The Intersection Of Spiritual And Psychological Health

Carrying on from last post about forgiveness, we begin to see how the principles of spiritual development and psychological health intersect. It is understood that we are not talking about religion in any organized sense, or about any rigid set of beliefs about this or that. Isn't it telling that on any given street of significant size there might be several different churches, synagogues or temples, each offering the real "truth" as only its teachings can provide, each believing that it has the "right" way, probably the only right way to that truth, and each sure of its special place at God's side. Of course this assessment can be carried around the world, with each country and each religion claiming that oh so special place in the scheme of right things for itself.

This is not what we're interested in here. We are instead interested in the core spiritual principles and teachings of many of the world's wisdom traditions. These, not surprisingly, tend to be very similar, if not exactly the same. I'm willing to conclude that these principles and teachings are rooted in an understanding of the human condition and the human psyche, so that when we are instructed to practice, for example, forgiveness, it is not simply in order to meet an arbitrary and perhaps nice, if naive "be good" agenda - or to be controlled by the power of the State for its own nefarious purposes, as in religion as the opiate of the people - but because it is understood that this experience is central to the deepest levels of health, or wholeness, or healing that the human psyche can achieve.

"I'll give you everything I got for a little peace of mind" sang Mr. Lennon. I recently read through most of a biography of Marlon Brando - I couldn't finish the whole thing. It was, frankly, too painful and a history of too much self-indulgence to be altogether tolerable. One of the themes running through the book was Mr. Brando's endless search for some peace of mind, a quest which he did not succeed in (despite, incidentally, decades of psychoanalysis). At one point he is quoted as saying to a fellow actor that he - this other actor - could never portray a certain kind of experience because he, the other actor, had never hated the way he, Mr. Brando, hated. The sense of this hatred is palpable throughout the book, and I don't think it's any accident that Mr. Brando failed to achieve peace of mind in its presence. The two are indeed mutually exclusive, as we have been instructed over and over again.

If psychotherapy is to be able to help clients achieve some experience of relaxation, of peace of mind, of happiness, then it seems all too obvious that certain principles and practices which have been discovered to lend themselves to the attainment of these experiences will need to be, at some point in the process, employed.





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