"Authentic" Spirituality

In his book, On Becoming a Person (1967), psychotherapist Carl Rogers explores the paradox that the more his patients accept who they are, the more open they are to the healing relationship. One experience he recounts is that of a patient, Mrs. Oakland, who discovers that it is okay for her to be fully liked and validated by someone else. It may seem strange that someone would need to open up to this idea of being fully liked by someone else. For example, one standard theory about “neurotic” human beings is that they crave to be loved by others, and yet are unable to stand up on their own two feet. Thus, the purpose of living becomes learning how to be with ourselves, without the constant need for validation of others. I don’t think that Rogers is advocating co-dependency on others for approval, including a supportive therapist. I think the opposite. He is suggesting a kind of nuanced personal exploration that allows feelings to unfold as they are, rather than trying to use a sense of ‘idealized self’ as a reference point for how a person is, let alone a person’s self-worth. And, Rogers adds that the therapeutic relationship can validate this unfolding when the therapist witnesses the patient’s exploration of feelings, and thus validates her true being in the world. Furthermore, the unfolding ‘authentic’ self can lead to more satisfying, fulfilling relationships. This is so because a person learns to fully accept her feelings and reactions, thus creating an open space to allow the same for others.

               

              As I mentioned in my recent thesis on Loving Kindness Meditation, I am not too sure how the notion of the authentic, unfolding self, works. I am not too sure what the patient is really “discovering” in herself when she starts to validate her own process. Is she really discovering “the real self”, or it is simply the insight that there really is no permanent, enduring ‘self’ to which a person need refer in the grind of existence? Carl Rogers seems to suggest that an integrated self emerges through authentic exploration. By beholding the messiness of emotions in a safe and supportive environment, patients learn that they are lovable as they are, moment to moment. And I think they learn to trust their open awareness and be more curious about what is going on within themselves, rather than jump to fix themselves or try to be their ideal vision of themselves. I might add here that this is tough work, because it often involves refraining from trying to complete goals for the sake of being able to say one has ‘accomplished’ something. It also means refraining from comparing ourselves with the ‘social’ being that we think we should be. Awareness allows me to see the kinds of pressures I place on myself, based on conditioning and the demanding standards I internalize from my social worlds.

                

             There are certainly parallels when we start to look into spirituality and mindfulness. In Good Citizens (2012), Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh talks about cultivating authentic enjoyment of mindfulness. Mindfulness doesn’t need to be a chore, and Thich Nhat Hanh urges people to regard the practice with an attitude of enjoying an unfolding process of being. He writes:

If someone asks you why you practice meditation or mindful awareness, a good answer might be, “Because I like it” or “Because I enjoy doing it.” If you don’t enjoy the practice, you have to make an effort. In making an effort you get tired, and finally you abandon the practice. (p.90-91)

In this passage, Thich Nhat Hanh suggests that practice needs to arise from a genuine liking for the meditative experience. This liking doesn’t come from an injunction to do something, but more an invitation to explore. I think that it also helps to be aware of the ways we resist this awareness, out of fear that it might take us away from what we expect ourselves to do on a daily basis.

                I think one of the paradoxes about spiritual life is that it urges constancy of method, but there is no expectation of a single outcome. I think that there is certain richness to the experience of exploring what is unknown and ‘unsolved.’ Rogers’ patient compares this process to sifting the pieces of a puzzle without necessarily knowing how they will eventually piece together. But in order to really enjoy ‘sifting the pieces’, there needs to be a relaxed urgency to try to arrange the pieces to form a coherent whole. I think the reason for this is that nearly all attempts to ‘complete’ the journey end in a premature closure. Whatever is not cleaned up or solved then becomes repressed or consigned to a place of the unsolved. Rogers perhaps wants his patients to learn to love the unsolvable, and to know that human selves are not ‘solvable’. 

              Chan Buddhism might extend this explanation by saying that there is no complete self to solve. Because phenomena are happening in a kind of dream, we might say it’s using pieces of a dream to solve a dream, which is impossible. This is a very different insight from the view that there is an ‘integrated’ self at the end of the therapeutic process. It might me more akin to learning that we can enjoy ourselves more and be a little bit less concerned with consciously integrating all the ‘loose’ or disjoined parts of who we are. We thus put awareness over and above the attachment to an idealized image of the completed self.

              I don’t think this short vignette has answered too many questions. But it scratches the surface of the kinds of questions I want to explore. I am not sure if the validation of one’s full experience automatically leads to a more open space to validate others. Rogers has a strong faith that there is an inherent goodness in people, and this goodness only needs to be unearthed after letting go of the standard defenses and reactivity of a self-rejecting way of being. In other words, if only I can let myself “breathe”, I will then find reason to allow others to breathe as well. It’s hard to say whether this only becomes a rationality for a laissez faire approach to inter-being. Would accepting self automatically lead to a curiosity toward others?

              From a Buddhist point of view, deeper practice of meditation could lead to a natural sense that all phenomena are part of the mind. This in turn leads to a natural sense of care for all beings as though it were one’s own body. But it still remains to be seen how we describe this care and what it would look like.

References

Hanh, Thich Nhat, (2012), Good Citizens: Creating Enlightened Society. Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press.

Rogers, Carl (1967), On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy. London: Constable