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Dr. Richard Jordan
San Diego County Psychologist
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Vision Magazine Article
Therapy As Spiritual Practice
by Sydney L. Murray
a conversation with Dr. Richard Jordan
There are many times in our lives where the assistance of an
experienced therapist, analyst or psychologist can greatly facilitate
our lives whether they be in a crisis, a period of stagnation or a
deep depression. My experience with therapy and analysis has been one
of great pain, deep awakenings and a recognition that my life lessons
are ones of dealing with my sense of value of my life and my world. I
believe that the time money and energy spent in therapy is a gift I
give myself to heal, forgive, acquire deeper awareness and to know
myself and love myself.
I asked Dr. Richard Jordan, author of Relationship School, A Path of
Conscious Loving and a psychologist known for his spiritual approach,
if therapy was spiritual practice. He answered, "Well every experience
can be spiritual depending upon the attitude you bring to the
experience. So, two people sitting in a room talking about big life
questions can certainly be a spiritual experience for both of them. In
fact, it looks to me like a pretty high spiritual experience when you
have two or more people revealing ever-deeper levels of their
authentic core selves, as is the case in effective therapy."
"In terms of therapy approaches, the field of transpersonal psychology
emerged two or three decades ago partly as an evolution of the
humanistic movement and partly as a result of our Western culture
beginning to have widespread experiences of interconnectedness through
altered states. Also, you could look to Carl Jung as a spiritual
psychologist, with much of his work having a spiritual basis, such as
his views of the collective unconscious. I once read that he told a
reporter when late in his life he was asked if he believed in God, he
replied, ‘No, I don't believe in God, I know.’ He had his own
experience of the divine through his work, his pursuits of image,
symbol and dreams."
"More therapists are daring to talk about spirituality, and the term
‘spiritual psychology’ is being used. The root meaning of the word
psyche is soul, so in it's essence the phrase spiritual psychology is
redundant and psychology may be viewed as a spiritual endeavor from
the outset. When you work with someone long enough you come to those
big questions which don't seem answerable by the mind but are more
suited for living our lives in wonder of …in the moment. "
"For example, What's the most loving way I can be in this situation?
Unfortunately, our schools place too much emphasis on teaching us how
to answer questions logically and efficiently, to produce the one
correct answer. Very left-brain. This has its place, but what it has
caused us to forget is the experience of wonder we knew as children.
Most of us need to re-learn this."
"Recently I was working with someone who was in a fearful state about
what was coming up in her psyche. She was afraid that there was no
bottom to it. I found myself describing it as fear squared: She was
terrified of her fear, that her fear was something too big and too
overwhelming and if she went into it she might never come out. We
ended up doing some breath and body work, anticipating that her fear
would come up, but what happened was she found herself in this
blissful state where she was aware that she was emanating light and
could feel this deep wellspring of loving. This gave her an experience
to put in her ‘file’ of what the opposite of fear feels like. After
this experience, she was still aware of her fear, but not terrified of
it. What a gift from the wisdom of her body that neither of us
expected! She got an image of her daughter as an infant and saw the
look in her eyes, a look of blissful connection with the source. She
was having that same feeling, awareness of connection with the source.
And the lesson is, that's where we always end up. There's an infinite
wellspring of loving that's ever available and it's always there
waiting for us. And that's always where we end up, even if it's not
until the moment that we die. The Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat
Hanh talks about how we don’t have to die to go to heaven. Heaven is
available to us in the moment, when we are fully awake."
"How amazingly beautiful," I commented, and thought that there are
many different places we may start from in therapy, and where it leads
us is sometimes a mystery.
Dr. Jordan commented that, "Some suggest that therapy replaces the
tribal elder and community support that is missing from our culture. I
agree, but would add that we now have the added benefit of about 100
years of recorded information about what works and doesn’t work in a
therapeutic environment, and we have lots of science about how the
mind and body work.. So we have three main sources of wisdom: elder
wisdom, therapeutic experience, and science."
"I believe the role of therapy is to assist people in moving toward
deeper levels of truth and authenticity and to facilitate
self-forgiveness. Our judgments of ourselves block us from
surrendering to the ultimate truth that we are infinitely worthy of
our own loving. Self-forgiveness clears the way. The role of therapy
is not simply to make people happier, although this is a by-product.
Truth, authenticity and compassion for oneself and others leads
naturally to upliftment."
Jordan continued, "I think it’s also the therapist’s job to fully
honor the person's whole experience which includes their relationship
with the planet. What I'm advocating is a return to the pagan concept
of relationship with the planet as a living entity deserving of our
honor. For example, a person might have on the way to my office seen
someone empty their ashtray on the highway and had a rage filled or
sad response. This person's experience should be recognized as an
authentic response to a harmful act to the planet and explored as such
in therapy, not treated as a mood problem or somehow related to some
experience with their father when they were four years old."
"There’s something else we can learn from nature. All things have a
natural rhythm. You see it throughout nature: waves ebbing and flowing
on the shore, oscillating atoms and molecules, the seasons of the
planet, our own psyches as we reach out to connect and then sometimes
go back into our inner world. We also do this in our relationships.
One of the skills of a thriving relationship is to honor that flowing
together and moving apart as a natural thing, rather than resisting it
or making your partner wrong if they don't want to be as close as we
think they should be at a given time."
"The way I would see my role as a therapist is as a partner in
wondering about the big questions, so that I'm honoring the person's
own inner wisdom. Offering them some guiding questions and
suggestions. Inviting them into their own non-judgmental awareness of
their experience into the deepest level of telling the truth and being
authentic and then taking responsibility for whatever shows up. At the
soul level there is total compassion and equanimity. Right and wrong,
good or bad fall away. This is the ultimate, divine altitude that we
sometimes approach in deep states of meditation. And this state of
compassion and empathy is where self-forgiveness and healing happen.
As Rumi said, "Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there." My goal as a therapist is to
place myself in Rumi’s field and invite the person to join me there."
You may visit Vision Magazine at
www.visionmagazine.com.
To arrange for counseling, workshops, or speaking engagements, you may
contact Dr. Jordan at:
drjordan@cox.net | 619-303-5062
Counseling Office Location: 5100 Marlborough Drive, San Diego, California
92116
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