I encourage my patients to see the spiritual dimensions in their everyday experience and in their dreams. For example, a thirty-four year old patient striving to become more independent from his controlling father dreamed that he and his father were traveling together by car. In the dream, his father suffered chest pains and was apparently suffering a heart attack. My patient called an ambulance via the car phone. He was very concerned and upset about his father’s condition.

From my knowledge of my patient’s hostility and fear of his father, I surmised that one meaning of the dream was his anger at his father and the wish that he die. But that is not the only important aspect of the dream. That is, it also reflects the son’s spiritual values of love and concern. The dream reflects my patient’s lifelong yearning to be important and needed by a father who in real life hardly valued or wanted his son’s help.

Psychotherapy can indeed benefit those in spiritual pursuits. As mentioned elsewhere in this article, religion and spirituality can be a convenient means of avoiding addressing unresolved conflicts. This has been called “spiritual bypassing”. For example, a college student struggling to separate emotionally from parents to independence becomes a religious zealot. His pathological dependency on his parents is transferred to authoritarian religious leaders and doctrines. Anger, hurt, and resentment remain repressed in his unconscious. Any admonitions to this college student to love his parents unconditionally, as many religious teachers would advise, without the gentle unearthing of the underlying negative emotions, would be premature and not helpful.

Many spiritually evolved people, despite their spiritual insights and moments of peace, are left with feelings of emptiness, low self esteem, and a host of other symptoms.

To their credit, they have been able to realize the limitations of their spiritual practice. They have embarked on a path of psychotherapy together with their spiritual practices.

The longer I have been personally involved in the dual paths of therapy and spiritual quests the more I am impressed with the tenacity of the emotional obstacles preventing more happiness and freedom. I have concluded that more harm is done to us by not accepting and improving our humanity than by not realizing our spirituality. My clinical practice reflecting this is echoed by the this statement in by Joan Borysenko, PHD in her book, MINDING THE BODY,MENDING THE MIND on page 163:

                      “It’s hiding feelings, believing you have no right to experience
                       them and therefore feeling helpless that leads to a more dangerous
                       state…. The only negative emotions are emotions that you will not
                        allow yourself or someone else to experience. Negative emotions
                       will not harm you if you express them appropriately and let them
                       go-bottling them up is much worse.”

Many people who are brought up in Eastern societies like India and Japan cannot understand why Westerners need psychotherapy in light of thousands of years experience in Eastern spiritual cosmology.  What they do not realize is that our westernized society has bred certain problems that can be dealt with better and quicker by psychotherapy than spiritual answers. Among these factors are our penchant for individual independent living over community living and extended family; the mobility of life style; emphasis on materialistic values; alienation from nature; breakdown of marriage as an institution; and the trend toward looking for answers from other than traditional religious figures. Our consumer driven and technological way of life has given us great benefits by raising our standard of living. Too much time and energy, however, is spent doing and achieving rather than in activities focused on just being- more time to “smell the roses”. For many, too much energy is consumed by inner wounds and childhood conflicts to move to spiritual direction and answers to deal with life’s problems. For them, the reflective exploration in the world of feelings, ego, and human needs is what is necessary before a spiritual quest can be undertaken.

In conclusion, psychotherapy and spirituality are two avenues for self-knowledge, whether that aim is curative or positive well-being. Many who have expanded awareness in either or both areas have come from rock bottom, having suffered from the likes of addictions, shattered personal relationships, life threatening diseases, and loss of purpose and meaning in life.

We in the West can learn much from Eastern thought and our own great spiritual traditions. Similarly, those in spiritual life can be made more whole by psychological awareness.

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