I didn’t used to like to reveal my secret. Many friends and some family members, who knew about it, would pass it off as nothing more than a fleeting attraction—like a phase that would fade in due time—like the way most college kids age out of binge drinking. I always knew that it was more than that for me. I knew that this love, that dared not speak its name, came from the core of who I was. I didn’t want to “get over it.” I was told by older mentors, who shared my secret, that as you age, you eventually come to a deeper acceptance of who you are. You naturally just quit caring about what others think. The years have proven that prophecy mostly true. However, I can’t help but notice that I’m not the only one who’s changed here. The culture that surrounds me has also miraculously transformed. People like me are getting accepted and even celebrated in places where we couldn’t even get into the door in years past. So why all this secrecy? Let me explain.
In my early practice, I functioned as a counselor in one of the most medicalized health care settings in the country (Barnes Hospital, an affiliate of Washington University’s School of Medicine). I came up in a counseling doctoral program that was desperately attempting to offer an alternative to the dominant, overly medicalized, approach to mental health (i.e. systems theory). Before the hard edges of outcome studies had sufficiently matured in our field, people like me in those settings, could be perceived as peripheral, or just plain goofy! While hob-knobbing with psychiatrists, and other physicians, I frequently got the drift that my skills were regarded with about the same level of seriousness as aroma therapy, or tarot card reading.
Which bring me to my secret. At the age of seventeen, I had a real-live, William James-certified, religious experience* (see footnote). From that moment, until now, I’ve endeavored to live in closer and closer connection with the Subject of that encounter. Back in the day, my youthful enthusiasm seared me with the brand, “Jesus Freak.” The sting of those experiences caused me to go more on the down low when it came to my inner life.
Later, in my early professional practice, I noticed how tapping into a client’s spirituality had a way of turbo-charging movement toward their therapeutic goals. Keep in mind, that I was pretty sure that the practice of counseling was considered suspect by my superiors to begin with. I could only imagine how a practitioner in that profession, already viewed with suspicion, would be regarded if it was known that he was working with a patient’s spirituality? After all, the modern founder of my profession, Sigmund Freud, considered anything that wasn’t atheism, a neurosis. Consequently, I practiced my brand of spirituality-informed counseling with great care and caution.
A number of things have happened to shift the cultural and medical landscape. Somewhere at the top of the list of those factors would be the replicated outcome studies that show the benefits of regular mindfulness and contemplative practices (i.e. lower cortisol levels, decreased mood disorders and addictions, greater equanimity). This, in turn, has made mental health practitioners accept the validity of contemplative practice. Secondly, I can’t prove it, but I suspect that the ideological divides in our culture are leading people to seek deeper forms of connection than ideology. I believe that people are learning that what’s deepest within us, is most universal between us…and they want that. Finally, there is suggestive evidence to conclude that the algorithms of the Internet, as well as the ego-boosting and busting nature of social media are increasingly alienating us from one another and ourselves. Just like the desert mothers and fathers who fled the cities for monastic life, many are seeking and finding their way to a soul-healing inner-life.
And so, these days I don’t make apologies for my counseling approach, or my increasing interest in exploring the crossroads where contemplative practices and resilience meet. In future articles, I will explore the common roadblocks that get in the way of meditation and contemplation. I hope to make some practical suggestions for how a wayfarer like me can address those barriers.
*footnote: William James’ collection of talks was published in the 1902 book, “Varieties of Religious Experiences”. In it, he outlined the four criteria that must be met to call an experience, “mystical”: a noetic quality, transience, ineffability, and passivity.”
Dialogue
What did you think of this article’s analysis of the shift in cultural attitudes that allow for an embrace of mindfulness, and contemplative practice? Would you add anything to that analysis, or would you critique that analysis in some way?
What are your current practices of mindfulness and contemplation?
Are you at all curious about some other approaches that you might one day try?
What gets in the way of your regular practice?
With whom do you discuss your inner life?