more about talk therapy

"Talk therapy" has its place for some people, and it is better than nothing for those who are not willing to go deeper.  And understanding our problems can certainly be a first step.  I did a lot of therapy and I absolutely got something out of it.  I realized after a while, however, that I needed a different approach. I had gained a lot of knowledge about my so called "issues," but unfortunately none of the therapists I worked with knew how to take me to another level, which intuitively I knew must be avilable.  It's important to note that a therapist, facilitator, coach can only take us as far as they have been willing to go.  Finally in my quest for "the next step," a yoga teacher and a Law of Attraction teacher helped me realize that I needed to have shifts and transformations rather than sitting around talking about my issues. 

 

As far as it being critical for a person to be spiritual, I don't think it is necessary for experiencing transformation or having a shift--though certainly, a view of the universe that at least includes a sense of the mystical helps.  And often, in the course of a transformation, people become more open to their native spirituality.  In any case, even self-proclaimed non-spiritual types can benefit more from learning to be in their heart and go into their traumas and "find the seed of the equivalent benefit" rather than just talking about their "issues."  People who have a rich spiritual life, however, definitely have more internal resources available to them to support  healing and transformation.

 

I believe people often use "talk therapy" as a way to avoid having a real shift (subconsciously, of course); it's a way of staying stuck. People use their intellect all the time to hide from what they already know intuitively or could  know if they would just be quiet and still long enough to hear the truth in their own heart.  We say, "I don't know" about things so often when really, we know very well if we go inside and listen.  It's when we're up in our head believing we don't know that we don't know. When we're in our heart, we can know the truth about our so called "issues" and how they can serve us rather than control us.  Our intellect is "a good servant, but bad master" and it isn't ever going to know truth when it's busy thinking its way through the details of the dream.  The body and the emotions feel their way into the truth, digest it, internalize it.  As my husband says, "The body doesn't lie.

 

 It's really not that difficult to have insights, to understand that we have fear or anger or what have you.  That's the easy step.  The work that counts, that changes us, is when we are willing to go into that fear, that pain, that trauma, feeling it and allowing it and in turn, allowing it to inform us.  Then, we are not going to be limited by the "trauma" anymore, and that energy that was all tied up in that "story" is freed up to be used constructively in our lives.  "The heart is wiser than the intellect," as Joshial Gilbert Holland so brilliantly put it, and it is only through the heart that we can heal and transform.