Being and Becoming

Whether prompted by marveling at a photograph of earth from space, or reading theories of modern physics, or even coming to understand the wisdom of ancient traditions, more and more people are recognizing the innate interconnectedness of all things.

Essential Wholeness presents a psychology that reflects the interdependent nature of life. Do you wonder if humanity will survive the suicidal-like destruction of ecosystems, or the threats posed by weapons of mass destruction and terrorism? Western civilization has proven its cleverness to maximize materialistic prosperity in the short-term. However, faced with mass extinctions, erosion and degradation of the soil that feeds us, and a society that is increasingly violent, depressed and addicted, this way of life would appear not to be sustainable, let alone fulfilling.

If we are to create a healthier ecological, sustainable and fulfilling future, it's imperative we discover how to change the ways of thinking that perpetuate problems.

We are rapidly moving from the technological/information age to the biological age. We are learning that to survive and thrive we must honor and harness nature's wisdom and ability to evolve in the face of challenging and diverse circumstances. Should we fail in learning to live harmoniously with nature, we may very well follow in the footsteps of dinosaurs.

To live in harmony with nature, we must live in harmony with our own true natures. If we are to live in peace with one another, we must be at peace within ourselves. It is the role of psychotherapy to help people find this harmony and peace so we can transform our relationships with ourselves, one another and nature.

'You are perfect as you are and you will never be perfect.' Being at peace with now and always becoming more into our full potential. Reality is as it is now and it can never be any different than it is now, yet concurrently everything is always evolving and changing. This paradox is one of the cornerstones of psychotherapy and spiritual development. Some approaches emphasize the ability to change and others emphasize the acceptance of what is; however, they are inextricably linked to one another. The more you accept yourself exactly as you are the more you recognize the ever-changing nature of life. The more you recognize and accept the impermanent nature of existence, the more you become aware of the changeless awareness of being within which everything is experienced. With the recent emphasis on evidence-based psychotherapy, discussions on the role of spirituality within mainstream psychotherapy have been relatively quiet compared to the human potential movement of the sixties and seventies. This is changing with the blossoming of mindfulness-based therapies and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which draw heavily on Buddhist teachings. Psychology has strived to treat people's suffering by merely treating their symptoms. Whilst this is very important, in the process of doing so it has identified with an allopathic medicine paradigm. As a result, therapists are implored to do whatever is necessary to help a person return to functioning in their life as quickly as possible. A more wholistic approach would help people question the basic assumptions and lifestyles that perpetuate psychological suffering, and then explore an approach to life that is more in harmony with their true nature.

Our true nature may not be suited to the type of life we have been attempting to fit into. Our suffering is a wakeup call on a heroic journey to a more meaningful life, and the life that is trying to emerge will somehow contribute to a better life for others.

An Integration of Approaches

The new wave of approaches integrating mindfulness with proven therapeutic methods has begun to address this inadequacy. There are additional therapeutic methods that can deepen and broaden this integration and help people connect with the essential qualities of being, while trusting more fully in people's ability to change and grow.

There are four basic paths to psychotherapeutic integration. A common factors approach emphasizes therapeutic actions that have been demonstrated to be effective, yet are presented in slightly differently ways in different models. Technical eclecticism looks "to improve our ability to select the best treatment for the person and the problem ... guided primarily by data on what has worked best for others in the past". A third model of theoretical integration focuses on combining and synthesizing a small number of theories at a deep level, whereas others describe the relationship between several therapeutic modalities. With assimilative integration, the clinician has a firm grounding in one system of psychotherapy, yet is willing to incorporate or assimilate perspectives or practices from other schools of thought.

Ken Wilber, in his comprehensive attempt to define an integral psychology, starts with one major rule:

Everybody is right. More specifically, everybody—including me—has some important pieces of truth, and all of those pieces need to be honored, cherished, and included in a more gracious,A spacious, and compassionate embrace ... But every approach, I honestly believe, is essentially true but partial, true but partial, true but partial.

In studying and applying spiritual teachings and psychotherapeutic methods to my own life and through assisting my clients, I have sought to understand what works best with whom and why.

As psychotherapy has evolved, the gap between the field of spiritual enquiry and psychotherapy has narrowed. I feel the gaps exists due to major differences in the contexts in which spiritual enquiry and psychotherapy are set and in the jargon each uses. This book is the result of following the four paths of integration through the learning and application of various psychotherapeutic orientations including: Ericksonian Hypnosis and Psychotherapy, Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Self Relations Therapy, Solution Focused Therapy, Systemic Family Therapy, Narrative Therapy, Gestalt Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Somatic Psychotherapies, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), Thought Field Therapy(TFT), NeuroSemantics and Jungian Psychotherapy.

My exploration in the field of psychotherapy has coincided with my journeying through the three schools of Buddhism: Hinayana, Mahayana and Vajrayana. I've been an avid student of A Course in Miracles, been touched deeply by the teachings of Carlos Castaneda, Osho, Adyashanti and, in the Advaita Vedanta tradition, Ramana Maharshi, Gangaji and Eli Jaxon Bear. In addition, when I was young, I was confirmed within the Lutheran Church and served as an altar boy.

Most teachings on the Enneagram do their best to describe a coherent integration of modern psychology with traditional spiritual teachings, usually from mystical Christian, Sufi and/or Buddhist perspectives. Like Wilbur, in this book I build on the foundations of all of these spiritual and psychotherapeutic traditions, and try to articulate what the common factors are, the most accurate descriptions and useful methods, and how they all fit into an integrated model.

In my study of Buddhism, I noted that Buddha, like a skilled psychotherapist, understood that different people require different teachings and methods to free themselves from suffering and realize their potential.

While the three major vehicles for realization are Hinayana, Mahayana and Vajrayana, most Buddhist and Western psychotherapy integrations appear to be drawn primarily from the Hinayana and Mahayana traditions. However, the deeper teachings of the Vajrayana school provide an opportunity to help people realize the fullness of their deeper nature by directing their attention, not only to the objects of mindfulness (breath, body sensations, emotions, thoughts and external sensory perceptions), but also towards that which is noticing all those things.

As Lama Ole Nydahl says, "The radiance of mind itself is much richer than the conditioned experiences of joy we all strive for. The best moments in life are actually gifts and appear when beings forget themselves. There are situations where feelings of separation disappear, like being in the arms of our loved ones; the timeless moment of 'being one'." As Sogyal Rinpoche says, "Meditation is the mind turned inward, resting in its own true nature." Or, as Ramana Maharshi said when speaking on working with the mind, "Let what comes come, let what goes go; find out what remains." I like to add, "And rest as that."

In his explorations into the nature of consciousness, psychiatrist Milton Erickson discovered for himself and passed on to his clients the experience of "being nobody, doing nothing, in the middle of nowhere." This is the experience of what Almaas refers to as the void, or the Buddhists refer to as Nirvana. It occurs when you go into deep sleep, but you're not awake to notice. It is what Ken Wilber refers to as the causal realm or the One Taste. That formless space of awareness is always present whether we are awake, asleep, dreaming, aware of our senses or engaged in thinking. In mindfulness approaches, it is what we are learning to perceive from when we allow everything to be as it is.

In searching for what relieves suffering and what helps people realize their potential, many therapists have recognized the importance of helping people access the essential ground of being. Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) is an integration of approaches, which grew from modeling the work of psychotherapists Milton Erickson, Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir and linguist Noam Chomsky. NLP-trained Brandon Bays has created a therapy known as The Journey, which guides people to the qualities of being through the direct experience of emptiness, using what NLP calls Drop Through Technique. Very similar work is described in The Void, by A.H. Almaas. Connie Ray Andreas developed an NLP technique of accessing core states of being by dialoging with alienated parts of one's psyche.

Spirit and Matter

There is form and there is formlessness, otherwise known as matter and spirit. We call ourselves human beings. Our humanity is the world of form, of things coming into existence and going out of existence. Our body comes and goes, our activities come and go and our thoughts and feelings come and go. All the comings and goings of our lives happen in the pregnant space of existence, sometimes referred to as emptiness. In Sanskrit, it is called Shunyata and in other traditions Presence, Spirit or Being. It is the ground of awareness. It is not personal; it is universal.

Gregory Bateson described Mind as being immanent, not located in individual; rather, individual consciousness is located in an intelligent self-organizing field. In Buddhism, emptiness is not a void in the sense of being nothingness. It is the infinite; it is the field of infinite possibilities out of which all form arises and dissolves into. Just as the outer world has arisen out of emptiness with the Big Bang, so also do our inner worlds of thoughts, feelings, imaginings, and so forth, arise out of and dissolve back into the empty space of being. There is no essential difference between inner space and outer space. It is all the same beingness. If the wholeness of being is like the ocean, then the waves of our separate sense of self arise on the surface of the ocean before dissolving back into the ocean, yet at no time are they separate from the ocean.

Human beings, like all other forms of the universe, are constantly coming into form. We play around for a while before dissolving, dying or disintegrating. All forms are impermanent and always changing, evolving or falling into decay, whereas the space in which all this occurs remains unchanged. We have a sense of this on a personal level when we open our eyes in the morning. There is a sense that whatever is looking out through our eyes, listening through our ears and sensing through all our senses is the same as when we were young, even if the eyes or ears, for example, aren't as effective as they once were, or the world we see all around us has changed. In ACT, this is referred to as 'self-as-context' or 'transcendent sense of self'. Psychiatrist and interpersonal neurobiologist, Dan Siegel refers to it as 'the hub of mind, which offers a ground of being'.

It would appear that the essence of the emptiness of being in human form and the essence of the universe as a whole have inherent qualities. As the great Tibetan Buddhist lama, the late 16th Karmapa said, "Every atom vibrates with joy and is held together by love." The universe has a self-organizing wisdom that is inherently playful and caring. It looks after itself in ways that are loving, lovely and wondrous. In Christian terms, this same statement would be that God is love, and is everywhere and in everything.

Body, Mind, Soul and Spirit

Essential wholeness is the sum total of what it is to be a human being. We are human and we are being. Our essential wholeness includes body, mind, soul and spirit, what is changing and what is unchanging. What is changing is like an ecosystem. As human animals we are imbedded in and dependent on the rest of nature. Our wellbeing as humans is dependent on living in harmony with our own nature, which is at one with all of nature. We are also Being. Our deepest nature is spirit or pure awareness. There is only one spirit, which is the unified field of energy and information out of which all of creation arises and disappears back into.

The bridge between spirit and body is soul. Soul allows us to experience the connection to spirit and the rest of creation. It is soul that awakens to its true spiritual nature while manifesting full creative potential through the human mind and body.

Mahayana Buddhism refers to these three aspects. Dharmakaya or spirit is the Absolute, the unified and unmanifested essence of the universe. Sambhogakaya or soul is what is in the process of realising enlightenment through spiritual practice. In Eastern traditions, it is what reincarnates for lifetime to lifetime. Nirmanakaya is the body that appears in the world. Dharmakaya, spirit, is like the atmosphere; sambhogakaya, soul, is like clouds; and nirmanakaya, body, is like rain. Clouds are a manifestation of atmosphere that enables rain. These dimensions are sometimes referred to as causal, subtle and gross. They are present in deep, dreamless sleep and silent meditation (dharmakaya); dreaming, imagination and trance (sambhokaya); and ordinary waking consciousness (nirmanakaya). The unified field of these dimensions is referred to as Svabhavikakaya. I like to refer to that as essential wholeness.

The self-concept or ego is identified with the body and its primary focus is on our survival by satisfying our instinctual drives. The Enneagram system traditionally recognizes three basic human instincts: self-preservation, social and sexual. In other words, focusing on survival of the body with food, shelter, and so forth; survival of and within society; and survival of the species through procreation.

The ego is a collection of habitual beliefs and behaviors that dictate how one survives by acquiring things, our place in the group and sex. Healthy egos, thanks to prompting from the soul, evolve over time and coincide with changes in how we relate to our survival. A healthy ego is going to have different concerns at eighty years old than it did at fifteen.

The development of healthy egos has historically been the focus of most psychotherapy. Symptoms usually arise in our lives when our egoic self-concept is more concerned about its own survival, even than the survival and wellbeing of the body. For example, if I identify with being the kind of person that thinks my career and money are the most important things for my survival, and consequently use most of my social relationships merely to further my career, I may find myself in the therapist's office wondering why I'm depressed. In the process of therapy, I will understand that I've been ignoring my developmental needs for friendship and sexual fulfilment.

The soul is the realm of the unconscious and what Jung referred to as the collective unconscious. It is the realm of archetypes and myths that inform and organize our human existence. At the most basic level we can think of soul as the universal laws that govern a self-organising universe.

Biochemist Rupert Sheldrake coined the term 'morphic field' as that which organizes the characteristic structure and pattern of activity in systems and their members. Soul manifests at different levels. There is the individual soul, the soul of a family, a soul of an organization, a soul of a nation and the soul of the planet. There are individual souls nested in collective souls. This mirrors the way life is organised, with cells within bodies, bodies within communities, within ecosystems, and so on.