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Truly transformational counseling, prt. 1

September 9, 2011 in COUNSELING, GODSTUFF with Comments Off

Most counseling, if done well by the therapist, and taken seriously and applied by the client (both very big ifs), can be transformational  on some level. But there is an approach that will dig WAY down, really help you uncover some amazing stuff about yourself, and help you get free to experience incredibly powerful change. Here are the first five of ten things you will probably work through in deeply transformational counseling.

1. You are already as loved as you’ll ever be. So in a certain sense, you’re already at your destination. You just don’t know it. So how you can you come to know it? It may take a couple years to answer that.

2. There’s nothing blasphemous about coming to love yourself the way God loves you. In fact, that would get you even closer to God. After all, having the heart of God means loving the way God loves right? How can you do this if you don’t include yourself?

3. Where is God in what you’re thinking, feeling, doing in the present moment?

4. How do you see the “fruits of the Spirit” growing up in you? If a person cannot see the fruits of love, peace, etc. steadily growing in their life, then something’s seriously wrong. I couldn’t care less how “correct” they may believe their theology to be. The greatest thing about the fruits is that you can get away from just “believing” and actually taste them, and they will taste great! This means you will experience these things in your life.

5. How might your view of God actually be part of the problem? In 15 years of pastoring and counseling, I have yet to meet a single person whose view of God was not at the root of their worst problems. As we grow up, our mental and emotional sicknesses (and those of our parents and authority figures) inevitably get mixed in to the theology we are learning, and we end up with sick views of God.

The next five are coming tomorrow, along with some parting thoughts.

If you have had truly transformational counseling, how did it affect your life?

My Broken-Hearted Summer

August 31, 2011 in GODSTUFF with 2 Comments

[I normally try not to use a lot of scripture in my posts, because I have a lot of readers who do not relate to it. Please bear with me. This post, unlike most others, was written not primarily for my readers, but for me. Still, I really hope it speaks to someone.]

This summer, for me and my family, and for various reasons, has been a summer of loss, of emotional devastation, of gripping fear and loneliness, and of confusion, mixed liberally with parts guilt, regret, and anger. And the deepest sense of love and appreciation for one another that I think we have ever experienced.

I do not write as one who has survived all these things and lived to tell about it. I write as one still in the storm, who still cannot see daylight, who remains uncertain where the road leads. I do not write from a place of victory. I haven’t been able to fix what is broken (and no, it’s not a moral issue) or bring healing to gaping wounds that seem like they must be obvious, despite my considerable attempts to conceal them most of the time.

I cannot articulate what I am experiencing. But I know one thing. It is a good place to be. No matter how painful life may be, it is always a good thing to feel like you  have lost most of what matters most. Because the truth is that you never had it to begin with. The truth is that no amount of effort — from you, or me, or anyone else — can keep the people we love from dying, from suffering, from leaving us, from slinging hurtful words our way, from embarrassing or shaming us. Nothing can shield us permanently from failure, since the very refusal to take risks is, in itself, a huge failure. Nothing can prevent aging and infirmity. We brought nothing into this world, and we will take nothing out.

In times of sorrow and loss — even despair — we can be reminded that all we think we have is an illusion to begin with. The truth is we have nothing that will not one day be taken away from us. This seems depressing, but if we can get in touch with its truth, it can shape us to live well. No one who lives in light of this reality will waste his life. No one who remembers that life is short will squander her opportunities. No one who remembers that little children grow to become adults will fail to snuggle them a bit tighter.

As a believer in the reality of God, I believe there is only one thing we can never lose, and to me it is the one thing that matters most.

Romans 8:35; 37-39 (NIV)
35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

For me, this makes a difference in how I live, even in how I suffer.

Psalm 46:1-10 (NIV)
1 God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. 2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, 3 though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. 

This is the witness of nearly every major religion — that God is alive, that God is good, that God is love, and that you and I are products of that love. This truth is affirmed not only in good times but — even more important — in bad.

Psalm 46:10 (NIV)
10 “Be still, and know that I am God…

So how will I wrap up my broken-hearted summer that appears like it will be turning into a broken-hearted fall and winter? A lot of stillness. I will remember that I am loved. I will affirm that there is meaning and purpose in what appears to be brutal meaninglessness. I will learn unrelenting love and courage, in the face of what seems like unrelenting discouragement and fear. I will sit in quiet daily, giving up the crippling illusion that by some great merit that is in me, I deserve better than what I have. As I do this, I will remember that this life is a gift, even when it hurts. And when I remember that, I will be grateful, not for pain or suffering, but that I am blessed with a choice — the choice to allow these seasons to embitter me, or to shape me for greater love, greater humility, and greater service to the world.

I choose the latter in this broken-hearted season, and in every other, as long as God gives me breath.

Isaiah 40:28-31 (NIV) 
28 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. 29 He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. 30 Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; 31 but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. 

Question: What do you do in your broken-hearted seasons?

 

A Body of Broken Bones, prt. 2

August 4, 2011 in GODSTUFF with 1 Comment

 

sticks and stones may break my bones

sticks and stones may break my bones

It is the rankling, tormenting sense of unworthiness that lies at the root of all hate. The man who is able to hate strongly…is the one who is…blind to all unworthiness in himself and serenely capable of seeing all his own wrongs in someone else. But the man who is aware of his own unworthiness and the unworthiness of others is tempted with a subtler and more tormenting kind of hate: the general, searing, nauseating hate of everything and everyone, because everything is tainted with unworthiness, everything is unclean, everything is foul with sin.

The beginning of the fight against hatred, the basic Christian answer to hatred, is not the commandment to love, but what must necessarily come before [love] in order make the commandment bearable and comprehensible. It is a prior commandment — to believe. The root of Christian love is not the will to love, but the faith that one is loved. The faith that one is loved by God. The faith that one is loved by God although unworthy — or, rather, irrespective of one’s worth!

In the true Christian vision of God’s love, the idea of worthiness loses its significance. Revelation of the mercy of God makes the whole problem of worthiness something almost laughable. The discovery that worthiness is of no special consequence is a true liberation of the spirit. And until this discovery is made, until this liberation has been brought about by the divine mercy, man is imprisoned in hate.

Humanistic love will not serve. As long as we believe that we hate no one, that we are merciful, that we are kind by our very nature, we deceive ourselves; our hatred is merely smoldering under the gray ashes of complacent optimism. We are apparently at peace with everyone because we think we are worthy. That is to say, we have lost the capacity to face the question of unworthiness at all. But when we are delivered by the mercy of God the question no longer has a meaning.

Hatred tries to cure disunion by annihilating those who are not united with us. It seeks peace by the elimination of everybody else but ourselves. But love, by its acceptance of the pain of reunion, begins to heal all wounds.

From Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation, ch. 4 (pp. 74-76)

Be the Change, prt. 5 — Presence

May 24, 2011 in COUNSELING, GODSTUFF with Comments Off

Gandhi and crowd

Gandhi and crowdThere but unaware

Have you ever driven from one place to another and then realized that you could not remember actually driving? It seems like you were in a trance, like you stepped into the car at home and got out at your destination, right? You were there, but you were not present. Human beings are rarely present to themselves. Presence is when we bring conscious awareness to what we are doing. You might object, saying, “Hey, when I cussed out that guy yesterday, I knew what I was doing. I was present and aware.” No, you were not. Had you been aware, you would not have done this. If you could have seen yourself in the mirror, you would have been embarrassed. If you had been present, you would have realized your reaction was simply in order to avoid feeling your own fear and indignation and hurt. You lashed out because it’s always easier than looking in. And you actually did not act at all — you simply reacted to what the other guy did to you. You behaved like a robot, or like a grizzly bear, both of which have consciousness, but no self-awareness — no presence. This is the usual way of being. Although humans have the capacity for awareness and presence, we usually react on sheer instinct, steeped in passion. We are not present. We do not really know why we do what we do. In our presumption of basic rightness, we do not see ourselves clearly.

Presence = Awareness

If you’re going to be the change you wish to see in the world, you first commit to practicing the Golden Rule, and then you must learn to be present. Leave reacting to those who are content to insist that everyone else should change. You must stop merely reacting, but you cannot do this if you assume that outside factors are causing you to think, feel, and behave as you do. When you are present, you become aware of your own state of heart — your hurts, fears, and self-justifications. In doing this you put a stop to the endless cycle of blaming and scapegoating that always leads to violence in some form or another (rooted in contempt, malice, and anger).

Presence is observing yourself quietly at all times

Presence requires that you learn to quietly and non-judgmentally watch yourself. You are simply observing. Once you learn to actually pay attention to yourself (that is, your own state of heart), absurdities will begin to arise. You will start to wonder why you get so upset when others say and do certain things. Eventually you will start appearing a bit comic to yourself when you overreact in these ways. You will begin to distance yourself from that part of you that simply reacts. As you do, you are learning to be present to yourself, learning to act out of awareness of what is really going on in you, rather than simply listening to that voice that constantly tells you you are right and whatever you do is justified because someone else deserved it.

Presence removes the presumption of basic rightness

The first thing presence does is relieve you of the presumption of basic rightness. And as you are freed from the illusion that you are not the person you should be because everyone else is somehow preventing you from it, you are simultaneously set free to really become that person you wish to be — to be the change you wish to see in the world. That is why I have gone to great lengths to explain the presumption of basic rightness. It is the “log in the eye,” of which Jesus spoke in the gospels — the thing that keeps all of us from seeing clearly.

In my last post in this series, I will explain one particular exercise (or discipline, or practice) that will be more effective than anything else at helping you learn to be present.

Be the Change, prt. 4

May 11, 2011 in COUNSELING, GODSTUFF with Comments Off

gandhi studying

gandhi studying

Scrapping the Presumption of Basic Rightness

Bin Laden like you and me?

How are Osama bin Laden and your angry, screaming boss alike? Answer: They both did what they did under the assumption that they were fully justified in doing it. In this way, most people are like bin Laden (please hear me out before the flames begin). We all just presume we are fully justified in what we think, feel, and do. Occasionally we really are right and everything works out fine (at least for us, that is). Often we are wrong and everyone knows it except us, and we make a huge mess (which of course we will often blame others for). In bin Laden’s case, he was wrong and thousands of people died.

The Problem is Ignorance

The difference is only in degree, but this prevailing assumption of basic personal rightness IS the problem in the world. This presumption simply cannot be correct. We know there is vastly more evil in the world than we can find people to take responsibility for it. That means a great many people who are doing evil either do not believe or do not see that what they are doing is evil. Either way, the problem is ignorance.

We see ignorance also in the fact that people do evil because they nearly always feel justified in doing it in this particular case. They also feel justified in declaring quite consistently (and often with great self-righteousness) that the reasons others do evil are  not convincing or compelling. “My evil is excusable, but yours is not, and the problem with the world is people who do evil that is inexcusable.” The cycle only stops when you realize that you in fact are one of those people who does inexcusable evil. Each of us must come to where we can say, ‘”The most inexcusable evil in the world is the evil that I do, because I’m the only person on the planet who can stop it, and I simply choose not to.” And we choose not to because we presume that we are, after all, right. This is — simply — ignorant.

Comparing

If this presumption of basic personal rightness is not constantly challenged, then you may do great good in the world, or great evil, but you will do whatever you do out of this basic ignorance. This explains why there is a pecking order in prison. Everybody compares themselves to somebody else so they can feel a little “righter.” The crooks look down on the rapists, who look down on the murderers, who look down on the child molesters — “At least I’m not as bad as THAT guy.” Everybody — behind bars and otherwise, is on a crusade to be better than somebody else. [This, of course, is what the Bible is countering when it says, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."  (Romans 3:23)] The world will NEVER be a place of peace until we stop doing this. And we cannot stop doing it as long as we live in ignorance. The way we stop living in ignorance is to learn to be present.

When we learn to be present, the error that is present in our myths of basic personal rightness will begin to become clear. I’ll address presence in my next post.

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