Ego, Morality, Character Development, Enlightenment & Psychosis

     "The notion of connectedness or union is present in some form in most cultures and all of the major religions. It has been given many names, including Brahman in Hinduism, the Buddha-mind, the Tao, and the Kingdom of God. This Spiritual Ground can be regarded as the source of one’s sense of union with self, other people, the environment, and the universe. In yoga philosophy, this Spiritual Ground is regarded as the true nature of reality and self, with all mental activity serving only to obscure this truth by creating a sense of separate existence. 

     This concept implies that the Spiritual Ground becomes more accessible as the cognitive activity that maintains one’s ego-identity diminishes. Whether one experiences contact with the Ground as edifying or destructive relates to the developmental health of one’s ego at the time this contact occurs, as well as the means by which one’s ego boundaries are transcended. Contact with the Ground is conceptualized as occurring through 'porosity' of the ego; this can occur either through spiritual development, which allows larger and larger fields of the Ground to be identified as Self, or through illness, trauma, drugs, or impaired development, which can permit premature contact with the Ground through defective maintenance of needed ego cohesion. This model, then, can account for the superficial similarity between psychotic and mystical states, and also for the significant differences between the sequelae of mystical experiences and psychosis. 

      In both psychosis and 'enlightenment,' individuals appear to have altered ego boundaries and to think and act in irrational ways. But in the case of a psychotic regression, this is a prerational, pre-egoic state, and in the case of healthy mystical experience, it is a transrational state built upon and extended beyond a normal, healthy ego. Wilber names this confusion between the two conditions the 'pre/trans fallacy,' and Freud’s criticisms of religion as a regressive defense may be partly understood in terms of this error. 

     The concept of the pre/trans fallacy underscores the necessity of healthy ego development as a prerequisite for constructive transpersonal experience: without it one is unable to integrate such experiences and is at risk of psychological fracture and regression into lower functioning states. Interestingly, character development is emphasized in many of the non-Western wisdom traditions that use various techniques to induce transpersonal states. Often the aspirant must go through extensive personal development and moral training prior to practicing the methods, as a safeguard to prevent subsequent spiritual difficulties. Also of interest are studies showing a positive correlation between mystical experiences and enhanced psychological functioning, further underscoring the substantial difference, in spite of superficial appearances, between psychotic regression and transpersonal states."

       Kasprow MC, Scotton BW. " A Review of Transpersonal Theory and Its Application to the Practice of Psychotherapy." The Journal of Psychotherapy Practice and Research 1999; 8:12–23.

 

Role of Transpersonal Approaches

     "All transpersonal approaches are concerned with accessing and integrating developmental stages beyond the adult ego and with fostering higher human development. Because of this concern, most transpersonal theories deal extensively with matters relating to human values and spiritual experience. 

     This focus sometimes leads people to confuse the interests of transpersonal psychiatry with the concerns of religion. Transpersonal psychiatry does not promote any particular belief system, but rather acknowledges that spiritual experiences & transcendent states characterized by altruism, creativity, & profound feelings of connectedness are universal human experiences widely reported across cultures, and therefore worthy of rigorous, scientific study. 

     Inattention to these experiences and the roles they play in both psychopathology and healing constitutes a common limitation in conventional psychotherapeutic practice and research."

       Kasprow MC, Scotton BW. " A Review of Transpersonal Theory and Its Application to the Practice of Psychotherapy." The Journal of Psychotherapy Practice and Research 1999; 8:12–23.

 

     See "Critical Spirituality": http://www.johnlovas.com/2012/10/critical-spirituality-holistic-approach.html

 

 

The Best Medicine - Start Now!

     "People often say that laughter is the best medicine, but it's not. Really, I think it is more accurate to say that friendship is the best medicine."

       Patch Adams MD http://www.patchadams.org
       "Bringing fun, friendship and the joy of service back into health care."

     And friendship with oneself has to be present before we can extend friendship to others, be it patients, family or other loved ones. We ache to know ourselves at the most profound depth - who are we? For this we need to step into the 'laboratory of the mind' - meditation.
     As obsessive doers & fixers, we postpone & find every excuse to avoid meditation, but NOW is the optimal time to get into it: http://jglovas.wix.com/awarenessnow#!WHEN-is-it-a-Good-Time/c17jj/56ae724e0cf2062bd4107a0c

Unquenchable Hunger

     In a healthy society, individuals are appropriately nurtured in their formative years to know that excessive: working, shopping, drinking, gambling, sex, etc cannot provide the profound peace & happiness that we all seek. See: http://jglovas.wix.com/awarenessnow#!Seeking-Authenticity/c17jj/569e31530cf2d42376d4d8f6
     Our society is far from healthy, desperately lacking nurturing supports, and actively promoting every form of unhealthy excess. On the excellent radio program "Ideas", Alan Lightman pointed out one of the causes of excessive shopping in our society:

     “More work is required to pay for more consumption fuelled by more production in an endless, vicious cycle. 
     And what is it that we are consuming so voraciously? What impels us to work faster and longer hours, even in the face of higher efficiency? What are these burning material needs, when Americans have become wealthier and wealthier, more than doubling their real income per person in the last 50 years? 
     One of the methods of capitalism is to create demand for its product, even when that demand did not previously exist. I was astonished to read this aim so unabashedly spelled out by Charles Kettering, a major inventor and general of GM Research Labs. In 1929, at the beginning of the automobile industry in the United States, Mr. Kettering wrote in Nation’s Business Magazine that business must create ‘a dissatisfied consumer’ and ‘keep the consumer dissatisfied.’ A more recent example of the same idea was voiced by the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, as he surveyed the future of capitalism in an ever wealthier America. In his book The Affluent Society, in 1984, Galbraith writes that, in modern America, production will have to ‘create the wants it seeks to satisfy.’ In short, a large part of our consumption is what we are told to consume, told that we need, and the cycle continues.” 
       Alan Lightman. "The World is Too Much With Me: Finding Private Space in a Wired World." Second Annual Hart House Lecture, University of Toronto, aired on the CBC Radio program Ideas, April 18, 2002. www.cbc.ca/ideas

Experts Trying to Hide Deficiencies

     Health-care professionals strive mightily to become competent, then proudly display their competence - hence the popularity of specialization & sub-specialization. The more minutely specialized one's area of training, the more sought-after are one's services, and the less one is subject to criticism from patients & colleagues.
     Of course the more time & effort expended in gaining specialized competence, the less time & effort remains to acquire general life skills. As a result, most of us haven't lead a balanced life since we were kids. Physical exercise, sleep & nutrition are not the only areas in which we're deficient. See: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.ca/search?q=maturation
     Because we become so tightly identified with the persona of "the one who knows", we become increasingly sensitive about our ignorance of the many life-skills we've ignored. This is problematic of course, not only in our family & social life, but also professionally.
     Defensiveness of our ignorance about subjects outside of our specialized area is often manifested as swaggering condemnation of basically anything outside of our own sub-specialty - the humanities, mental-health, social work, nursing, physiotherapy, spirituality, etc - are all targets. See: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.ca/2012/07/soft-skills-undervalued.html
     Since such attitudes are politically incorrect, the condemnation happens behind closed doors - the "hidden curriculum" - it's toxic effects are part of professional socialization. See: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.ca/search?q=hidden+curriculum

     Fear of our own ignorance, hubris, and our unwillingness to step-up to acquire competence in practical wisdom, condemns too many of us to become grumbling backroom cynics - "nattering nabobs of negativity." Surely health-care professionals can rise above that!

Receiving is, for Some, More Challenging than Giving

     We health-care providers are doers, givers, fixers. We're notoriously poor at self-reflection. We don't recognize or don't do enough about the fact that we ourselves require rest, a balanced life, and care. Many of us don't even have the vocabulary to think about these matters, much less discuss them. The whole are makes us feel viscerally uncomfortable. A window into our world:

     “How to let love in is an archetypal theme. It becomes an urgent call when any of us – deeply attached to our independence – need to be cared for by others. We may deny others the gift of their generosity because we aren’t comfortable with receiving or because we feel that we don’t deserve it. In Hob’s case, expressions of love from his family in his early years had been painfully missing; he survived by becoming independent, sometimes stubbornly counter-dependent. Then he was a therapist and teacher, always giving to others. With his illness, the equation turned upside down; now he had to let the love in. He recognized the challenge.”

       Olivia Ames Hoblitzelle. “Ten Thousand Joys & Ten Thousand Sorrows. A Couple’s Journey through Alzheimer’s.” Penguin, NY, 2008. 

See also:
http://healthyhealers.blogspot.ca/2012/08/burnout-as-existendial-deficiency.html

http://healthyhealers.blogspot.ca/2012/03/unacceptable.html

http://healthyhealers.blogspot.ca/2013/07/existential-challenges-approach-with.html

 

Cleaning-up - Outside & Inside

     Last night I dreamt that I was a Native chief or healer who had a powerful dream to help his people. In this dream I was instructed to strongly advise my people to keep their bathrooms spotlessly clean.

     Later I realized that this was to help them with addictions. Bathrooms are a common place for "using" subsances; literally cleaning this space blends with cleaning-up one's life, just as cleaning-up inner cities has been shown to reduce crime.

     We can make our bodies & homes sacred once more.

     This was a good dream. May it help those struggling with  addictions.

Winter Moon