking) interfering with it. Intellect is fallible because it has no experience about life, it only accumulates information. Intuition opens doors to wisdom inherited from existence – it is our consciousness, our very being. We can experience all three if we are aware.

One vivid example of that sense of deep spirituality I experienced some years ago within our Gestalt training group in Brisbane. [1]One woman who has revealed her history of being badly treated by her mother when she was 7, developed severe shakings after her mother died. She also had panic feelings and her body would go into spasms. As a young woman, she tried to calm herself with alcohol and later went to counselling but without any positive results.

I offered to work with her in the group and she readily agreed. I then invited her to show us the shakings she often experienced and she quickly entered in some sort of trance – her body begun to shake and sounds came out of her mouth that were hard to understand. I suggested that when she could, she may stop. Her ability to control herself was amazing to us all and after calming herself, I suggested that she take a piece of butcher paper (A3) and write the words she spoke earlier on the paper. The list of words that came out were some sort of accusations like: “you are bad”, “you are evil”, ‘the devil is in you” and so on. Reading the words she started to cry and the group fell totally silent. After some moments, I suggested we all go to the local park with the paper and then I invited her to burn that paper and we all stood around her in support. One group member offered to light the paper with a match but it did not work and then I suggested that the client light it herself and the paper started to burn.

 As the paper burned, the words written on it started to turn black and suddenly the black burning paper showed a symbolic Black Hand shape emerging and the disappearing in the fire and finally turning into ashes. Everybody was mesmerised by this event and after I suggested that each person take a handful of the ashes and spread them around a tree. At that exact moment, a [2]black dog appeared and sniffed around the ashes and then was gone before anybody could notice where he has gone. We were all amazed and silently aware of some spirit energy present in our midst. After the group ended that weekend, it was almost a month that I checked with our participant in the burning ritual and [3]she said that her shakings have ended since that weekend workshop.

Ancient and current traditional shamans are very clear about this phenomenon. They call it The Spirit medicine. It is described as a state of awareness in which people recognise their union with all creation without losing the Self – the observer. Shamanism is not a religion but a way of understanding our Spirit self and its relation to Creation and not the Creator. It is our intuitive way of creating healing, beauty and harmony with everything.

This is the aim of all therapy and Gestalt therapy in particular. It integrates the spiritual and the intellectual including the feelings that connect knowledge of science and philosophy. Today we can easily gain knowledge with one click of the computer mouse but neither science, information data nor religions can explain fully our ‘journey’ as an individual.

Most therapists have encountered C. G. Jung and his work on the Archetypes and the notion of the collective unconscious. Jung writes about the wounded hero archetype and how we heal by way of our early hurts. People can't accomplish what they want to accomplish because they have inner pain that's driving them crazy, so they seek a psychologist. Here, you immediately encounter two different approaches. One is: "I've got a problem that stops me from getting on with my life, so I want to seek a therapist to fix it, to help me to get on with my life." And that is one approach to psychology. The other is: "I've got a pain. I need to understand where this pain comes from." This is the beginning of the inner journey. And this is when psychology, particularly in the spiritual tradition to which Jung belongs is also an opening to the unconscious, to the inner, intuitive world.

So in my example, the woman was hurt by her mother and her pain was so intense that produced a psychosomatic reaction taking her into spasms and shakes. While performing the ritual with the support of the group; in my opinion, supported by my professional experience, her unconscious created the symbol of the Black Hand and the Dog – both are elements of helpers and guides out of her pain.

Jung said: “Collective unconscious lies beyond the conceptual limitations of individual human consciousness, and thus cannot possibly be encompassed by them. We cannot, therefore, make controlled experiments to prove the existence of the collective unconscious, for the psyche of man, holistically conceived, cannot be brought under laboratory conditions without doing violence to its nature”. In this respect, psychology may be compared to astronomy, the phenomena of which also cannot be enclosed within a controlled setting. The heavenly bodies must be observed where they exist in the natural universe, under their own conditions, rather than under conditions we might propose to set for them.

Fritz used to say “we write our own script” and that statement I translate into “we create our own mythology”; our personal myth can set our little experience in daily life into a larger context that brings meaning and purpose of who we are and what is life all about. Our ‘script’ is written by our inner Self and that is our Spirit connected with the Universal Spirit.

“Have you ever asked yourself:

"What am I searching for?”

 

[1] Details of the client are confidential

[2] Archetypes Collective unconscious.

[3] Before she had therapy sessions for several years.

TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY

A TRANSPRERSONAL SEARCH FOR MEANING

By

Yaro Starak, Gestalt Therapist

Photo: Saint Circ La Popie FRANCE By Yaro Starak

The 2013 New Year is here. The media continues to expose the horrors and terror that is being inflicted upon humans and nature in many parts of the world accompanied by false ideologies, religious fundamentalism and the struggle for power.

We are entering, more and more into a vortex of self-destruction based on the illusion and false belief in “our” God. And so the world has changed very little since the evolution of humanity. In psychotherapy we are also entering a place of divisions, a plethora of “treatment” methods of our ills and much confusion about what is good and ethical practice calling for legal management (control) of false practitioners selling solutions to our ills.

Over one hundred years now we are exploring and researching ways of dealing with problems of the human psyche and still the outcomes are unclear. However some more recent developments could bring us some hope. Psychology and Spirituality seem to be getting closer due to the re-discovery of ancient shamanism and spiritual practices coming from the Eastern traditions that have been unknown in the west for thousands of years. Ken Wilber’s book on “The Marriage of Sense and Soul” is only one example of an attempt of union between science of the West and spirituality of the East.

Still the majority of people are experiencing a new creeping fundamentalism that is creating a new “inquisition” that questions those attempts to ‘marry’ ancient spiritual practices with hard science. Evangelism in both scientific circles and religious groups are fighting against ways that are touching our most intimate relationships and even re-interpreting the sexual relationships in all genders.

This split between sense and soul has created much confusion in people searching for a spiritual understanding and a path of awareness that is one of the most important psycho-spiritual needs today. Many enter this search by way of Yoga (there are many), Tantra, various meditations, the Enneagram and so on. A few join ‘growth’ weekends with visiting “gurus” and get a sense of temporary well-being and talk about their ‘virtual transformation’ that eventually result in a temporary trance state leading to more confusion later. The most difficult question is still the same: “Who am I?”

There are stories in many journals about the true search of a spiritual Master or Guide that has been able to give the disciple THE WAY. However, where to find such a Master among the thousands of so called ‘enlightened’ guides that eventually take your money and go home. Many charlatans and New Age marketers can be found on the internet selling everything: from instant ‘enlightenment’ to Viagra.

Zen philosophers for millennia have been saying that if you are confused and do not know what to do, then do no-thing. This will help you to get out of the trance state of the spiritual supermarket and begin a search for a true Master.

THE TRUE MASTER

Transpersonal psychology is a branch of psychology that has been attempting to interface between spirituality and modern psychology. Studies conducted to find a definition of a Master have been many and what follows is a summary. The true Master is not a master over others, but a master of himself or herself. The very word and gestures that come from such a master reflect a state of inner wisdom. He has no personal goals, no desire to educate or change but accept things as they are – here and now.

With a true Master we experience our own true Nature and in his silence we find our calm and inner peace. A Master has much to share and not to lead us somewhere. He enables to create a mutual field of energy where disciples can find their own path to selfhood. However, to choose a path to that selfhood with a Master is not easy. It is a constant challenge; a struggle to transform our old patterns and social conditioning and that process may often be very painful and take a long time. Many choose not to go that way and seek a ‘quick fix’ instead of developing a long term discipline.

A spiritual search is not some sort of holidays from reality as it is. It takes more than a week or two of residential seminars where we may feel free to practice our spiritual discipline for a while and then get back to the chores at home. The spiritual path is a constant process of discovery of our own limitations, errors and confusions as we experience life each day.

Most people end up searching for a therapist. A good therapist may be able to help us with ways of achieving a healthier life style or a more satisfactory relationship or a deeper awareness of our blocks to growth or even gain insights how to resolve issues based on a false self. At times a good therapist will be able to guide us to find a spiritual path, but at the end, the full journey is ours alone.

A therapist, no matter how good or capable he or she may be, will never be able to become our spiritual Master. Some therapists may have their own unfinished issues to complete while others will have excellent techniques that will help us to reach a point of resolution of our life issues but at the end, the therapist has to earn a living from the therapy work (called a profession) and therefore very few have been able to dedicate themselves to a spiritual search themselves.

Many people may ask: “Do I really need to have a spiritual master”? “What for”? Life as it is today has so many distractions that an honest search requires much work and time. A spiritual guide comes when we are ready. This means that we have had a long inner struggle with our self and our shadow. The ancient monks called “the dark night of the soul”. Finally such struggle requires help from someone who has been there to guide us into the light.

Yet this struggle is worthwhile. Rumi, the great Sufi poet once said: “false gold exists because the real gold exists”. The spiritual guide is there to help us to distinguish real gold from false gold. Being clear and authentic in our aim to search for a true spiritual path must begin with the first step and that is meeting the guide and then embark on a life-long journey without end.

Today, the word “enlightenment” has been used in so many contexts including in the current New Age marketing of ‘spiritual solutions’ that is much better to begin with self-understanding and personal growth rather than search for an “enlightenment” formula. In addition, as we grow into more awareness each day, we will be able to assist others in our community to do their personal growth work. As a song states: “we are the world” – the source of all beauty and part of all Nature interconnected with everything that exists.

Most people live in a limited consciousness and therefore inhabit a dark well (Socrates) and see nothing but their shadows reflected on its walls. They believe that those shadows are THE reality. By opening our eyes and drop the veils of illusion, we may be able to eradicate the evil shadows of cultural conditioning that has been the cause of much pain for millennia. However, without a spiritual guide who has harnessed the creative energy of passion and therefore of Love for all creation rather than destruction we cannot reach the understanding that brings peace, harmony and an understanding that we are all longing for. Eradicating evil takes a spiritual discipline and not a warrior nature. Allowing the passion without the repression that leads to destruction and imbalance requires understanding and integration of the gift of creative light that comes from the pure center (heart) of each human being. 
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Transpersonal psychology is a school of psychology that studies the transpersonal, the transcendent or spiritual aspects of the human experience. The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology describes transpersonal psychology as "the study of humanity’s highest potential, and with the recognition, understanding, and realization of unitive, spiritual, and transcendent states of consciousness" (Lajoie and Shapiro, 1992:91). Issues considered in transpersonal psychology include spiritual self-development, peak experiences, mystical experiences, systemic trance and other metaphysical experiences of living.

Transpersonal psychologists see the school as a companion to other schools of psychology that include psychoanalysis, behaviorism, and humanistic psychology. Transpersonal psychology attempts to unify modern psychology theory with frameworks from different forms of mysticism. These vary greatly depending on the origin but include religious conversion, altered states of consciousness, trance and other spiritual practices. Although Carl Jung and others have explored aspects of the spiritual and transpersonal in their work, transpersonal psychology for the most part has been overlooked by psychologists who are focused on the personal and developmental aspects of the human psyche (Cowley & Derezotes, 1994; Miller, 1998).