A Spiritual Journey

by Gregory V. Wilson, D. Min.


On embarking on a journey it is wise to consider what kind of terrain, weather, communities one might encounter-on an inward spiritual journey we asked the same questions, what might one expect to happen.  How is my  inscape the very form and structure of my inner world? Is my mind busy,,, anxiety ridden, peaceful, compassionate, judging, have I traveled this way before, am I familiar with the nature of my mind, am I aware of the cultural influences of the formation of the structure of my imagination.
   
As I was contemplating this particular style of inward journey I realized it is a cross or an integration of spiritual direction and pastoral psychotherapy.  In spiritual direction you work to prevent the mind from interfering with meditation and greater awareness of my setting and in pastoral psychotherapy the tendency is to grapple with and come to terms with personal history so that you are not captured by your history.  Being captured by your history hinders change, transformation, and the awareness of new possibilities in life-which both spiritual direction and pastoral psychotherapy move us toward.

So in the beginning of this particular journey we start by attempting to gain an understanding of the cultural context of the formation of our inscape – our inner world.  Which is a question from the prophetic perspective of pastoral psychotherapy.  The prophetic perspective of pastoral psychotherapy moves us to understand cultural patterns in terms of social and personal justice.


Matthew Fox, author of such books as Original Blessing, the Coming of The Cosmic Christ, a Spirituality Named Compassion and A Healing of the Global Village, Humpty Dumpy and Us,  in his works he suggests our minds are structured by a value system centered around competition, compulsion, and dualism.

If the structure of our mind determines how we know others, self and the world, in my inscape I am  experiencing dualism, competition, and compulsion as the primary determinates of what the world is and how I am to be in relation.

Sam Keen, another writer in the area of spiritual life and cultural values writes, as a general rule, when power, force, or energy becomes the central organizing metaphor and concern in any system-natural, psychological, interpersonal, corporate, or political-its tendency is to reduce rather than enhance complexity and creativity.  For example, a tyrannical leader exerts power and effort to reduce people to conforming units that can be controlled.  All totalitarian relationships try to destroy the natural diversity of the human community in order to produce an anthill society in which people are interchangeable, standardized units that can be controlled.  “The result is inevitably a conforming mass that lacks color, spirit, or creativity.”
   
An example of how this is facilitated is that every evening of the week at 8 o’clock and average of 30 million people are watching the top six television shows.  This does not include the television shows that are not in the top six.  Such as public broadcasting service or the science-fiction station.  Which is why my favorites.

   
As a result some of us in the beginning of our journey inward may discover a smoothness, a kind of stillness that is a result of being conditioned by mass media which supports conformity.  But be patient, if you decide to take this inward journey you will find the chaos within, as well as excitement and creativity.
   
When power, profit, greed, are cultural values; competition, compulsion, and dualism will be central characters in the play, both in the external world as well in the world within our minds within our inscape.    

Dualism

Dualism is;  either-or, up-down, good-bad, black-white, justice-punishment, judgment-shame, love – hate, dualism that which creates an over and against paradigm that structures worldviews.  For example let’s look at the evolution of the dualistic process of justice-punishment in our culture.  This topic is related to the Unitarian Universalist statement of conscious which we are studying for this year and next.

A deep and destructive dualism that structures are culture stems from the separation of love and justice.  Author, Jose Miranda states, “one of the most disastrous errors in the history of Christianity is to have tried-under the influence of greek definitions-to differentiate between love and justice.”
   
This is not at all congruent with the Old Testament-Jeremiah the prophet stands on a street corner in Melbourne with a loudspeaker any yells, “to know love is to do justice.”  And goes unheard. Justice in the eyes of the prophet  is not opposed to charity, it is charity. The separation of justice and love creates a dualism that plagues our country and structures our minds-for example psychologist William Eckardt defines compassionate justice has, “moving towards equality guided by the assumption that human beings are equally human.”  (First principle)

In the struggle for  prison reform we will see clearly that love and the justice system of our nation are not in contact with each other, in the Unitarian Universalist tradition they are in contact with each other or so we hope.

Competition

How will we know unhealthy competition will we see it and feel it in our inscape. Competition, Karen Horney, and American psychiatrist, writer and educator, points to an outcome of a society that structures values around competition. The result creates a core emotional response in its citizens that value good citizenship with the acquisition of goods, which creates an underlying anxiety in society at large.   She states this anxiety leads to a neurotic competitiveness. “For  power, prestige and possession have to be acquired by the individuals he is compelled to enter into competitive struggle with others.  From its economic center competition radiates into all other activities and permeates love, social relations and playing.  Therefore competition is a problem for anyone in our culture, it is not surprising to find it at the center of neurotic conflicts.  (188)

There are also gender considerations in any culture that also contribute to the inscape in the development and evolution of the mind.  Karen Horney questions, “is not the tremendous strength in man to do creative work in every field precisely due to their feelings of playing a relatively small part in the creation of living beings, which constantly impels them to an overcompensation in achievement?

Like all sciences and all valuations, the psychology of women has hitherto been considered only from the point of view of man.
And in women, it seems to me impossible to judge to how great a degree the unconscious forms of womanhood are reinforced by the actual social subordination of women.

Thoughts for considerations.

Sign posts up ahead pointing to competitiveness;

  1. Comparing ourselves to others and that comparison affects our sense of worth one way or another.
  2. ambition so powerful that there is not satisfaction after accomplishments, a noticeable lack of celebration – fun  phobia
  3. in competition – formal or formal, hostility is present to the point of harming, belittling, shaming, cheating in order to win.

Compulsion:

Psychologist William Eckardt suggests competition is a function of compulsion.  Christopher Lash would say that we are as a culture addicted to the feeling of acquisition.  Compulsion moves toward a worldview of absolute truths; being right is more important than relationships even if you’re wrong.  Common compulsions in our society are addictions, passionate attachment to political view to the point where new information is not considered, a commitment to upwardness, we see compulsiveness in our political spectrum when two parties are at war and other parties cannot be heard. I am reminded of an early Star Trek episode for Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock fine two-man moving through time for eternity, their faces were divided in half ½ was white ½ was black.  At the end of the show Captain Kirk asked why they’re fighting with one another  with such hatred and intensity, one of the men said, “don’t you see the left side of his face is white mine is black;” just then they jumped into another time portal in an aggressive embrace.  They were stuck in a history of hatred without the capacity to come out of the history creating a new and different future.

To find a way out of this way of life and driven by values of greed is good, power is good when used to acquire anchored in the human traits of competition, compulsion, and dualism – we move inward; walking through our past – into the formation of our minds, weaving new threads into the tapestry of our history in order to generate a greater capacity to love and express compassion. To once again join love and justice.

Our imagination is filled with the many events and memories of our experiences– cultural, family, celebrations, good and pleasant memories, sad painful dramatic memories, our fantasies, our dreams, our fears our hopes, all these in many more makeup threads within our imaginations.  In a sense we can walk around within our imagination and we can point to particular memories, particular events, we can look at our imagination through  many different lenses, through the lens of a prophetic perspective, the family of origin perspective, through the lens of self affirmation, through the lens of a sense of inadequacy and its origin, through the lens of the development of our spirituality of our religious sensibilities.  So when we are walking through our imagination we can determine how to interpret who we are and not interpret ourselves through the lens of others or our own internalized colonization values.  
   
Given any particular lens, in this case the prophetic lens, we can see the influence of the values of competition in our memories from childhood, high school, college and in our adult lives, we can see the influence of the value of compulsion and the value of dualism, and we can see how gender influences have influenced our identity formation.  And after walking around in our imagination and identifying those things that have formed us and identifying those places in our history that capture us and influence our behaviors in directions that are not our best selves  we can move to the edge of our imagination we can rise up and step out of our own history; within our imagination and we can view the structure of our history within our imagination and we can find the  difficult places there and we can begin the work of transformation.  Viewing our history in the formation of ourselves we can rise up and  step out of  it and view the path we have been following.  We can also turn slowly around in see what is beyond ourselves, see what is beyond the cultural influences that have formed our selves and ask the question what is out there?, what is  me and yet  not me?
   
We must stand in a place,  the edge of our imaginations to get a sense for how we feel about what is and is yet to come beyond ourselves, indeed there are the possibilities for ourselves they are  within ourselves.  We must stay there at that place and revisit that place until a sense of love and belonging moves through our being.  Until we experience radical self-love; where you interpret who you are and recognize you are part of the whole universe.

Love

Being within love; you exist in the movement of love-it is here we discover something that is inexhaustible.  We discover we are more than our history we are more than mother, father, brother, sister, we are more than offender, victim, we are more than when we began this journey.  In many senses there are no words described that first experience of being more; that  is
because there has yet to be time for reflection and meaning making, we simply are in the presence of love.  Here on the edge of our inner universe as it expands and takes new form we are beyond the very identity that brought us to this place.  Here love initiates us into an expanding universe where we add to the library of our history as we continue to live freely in the present knowing our worth, the worth of others, and the worth of all creation.

© 2008, Gregory V. Wilson