I often look back across my psychotherapy training and consider those stand-out moments and events that brought me to where I am today as a practitioner. Being someone who values a transpersonal (psychospiritual) perspective towards human development, I’m always intrigued by the many ways that life appears to demonstrate unseen forces at work in the lives of both clients and myself. More so perhaps, when moments of synchronicity (meaningful coincidence) occur in ways that invite, challenge, and inspire one to let go of the familiar and grow towards fullness of being, no matter how hard this may at first seem to be.

Following the completion of my MSc research in 2023, I continue to question my frame of reference and the circumstances that shaped the direction of my research into the transpersonal relationship in psychotherapy. I remember one moment in particular while writing my literature review that still makes me smile today. As many who’ve undertaken research will possibly agree, the hot-house nature of the process provides plenty of opportunities to explore the limits of ones’ comfort zone, and I can surely say that I was no exception to this! At times, it felt like I wrestled a fragmented body of disparate works, in search of an elusive golden thread to weave my work together. On this occasion, as I sat down to read the opening chapters of The Spiritual Art of Therapy (Mindell, 2016), Amy Mindell eloquently described the synchronous events surrounding the creation of her book, and decision to include her chosen cover photo, a visual representation of the Zen Kohan:

“No matter how hard one tries, it is impossible to grasp the moons reflection seen on the surface of the pond”.

In that moment, this simple Koan (riddle without solution) was all it took to tip me over the edge as I lost my cool. I’ve had enough of metaphors, tales of synchronicities and dreams, what nonsense I scoffed! Give me something I can use I cried in silent desperation. Give me something I can at least grasp. For some reason, suddenly, I remembered a one-card-tarot reading website I’d recently discovered and reached out for my mobile to revisit the page. As I sat there silently considering my intentions, and questioning the very direction of my research, I asked myself, isn’t this all just a really bad idea? I mean, this can’t be heading in the right direction, surely, it’s not meant to be this hard, right? Exasperated, I clicked on the button to turn the card. The card turned, and to my disbelief it was card number eighteen, the moon.

The accompanying text stated:

“The moon advises you to look for the answers to your questions in the dark and unexpected places. The results will be brilliant but they make take some time to find”.

It’s hard to describe just how impactful this moment was. To say it stopped me in my tracks is perhaps an understatement. My frustration, my anger, my hopelessness, all exerted their terrible force, and all fading, transformed, through a moment of being-at-the-limit. A point of such incredible tension something simply had to give, to be relinquished, to be accepted, and to be assimilated. In this case, the mysterious occurrence of events seemingly unrelated yet deeply entangled provided an opportunity to breakthrough my distress. And so, it seemed, relinquishing my control in a moment of receptive openness was perhaps all that was ever required.

Of the many transpersonal theorists I’ve encountered, I was struck by the works of Michael Washburn (1995). Washburn proposed that transpersonal development is paradoxically, in one sense, a deeply egoic matter. A dynamic interplay between two poles of the ego and something much greater emanating from the deep unconscious mind. He argued, socialisation is the very process that limits and obscures this interplay, as the developing mind of the infant represses this to first establish a functioning personality. As we now know, the circumstances in which infant development occurs are often far less than optimal, leaving the scars and wounds of childhood for all to see. As if by some cruel twist of fate, the necessary apparatus of this life becomes the very chains that binds it.

How can it be then, that these very chains, our limitations, be more helpfully understood, and experienced, as both limiting and necessary?

I once heard that the key to good investigative journalism was to the ‘follow the money’. That the flow of money back and forth between sources revealed a fundamental truth about the nature of the objects under investigation. Perhaps something similar can be said about the transpersonal way. Perhaps what is most beneficial is to follow one’s own discomfort, as our traumas and limitations become the very currency of liberation. To look into the dark and unexpected places and with time, delight in the discovery of that which shimmers on the surface of the pond. To catch a glimpse of an ineffable potential that can cut to the quick and stop one in their tracks with brilliant radiance, bright like the first rays of sunlight. However we might conceptualise this potentiality seems to perhaps matter less. As the first noble truth of Buddhism teaches, to be alive is to inevitably suffer, and furthermore, learning to suffer well is the path of liberation, of return to whom one truly is. Of course, how we choose to respond to such matters can only ever really be a personal endeavour. And so, it seems to me that courage, and the willingness to tolerate and accept that which one finds most uncomfortable about oneself, rewards the sincerity of heart.

In his poem The Laughing Heart, Charles Bukowski put’s it like this:

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dark submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvellous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

References.

Mindell, A. (2003). The Spiritual Art of Therapy. Oregon. USA: New Falcon.

Washburn, M. (1995). The Ego and the Dynamic Ground: A Transpersonal Theory of Human Development (2nd Ed). New York. USA: State University of New York Press.

Bukowski, C. (1993). The Laughing Heart. https://poemanalysis.com/charles-bukowski/the-laughing-heart/. Accessed 8th July 2024.