When Self-Help and Spirituality Collides
You’ll find wildly different attitudes on self-help from those walking a spiritual path.
My first spiritual teacher railed against psychotherapy. He felt disdain for self-help. He even looked down on newly emerging teachers of non-duality as being less than authentic.
He pointed out that the great teachers of the past didn’t go into retreat to deal with their emotional problems—heaven forbid! They held a higher aspiration: to awaken for the benefit of all beings.
Having one foot in old Tibet and one foot in the West, he held a traditional view. But even a contemporary Western teacher like Pema Chödrön has said spiritual practice on its own can transform your emotional problems, unless they tend to the extreme.
On the other hand, there are modern spiritual teachers who welcome psychotherapists into their spiritual communities. They recommend psychotherapy as a way to better prepare people for all that will arise on the spiritual path. “Buddhist psychotherapy” has even emerged as a blend of the two worlds.
What’s the right way?
Should you get out of bed at the crack of dawn and meditate endlessly like your life depended upon it? Or should you be dialing a therapist right now? Or maybe you should do both
Self-Help vs. Spirituality
Self-help is a set of beliefs, attitudes, and techniques that help you become a better person—happier, more productive, more connected to others.
Let’s include psychotherapy under the umbrella of self-help. In essence, psychotherapy has a similar aim. A psychotherapist helps you heal past wounds or address dysfunctional behaviors so you become a a better functioning and hopefully happier individual.
Self-help and psychotherapy strengthen the sense of self.
On the contrary, spirituality, at least the non-dual version, encourages you to step away from the false notion of a permanent self. It tells you to let go of the constant clinging and aversion that breeds suffering and obstructs true happiness as well as awakening. It asks you to see the world as it is rather than to attempt to shape it according to your preferences.
Self-help, psychotherapy, and spirituality all work with transforming the mind and heart. But they have radically different goals, don’t they?
“The deepest level of obsession is obsession with a sense of self. A sense of self, generated as a reaction to non-referential space, lies at the core of every habituated pattern. A self is felt to be a permanent, independent unit. The feeling of permanence manifests in life as a feeling of dullness, of not being quite present. The illusion of independence arises as a feeling of separation. The feeling of being one thing arises as a feeling of incompleteness or dissatisfaction. Together, these three qualities obscure the mystery of being.”—Ken McLeod
Can You Help a No-Self?
My first teacher’s views on self-help and psychotherapy profoundly influenced mine. I felt an aversion for psychotherapy in particular.
Eventually, my teacher was revealed as a serial abuser.
What now?
Scarred by trauma, having worked under his authoritarian thumb for a decade, I felt disheartened. I left his community and drifted spiritually for years.
But life has its way of taking you where you need to go. I began to study trauma and eventually began working with a therapist. Now, I study with a non-dual teacher and work with a spiritual mentor who has shown me how to use everything that arises on the path of awakening.
Self-help, psychotherapy, and life itself can all be a part of your spiritual path if you view the processes from the viewpoint of awakening and the realization of no-self.
Self-help, psychotherapy, and life triggers can all be a part of your spiritual path if you view the processes from the viewpoint of awakening and the realization of no-self.
There isn’t a single right way.
People come to spirituality with different degrees of mental and emotional baggage. Some may be able to awaken through meditation and contemplation alone. But especially in these modern times, many need the help of personal growth techniques or therapy to clear the way.
Also spiritual by-passing can be a real danger. Spiritual by-passing means using spirituality to runaway from psychological problems and emotional issues. You may meditate night and day for decades and even have some amazing highs, but never truly progress because you haven’t directly addressed your core emotional issues.
Until you fully realize no-self, there’s still a conventional self—even if it’s just a story—that needs to heal its patterns and can obscure awakening if it doesn’t. Self-help techniques and psychotherapy can be a skillful part of pulling apart the components that form a solid sense of self.
The Four Obscurations That Hinder Awakening
We all have the same obscurations to awakening, just to differing degrees. In Buddhism they’re called the “Four Obscurations.” Some require meditation and the practice of inquiry to undo. But others can be transformed through self-help practices, including psychotherapy.
The Four Obscurations include:
Karmic obscurations: Our past negative actions. These negative actions make us more likely to act in negative ways now, thus hindering awakening. For example, if you have a tendency to gossip, you’re likely to continue to gossip.
Emotional obscurations: Disturbing emotions like greed, anger, envy, attachment and aversion and and the tendencies they encourage in us.
Cognitive obscurations: Dualistic thoughts that include subject, object, and action.
Habitual obscurations: Extremely subtle forms of cognitive obscurations.
If you sit in meditation waiting for your past wounds to arise or your mental patterns to activate, they will. But it may take a very long time.
Daily life however, dishes up one trigger after the other. You can react to these triggers in the same old way, entrenching emotional and mental patterns that obscure awakening. Or you can use them, along with meditation and inquiry, to wake up.
Nowadays, I strive to use whatever arises to chip away at an emotional or karmic pattern. It’s not always easy, but I try to see emotional pain as a gift instead of recoiling from it.
When I feel triggered, first I feel the feeling, whatever it might be. I don’t push it away or tell myself I shouldn’t feel it, but I also don’t feed it. I feel the feeling in my body. Sometimes, doing this will lead to a memory from childhood that becomes part of the unraveling.
I’ll ask questions, like:
What’s the message in this experience?
Why is it activating me so much?
Have a felt this feeling in the past?
Once I do the emotional side of the work, I try to break apart the belief that lies beneath the emotions, like “I’m not good enough” or “people should be fair.”
I use questions like:
Is this really true?
Why do I believe it’s true?
Is there evidence contrary to this belief?
I’ll keep working the belief until it starts to fall apart.
Sometimes a shift occurs quickly. Other times, it takes many go-arounds and many different attempts.
This is an ongoing process that I expect will take years—our patterns are deeply entrenched, aren’t they? But I’ve seen positive signs as a result of the direct work I’ve done so far with whatever life presents.
”Who would you be without your identity?”—Byron Katie
Concluding Thoughts
When I first encountered the world of spirituality, I wasn’t terribly young, but I was seriously naive. I devoted myself completely to a narcissist. I thought magical blessings would be bestowed upon me if I did everything he said and worked tirelessly on his behalf.
Now, I know awakening takes considerable effort, determination, and disciple—at least for most people. It means unraveling all your emotional patterns and dualistic beliefs.
Some people may be able to do so through the practices of meditation and contemplation alone. But I have found psychotherapy has made me a far more suitable vessel for awakening. Using self-help techniques to address emotional triggers and stuck beliefs as they arise in life seems to quickening the emptying process.
Don’t just blindly follow a teacher’s advice like I did. Tune in and discover what you need and what will work for you on the path of awakening.
Thank you for your presence, I know your time is precious! Don’t forget to sign up for Wild Arisings, my twice monthly letters from the heart filled with insights, inspiration, and ideas to help you connect with and live from your truest self.
You might also like to check out my Self-Care Shop. May you be happy, well, and safe – always. With love, Sandra
