Integrated Spirituality
"The effectiveness of the search of the sacred lies not in a specific belief, practice, emotion or relationship, but in the degree to which the individual’s spiritual pathways and destinations are well-integrated, working together in synchrony with each other. At its best spirituality is defined by pathways that are broad and deep, responsive to life’s situations. Nurtured by the larger social context, capable of flexibility and continuity and oriented towards a sacred destination that is large enough to encompass the full range of human potential and luminous enough to provide the individual with powerful guiding vision. At its worst, spirituality is defined by pathways that lack scope and depth, fail to meet that challenges and demands of life events, clash and collide with the surrounding social system, change and shift too easily or not at all, and misdirect the individual in the pursuit of spiritual value"
(K. Pargament: In Press. 2008.)
How would you describe your sacred experiences and how is it supported or not supported by society at large?
I have found that sometimes the sacred becomes secret and not shared, because of conventional social ideas about the subject that does not allow the breadth and depth of the subject.
What do you think and what is your personal experience? Is society prejudice about the sacred?
Creative Interactions
Relationships are creative interactions that forms a powerful platform for partners to mature and overcome personal struggles and inner hurts. Couples go through a journey where the deepest individual wounds are triggered by each other usually soon after the initial honeymoon euphoria settles. A natural, automatic defensive response to perceived emotional pain in the relationship is projected onto the partner as the cause of the hurt. Your partner might contribute to the unhappiness, but the root of the issue usually lies deeper. One's personal history tells of themes or patterns of emotional experiences that resembles the current hurt-pattern in ones relationship. For instance the theme of feeling criticized or sensitive to rejection might be such a theme.
So, what really goes on? How do we understand why these themes happen in our emotional experiences?
Let's go back to our youth. All of us develop unconscious defense mechanisms that originates in youth when we need to survive emotional conflict. These defensive systems become unconsciously refined through repetitive experiences that unconsciously confirms perception of painful events and the need for particular defensive responses. These defenses become automatic response reactions in relationships, because we are now so practiced in perceiving the signs of emotional danger, that we defend against it in constant anticipation of the particular hurt-theme. Our relationships become stuck in a repetitive roundabout of fixed defense response patterns from both partners that feed the viscous circle.
We justify our defensive behavior by rationalizing while it actually interferes with emotionally satisfying attachments. Our longing for understanding and acceptance triggers counter reactions in others because we do not realize how we sabotage our relationships through these unconscious behavior patterns. It is easier to blame and project cause onto the partner.
For example: a person might experienced a feeling of competition with siblings for their mother's attention and respond with a feeling of rejection and lack of confidence because they feel unimportant. This experience creates a conflict of paramount importance. This conflict is a dilemma that contains on the one hand the hurt that needs to be defended against and on the other hand the original need that is still unfulfilled. Because human nature is neurologically programmed to defend itself but also to heal itself, this conflict becomes the archetypal theme that repeats itself in the persons relationships as a healing challenge. The wound-feelings surrounding the theme becomes a sensitivity that is guarded against experiencing, but at the same time needed to be solved, so it is sought out.
A busy partner, for instance, could easily be perceived by the person in our example as not being interesting in them which triggers the hurt feeling of not being important. They would look at experience with lenses that perceive and confirm their wound in order to confirm the need for defensive behavior but serve as a healing challenge at the same time. One is programmed to protect oneself against pain. Once a defense-response-theme is created one sensitively but unconsciously seek it out to confirm an ability to survive the hurt while constantly seeking to solve the conflict that caused the hurt in the first place. Ones partner creates the platform for this dilemma to come to resolution.
Understanding how our wound-perceiving spectacles trigger unconscious automatic defensive responses that keep the unhealthy themes in our relationships alive can help us heal the dilemmas of our lives.
The very partner we struggle with in a relationship contains all the clues we need in order to heal our inner defensiveness and the relationship. Our problems and symptoms are guidance to the answers. The wounded part of our self need to be drawn to the person who brings it out so that an opportunity for awareness can follow. The most amazing thing is that we unconsciously select the exact person who instigate both our own and their wounds so the relationship is beneficial to both partners. Relationship is a dynamic healing tool that underlies the purpose of existence and evolution.
Copyrighted © Jayni Bloch 28 October 2003
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Relationship struggles?
© Jayni Bloch, April 2003
Many couples wonder why they battle with their relationship and what will happen in therapy. Is it worth their investment and will it really help in the long run? Look at the following guidelines of principles and Process ideals and decide for yourself.
Why do we have relationship struggles?
When you have a relationship struggle, whatever the nature of it, we will sit down together during Couple Therapy and learn to understand the nature of relationships, why we encounter problems and what to do about it.
Basic Principles
There are basic principles that need to be followed in therapy which will be discussed in detail with clients. Here are examples.
- Personal Responsibility. Every individual needs to accept responsibility.
- Trust your partner to accept responsibility.
- Focus on Listening to the Emotion and not the Contents.
- Mutual Respect.
- Equality.
- Keep on Talking.
- Commit and Cooperate.
- Practice Neutrality and Perseverance:
- Our mistakes are guideposts that leads us to the answer.
- Uncertainty is the midpoint of the path towards understanding.
- Accept whatever happens challenges you into a new direction.
- Humbleness do not equal humiliation.
- Giving up only extends the agony, you have to confront your lesson some or other time.
- Trying to understanding a situation that feels like a mystery is like solving a riddle: there is a hidden theme that has a clear message and it is the problem that shows the way to the solution.
The therapy process will take you through the following steps to help you develop tools to communicate and relate well and achieve personal happiness and ongoing growth.
- Identify personal schemas/themes/archetypes.
- Identify and understand all the archetypes at play in your relationship.
- Identify the vicious vortex in your partnership. How are you pulled in and how do you pull in?
- Learn to listen and talk (Communication).
- Learn to jump out of the vortex.
- Refine the process of connecting and growth. Practice new skills with newly discovered themes.
- Develop confidence. Apply skills in other relationships.
Hope this short guideline give you an idea of the possibilities for your healing and growth. Please contact this office if you feel you want to work on your relationship.
Regards and Blessings,
Jayni Bloch. © 24 April 2003
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Relationships: the mysterious gift of self-development
© Jayni Bloch, July 2002
I understand the relationship between two people, especially intimate ones, as an archetypal expression. Each person's being selects and is drawn to another that mirrors the 'other side' of themselves they need to get in touch with (whatever that may mean to them at a particular time in their life). The more unconscious we are about whom we are the more unconscious our selection process. We are always unconscious about the things we need to discover. there will always be new things to discover and the easiest way to discover it is to see it first in our partner. We cannot see ourselves without looking in a "mirror". It is our partner that reflects to us the unknown aspects of ourselves.
Conflict in relationships helps each of the individuals understand themselves better. Whatever irritates us in our partner usually represents the unconscious side in us that needs to be recognized. What we are blind for in ourselves, our partner usually show painfully clearly to us. It is the mirror in which we can see our true selves and our true issues that needs healing. As we integrate the wounded parts we move forward and are ready to encounter new aspects.
Every human being contains the archetypes within their personality. Some archetypes are more prominent than others. Some are related to our wounds and issues and it's those which needs our attention and forces our attention to it through our experiences in relationships and events. Our relationships therefore reflect these Archetypal personality patterns.
To understand more about why one encounters specific experiences one need to ask the question: "What is it in me that wants to be noticed by me about myself through my feelings about this person I encounter or this happening in my life at this time?" Or "What does this person tell me about me"
Archetypes or primordial principles are dualistic; every one contains both polarities. One side of the polarity cannot exist without the other and opposites are therefore different sides of the same energy. We become initially only aware of one side of the archetypal energy in us. It is experience that allows us to develop maturity to be able to accept the opposite pole of the same energy.
In relationship, the individuals usually represent the two sides of a polarity. This is why there is tension in couples that attract and repulse at the same time. It is this tension between the opposites that sharpens our self-knowledge.
In close relationships, people experience an opposition from the "other" because they split archetypal aspects into good and bad parts that they accept and reject about themselves. When this happens blindness develops of one's own side that is not accepted and usually gets expressed by the "other". What we "see" in the other, as the problem is what we needs to become conscious of in oneself as the opposite side of the same energy that needs integration. Conflict in couples is the subconscious's attempt to "show each person the other side of themselves.
The need for us to become whole (to be conscious of both sides of the polarity of its archetypal energy) is so strong that it draws to us the other (unconscious) side subconsciously. Yes, this underlying blueprint to integrate is stronger than and rules the conscious mind. How things appear to the rational mind is not necessarily how they are. Rational appearances are delusional, but so is the imagination and dream world without reason. One side of a energy is usually unbalanced and delusional. We realize this very quickly in our relationships when we base our choices of partners on reason alone. There are the unexpected traits and behavior that becomes apparent that we never noticed before. The conscious mind can defy and rationalize what it encounters and lose the message from the subconscious about the meaning of the unaccepted behavior or the encounter. This is by the way why we keep on experiencing the same themes in our life and relationships, because if we don't get it, we repeat the experiences over and over again in an effort to become conscious. Consciousness is not brain intelligence alone but a combination of rational and subconscious faculties; our "whole" being that is clear about the polarity of our archetypal traits and keen to unravel the mystery of clues towards understanding new aspects not yet seen.
Jeremy Taylor describes in The Living Labyrinth: Exploring Universal Themes in Myths, Dreams, and the Symbolism of Waking Life. (1998), how seemingly polar opposites flip over and turn into one another at precisely the moment when they seem to be most in opposition.
This is exactly what happens with couples. The exact complaint they have about the other is usually exactly what they do themselves but cannot recognize.
The discomfort of the conflict is the soul's plea for consciousness. Too bad that we think we can fix conflict by avoiding it or forcing our partner to change.
Carl Gustav Jung (On the Psychology of the unconscious, para.117-119.) wrote: There comes the urgent need to appreciate the value of the opposite of our former ideals, to perceive the error in our former convictions, to recognize the untruth in our former truth, and to feel how much antagonism and even hatred lay in what until now, had passed for love... The point is not conversion into the opposite but conservation of previous values together with recognition of their opposites?
In other words: Our partner and even our enemy show us the "value" of the opposite ideal we upheld, the possibility that our convictions can be wrong and need to be updated, the fact that what we believe to be true is not the whole truth and that there's more to be considered than what we thought. It does not mean that we need to change into the opposite, but reconcile both sides into a new understanding. Bringing opposite energies together in this way is the basis of all creativity. It is the symbol of new life, like the ovum and sperm that unites into an embio. This is how we heal, become whole and grow.
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