Apollo’s Lyre: The Art of Spiritual Psychotherapy

By Kenneth Porter

Where does spirituality belong in psychotherapy, and in our lives? Drawing
upon thirty years of experience with meditation, spiritual practice, and
the art and science of psychotherapy, Dr. Kenneth Porter demonstrates how
spiritual practices and psychotherapy inform and enhance one another in helping
therapists, clients, and all of us in simply living our lives to find our fullest,
most authentic, and loving selves. Utilizing a balance of personal experiences
and established psychological theory, this book is an essential resource for
psychotherapists and patients, presenting a compelling case for spirituality's
place in therapy, and explaining in detail how practitioners may incorporate
spirituality into their practice. But Apollo's Lyre is also a crucial resource for
all of us, establishing how we are all spiritual beings at our core, and revealing
how spirituality reveals incredible possibilities for loving self-discovery and
transformation in our lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 1, 1900
• ISBN: 9781734600810

Book preview

APOLLO’S LYRE

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in

seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes."

—Marcel Proust—

APOLLO’S LYRE: THE ART OF SPIRITUAL PSYCHOTHERAPY

Copyright © 2020 by Kenneth Porter, M.D.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any way by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the author except as provided by USA copyright law.

The opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of Wisdom House Books, Inc.

Published by Wisdom House Books, Inc.

Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27516 USA

1.919.883.4669 | www.wisdomhousebooks.com

Wisdom House Books is committed to excellence in the publishing industry.

Book design copyright © 2020 by Wisdom House Books, Inc. All rights reserved.

Cover and Interior Design by Ted Ruybal

Published in the United States of America

eBook ISBN: 978-1-7346008-1-0

LCCN: 2020905743

PSY045030 | PSYCHOLOGY / Movements / Transpersonal

REL062000 | RELIGION / Spirituality

OCC019000 | BODY, MIND & SPIRIT / Inspiration & Personal Growth

First Edition

25 24 23 22 21 20 / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

DEDICATION

To my spiritual teachers:

A.H. Almaas

Swami Chandrasekharanand Saraswati

Alia Johnson

Jack Kornfield

Karen Johnson

Kristina Grondahl

Joan Shiva Harrigan

John Welwood

Harvey Grady

And to all my psychotherapy patients, for their enormous and beautiful dedication to their own personal growth, and their amazing capacity to understand and forgive my limitations as a psychotherapist.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Why This Book?

Part I: Who Am I Really?

1What Is Spirituality?

2Our Resistances to Spirituality

3The Ordinary Self and the Real Self

4A Spiritual View of Human Development

5Diagnosis or Dharma?

6Beginning Spiritual Psychotherapy

7Ghosts in the Room and the Gift of Transference

8A Spiritual View of Resistance

Part II: What Really Heals in Psychotherapy

9Disidentifying from the Ordinary Self

10Awareness

11Analysis

12Acceptance

13Allowing

14Action and Will

15Connecting with the Real Self: Communion

Part III: Techniques of Spiritual Psychotherapy

16The No-Technique of Spiritual Psychotherapy

17Presence

18Don’t-Know Mind and Spiritual Guidance

19Non-doing

20Love, Hope, and Joy

21The Levels of the Soul and Working with the Body

22Working with the Super-ego

23The Necessity of Hatred

24The Role of Forgiveness

25Using Meditation and Other Spiritual Techniques

26Making Mistakes

Part IV: The Frontiers of Spiritual Psychotherapy

27The Healing Crucible of Spiritual Couple Psychotherapy

28The Underworld Journey of Depression as a Spiritual Teacher

29Spiritual Emergency, Psychosis, and Transcendence

30Kundalini

Part V: Coming to an End

31The History of Spiritual Psychotherapy

32Endings, Losses, Death

33Psychotherapy as a Spiritual Practice

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

About the Author

WHY THIS BOOK?

I did not come to solve anything.

I came here to sing and for you to sing with me.

—Pablo Neruda—

There comes a time in life for some of us when we have to write. It’s not a question of saying it right or selling books or becoming famous. All these are fine. But they are not why we write.

We write because we’re seized by a daemon that dictates to us. We stay up late instead of sleeping. When we have a free moment, we write. We write the book all day long in our heads. We’re possessed, driven, and it no longer matters whether we want to write or not, or whether it makes us happy or makes us miserable. All that is irrelevant. We only know that we have to write. We come to understand what Henry James meant when he wrote about the artist’s path: We work in the dark, we do what we can—we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.

I believe there must be moments like these for all artists. We have to sing, we have to act, we have to dance, we have to paint, we have to make music. We’re possessed and that is all. Such a moment happened to me when I had just turned seventy-one years old. There was no major event that tripped the wire. I suddenly knew, after considering it for fifteen years, that it was time to write. But, at the same time, it did represent a fruition.

When I was in college in the 1950s, I read a groundbreaking book by a European psychoanalyst. Written by Erik Erikson, Childhood and Society was the first book to explore the stages of life after childhood (Freud and the early psychoanalysts were primarily interested in the first six years of life). Erikson, with unprecedented insight, outlined eight stages of human life, each with its own developmental task. One of the last of these was adulthood, and its task was what Erikson termed generativity. Erikson’s insight was that, in the later stages of life, we hopefully have accumulated some wisdom. The challenge of these final stages is to return the favor, to give something back in order to help others to mature.

I have been a psychiatrist for fifty years and am grateful that many people have come to work with me—and they have been my teachers, as all psychotherapists know. I have also received personal help from many mentors, psychotherapists, and spiritual teachers. I think I am a slow learner, but in these nearly five decades, I seem to have learned something about how to help people mature, something about how to be a healer. So: time to pass it on.

But given that thousands of books have been written about psychotherapy in the last century, and dozens of books written about spiritual psychotherapy, is there any objective need for another such book, other than to live out a writer’s trance and his need to pay it forward?

This brings us to my second reason for writing this book, and that has to do with spirituality. The field of psychotherapy has grown enormously since Freud published his first book on psychoanalysis in 1895, and many different approaches have developed over the years. In the last few decades, a number of therapists, themselves personally interested in spirituality, have begun to explore the integration of spirituality with psychotherapy. But I believe that no one has yet outlined the theory and practice of spiritual psychotherapy in a clear way that makes the approach accessible to individuals simply curious about either spirituality or psychotherapy, and to professional psychotherapists, as well. This book is an attempt to do just that.

But why do this at all? In other words, what is the benefit of integrating spirituality and psychotherapy? This is where Apollo enters. The Greek god of Healing, of Music, of Prophecy, and of the Sun, Apollo slew the great python at Delphi, a symbol of the primitive forces in us that we must transform in order to become mature human beings. For to do the work of human transformation—what I believe is the purpose of our lives—we need both to transform what is primitive in us, and also to call upon the support and guidance of certain qualities that have traditionally been the domain of the spiritual endeavor.

In spiritual psychotherapy, when it is at its best, Apollo enters the room and stands invisibly behind us, patient and therapist, and speaks through us. Such was the way of the ancient Greek gods with their favorites, as recounted by Homer in The Iliad and The Odyssey, and later by Virgil. Apollo plays his lyre to soothe and uplift us and our patients, he shines the sun of his brilliant light of understanding upon us, he gives us the gift of prophecy—as he did with his priestess-oracle Pythia, who was consulted by commoners and kings alike for one thousand years—and he supports us in the pursuit of the commandment that he carved above the Temple of his Oracle: Know Thyself. Ultimately, Apollo teaches that to know oneself is to heal oneself.

But at the same time, as is told in the ancient myth, Apollo is a stern and unforgiving god. Once he bestows his power, we must surrender to him; otherwise, like Cassandra, to whom he gave the gift of prophecy but who then dared to refuse him, we will be doubted and shunned. This is the blessing and the danger of living with a god. He will give us—patient and therapist— the power to see deeply into our own souls and, if we allow it, the power to be deeply affected. But we must do this, insofar as what is humanly possible, with humility, purity, and a lack of selfishness. That is the surrender that the god requires.

The point of view of spiritual psychotherapy, as we will see, is that we all—therapist and patient alike—can learn to embody Apollo. We all can learn to play, sing, shine, prophesy, and heal—like a god or goddess. This has nothing to do with whether we are religious or believe in God or go to church. And this is not an enactment of narcissistic grandiosity. Rather, it is about the potential in all of us to embody, in our work and in our lives, those qualities of love, wisdom, joy, power, will, and creativity that the ancients ascribed to the gods, but that we now know are the birthright of us all.

A word about my choice of Apollo as a symbol of spiritual healing: for as long as I can remember, I have felt a fierce passion to reach the stars, literally, which somehow have symbolized, for me, the calling of higher spiritual truth. So, I can see that Apollo appeals to me because of his connection with the original Apollo space program—a vehicle for reaching the stars. But in truth, this book could equally be called Sophia’s Wisdom or Saraswati’s Song or Athena’s Shield. Spiritual psychotherapy is, in the end, only and always about whoever or whatever helps us to become who we truly are.

How is it then that we, as psychotherapists, can help our patients connect with who they truly are? The central tenets of the particular approach to spiritual psychotherapy that I am proposing are:

1. All human beings have what I am calling an ordinary self and also a healthy spiritual core self, which I call the Real Self;

2. Healing involves connecting with this core Real Self;

3. The way to facilitate this has two aspects. First, we must disidentify from our ordinary self. Disidentify means to mentally step back, observe the ordinary self, and begin to explore the possibility that who we truly are is something deeper and more universal than the ordinary self: the Real Self. Second, in psychotherapy, what helps facilitate this is for the therapist’s Real Self to connect to the embryonic Real Self of the patient through a process I call Communion.

Since the reader of this book may be someone interested in spirituality or psychotherapy, or someone who is a professional psychotherapist, writing it has posed a dilemma.

Do I write from the point of view of a spiritual psychotherapist, excluding persons who are not professionals but who may simply have an interest in spirituality or psychotherapy? Or do I write from a more general point of view, but then not give professionals the technical information they might desire? After trying many ways to solve this dilemma, I’ve simply decided to do both. Sometimes, I will be writing from a universal point of view, and at other times as a professional speaking to other professionals, and I hope this will be enriching to all readers.

A word about the term patient: for this there is no good word. Patient implies there is something wrong with the person—which is the exact opposite of the approach of spiritual psychotherapy. Client, in my opinion, is equally untenable. It centralizes the financial relationship of psychotherapy. So, what word to use? I am a psychiatrist, so I lean toward using the language of my training, and perhaps the word patient remains imbued with some of its original meaning and can attest to our patients’ patience, their capacity to be willing to bear adversities in service of self-knowledge.

I would also like to note that there are a number of spiritually oriented approaches to psychotherapy that I will not be exploring here. I have in mind such approaches as the various forms of trauma therapy, psychedelic therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, past-life regression therapy, and body psychotherapy, among many others—all of which, at times, may have a spiritual orientation. I am passing over these not because I lack belief in their efficacy; I have personally experienced, and benefited from, many of these approaches. I simply do not know enough about these approaches to speak intelligently about their practice.

Finally, a note to therapists who may be reading this book. This is not an attempt to present a new theory of psychotherapy. But spiritual psychotherapy is definitely a new orientation to psychotherapy. Simply put, it can enable those of us who choose to follow its lead to take what we already do well, and do it even better. As children can surpass their parents, we, as therapists, can surpass our teachers, and so humankind continues to transform into a wiser and more loving species.

PART I

WHO AM I REALLY?

WHAT IS SPIRITUALITY?

In 1969, Rusty Schweickart—Apollo 9 Lunar Module pilot—walked in outer space. Afterwards, he spoke about the experience that he had when he was looking down at Earth:

When you go round the Earth in an hour and a half, you begin to recognize that your identity is with that whole thing, and that makes a change. And you look down there and you can’t imagine how many borders and boundaries you cross, again and again and again. And you don’t even see’em. From where you see it, the thing is a whole, and it’s so beautiful. And you recall, standing out there, the spectacle that went before your eyes. Because now you’re no longer inside something with a window looking out at a picture, but now you’re out there, and there are no limits, there are no frames, there are no boundaries.

And you think about what you’re experiencing and why. Do you deserve this, this fantastic experience? Are you separated out to be touched by God, to have some special experience here that other men cannot have? And you know the answer to that is no, you know very well at that moment—and it comes to you so powerfully—that you’re the sensing element for man.

There you are, hundreds of people killing each other over some imaginary line that you, you’re not even aware of, you can’t see, and from where you see it, the thing is a whole, and it’s so beautiful—and you, you wish you could take one in each hand and say: Look, look at it from this perspective, look at that, what’s important? And you realize that, on that small spot, that little blue and white thing, is everything that means anything to you: all of history and music and poetry and art, and birth and love, tears, joy, games—all of it on that little spot out there that you can cover with your thumb.

You look down, and you see that surface of that globe that you’ve lived on all this time, and you know all those people down there, and they are like you, they are you, and somehow you represent them—you are up there as the sensing element, and that’s a humbling feeling. And somehow you recognize that you’re a piece of this total life. When you go ’round the Earth in an hour and a half, you begin to recognize that your identity is with that whole thing, and that makes a change.

This kind of realization of unity can happen here on Earth, too. We have all experienced something like this at different times in our lives. I remember being on retreat years ago and exploring my experience during a small group process. I had an intense emotional catharsis in the group. Afterwards, I went to sit on a bench located on a ridge overlooking a valley, where I had sat many times before. Although the view had always been lovely, this time, I began to notice something unique. Everything in the world looked absolutely beautiful. Everything was exactly right. Nothing looked wrong. Inside, I noticed a sense of peacefulness and quietude I had never felt before. Everything was absolutely perfect. It was as if the world, inside and out, was filled with sunshine. I was at one with everything. I understood, This is what life is about.

Experiences like this or like Schweickart’s, which are often called spiritual, are not uncommon. We give birth to a child and experience a state of ecstasy. We watch a gorgeous sunset. We write a poem. We listen to or create an exquisite piece of art. We make love. We are given a vision of God or are visited by an angel. We meditate and go into an altered state of consciousness. We conduct what feels like an exquisitely perfect psychotherapy session. We’re in an accident and almost die and, before returning to ordinary consciousness, experience a tunnel of light and an encounter with higher beings. In each case, and in many others that many of us have had, we feel something like, "Oh, this is what it’s all about. This is what they’ve been talking about. This is another level of existence than what I usually experience, and I see this level is more real, more meaningful, even more magical than ordinary life."

And these experiences are not exclusive to outer space and spiritual retreats. Athletes often speak about being in the zone in similar terms. Football running back Marcus Allen recounts his experience setting a record for the longest run in Super Bowl history in the following way:

It was magical, mystical, sheer wizardry…. It was pure time travel. I felt like it was a still picture and I was the paintbrush moving on the canvas. I was so in tune. I noticed everything in great detail—the expression on the tacklers’ faces, the cheerleaders crying when I got into the end zone.

What do outer space, a valley in rural Pennsylvania, and a gridiron have in common? These spiritual events tend to be characterized by deep experiences of knowing, of love, of peacefulness, of joy, of realness, of meaningfulness—and sometimes by a feeling of oneness with life. It is as if our ordinary world is characterized by an unnoticed experience of feeling separate from other people, from life, and from ourselves. Spiritual experience begins to break down the separateness, and acts as a gateway to a more meaningful life. It is sometimes characterized as waking up because, in these moments of heightened and vivid experience, what came before often feels like a slumber, if not deep sleep.

MANY LEVELS OF REALITY

In our upbringing, from the time we were babies, and in our schooling in the West, we have been taught that there are three basic levels of reality: the physical, the emotional, and the mental. Science has greatly refined our knowledge of these levels in the last four hundred years. Through biology and physics, our knowledge of the physical now descends to the submicroscopic, and includes the electromagnetic spectrum and the subatomic. Through psychoanalysis and psychology, our knowledge of the emotional now includes the depths of the unconscious. Through philosophy and logic, we now understand the mechanics of reality in a more comprehensive and deeper way.

But we still live in a 3-D world. The experiences I describe above, and the teachings of at least the last ten thousand years of the great spiritual traditions, suggest to us that reality is far more than 3-D. Perhaps it is 4-D, 5-D, 6-D, maybe even 9-D or 13-D. Perhaps there are higher or deeper levels of life that may be more real or true or compelling than everyday reality.

These higher levels have been given many names: Essence, Presence, Subtle Energy, Spirit, Soul, the Divine, God, the Sacred, Buddha Nature, Christ Consciousness, True Nature, the Ground of Being, Kundalini Shakti. These different terms may refer to very different experiences of reality, but what they all share in common is that they refer to dimensions beyond our familiar 3-D material reality. And it turns out that these levels have actually been explored, mapped, and described for thousands of years by the great spiritual teachers, mystics, and saints of our species.

These traditions invite us, as Westerners, to be open to the possibility of what has been called—by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and by my own Kundalini teacher, Swami Chandrasekharanand Saraswati—subjective science. In other words, spiritual experience may not simply be subjective reporting, as we tend to think of it. Rather, spiritual experience may be subjectively scientifically real. Subjectively real spiritual experience might even turn out to be more important and more real than the physical, mental, or emotional realms of experience that we are accustomed to think of as most real.

This worldview of spiritual experience—that the material world is not the ultimate reality—is remarkably similar to the descriptions of reality proposed by modern physicists. For example, the quantum mechanics developed