Love Ministries - AN INTRODUCTION TO SPIRITUAL PSYCHOLOGY

AN INTRODUCTION TO SPIRITUAL PSYCHOLOGY

Spiritual psychology is the journey to love. It begins with love for self, and expands from that nucleus into a healthy, strong compassion for others. In fact, in spiritual psychology, one's level of wellness or balance is equivalent to one's quality of love.

The journey takes us through many traditional spiritual paths, but is not a religion. Instead, its quest represents the "holy grail" of learning to live well, productively, and joyfully. Its goal is wholeness or completeness, indicating that the major problem of human psychology may be represented in terms of fragmentation or breaking apart from the Whole, the Totality of life and life-processes. Among the many schools from which spiritual psychology derives its principles are Buddhism, Taoism, Gnosticism, and other related schools of traditional "enlightenment" consciousness, including various shamanic traditions. (In "primitive" or non-technological cultures, "shamanism" is the specialized field in which altered states of consciousness are studied.)

The very core of all psychospiritual exploration is the definition of reality, called "truth" in many traditions. Oddly, a bit paradoxically, most people tend to think of reality as having little to do with life-- that it is the province of philosophers and metaphysicians. Quite the contrary is the actual case, however; the kind of universe or reality in which you believe will determine, influence,and modify everything in your personal psychological make-up.

As in traditional schools of psychology, so in spiritual psychology, technique and practice is strongly rooted in mental constructs, world-views, or philosophy. Unlike traditional perspectives, however, spiritual psychology seeks to embrace and to welcome specific insights from the mystical illuminations of the world's great spiritual traditions. Thus, spiritual psychology takes a holistic approach, seeking eclectically to blend or synthesize profundities from luminaries and teachers and masters of history.

Mystical psychology, however, is no mere artifact of that history. Instead, it is a living, vibrant, dynamic system that includes most of the truly important factors in self-image, relationship, value-systems, social transformation, in-depth mental analysis, and other important factors in wellness, harmony, and balance. Thus, from this perspective, it does not really matter whether one has a form of religion; what matters is that everyone does have a spiritual nature, from which she can tap enormous resources; it is an interior reservoir of immense wisdom, knowledge, peace, and empowerment.

This pool of "spirit" or "soul" lies deep within the unconscious mind. The unconscious mind is, in fact, according to spiritual psychology, the source of the actual world, just as it is the source of innumerable realities or worlds in night-dreams.

That the world is a dream has been the back-bone of more than one tradition in history. But since the time of Descartes, the Cartesian world-view has dominated Western thinking and science. In the West, the dream-world-view has largely died. But it arises from the most rational or premises.

The first premise arises from the question, "What can we demonstrate actually to exist? What can we actually prove to ourselves exists?" The answer is, surprisingly, that you cannot prove to yourself that any material object or world exists. Instead, you can demonstrate or prove to yourself only that the *sensation* or awareness of an object exists-- and that is a very different thing from verifying that the object itself actually has independent existence.

Descartes started his line of reasoning from the famous dictum, "Cogito ergo sum," or, "I think, therefore I am." But where do we go from there? In many schools of mystical illumination, it is not actually necessary to go any "further," in order to explain the existence of the "material" world. According to these philosophers, by demonstrating the existence of the self to the self, by the process of thinking, one simultaneously demonstrates the existence of a greater phenomenon:-- mind or consciousness.

Since the world operates independently of the known content of the mind, however, it is necessary to suggest the existence of two levels of mind: The conscious mind contains all that of which we are aware, and the unconscious contains everything else. Also, in the history of spirituality and psychology, the unconscious mind is itself further sub-divided into two sections-- the subconscious and the super conscious.

In the illumination-traditions, the super conscious mind has been identified with God. And so , unlike in the more primitive anthropomorphic traditions, God has never been externalize, but has been known as an inner quality, state , or process of the unconscious mind. Its essential nature has been described as "wholeness," a word that shares a root with "heal," "holy," and "holistic."

And the core-nature of this wholeness, the process by which the mind finds wholeness, has been described by the word "love." But this spiritual love, as the foundation of all wellness, is different from, although it often includes, the many distorted meaning of the word common in popular Western culture. Love, in its larger sense, is the ability to embrace living beings as they are, fully to accept them without judgment as to their intrinsic or eternal value, and to render to them goodness, kindness, compassion, tenderness, generosity, and related qualities. In some ways, love is analogous or even equivalent to what , in Rogerian psychology,is called "other-centeredness," or "unconditional regard".

These are not exact equivalents to cosmic love. The nature and varieties of this love are the subject of a special branch of spiritual psychology called "agapology." That artscience demonstrates that real or cosmic love is very close to a condition described in Buddhism as the "all-embracing mind." This is the mind in the clarity of perfect illumination; it does not pass judgment on either persons or situations, but embraces all with equal equanimity.

Thus, the way to mental and spiritual oneness does not consist of long, drawn-out sessions of therapy, although there are appropriate times and places for this. It does not consist in an understanding of intellectual psychologies, although this can be very helpful; it does not consist in belonging to any particular religions, although some have found that religion can be a door-way into spiritual renewal. No, instead, we can say that mental wellness or harmony consists in maximizing the manifestations of one's personal capacity to love-- both the self and others. Of course, capacities will vary from one to another, and we are not all expected to be exactly like Jesus, Gautama Buddha, or Lao Tzu. But each person has the ability to tie into the very same Love-nature within the self, and to express it according to his/her capacity. Every act of love is a healing act, and the most powerful healing energies in the world are tapped whenever we decide to give or receive love. From the more exalted spiritual viewpoint, every act of love, even tiniest one, is an act of worship.

For, in the final analysis, when we look back on our lives, we will treasure only those moments of sharing, relationship, compassion, goodness,and love. When all is said and done, love is not only the most enjoyable and healing act in which we can possibly engage that we can possibly engage in, but it is the only activity worth doing.

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