Psychotherapeutic Approach
My early training in spirituality in conjunction with my training and experience in social work instilled in me at a young age a deep sense of the necessity of methodology in the healing process. My approach to therapy was enriched by my personal experience in psychoanalysis and by an extensive education.
My approach to therapy is characterized by the notion that freedom comes from faith. The freedom to act creatively and lovingly, and to be free of destructive habits is a function of exercising faith and openness, as an act of ones free will; to believe one can be happy and live a meaningful life, in the face of or in acknowledgement of unknowing about the relevance of awareness for action.
The opposite of this approach for a psychologist is to take techniques and awareness literally over emphasising their efficacy. My approach to psychotherapy is based on the belief that freedom to love, be creative and effective, and freedom from anxiety, depression and destructive behaviour comes from exercising faith - faith as an act of one/'s free will to believe that truth exists. For example a research scientist who works on a cure for cancer for 30 years must exercise faith that truth exists and that his/her life is not meaningless in order to persevere with the problematic nature of his/her work. | Back to top
The Human Condition
The problem of our human condition is that we have experiences, especially in early childhood, which set up seemly fixed templates of motivation and reactivity, both positive and negative.
Some psychological approaches believe we can somehow 'format the hard drive' of past experiences and start again. I firmly do not believe this is possible. Once the neuro-pathways are set up in our brains they are perpetual. However, they do not have to define the limits of experience and responses in all situations forever.We will act only according to and parallel with our most painful or pleasurable experiences if we act only according to our conditioned self/template.
What I believe is that our actions can be informed by our unconditioned self which helps us transcend our predictable self. This can have consequence for new positive experiences and outcomes in a feedback loop which reinforces better self opinion.
The trick is to allow our actions to be informed by our unconditioned self not our conditioned self be the experiences from the past positive or negative. The key is freedom of action. The condition of the possibility of free action is freedom itself which exists in all human being regardless of their experiences.
How then is it possible for our experience to be informed by our unconditioned free self? Free action comes from an unconditioned self not a conditioned self. The conditioned self is formed through positive and negative experiences. For example, when one is rewarded for good works and encouraged to do better as a child. Then latter in life one may find oneself being a high achiever for better or worse. Environmental and life span issues trigger the condition self to react according to the template already set up. How then do we acknowledge this perpetual reality yet act free of it? | Back to top
Faith
Free and creative action, appropriate and relevant action comes from our transcendence in an acknowledgement of our conditioning through faith and non-judgement.
Faith as a method for living needs to acknowledge unknowing as the core of human experience and whilst unknowing may at times be painful, even disturbing, it is not a negative thing. In relation to resolving problematic issues, faith and unknowing perfectly correlate with freedom, creativity and appropriateness. Exercising faith while deliberately and consciously holding a position of knowing, a supposed objective view, correlates negatively or inversely with freedom. Faith needs to be exercised in an acknowledgement of unknowing about the relevance, significance or meaning of our awareness for action in the future. Awareness is not necessarily predictive. Its relevance for action is not necessarily known. | Back to top
Awareness
Awareness refers to any consciousness or state of mind. In this model awareness is not necessarily about what is right. It has a broader non judgemental boundary.
It can refer to knowledge of research regarding an issue we are dealing with. It can refer to advice others have given us in relation to a problem or issue we are personally facing. It can refer to different perspectives we may generate to deal with a problem. It can refer to our different states of mind from time to time or our subjectivity. It can be of confusion or illumination.
Some people say one is in touch with ones authentic self when one has a sense of congruence regarding an issue. I say one is in touch with ones authentic self just by being aware of ones experience without judgement or agenda about what is up or down, good or bad, more congruent or less congruent.
The sense of needing to reach a higher self, a more congruent consciousness, in order to be whole is artificial, constructed and misleading. Unlike other therapies which to a greater or lesser extent hold that a sense of congruence, insight, analysis of cognition, schemas and so on necessarily indicate and point to the relevance of taking certain strategic actions or measures for dealing with a seemingly irresolvable problem, this approach to psychotherapy and meditation therapy encourages one to suspend judgement about the relevance of awareness for action, without rejecting how one feels about awareness from time to time.
This psychotherapeutic approach holds that one can be just as seduced by great ideas as bad ideas and that seduction is the problem not the idea. We can become addicted to ideas about who we are and who we should be.Freedom is the absence of addiction to ideas not the idea itself.
Seduction may take one to a mountain top of illumination and enlightenment but it would not necessarily help with application of the idea in the here and now. Ultimately the question is: what is the relevance of an idea for action now?
What we need in order to act freely and creatively in relationships and at work is inner freedom, freedom from attachments, especially when the issues that overwhelm us are problematic. Judgements about how best to deal with lifes challenges are usually based on the idea that one can consciously know truth and its relevance for action in the here and now. We do not know truth and its relevance for action in the here and now. This is a form of denial and denial is the foundation of maladjustment. Denial underpins destructive behaviour. In fact the greatest form of denial is the belief that we know we are right, even if we are right.
If we act based on a strategic approach to a problem, we do it on the base of probabilities given the weight of evidence, but we do not know for a fact we are right and we cannot know with certainty that strategy will be successful when dealing with problematic situations. | Back to top
Unknowing
We can never eliminate unknowing and the risk which comes with it. All experience is couched in unknowing about the relevance of ideas and facts for action in the here and now, particularly in relation to highly problematic problems.
This approach is positive about unknowing. It does not see it as an enemy. Unknowing is often acceptable and tolerated when all is well. When we are in crisis it is suddenly viewed as needing to be defeated. This is understandable given the pain one may be going through but it is also deceptive. For example, the Arab/Israel crisis has an endless number of people presenting solutions and claiming to know what is the root cause of the problems. Ultimately people end up holding positions and not listening or being adaptable in the situations as they arise. Each crisis brings a new round of experts saying what needs to be done to fix the problem. But in reality nobody knows how to fix the problem and nobody knows the causes for a fact. Ultimately we keep being left with more questions.
In my approach questions breed awareness rather than compulsively demanding answers. A focus on answers which are then held and acted on directly breeds compulsivity, prejudice and inappropriateness. Staying open to disturbing questions is obviously harder and less instantly gratifying but allows room for commonsense to arise in consciousness. A space needs to be created for commonsense to arise, be heard and expressed in spontaneous action. Out of a sense of perseverance in nothingness and lack of closure something else surprising arises and it arises in action not ideas, in interaction. Resolutions evolve through faith, unknowing and perseverance. The evolving resolution is then often experienced with surprise, gratitude and a sense of mystery | Back to top
Openness
My approach to psychotherapy holds that maintaining openness to the questions that disturb us generates awareness and ultimately more creative outcomes.
Openness or non judgemental awareness is the condition of not being in denial. Answers which are held to consciously and acted on deliberately as fixed solutions in the here and now kill questions and awareness.
Awareness comes when we are not in denial and forms the basis or starting point for adjustment in an evolving resolution in which we find ourselves participating. Believing an answer to be right and holding to it directly and deliberately when acting on a problem as ones main method for resolution breeds reactivity, even if we are right. On a personal level it fosters prejudice.
Prejudice begets reactivity. Reactive depression and anxiety are derived from our fixed maladaptive judgements, often deeply held at a less conscious level, being challenged when our defences are breached in overwhelming, problematic, unpredictable and often unintelligible situations.
Often people who first start therapy act out. Their minds are filled with new awareness which they find so seductive and convincing they act compulsively. Whilst the patient needs to enjoy the new awareness, to feel that sense of release and liberation from the old way of seeing themselves and their situation, there needs to be a boundary where one can enjoy the journey of self discovery yet not be driven by the awareness.
One needs to give oneself permission to explore and entertain options involuntarily without having to justify the presence of the options in consciousness. When we spend all our private time looking for 'the answer' as though it can be apprehended consciously we are spending all out private time developing prejudice not openness, reactivity not adaptability.
Even though these prejudices are often less than conscious we find ourselves consciously convincing ourselves of the value of such judgements or assumptions. It is the conscious convincing or being convinced mode of being which is so dangerous.
For example most of us have paranoid thoughts from time to time. Those of us who are actually convinced by them are most at risk. The issue is not whether or not the paranoid thought is right or wrong. The problem is whether or not one operates only out of that belief. Situations may cause one to be highly suspicious of others motives. The question is: does believing the suspicious awareness foster adjustment to the danger one may be in? Or is it better to acknowledge the suspicious awareness, suspend judgement about its relevance for action, without invalidating it, and then see what one does in the situation? Is it necessary to adopt the position that we are right or can we let go of the awareness and see what we do? If we adopt the position that we are right we are doing so in denial of the fact that we do not really know that we are right. There is value in just having awareness in the first place. Its usefulness does not have to be apparent for the awareness to have relevance.
A person may be fantasising about leaving their partner and the ideas surrounding the fantasy may be convincing. They may even appear to justify leaving. However, a person may end up staying with their partner subsequently. The fantasy may have served a less conscious purpose of making one feel one had options. It may have had a self soothing therapeutic value. Who knows why we think what we think, but that we allow ourselves to have our own involuntary thoughts seems basic to mental health.
Mental health must then be the basis of appropriate action. This appropriate action is not to be confused with political correctness: a preconceived system of ready made responses and answers burdening the individual restraining free action and spontaneity.
Denial is the root cause of lack of adjustment. The greatest source of denial is the belief we are right. Holding positions as though we absolutely believe we are right leads to division and war, domination and oppression. The well spring of human creativity and appropriateness is the validation of our subjectivity or our awareness supported by: firstly, suspension of judgement about its relevance for action; secondly, acknowledgement of unknowing; and thirdly, faith. Adaptive, powerful and creative behaviour is more likely to evolve when we approach a situation like the batsman at the crease. That is, by not coming to closure in our minds prior to the immediacy of facing a ball propelled at 150 kilometers per hour.
We are more likely to respond appropriately to the risks and challenges if we are less defensive at the point of encounter of risk. Please do not conclude that I am suggesting you should be passive in the face of danger. Deciding to be this or that as a construction of what is better or worse is defensive. You may surprise yourself as you break free of other peoples ideas and philosophies about appropriate behaviour.
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Meditation
The meditation technique which I teach dovetails with this approach.
The aim of the approach is to cultivate elasticity of consciousness as opposed to being bogged down with fixed judgements. We are trying to foster a flow of feelings and thoughts so they can integrate themselves. We are trying to cultivate openness to involuntary consciousness; learning to be at home with our own thoughts and feelings.
It is far more important that we allow ourselves to have our own thoughts than it is to know which are right and which are wrong. This is the type of consciousness that a painter uses to create great works of art or a cricketer maintains in order to successfully strike a ball.
Artists are encouraged to just let the paint brush paint the painting, so to speak, to see what happens, to see what you do. A cricketer is trained to watch the ball leaving the bowlers hands rather than decide consciously and deliberately where he is going to hit the ball while watching the ball in flight. Once a ball leaves the bowlers hands it is moving too fast for conscious and deliberate analysis.
This is so in all human encounters. Conversations between human beings happen before you can consciously analyze them. Intimacy is contingent on surrendering in the moment. It requires faith or trust as a choice to let go and see what happens. Intimacy is impossible if one has fixed judgements about the other person or about what will work with that person in the here and now even if one is right. Intimacy requires an abandonment of ideas about how intimacy works.
Text books say acting out is best exemplified in relation to reactivity and violence. Stimulus comes in. Fist goes out. There is no consideration of what is appropriate. It is mindless. My take of acting out is that whenever we act directly and deliberately on a conscious deliberate judgment in the here and now as our method of interaction and problem solving when dealing with problematic situations we act out.
For example, a person realizes his/her partner is not listening. He/she feels invalidated. His/her therapist asks the rhetorical question: 'how can you be happy if you are not being heard and valued?' He/she consciously and deliberately deduces that he/she can not be happy with a partner who does not listen. Being heard is declared as a fundamental requirement for happiness. Then in a moment of acute illumination he/she acts by leaving the relationship or pushing the issue eliciting a separation. This is acting out.
Whenever we act on our awareness without a circuit breaker, like faith in an acknowledgement of unknowing, we act out. When we take awareness literally we act in a non adaptive and maladjusted non creative way. We tune into our destructive instinct even though our ideas about our needs may be right in general terms. What is critically important in creative problem solving is not so much finding the right answer as being open to what our mind considers appropriate from time to time.
The person whose needs are not being met in their relationship will find what he/she needs if he/she stays open as opposed to being seduced by what he/she is convincing themselves of and taking literally in any given situation. The critical issue is the relevance of awareness for action in the here and now. Relevance is never known with certainty.
The techniques I use cultivate awareness and a sense of congruence along with a commitment to openness and unknowing as the foundations of awareness and creative action. Awareness without faith is destructive promoting compulsive acting out. Faith without openness to awareness is baseless, without human context. | Back to top
Safety
The techniques I use for meditation and psychotherapy are regressive so for people prone to psychotic episodes they ought to be used under the supervision of a treating psychiatrist.
Other precautions also need to be followed in order to avoid the dangers of regressive therapy. My meditation is a simple and effortless technique that has been used to alleviate suffering and promote healing. It is a regressive technique that reduces a person's defences; it encourages and assists unresolved issues to come to the surface.
My basic assumption is that all unresolved issues seek expression involuntarily as their way of resolution. Unresolved issues, be they internal conflicts or to do with external adjustment, will resurface in destructive ways if not dealt with appropriately.
The primary condition for appropriate handling of issues is safety. Without safety nothing is possible. And the critical point in development of awareness for safety is what we do with awareness. How do we use it? How is it relevant?
Often anxiety and depression can hold deeper feelings such as fear, grief and loss at bay. In this sense anxiety and depression are defences against processing issues necessary for adjustment.
Meditation can reduce the anxiety and release the underlying emotion and so the integration of feeling and thought may be fostered for the purpose of adjustment to a concrete situation. One often hears people saying when they are confused 'my head says this but my heart says that'. The dichotomy is false. In fact the notion that we can know right from wrong underpins dualism. Sudden awareness of intense unprocessed emotion can be risky.
For this reason guidelines need to be followed in dealing with awareness. When using meditation it is very important to separate therapeutic life from decision making about real-life issues. It can be dangerous to discover something in a meditative state and act on it in real-life, whether the awareness is congruous and breeds a sense of self acceptance and well being or is disturbing and anxiety provoking.
Some people use meditation to achieve higher consciousness. However, this is a no-go area for people who are prone to psychosis. In fact, it can be dangerous even for people without psychosis because it promotes acting out rather than inner freedom.
Meditation is frequently confused with forms of concentration such as yoga, tai-chi, guided-imagery and visualizations. The purpose of these exercises is often to focus full and undivided attention on a specific aspect of the mind and/or body in order to achieve a certain goal, develop a certain skill or promote a specific pathway of internal inquiry. These forms of mental exercise have a specific deliberate agenda.
My meditation doesn't have an agenda. Meditation is experienced as random and non-directed. Meditation is about free association and involuntary affective consciousness. It is about cultivating openness to what seeks resolution, what is coming into consciousness.
Human beings are driven by pleasure seeking and pain avoidance yet adjustment to problematic situations and stressors requires transcending these instincts. We need to transcend our immediate desire for instant gratification without denying that desire. It is out of this balanced approach that freedom expressing itself in appropriate action arises. | Back to top
Meditation Technique
Meditation techniques work by promoting day dreaming, involuntary affective consciousness. By repeating a mantra, without deliberately concentrating on the procedure or word, a daydreaming state of mind is achieved. In this meditative state one stops deliberately searching for answers to problems that don't appear to have immediate answers.
The pain or pleasure associated with an unresolved issue then surfaces directing ones thoughts or consciousness so the integration of thoughts and feeling as well as unconscious drives, both spiritual and base, may be fostered.
The choice of a mantra is important. It should evoke higher values and beliefs; something we would die for. A mantra should not gratify us. For example a word like relax evokes our pleasure seeking, pain avoidance drive. A mantra should evoke our transcendence. So I suggest people pick a word for God, an all powerful caring being who directly communicates with us or a human value like love, trust or freedom.
It is not critical that a person have faith in God or be traditionally religious to use my method. My accent is on faith in the face of unknowing. It is not about a conceptualized God. However, I do believe it is more difficult to exercise faith as a way of being outside a community or living tradition of faith.In this sense, we all may need to find our community of faith or own living tradition which expresses our values.
Our normal tendency is to try to manage our emotions, whether they are pleasurable or painful. In meditation we are encouraged to keep returning to our mantra recitation and breathing exercises as a way of stopping the tendency to hold onto or manage the emotion, as a way of practising openness to our experience.
In this sense meditation can be thought of as an exercise for the mind - an exercise used to promote inner freedom and openness to experience, which can help one cope with the pressures of life.The aim is to let go or practice using our free will to let go or be open. One may think of free will as a muscle that needs to be exercised with the result of one developing a habit of openness.
By allowing the emotions to sort themselves out we allow our unconscious sense of reality and safety to unify the apparently random thoughts and emotions. We allow our being to be more directed by peaceful instincts and not destructive ones. The process of becoming more psychologically healthy is mostly unconscious or in the unknown. It is not something we figure out consciously.
The synthesizing of what appears to be random and unresolved - thoughts, feelings, instincts, ideas, desires, quests for happiness, truth and identity - mostly happens unconsciously, if we exercise trust and openness. We live in accordance with this non-observable reality by being open to our experience rather than jumping to conclusions about apparently irresolvable problems.
Meditation and the psychotherapeutic methods I use encourage you to trust what you do not see. What we do not see is obviously unknown. It is our openness to unknowing which determines freedom and adjustment.
My approach encourages you to trust your unconscious sense of reality will stand you in good stead when you are required to act in the outer world of risk. Meditation and my accompanying approach to psychotherapy can train you to develop the habit of trusting yourself, and by doing so, break the habit of worrying. In the sense that it is a technique which encourages the habit of trust, it promotes your creative innate capacities to love and seek happiness. Worry does the opposite. | Back to top