The Alan Walker Lecture
Presented at tje International Lifeline Conference
Kaohsiung
November 2002
BRUCE MACKIE
(Executive Director, Auckland Lifeline - New Zealand)
The world today hangs on a single thread, and
that thread is the psyche of man.
Carl Jung
When I was invited to deliver this lecture I was both surprised and honoured. Honoured because of my respect for Sir Allan. I regard him as one of the leading Australian social reformers of his time. I remember his fearless confrontation of institutions and systems that exploited and diminished ordinary people. He stood against greed and graft in political and community life. He was surgical in his analysis and exposure of corruption. He was a champion of the poor, the under privileged and the down trodden. He was a man of conviction and amazingly complex. To be here today is therefore somewhat daunting given Sir Allan's legacy.
I have been seriously challenged by the parameters of this lecture. The Alan Walker Lecture is directed to the exposition of the Christian basis of Lifeline. In particular how faith in "God" and Christian insights, contribute to effective counseling. When the theme of Hope was determined for the convention this lecture became tentatively titled "The Hope of Lifeline". Perhaps you will sense the enormity of scope and the diversity of the presuppositions we face and also forgive the omissions that time alone therefore prescribes.
I don't know whether Sir Alan Walker recognized the most important and pressuring issue of the modem world when he determined this lecture. I believe that issue is that while science is the most profound method we have for discovering truth, religion remains the greatest force for discovering meaning and these two enormous forces are at war in today's world. The more I reflected on it the more it seemed to me the prescription for this lecture was permeated with this conflict. I suggest the schism between religion and science is a violent rupture in today's global culture and if some sort of reconciliation is not achieved soon the future of humanity is at best precarious. 1
Main stream psychiatry and psychology in its research, theory and practice tends to reject or at least be suspicious of the spiritual dimensions in mental health care. In their diagnostic classification system they have tended to ignore or pathologize the religious and spiritual issues that clients bring to therapy. It is clear that science and scientific psychology have been at a loss to discuss meaning or spirituality and its role in our lives. While suspicion of those issues may be the result of a methodical scientific approach it must be noted that it is very easy for science to disregard what it finds difficult to measure. Attitudes of "Scientific Fundamentalism" 2 - where dogma triumphs over common sense is a plague on psychology - leading to the deferential posture of psychology toward medical authority and the academic research professional. At it's best psychotherapy is integrating and inductive in nature and so contrary to the reductionist propensities of research. The truly interesting phenomena in clinical psychology are not reducible to researchers categories. Much of the suspicion may have started with Freud who said religion is a universal obsessional neurosis. Eysenck who was a Freudian psychoanalyst even suggested that religion and spirituality may be harmful to health. Carl Jung on the other hand vigorously questioned many of Freuds ideas about therapy and his view of human nature on which is was based. To Jung meaning and spirituality were central. Jung took psychoanalysis in a different direction. He noted that "The lack of meaning in life is a soul sickness the full extent of which our age has not even begun to comprehend" Today there are signs of an interesting trend toward a synthesis of spirituality in counselling and therapy. It is this Jungian perspective on meaning that I wish to pursue.
Today I invite you to consider how the hope for Lifeline lies in its ability to deliver effective healing and therapy and how that outcome is a product of the spiritual life. My underlying premise is that Lifeline will only gain relevance, it can only provide effective therapy when it gives weight to that neurological level we have come to describe as spiritual and which provides an encompassing meaning for life.
LANGUAGE
We begin with language because our world has largely been created by human language. It is language that allows us to question, to learn, and to communicate. Words allow us to construct ideas, theories and meanings. Words allow us to have a sense of ourselves in time for without language we could not be aware of ourselves. Words are the pieces of language which we use to convey meaning and also the source of meaning itself. Like the air we breathe or the force of gravity, language has always been there and we take it for granted
The theory of biological and cultural evolution presents us with a great shock. It is that language itself is evolutionary. Language has been evolving for a long time. 3 Language did not suddenly appear on
the scene from some superhuman or divine source any more than the human species did. Some think that it first appeared about 150,000 years ago then it evolved. Language enabled us to become human. Once symbolic language began to develop it opened the way for the evolution of ideas. knowledge and culture.
Language is the result of the powers of human imagination and creativity and as it develops it further stimulates that same imagination and creativity. Neurologists and biological anthropologists 4 show that language is a uniquely human symbolic, meaning centered activity that co-evolved with rapid development of the brains frontal lobes. While biologically we evolved very slowly since the beginning of life on the planet, linguistically and culturally our evolution has been very rapid. Language is symbolic - just as the recipe is not the cake so words are not and cannot be the reality. This evolution of symbolic imagination and its consequent role in brain and social evolution underpins spirituality. The power of language is such that it can create specific physiological changes within the body 5 and must therefore be essential in the curriculum of counselor training.
Theologian Don Cupitt said "Language is the medium in which we live and move and have our being. In it we act, we structure the world and order every aspect of our social life." 6
Language is also the foundation and medium for religions such as Muslim, Jew, or Christian . The holy books of these religions - The Tanach, Qur'an and the Bible are referred to as "The word of "God". In the prologue to the fourth gospel in the Christian Bible, words were portrayed as powerfully present from the beginning. "When all things began the word already was. The word dwelt with "God" and what "God" was, the word was."
When a counselor is working with another person toward heath, then we must ask how that wholeness can be achieved if the counselor holds no appreciation or understanding of how language as a symbol is employed toward ultimate meaning.
"GOD"
As language evolved so did the capacity to think, to develop ideas and search for meaning.
In order to establish ultimate meaning the human mind created the symbol of God and in most traditions it became the supreme symbol of meaning. Just as all concepts and language are evolving, so "God', has evolved and is evolving. Voltaire a deist made the famous observation "if "God" did not exist it would be necessary to invent him". What he did not acknowledge was that "God" had been invented out of the necessity to find meaning
Karen Armstrong in "A History of "God", traces the idea of "God" though its manifestations in the Jewish, Christian and Islamic faiths in all their variations.
"Today many people in the west would be dismayed if a leading theologian suggested that "God" was in some profound sense a product of the imagination. Yet it should be obvious that the imagination is the chief religious faculty..... The imagination has been the cause of our major achievements in science and technology as well as in art and religion." 7
"God" therefore is a word or concept with a long history during which it has undergone some radical changes and been understood in widely different ways. Indeed if we were to canvas the room today for how this word is understood we would likely find the word has as many meanings as there are people present. Some might refer to: creative energy, love, spirit, infinite, awesome, ultimate life force, Father, source of being, supreme, magical, mysterious, universal, all powerful, all knowing, and there would be many others.
When we try to explain the meaning of "God" we cannot avoid using words. Some say "God" is spirit, consciousness, value, reason and purpose. However we choose to interpret those words, we are unable to disentangle ourselves from language. To associate consciousness with "God" is to impute to this term the experience of self-consciousness which we humans possess and which itself has only been made possible by language.
Historically the gods of ancient polytheism were refined and replaced by monotheism. that One "God" of Monotheism, was so far beyond human conception that Jews and Muslims preferred to speak of "God" simply as "The Name" or the bearer of "The ninety, nine beautiful names". Christians spoke more of the attributes of "God" than the being of "God" and authoritative theologians acknowledged that it is impossible to say what "God" is - only what "God" is not.
Defining "God" is therefore an impossible task. While some Christians claim "God" is the personal creator, one of the most profound and influential religions in the world, Buddhism, does not recognize a personal "God".
For Jews "God" is the one who delivered their forebears from slavery and gave them the land of Israel and continues to preserve their identity. For Christians "God" is the one who became incarnate in Jesus the Christ. For Muslims "God" is the one who appointed Muhammad as the last of his prophets and through whom he delivered the Quran. In each case the attribute is derived from the tradition in question and without these attributes the word "God" is bereft of meaning. It was Pope Sixtus who said "God is not the name of "God" but an opinion about him".
As a religious symbol the word "God" is devoid of content or meaning except that which we subjectively choose to give it. The content with which we invest it is the set of values and aspirations which we find laying a claim on us. What those are depends on the world we have constructed both individually and collectively. This is best illustrated at the collective level where Jews, Christians, Muslims, while all claiming to be monotheists have never agreed on the question of who the true -God" is. While claiming to know "God", they cannot be said to worship the same "God" - for the only criterion we have for determining identity lies in the 'attributes' of "God" - and we humans are the ones who attribute those qualities. History shows we can turn "God" into a racist or a revolution.', a conservative or a liberal, indeed a personal "God" can easily embed us in our own prejudice and make our human ideas absolute.
Today the perception of "God" as a being. supernatural in power, dwelling outside this world and invading the world periodically to accomplish a divine will - is dying. Sickness is no longer seen as a reflection of "God's punishment. The weather - floods, storms, droughts are no longer blamed on "God" but on La Nina or El Nino. Where once we thought "God" helped us in battle to defeat our enemies now we know that battles are won or lost by very human attributes.
Ivan Karamozov in the "Brothers Karamazov" says "What is strange, what is marvelous is not that "God" really exists, the marvel is that such an idea, the idea of the necessity of "God" could have entered the head of such a savage and vicious beast as man So holy it is, so moving, so wise, and such a great honour it does to man". 8
It follows therefore that all theology is really an exercise in human self understanding for in referring to "God" we are discussing the meaning of human existence.
It is both the burden and glory of being human that we get to ask what life is about. We get to self consciously shape our lives through the commitments we make or by searching for that which will make sense of things. (Ernest Becker) refers to "man the meaning maker". We do not live by bread alone, sex alone, success alone and certainly not by instinct alone. We require meaning. We need purpose and priorities, we must have some grasp on the big picture.
The nature of this relationship is found in the word faith.
FAITH
Faith is not the ultimate meaning we hold - rather it is our relation to it. As someone once said - faith is the way I lean into life.
James Fowler in the seminal work "Stages of Faith" wrote "I want to affirm the largeness and mystery of faith. So fundamental that none of us can live well for very long without it, so universal that when we move beneath the symbols. rituals and ethical patterns that express it faith is recognisably the same phenomenon in Christians, Marxists, Hindus, and Dinka. Yet it is so infinitely varied that each person's faith is unique. Faith is inexhaustibly mysterious. Liveliness and continuing growth in faith requires self examination and readiness for encounter with the faith perspectives of others. Any of us can be illumined in our efforts to relate to the holy by the integrity we find in the faith stances of others, whether they are religious or nonreligious." 9
The English language handicaps us when we try to speak of faith. It gives us no verb form of the word. The Greek and Latin however show that faith is a verb: it is an active mode of being and committing, a way of moving into and giving shape to our experiences of life.
Linguistic shifts have left many people understanding that both faith and belief are a set of propositions. Belief is about holding certain ideas and it may be one of the ways faith expresses itself. Faith rather is the relation of trust in and loyalty to the transcendent about which concepts or propositions or beliefs are fashioned. It is an alignment of the heart or will. If faith is reduced to belief in creedal statements, doctrine and ritual then sensitive and responsible people are likely to judge that they must live without faith. But if faith is understood as trust in and commitment to a transcendent center of value and meaning, then the issue of faith becomes open and lively.
The "God" values in our lives are those things that concern us ultimately. Our real worship our true devotion directs itself toward the objects of our ultimate concern. Religions are cumulative traditions but faith is deeper and more personal than religion, for it is the quality of the person not of a system. Faith as a state of being ultimately concerned may or may not find its expression in institutional or religious forms.
Faith is a generic, universal feature of human living.
Wilfred Cantwell Smith puts it this way.
"Faith, then is a quality of human living. At its best it has taken the form of serenity, and courage and loyalty and service: a quiet confidence and joy which enables one to feel at home in the universe and to find meaning in the world and in ones own life, a meaning that is profound and ultimate, and is stable no matter what may happen to oneself at the level of immediate event. Men and women of this kind of faith face catastrophe and confusion, affluence and sorrow unperturbed; face opportunity with conviction and drive, and face others with cheerful charity. Faith is the orientation of the personality to oneself, to one's neighbours, to the universe - a total response: a way of seeing whatever one sees and of handling whatever one handles; a capacity to live at more than a mundane level; to see, to feel, to act in terms of a transcendent dimension." 10
Spirituality and neurology
A great number of neurological, psychological and anthropological studies already exist revealing the neural foundations of spirituality. The work of the neuropsychologist Michael Persinger in the 1990's, and more recently the neurologist Ramachandran on the existence of the "God" Spot in the brain while it does not prove the existence of "God" does confirm that the brain has evolved to ask "ultimate" questions, to have and use a sensitivity to wider meaning and value. The work of Austrian neurologist Wolf Singer revealed a neural process in the brain devoted to giving meaning to our existence. The unifying neural oscillations provide a strong hint for the function of the spiritual dimension.
To further explore this I want to introduce the work of Gregory Bateson , 11 Alfred Korsybski 12 and numerous other writers in the area of neurological levels or neurosemantics.
Our brain, in fact any biological or social system is organized into levels. Our brain has different levels of processing and when we are working to understand the brain or to change behaviours we need to address these different levels. Those of you in a business system will recognize this is also true for organizational change.
From a psychological point of view there seem to be six levels that we work with most often.
Level one is the environment.
This is the basic level - characterized by the questions Where? And When?.
Suppose a child doesn't do well in an exam.
The teacher could say "It is not your fault at all. Either there was noise in the room or something in the environment that interfered with your performance in the exam. " In other words the problem is in your environment and nothing to do with you at all. Of course this has the least impact on the student.
Level two is that of behaviour.
It is the way we act upon our environment - and characterized by the question what?.
The teacher could say, focusing on a specific behaviour "You did poorly in this test" - that puts the responsibility with the student.
Level three is that of capabilities.
These are the strategies and perspectives that guide our behaviour. They are characterized by the question how?.
At the capability level the teacher could say "You are not very good at this kind of material, your capabilities for maths or spelling - or whatever it is - are not well developed" This has a wider implication than the previous level.
Level four is the level of beliefs and values.
Our beliefs and values organize our capabilities and respond to the question why?.
On a values level the teacher could say "Oh well, it is not important. What is important is that you enjoy learning" Here the teacher is reinforcing the belief that it is not important to get a good grade, but that enjoying learning is important. It is at this level that the shift is made to that of the process of learning.
Level five is that of identity.
Beliefs and values are organized by our identity - identity helps us choose our beliefs and values and is characterized by the question who?
On the level of identity the teacher can say "You are a poor student" or "You are not a mathematician " This touches the students whole being. This level of identity is different from the level of capability. It is different to believe that I am not capable of excelling in a particular subject than to believe that I am a stupid person.
The sixth level is that of other.
It is our relationship to those things which are bigger than us - those things that most people would call the spiritual. It is where we make meaning or sense of everything.
On this level the teacher may ask of the student, "How does this result relate to your highest aspirations". That to which the student is devoted with loyalty and passion and which is central in their life, integrates all else. It makes sense of their effort, direction, values, and their world.
Knowing then as we do that higher levels transform lower levels whether in organizations or in neurology we may glimpse the significance of the spiritual dimension for transforming change. This domain provides us convincing argument for the significance of spirituality in therapy.
Let's consider this in relation to our Lifeline service.
The vast majority of people approaching Lifeline for help do so at the level of capabilities. They want to change their ability to relate to their partner, to be a better parent, to deal with stress effectively, to manage their depressing activity, to sleep better, to respond without violence, the list is endless. They want the capability to influence their behaviour and therefore their environment.
Seldom do clients move from the content of their problem to the process that holds the maladapation in place. Very few ever get to consider how their faulty beliefs and values reinforce their behaviour - seldom will people get to reflect on their identity and it's impact on how they are acting much less ever grasp how their relationship with a spiritual meaning influences all other neurological levels and therefore their health and healing. Why then should we be surprised that people without hope, vision or meaning tend to be repetitive callers or clients.
There is a big difference between someone who says "I am not capable of controlling my drinking" and somebody who says "I am an alcoholic and will always be an alcoholic". If I take something on as part of my identity it begins to have a very profound impact. Likewise living from a bold and courageous vision of how my life fits in the universe, knowing those highest spiritual aspirations that give my life meaning and having them permeate every other level is therapeutic and transforming. It is the finding of Victor Frankl in "Mans Search for Ultimate Meaning" 13 wherein he describes Jewish prisoners in concentration camps and the manner in which they handled the trauma. It is the experience of the suicidal whose lives are bereft of meaning as described by Carl Jung, and hope as exquisitely described by Aaron Beck.. It is increasingly the accumulating evidence from the field of psychoneuroimmunology. 14
To ignore the spiritual dimension in therapy is to fall victim to, and be deferential to the mechanistic and valueless scientific model found in the medical and academic research world. It is to be manipulative without heart or soul and ultimately effective only in the content and not the process of healing.
EFFECTIVE OUTCOMES:
This brings us to consider effectiveness and the place of the counsellor. Perhaps the starting point for this lecture should have been that of the outcome of Lifeline services. Many people think counselling has very poor efficacy and avoid it for that reason. One significant study (APA 1998) revealed:
76% of people identified low confidence in the outcome of therapy as the major reason for not seeking help. This is higher than the reasons most commonly thought to deter people from help - 53% gave stigma, 59% gave length of treatment and 47% gave lack of knowledge.
SPIRITUAL HEALTH AS THE OUTCOME
What then is the outcome for Lifeline. The American Surgeon General's Report on Mental Health defined mental health as "the successful performance of mental function, resulting in productive activities, fulfilling relationships with other people, and the ability to adapt to change and cope with adversity."
We all know that without being mentally healthy an individual cannot consider herself "healthy" in the true sense of the word. More importantly, however, mental health affects our physical and social health. Researchers in health psychology have conducted numerous studies wherein mental disorders such as depression have affected the outcomes of pregnancy, gastrointestinal disorders, and heart disease. Components of our mental health not only affect our emotional states but our bodies physiological and biological states, as well.
The outcome for which Lifeline exists I suggest is most profoundly put as that people are spiritually healthy . Not physically healthy, nor mentally healthy for they are consequent upon spiritual health. One of the common ways by which meaning deprived people seek wholeness is in an obsession with health. Such an approach is taking the body and mind as a machine - a very Newtonian - and medical approach to life. Could it be that in its inception Lifeline saw that health really is a crisis of meaning. Today that view is being confirmed at the frontiers of science, in quantum physics, in the revelations of eastern mysticism, and among leading psychology thinkers who are returning the psyche to psychology.
D H Lawrence in his poem "Healing`, wrote:
I am not a mechanism, an assembly of various sections
And it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly that I am ill
I am ill because of wounds to the soul
To the deep emotional self.
What a noble mission it would be if Lifeline became instrumental in reasserting and exposing spirituality to the light of our age and freeing it from the risk of being lost in the doctrine, dogma and fundamentalism of another time or another discipline.
Methodology
If the therapeutic world is unclear about the outcome for which it exists - it is even more confused about the methods it will use to achieve them.
Despite all the claims that are made, change in therapy, does not come about from the special powers or authority of any particular treatment approach.
There are more than four hundred models and techniques of therapy. They contribute only 15% to change in therapy. (40% are client factors, 30% are relationship factors, 15% expectancy factors - Assay and Lambert 1999). The greatest value of modalities lies in empowering therapists to change their view of clients.
Likewise psychiatric diagnosis is based more on political and economic factors, while diminishing clients. The fixation with diagnostic groupings, classification and cures is the result of the medical model being transplanted wholesale into the field of human problems. "Any approach which diminishes the client from collaborating in their own change has inherent efficacy problems" 15
Without doubt the field of counseling or therapy is in deep trouble from the perspective of both its outcome and methodology. It was James Hillman the Jungian Psychologist who wrote the book "We've had 100 years of psychotherapy and the world is getting worse". We might well ask today is our world any better?.
THE PRIMACY OF RELATIONSHIP
If meaning is the air we breathe then relationship is the lung that converts it for use. I cannot stress the significance of this enough.
A mechanical world view is based on reductionist science that has no need for values and does not work toward greater coherence. Such a world view that leads to fragmentation, selfish exploitation - and fails to recognize interdependence and move towards relationship and coherence - has and must inevitably fail.
An example of the significance of relationship is found at personal, social and global levels. (Zohar) 16
At the most personal level a world view or meaning is a theme running through life. A thread that draws apparently disparate pieces together and joins them into a coherent whole. Each of us has or at least strives to acquire a meaning for life. If at this personal level one fails to sense some coherent world view, then life itself fragments. The alienation suffered at this level is alienation from the self .
At the social level if one fails to sense some coherent world view the sense of self and others breaks down. Relationship disintegrates. Both the feeling of belonging and the morality that follows from such a feeling fragment. We feel that we are loners, outsiders or misfits. This is alienation from society .
At a global level a world view is a theme which integrates the sense of self, the sense of self and others, and the sense of how these relate to the wider world - the planet, the universe and ultimately to that meaning some call "God". At this level we ask why we were born, why we must die, what the meaning of our lives and pursuits are - what good we are doing and what sense our suffering has. If we fail to obtain some sense of coherence in our world view everything disintegrates - we feel empty, hopeless, that life is pointless or absurd or that it's all for nothing. This is a general spiritual alienation.
In our work with Lifeline there are numerous riveting situations every day , when we are ear to ear or face to face with the smothering palpable despair of clients in their helplessness and hopelessness. Here we are called to resonate with the suffering and seemingly inescapable dilemmas clients present. And it is this very resonance, echo or reverberation , that permits some connection and therefore the possibility that we can be part of some kind of change. It is the relationship that enables meaning to evolve.
The American National Institute of Mental Health, ("Treatment of Depression - (Collaborative Research) Project') found that clinical improvement was unrelated to the type of treatment received whether it was psychotherapy or drug treatment. What did account for improvement was the quality and strength of the therapeutic relationship (Blatt, Zurof Quinlan and Pilkonis 1996). The type of treatment administered doesn't matter. The type of relationship formed mattered most. Indeed the best most empirically supported treatment for depression is a relationship with a good therapist.
This therapeutic relationship is not a vague, unquantifiable "feel good" technique from the field of therapy. It is not the latest in a long line of miraculous models. There is a virtual mountain of studies
which consistently show that therapies in which the clients goals, ideas about the change process and where perceptions of a helpful therapeutic interaction are actively incorporated, are the most successful.
The quality of the therapeutic relationship - that which is effective for the client emerges from the highest neurological level. It emerges from a spiritual life that is directed toward coherence and meaning.
FINALLY THIS MUST BRING US TO CONSIDER HOW SPIRITUALITY IS WITNESSED IN THE COUNSELOR
When counselling is spoken of as something applied to a client or when techniques are stressed then counseling becomes simply a method of bringing about change. However an effective counselor is someone who holds a coherent and developing sense of life that is deeply embedded in their way of being. They are someone with a developed sense of meaning that integrates their personal, social and global view of life. The counselor who tries to use a "method" is doomed to be unsuccessful unless it is genuinely in line with their own meanings. While it is true that attitudes without appropriate knowledge and skill will be inadequate it is more valid to select candidates for counselor training on their way of being - than on their knowledge or skills.
Effective helping is a way of life . - It is not limited to the therapy hours or the counseling call. If counseling is inviting clients to live more successfully in the world we must ask, "how can they, if we ourselves, do not ?". If we are inviting them to hold hope - how can they if we do not. If meaning is the spiritual dimension - the core of life - on which all else depends how will they have meaning if they do not experience it in us.
If counseling is not a way of life then it is a game. In this sense counseling is irrelevant or destructive. Insofar as it reinforces the notion that the successful life is the one which "techniques" best - it becomes just one more of many selfish and cruel manipulations.
Counselling is not as some would believe - a set of functions or techniques within a socially defined role. Rather it is about freedom from roles for both the counselor and the client .
Effective helping therefore offers a unique and vivid contrast to the general life most experience in society. That's why to ask about effectiveness of counseling we must ask about the counselor - not the school of psychology or the memberships and associations. We must ask about the wholeness - the health of the counselor and not their theories or experience. It will be heard in their language of hope, compassion, peace and oneness. It will be heard in the music of their sounds and in the images of their metaphors.
Central to and determining all else in effective counselling is the spiritual life of the counsellor.
Spirituality can be experienced in a number of ways - all of them as transcendent, personal and sacred moments which cannot be adequately communicated.
One way is in the state of being . Where I am deeply aware of my own presence from the inside out. It is not that I am thinking about myself but rather that I just am. I experience being fully here. This might also be described as fullness, wholeness, or presence. Rather than being self conscious this state is one of simply being.
Another way is in the state of peace - this is the quiet inner assurance. It is the calmness or tranquility that is present in all kinds of surroundings. Indira Ghandi said "You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose".
It is also seen in the state of love - we know there is something transforming about being loved and loving but this is much more - more than the sentimentality of song writers. This state includes everyone and everything. It is unconditional and neutral. It just is. When you get high enough in neurological levels everyone has the same name. That name is love.
It is also seen in the state of OK ness . This is where judgement is suspended - it is a deep sense of worthiness that arises out of our very being ness. It is not from doing anything or having anything - it is a deep level of intrinsic worth.
It is also experienced in the state of oneness . Some people call this spiritual connection others "oneness with "God"". This is not a belief that we are one - rather it is the experience where boundaries dissolve. Where I am everything and yet nothing at the same time. Dan Millman in The Way of the Peaceful Warrior - Open your eyes and see that you are far more than you imagine. You are the world, you are the universe, you are yourself and everyone else too. You are free".
I believe these are states of consciousness that many people strive for in spiritual traditions - they can be described as transcendent or spiritual experience. Danah Zohar 16 claims spirituality is the most fundamental of all intelligences because it is linked to humanity's need for meaning. Spiritual intelligence is what we use to develop our longing and capacity for meaning, vision and value. It allows us to dream and strive.
This intelligence is what determines the effective outcome of therapy, it is I believe what is the heart of all Lifeline service, it is what gives hope for the future of Lifeline as it transcends culture, creed, politics, psychology and religion..
To end on a personal note:
The sacred meaning that integrates my living and dying is inadequately expressed in the words truth, beauty and love. Simple yet all encompassing. They are my integrating values - encapsulated in mystery - transcending all boundaries of space and time - evoking devotion, harmony, awe, wonder and oneness. For them I strive, I dream, I live and die.
Thank you.
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REFERENCES:
1 Wilber- Ken (1998) The Marriage of Sense and Soul. NY Random House.
2 Schaef, A. W (1992) "Beyond Therapy, Beyond Science. A new Model for Healing the Whole Person". Harper San Francisco
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