The Life of Love: An Invitation: Fifty-two Reflections on Emotional and Spiritual Healing

By Sharon Southwell

Is love the place where psychological observation and spiritual wisdom about healing meet?

If love is associated with healing of all sorts, how do I more consciously set about to grow in love, seeking healing for myself and for my neighbours, community and world?

How do I encourage others in their journeys into love?

Drawing on a broad Christian heritage, a deep respect for the insights of other religious and spiritual traditions and two decades of work in welfare and clinical settings, psychologist Sharon Southwell encourages spiritual seekers of all backgrounds to consider these questions for themselves.

Structured in 52 Reflections, each followed by ‘Invitations’, The Life of Love invites you to grow in love by embracing life-giving connection to yourself, to others, your community, to art, nature and to your ultimate context, whether you experience this as God or as some other immanent or transcendent spiritual connection.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Oct 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483419176

Book preview

The Life of

Love

An Invitation

Fifty-two Reflections on Emotional and Spiritual Healing

Sharon Southwell

Copyright © 2014 Sharon Southwell.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

Unless otherwise indicated, the scripture quotations contained herein are from two sources:

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Tables 2-1 (p. 38), 2-2 (p. 39) from ADDICTION AND GRACE by GERALD G. MAY, M.D. Copyright © 1988 by Gerald G. May. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Brief excerpts from pp. 67, 77-8 from A GIFT FOR GOD: PRAYERS & MEDITATIONS by MOTHER TERESA OF CALCUTTA. Copyright © 1975, 1996 by Mother Teresa Missionaries of Charity. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Cover photography by Greg Restall.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-1918-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-1917-6 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Rev. date: January 8, 2024

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: What to expect from The Life of Love

Part One: The Role of Love

Reflection 1: Anxious self-focus

Reflection 2: What is life-giving?

Reflection 3: Addiction, freedom and love

Reflection 4: Attention

The Review: Where do things stand for you right now?

Part Two: Life-giving Connection

Section One: Connecting to the Self

Reflection 5: Life-giving connection to ourselves

Reflection 6: Self-love and self-compassion

Reflection 7: One place to begin self-care

Reflection 8: Fear, love and light

Reflection 9: Behind the screen emotions

Reflection 10: The unconscious

Reflection 11: Attachment patterns

Reflection 12: Defences and fantasy

Reflection 13: Being present

Reflection 14: Finding forgiveness for ourselves

Reflection 15: Strengths

Reflection 16: What is most important?

Section Two: Connecting to others

Reflection 17: No one is an island

Reflection 18: More blessed to give

Reflection 19: How love works

Reflection 20: Love and pain

Reflection 21: Pain and reconnection

Reflection 22: Our earthly beloveds

Reflection 23: Work is love made visible

Reflection 24: Do we accept ‘normal’?

Reflection 25: War and violence

Reflection 26: Anger

Reflection 27: As we forgive those who trespass against us

Reflection 28: First be reconciled

Reflection 29: Blessed are the peacemakers

Reflection 30: Loving our neighbour

Reflection 31: Loving our enemy

Reflection 32: Loving each other as we have been loved

Interlude: Nature, Creative Expression and Excellence

Reflection 33: We are all connected

Reflection 34: Holy ground and sacred sites

Reflection 35: Pilgrimage

Reflection 36: Converted pagans

Reflection 37: Beauty, creativity, excellence and grace

Section Three: Connecting to God

Reflection 38: Gratitude

Reflection 39: Still, small voice

Reflection 40: Jesus, the Holy Spirit and love

Reflection 41: God in whom all things hold together

Reflection 42: All find what they truly seek

Reflection 43: As we do to the least of these

Reflection 44: Service, worship and love

Reflection 45: Scripture

Reflection 46: Prayer

Reflection 47: Praying the hard things

Reflection 48: Meditation and mindfulness

Reflection 49: Meditation and imagination

Reflection 50: Solitude and silence

Reflection 51: The life of love

Reflection 52: The lover and the beloved

Conclusion

Appendix A   Additional Resources for Thinking about Harmful Attachments and Addictions

Appendix B   The Twelve Steps

Appendix C   Finding Professional Supports

Notes

Bibliography

To my parents, who pointed me towards Love

Acknowledgments

My particular thanks go to:

the clients and colleagues who have shared their experiences and knowledge with me and prompted me to think about these questions;

the organising committee and congregation of the then evening service at St John’s West Brunswick, for opportunities to explore much of this material with them, and for their encouragement;

Bill Andersen, Alison Herron, Elizabeth Kinsey, Penelope Langmead and Greg Restall, who gave of their time to read the manuscript and provide thoughtful feedback;

Jill Firth, Howard Langmead, Gordon Preece, Susan Preece, Jenni Southwell and Chelle Trebilcock, who read and commented on particular sections;

the many other writers and thinkers I have quoted here;

and to my family and friends, for their support.

Introduction

What to expect from The Life of Love

This is a book about love.

Many others have written about this topic and in many ways. So what, I hear you ask, is the angle? Why read this book?

I have observed that behaviours and attitudes that I recognise as ‘love’ are associated with healing of all sorts, of body, mind, spirit, relationships and society.

As a person who is interested in spiritual growth and healing, these observations are no coincidence: it is not by chance, I tell myself, that the topic of love, its practice and the encouragement to love, are present in many of the world’s religious and spiritual traditions.

As a psychologist, when I observe patterns like this, of improvement in emotional and relational wellbeing occurring consistently in particular situations, it makes me curious about what is shifting internally for people, and how understanding these dynamics might help others. Again, I am far from the first observer of human behaviour to notice such patterns, wonder what is going on, or consider how these insights can be applied.

In writing this book I have in mind two simple yet ancient questions: If love is associated with healing of all sorts, how do I more consciously set about to grow in love, seeking healing for myself and for my neighbours, community and world? And, how do I encourage others in their journeys into love?

Is this book for you?

This book is addressed to seekers of all backgrounds who are interested in emotional and spiritual healing and growth. It is aimed at two groups of seekers in particular:

•  The first group - and this includes all of us, at times - are those experiencing emotional, relational or spiritual pain, a pain so great that the status quo can no longer be tolerated.

•  The second group are those who want to be better lovers, in the broadest possible sense. Whether you are just beginning this journey or have been on it for a long time, as an individual quest or also within a spiritual and religious framework, you have experienced the power of love and want more of it for yourself and in your relationships with others.

This book is an extended invitation to engage actively in your own interior dialogue about the nature of the emotional and spiritual connections in your life and where you feel challenged to grow in love. It focusses specifically on the areas of loving connection to ourselves, to others, to art and nature and to God.

Psychological and spiritual lenses

This book approaches the topic of love with both psychological and spiritual lenses. Individually they offer ways of seeing the dynamics at work in both emotional and spiritual distress and healing, and resources that support this healing. Held together, they provide a richer picture still. My hope is that if you are primarily familiar with one or either path, the psychological or spiritual, this book will deepen your understanding, allow you to integrate insights about healing from both, and support you to harness those insights in your own healing and growth in love, and the way that you live these in the world, and nurture them in others.

Psychological perspectives

For much of its comparatively short history, religion and spirituality have been kept out of therapy.¹ This may in part reflect Freudian perceptions of religion as a form of psychological defense against anxiety. Religion does act that way, of course, but many people would attest that there is far more to their experience of religious and spiritual practice.

There is also the widespread and understandable professional concern that discussion of spiritual and religious matters may result in a therapist imposing their own beliefs on a client rather helping the client find their own way. Most reflective therapists would acknowledge that this concern is relevant to their psychological, cultural, political, and philosophical views and assumptions as well as to their spiritual and religious beliefs. Therapy is often a process of influence and therapists act out of and impose their beliefs on clients in many ways, often unconsciously. This can happen in any human interaction, but is more likely in one with a power imbalance, such as a therapeutic relationship. When this does happen, the risk is that there is a failing of the healing fundamentals of therapy - genuineness, empathy and respect. In this, as in the rest of psychological care, the conscious and reflective commitment to ‘do not harm’ is vital.

Perhaps because of these two concerns the interface between psychology and spirituality has not usually been included in professional training courses. Most psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists and counsellors were not taught to ask about the spiritual or religious aspects of life in an intake interview, let alone how to work on this material at any depth with clients.

Taken together, these considerations have presented barriers to integration, even among therapists and psychologists who recognize the healing potential in conversations about a client’s own spiritual tradition, values and resources. If these barriers exist for professionals who work in the area of mental health, and for those who have a particular interest in both the psychological and spiritual realms, then it is understandable that most lay people see the two areas as separate. As a consequence, most people seeking emotional or spiritual support choose one approach or the other, or hold insights from the two separate in their lives, rather than experiencing the benefits of bringing them together, where this is possible.

Increasingly though, psychological research is pointing to the resources that individuals with religious faith and spiritual practices may bring to therapy in the form of a frame of meaning, coping skills and a supportive community. Alongside this, and since around the time of my own training, the psychological profession has been challenged to expand to encompass positive psychology concepts like character strengths and virtues, mindfulness and meditation-informed practices, forgiveness interventions and the routine discussion of values and meaning, topics and practices that were often previously the domain of spiritual and religious traditions. As these ‘newer’ approaches are emerging into mainstream psychological practice, they are stimulating much fruitful professional conversation about how we can understand and use them alongside the more traditional therapies. While therapists who identify as specifically interested in the crossover area between spirituality, religion and psychology are still small in number, that number is growing steadily.

Another significant motivator for me in exploring this crossover territory has been the concerns and perceptions of people from within my own spiritual community about the work of therapists. As an example, it is not uncommon for Christians to question the assumptions underlying psychological therapies and whether and to what extent these are consistent with the values and the notion of self or person found in their faith tradition. From the moment I began training as a psychologist, these anxious, skeptical voices prompted me to consider where there existed genuine places of meeting between psychological, spiritual and religious ideas and practices, and how I might communicate these effectively to support people in their healing journeys.

These themes, which include my interest in the intersections between psychological and spiritual conceptions of healing, the emerging professional knowledge in this area and the questions of my own community, are the background from which this book arises. In addition, psychological principles and practices inform the structure of this work and are reflected in the content of almost every page. In exploring the topics of love and healing, I have drawn liberally on ideas across therapeutic traditions, with particular reference to Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, mindfulness-based therapies, positive psychology, solution-focussed principles, and psychodynamic concepts. This work is also deeply informed by the many clients who have shared their healing journeys with me and by the colleagues who have reflected with me on this material, challenging and stimulating my practice. Collectively the courage and wisdom of clients and colleagues have helped me to ground ideas and musings in experience and practice.

Religious and spiritual perspectives

Having been raised in the Christian tradition and shaped in my thinking and faith through extended contact with three Christian denominations, Christian belief structures, traditions and Scripture form the primary framework for my thinking about spirituality, healing and love. This is evident throughout the book, and particularly in the final section on loving connection to God. Many of the ideas in that section reflect longstanding traditions of Christian spirituality.

Although I have written this work largely from within a Christian frame, it is a broad frame. That said, I do not claim to speak for all Christians or indeed for any others. Neither is it my intention in this work to argue for the merits of the Christian tradition in comparison with others or to attempt to convert non-Christian readers to Christianity. Indeed, my broad Christian heritage has supported me to explore similar ideas about healing and love as they occur in other religions. I do not have the same level of familiarity with those other traditions but I have tried to render them accurately where that occurs.

In that context it is important to acknowledge that parts of this book may be challenging for some Christian readers. I am thinking particularly of the use of quotations and exercises from a range of religious and spiritual traditions. I have included them because of my belief and experience that other traditions have also deeply explored practices of love and compassion. I can take this step with integrity but I understand if this does not feel possible for you. Please do not let that prevent you from exploring the other resources in this book.

One feature of this work that may challenge non-religious and non-Christian readers is the focus on loving God. People understand the word ‘god’ in a great variety of ways, some of which are consistent with those presented here and others of which may be in tension. When I use ‘God’ language, I mean that within, beyond, beneath (as in, ‘ground of being’), above and around us which calls to life (as opposed to that which is not life-giving), light, love and freedom, whose other name is Love. Each of the elements in that description is explored further in the text. For example, when using the word ‘freedom’ I see this as in contrast to unforgiveness, addiction and harmful attachments. Addictions and harmful attachments are explore in ‘Reflection 3: Addiction, freedom and love’ and both forgiveness and the effects of unforgiveness are addressed in several places. I also elaborate a definition of ‘love’ in ‘Reflection 2: What is Life-giving?’ In addition to that large scale sense of ‘God’, I do from time to time attribute human qualities to God and address God as person. While these habits of heart and mind are shaped by my Christian heritage, they also reflect what humans have historically done with big concepts and forces; they best understand and feel them in human and relational terms; and I am prepared to take part in mystery on those terms.

I write as one who recognises in any yearning after growth, healing, connection and spirituality, signs of the spirit of love at work and for me that spirit of love is from God and of God and is identical with what Christians called ‘the Holy Spirit’. That is a faith statement. I do not have proof. Also shaped by my faith perspective is my observation that while many people notice and respond to the promptings of love, most do not recognise them for what they are or suspect their importance. After a time, the initial glow or yearning fading, they lose focus or do not know how to keep up the motivation, and so their progress towards life, light, love and freedom suffers and they become waylaid or distracted on their journey to the source. Again, the possibility that there is ‘a source’ is a faith statement, although not solely a Christian one. Most religious and spiritual traditions have formulated practices (rituals and beliefs) around the idea of ‘a source’. Whether in reading this you feel that there may be a source of love, or whether you are simply inspired to continue on the path of love, I trust that you will find here something of worth.

Many readers will consider with integrity that they can approach the topics of spirituality, healing and love without recourse to the language or concept of God. If this is where you find yourself, what I can offer you is the assurance that your presence as a reader was in my mind as I wrote. I have attempted to write respectfully, leaving room for those where that language or step is not possible or not now or not as I have framed. Mine is not an attempt to convince you of a particular stance towards ‘ultimate things’. Instead, in writing this book, it is my hope that readers from all backgrounds are encouraged to consider the way love may make for healing in their lives and in the world, and how it can be lived out through life-giving choices.

The structure

The book has two parts.

‘Part One: The Role of Love’ includes four Reflections and a Review. The first two Reflections introduce the role of love in psychological and spiritual healing. The third introduces the ways addictions can be a barrier to this growth and healing, and the fourth, introduces attention as a foundational skill for intentionally growing in life-giving connection or love. This part finishes with a Review that invites readers to consider their current situation and where they might like to make changes, now or in the future.

‘Part Two: Life-giving Connections’ includes forty-eight Reflections. These are grouped into three Sections, connecting to self, to others, and to God, with an Interlude to consider connection through nature, creative expression and excellence.

The Sections and Reflections are intended to be read in the order they appear, and invite the reader on a spiritual journey. This journey begins with an invitation to connect with ourselves in love and concludes with an invitation to engage with our ultimate context in the same spirit. The text assumes that readers will come to this journey from many backgrounds and that they will experience or conceive of that ultimate context in a variety of ways, including as higher power, spirit, soul, God or some other immanent or transcendent connection.

Although this book is intended to be read in a particular order, not all readers will feel able to take the whole journey now, or as it is expressed here. That is as it should be. In the Preface to Reaching for the Invisible God, Philip Yancey writes, ‘I have written the book in a progression from doubt towards faith, which recapitulates my own pilgrimage. For those leery of spirituality, or perhaps scarred by bad church experiences, I suggest reading as far as you can, then stopping’.² The first Part of this book presents the core ideas at a level that is accessible to a secular audience. The second part of the book moves from largely secular to more overtly spiritual and religious material. With this in mind, if you identify with Yancey’s description, I suggest that you read the first part and then explore the second part as far as you can.

How to use this book

As I wrote earlier in this Introduction, this book is an invitation to you to actively consider the nature of the emotional and spiritual connections in your life and where you feel challenged to grow in love.

In this spirit, each Reflection ends with Invitations to experiment with the life of love. This idea of ‘experimenting’ comes from the therapeutic context and the observation that we are more likely to find the motivation to change if we try something out for ourselves and experience that it is relevant and helpful. Depending on the topic, Invitations include questions, ideas for action, structured meditations, prayers, quotations, and resources for further investigation. If you think you may respond to the questions and exercises in writing, I encourage you to obtain a suitable journal.

This material is intended to be read slowly. I have written the Reflections so that they can be read one a day, or one a week for a year, allowing time to digest and engage with the Invitations. Some readers told me they read the Reflections through first and returned to particular exercises or suggestions later. Others appreciated the structure of Invitations and felt that reading and responding to them as they went along deepened the experience for them. I invite you to read the book slowly but at the pace and in the manner that works for you and your commitments.

‘Do no harm’

Before we proceed, a few playful and yet serious words of caution are warranted, in the spirit of truth in advertising.

First, some words about language: You may notice that frequently I refer to the way ‘we’ may be affected by things or about ‘our’ experiences. This is deliberate. Although this book is an invitation to you, I do not want to convey that I have mastered the material or that this is possible. We are fellow explorers, co-pilgrims in this life of love. None of us will ‘arrive’ in this lifetime, but we may find companions on the journey, even in reading a book like this. There is a risk, though, in this inclusive language. As humans, our histories and personalities are infinitely and wonderfully varied, even as we are bound by core needs and experiences. So there is just the possibility that as I am referring to ‘we’, you may be thinking, No, that’s not me at all. If on reflection you still feel that way, then the error is mine in not leaving room in my words for your experience.

Secondly, some words about care: Very few people, if they reflected honestly, would be able to write a book on love without a considerable measure of irony. The note of humility is important. This is the product of a human. It is up to you to judge its merit and its relevance. That is your responsibility as reader, from the first to the last word. I take seriously the professional responsibility to ‘do no harm,’ and the spiritual imperatives not to mislead, but as well not to discourage.³ So I have taken care; but even with the greatest care, the burden of care for your soul remains with you.

Finally, some words about the very real possibility of change. I have observed that, as part of a healing journey, people who have otherwise had quite unremarkable lives are drawn to causes which are larger than themselves. This might be, for example, to care for the less fortunate, to campaign for a better education system, to oppose war, or to protect the environment. Other changes seem subtler but have the potential to be just as far reaching, including joining a community for the first time, going back to school, or beginning counselling. Sometimes individuals who take up these causes or choose to make these changes find in them something of such meaning and satisfaction that it comes to inform their whole way of life. While this sort of change can be understood in different ways, I have come to believe that when it occurs, God’s spirit, or love by another name, is at work in our lives, motivating our actions and changing us in the process, whether we realize it or not. Whatever the dynamic at the heart of it though, there is the real possibility that if we seriously embark on this path of growing in love our lives may be transformed.

It is my hope and prayer that you come to experience more of the life of love and that this work contributes in some small way to your journey into love.

Part One

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The Role of Love

Part One

The Role of Love

Part One: The Role of Love, includes four Reflections that introduce the role of love in psychological and spiritual healing. These Reflections provide a conceptual framework for the Reflections that follow in Part Two. They also invite the reader to begin engaging actively with the ideas in the book in a process of self-reflection. They are followed by a Review or self-assessment that allows readers to consider their own circumstances and priorities before they continue reading.

‘Reflection 1: Anxious self-focus’ introduces the idea that much of what ails us at the emotional and spiritual level is an anxious self-focus. In both the spiritual and psychological realms thoughtful observers have noticed that when individuals step away from their usual self-focus in one way or another, they begin to experience an improvement in their emotional symptoms.

‘Reflection 2: What is life-giving?’ explores the idea that an antidote to anxious self-focus and its effects on our lives is what various religious and spiritual traditions call love. It introduces Bill O’Hanlon’s model of connection, compassion and contribution as a frame for thinking about how it might be possible to grow intentionally in love or life-giving connection.

While these are two of the shortest Reflections they are the most ‘technical’, explaining some of the psychological and religious or spiritual ideas behind this book and introducing the model of spirituality that informs its structure. If you would like to get started immediately in applying the ideas in this book to your own situation, then begin with Reflection 3. Later, if you are curious, you might like to come back to these opening Reflections.

‘Reflection 3: Addiction, freedom and love’ explores a universal barrier to life-giving connection, addictions. It invites you to reflect on the many attachments you have in your life, and whether these either meet a clinical definition of addiction or have addictive features that to some extent impair your freedom and capacity to love.

‘Reflection 4: Attention’ introduces the skill and work of attention as central to the task of growing in life-giving attention or love. It includes a range of ideas to support you in developing the skill of attention.

‘The Review: How do things stand for you right now?’ invites you to consider the quality of your connections to yourself, to others, to art and nature and to something larger than yourself, be that the universe, a higher power, God or cosmic consciousness. It provides an opportunity to reflect on where you might like to make changes in those connections, now and in the future.

Reflection 1: Anxious self-focus

The more one forgets himself – by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love – the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. (Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning)⁴

A place of struggle

Imagine two people, both with a long list of challenges: chronic health issues, marital dissatisfaction, strained relationships with adult children and financial worries. One is caught in the middle of it, her experience of worry, her physical symptoms and her distress at the way people around her are behaving. The other, with the same list of challenges, acknowledges that things are tough, and is struggling with mood too, but sparkles when she tells you about a particular friend or child, or her dance classes: I live for my dance classes, she says. You may substitute for dance any number of other activities.

You may have noticed this basic difference among the people you know - psychologists may meet more people and are privy to particular personal details, but much of what we observe is common to human experience.

Before saying anything else, it is important to acknowledge that given a particular set of circumstances any of us might sound like either of these people. I know I do. Sometimes the immediate situation feels so bad we cannot see beyond it. In addition, making these comparisons might imply that the first woman is handling things badly. This is not my intention. There may be all sorts of explanations for the difference: how long they have been struggling, how they learnt to handle problems when they were growing up, their particular coping skills, and the amount of support they have around them, to name a few. For my purposes, the crucial observation is that the second person has at least one thing in her life that shifts her focus from worry, and when she engages with it this lifts her mood.

A place of life

In my experience, when this place of ‘life’ is present for us, it is often the lever to our recovery and healing. There is a place that is working and positive that we can build on. If we have lost all connection with this place of ‘life’ and rediscover it the same is true.

There is the potential that in connecting to a place of life away from my worries, one taste of life begins to build on another. While I am out walking, however briefly, I may see other people around me and reconnect with them or at least to a stranger through a smile. I may see a little of nature and feel glad for the fresh air. I may unexpectedly find energy to deal with something I was putting off. I may even notice an idea arise about how to handle a situation that has been worrying me.

This principle operates when we reconnect to significant things like relationships, hobbies, physical exercise and values, but it also works at a much simpler level. If we are anxious, and we learn to distract ourselves temporarily from our anxious thoughts, our mood improves. If we have stopped doing things we enjoy and withdrawn from social contact because we are experiencing sadness, low mood or depression, and then we start to do some activities, however small, that give us a sense of pleasure or achievement, our mood improves. Humour can work at both these levels, as distraction and a brief experience of pleasure. In any of these ways, getting a break from our anxious and negative thoughts and a taste of ‘life’ helps. It makes sense, really.

Similarly, we are often able to be insightful and creative about our own situation when we take a step back and try to see our worries and concerns as a caring friend might. Psychologists call this ‘decentering’, or stepping outside of our usual frame of reference. Doing this often puts us in touch with a wealth of inner resources for healing.

To broaden this out beyond the psychologist’s office, in my observation these principles – connecting with a taste of ‘life’ and stepping outside of our usual focus on self – operate for growth in all our lives. If we are struggling, they are a path to healing. If we are doing reasonably well, they are a path to flourishing and living life more fully. They are also a buffer against hard times, a resource to strengthen us when difficulties arise.

You might recall for a moment the stories we occasionally hear in the media of people who have suffered some sort of tragedy and decided to respond to this by giving time and energy to a related charity or seeking justice and protection for people who might otherwise experience something similar. They are making this choice. They could easily and understandably to be lost in grief, pain or bitterness. Instead, they have somehow found a meaningful way of connecting to others and the world around them, working out their pain in other ways. Again, this is not to imply that the first set of responses and choices would be handling things ‘worse’. Instead, it is noticing the impact of the second set of choices. Looking ‘beyond ourselves’ somehow helps with healing and with staying on track.

A psychological perspective

As I have suggested, psychologists have noticed that these principles work to shift our mood. Others have gone further and suggested that there are also deeper psychological processes at work. Rollo May, a Christian psychotherapist more popular and well known in the 60s and 70s, reflected on just this in his The Art of Counseling, about his work with the young people at a university counselling service.⁵ Trained in a psychodynamic perspective, one that understands much of our mood and lived experience as reflecting internal processes shaped in childhood, May wrote that for a host of early developmental reasons, most of the young people who came for counselling had developed ways of being on the world intended to bolster their own fragile sense of self-worth. These ways of being might be anything from styles of interacting with others to self-imposed standards and expectations. At the extremes, their habits or ways of being brought them into conflict with others and themselves, conflict that often also expressed itself in anxiety and depression.

May saw underlying these ways of being in the world, whether productive or potentially harmful, normal and universal energies or drives at self-expression and creativity. In keeping with his training, rather than seeing these drives as ‘bad’, self-centered or sinful in themselves, May saw them as simply a given parts of our created and essentially good human constitution. It might be appropriate to make judgments about the morality of particular paths, he writes, but he does not do so about the drives themselves.⁶

May’s experience suggested that when these young people were able to channel their energies into creative and socially constructive activities beyond themselves, and beyond their image, status and self-worth, beyond what he called neurotic – anxious – self-focus, their depression, anxiety and tension diminished. In addition, they were often able to find avenues for creative expression unimagined or to a much larger degree than they could have imagined.⁷ Many of the things that they had previously wanted but struggled with in terms of accomplishment, relationships and so on were also more likely. Although they had not pursued these other goals directly and there was no guarantee of a positive outcome, the changes they had made in external behaviour and experienced in mood made them more likely.

May was not alone is his observation or suggested path to healing. Many who have reflected on the human condition have noticed and wondered similar things: so many that in reading them I realise I have discovered an open secret. Viktor Frankl, in his Man’s Search for Meaning and a section on anxiety, wrote that the way to treat our own over-drivenness or over-focus was not to do more self-reflection in therapy but instead to focus away from ourselves to ‘a vocation or mission in life’: ‘It is not the neurotic’s self-concern, whether pity or contempt, which breaks the circle formation; the cue to cure is self-transcendence!’⁸ In the footnote to that section, he quotes Gordon Allport’s The Individual and His Religion in support: ‘As the focus of striving shifts from the conflict to selfless goals, the life as a whole becomes sounder even though the neurosis may never completely disappear’.⁹

Different psychological and philosophical writers have placed different interpretations on similar observations. In To a dancing God: Notes of a Spiritual Traveler, Sam Keen summarises the challenging if legitimate existentialist perspective of Sartre’s Nausea as follows:

In the face of the absurdity of existence, the only option for the lucid individual is to create a reason for existing by writing a book or joining a political movement, etc. Only by choosing some project, however arbitrary, can the individual fill the present moment and escape the nausea that results from awareness of the absolute contingency and absurdity of existence.¹⁰

Following this argument to its logical conclusion, busying ourselves in projects and activities beyond ourselves may act to support our mental health, if only because they distract us from awareness of what Sartre sees as the essential meaninglessness of existence.

Coming from a very different perspective, in The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm writes,

The deepest need of man, then, is the need to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness. … Man – of all ages and cultures – is confronted with the solution of one and the same question: the question of how to overcome separateness, how to achieve union, how to transcend one’s own individual life and find at-onement.¹¹

For Fromm, the emotional healing observed by May occurs because as we begin to look beyond ourselves, to transcend ourselves, we begin to overcome our separateness, and in doing so begin to meet our profound and often previously unrecognised human need for connection.

May’s explanation for these observations of emotional and psychological healing was that they reflected something of the way we were created in the first place. When we begin to look away from ourselves to others and their interests, our God-given energies find their most natural and healthful course.¹² May offers this interpretation, shaped by his Christian frame of reference, in the final part of his work, in a chapter entitled ‘Ultimate Considerations’. It is important to note that he does not suggest that patients or counsellees needed to accept his religious interpretation to experience healing. From May’s perspective, this potential for healing is built into our human fabric.

Regardless of their differing interpretations, each in turn based on differing conceptions of the human self, the ideas expressed by these therapists and philosophers shed a broader light on the healing change I have observed in people who begin to look beyond themselves. They also offer ways of thinking about why life-embracing change might occur: both more obvious healing, in circumstances where we are initially experiencing anxiety and depression, but also when we are apparently doing alright.

A spiritual perspective

I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life …. (Deut 30: 19)

I have briefly outlined some of the psychological processes involved in both low or anxious mood and in healing and flourishing. In addition, May’s ideas point to one way that observations of healing might make sense from a spiritual or religious perspective. They also touch on two associated and perennial issues addressed by religious traditions, sin and love. At first this may seem a mysterious leap, particularly if you do not come to this book from a religious background, but I ask you to stay with me a moment. I explore one particular meaning of sin in the remainder of this Reflection and a definition of love in the Reflection that follows.

One way of viewing religions is as codifications and structures developed over time by people like you and me responding to spiritual experiences and insights. Perhaps a spiritually sensitive and gifted communicator passed on experiences and insights to disciples who recorded them. In turn, the practices and texts of disciples were elaborated and surrounded by interpretation and ritual.

I have framed religious practice in this way to point you back to the original experiences and insights and to encourage you to attend to your own spiritual experiences and insights. Religious and spiritual practices and rituals are not alternatives to experience and insight, and may even obscure them. At their best, though, they record, explain and point the way.

Is it possible, I have wondered, that at the heart of many world religions and spiritual traditions - at their beginnings - there were similar observations to the one I have made in therapy, and to the one reflected by May’s experience: that when we are caught up in anxious self-focus and all that goes with this, our mood is troubled and we are often in conflict with ourselves and others, but that when we find a focus beyond ourselves, we encounter healing and growth?

Where might the concept of sin fit in here?

As humans, we so easily ‘see’ and name opposing categories. Thinking back to the beginnings of religious traditions again, I can imagine it was not a big step to recognise that certain types of thought and behaviour were good for individuals, family groups and the community, supporting life, healing and growth, and that others were not, resulting in misery and conflict. In fact, the Ten Commandments may be viewed as an example of just this process. It is then only another short step to define the second group as undesirable, to be avoided and as failings of a sort, sins, indeed.

To me it makes all the difference if that is what is meant by ‘sin’. If ‘sin’ means ‘all that is not life-giving’, then I feel drawn forward to the life-giving rather than tempted by what is not. By this definition of sin, a controversial one I grant, who would really continue to choose it with delight? We might choose it out of habit, ignorance, addiction, weariness and even laziness, but not with delight. From this perspective, rather than feeling chastened for my failings, I begin to feel compassion for myself and others when we find ourselves struggling still with those things which are not life-giving and indeed its opposite: life-denying. This idea of life-denying or death-dealing behaviours is explored further in a number of places, including in ‘Reflection 10: The unconscious’.

The language people have around sin varies tremendously depending on their religious and spiritual background. Two Christian traditions, the Roman Catholic and the Anglican or Episcopalian, use words in their prayers that are consistent with my suggested definition of sin, how it hurts us and those around us, and how we might find healing. The following lines are from A Prayer Book for Australia, the Anglican prayer book, and are intended to be addressed to God by the congregation. The italics are mine.

We thank you that when we turned away from you,

you sent Jesus to live and work as one of us,

and bring us back to you.

He showed us how to love you

and set us free to love and serve one another.

Lord our God,

we give you thanks and praise.

We thank you that on the cross

Jesus took away our sin,

all that keeps us from each other and from you.

He frees us from hate and fear,

from all that destroys love and trust.

Lord our God,

we give you thanks and praise.¹³

You will notice that in this prayer it is what is not life-giving and not-love, ‘hate and fear, all that destroys love and trust’ that separates us from each other and from God, and it is these things that the prayer refers to as sin. There is a link here to psychological perspectives on distress: ‘hate and fear’ usually arise from an anxious sort of self-focus. They are understandable in certain situations, but the effect of them when they continue in our lives is much as the prayer suggests, undermining love and trust and separating us from ourselves, others and our ultimate reference point, whether that is our values or our sense of God. From a spiritual perspective, the prayer suggests that when those things are dealt with we are freed from what is not life-giving and set free to love and serve others, a path that sounds remarkably like ‘looking beyond ourselves’.

Blame

One of the risks of using the word ‘sin’ as a spiritual or religious way of thinking about ‘anxious self-focus’ is that it may feel confronting and blaming, particularly if you have loaded and painful associations with the word, or if you are currently experiencing emotional pain, anxiety or depression. This issue is important, because it is so easy to fall into the trap of blaming people who are suffering - others and ourselves - for their difficulties. Moreover, sadly, there are aspects of religious structures and language that have made this blame more likely. In various guises, our thinking might be something like this: ‘If I am suffering I must have done something wrong’. This is obviously a huge question and one that many other books address. If you are struggling with these questions yourself, I would encourage you to draw on the support of others or to consider a pastoral conversation with a thoughtful representative from your own spiritual or religious tradition.

Of course, when we are encountering difficulty or emotional pain, some degree of self-reflection on our contribution can be valuable. This is one of the reasons I have framed sin as ‘all that is not life-giving’ and in fact what is ‘life-denying’. I think this puts the focus where it needs to be, not in judgment about ourselves or others but on the effect of our thoughts and related behaviour on ourselves and others. This definition may help us to reflect on and make choices about our own behaviour, discerning what is life-giving to us and others, or not.

It is important to add that neither May nor Frankl blamed their clients for their anxious self-focus, the ways they have developed of being in the world, or their experience of depression or anxiety. Their stance was one of compassion: the compassion of healers who recognise that generally we only come to therapy or reach out for help if we are in pain and feel stuck.

I do not believe, as some do, that anxiety and depression are failings in themselves, although they can certainly be prolonged and deepened by our existing patterns and ways of being. Neither do I believe that all anxiety and depression are produced by an anxious sort of self-absorbed life-style, however universal that life-style may be. Most patterns of anxious self-focus have their origins early in our developments, before we have any real capacity to appreciate what is happening. As children, we made choices that made sense at the time. Most of them were about how to ensure the love of a primary care-giver, and for a child even benign absence, distraction and disapproval in a caregiver can feel like a threat to love and safety. Much that is unavoidable in the raising of children, even by ‘good enough’ parents, can feel to a child like a threat to love and safety, and prompt all sorts of small anxious patterns intended to ensure those basic needs are met.¹⁴ It is often only as we reach adulthood that it becomes apparent that those patterns we developed, however useful they might have been, are no longer serving us well.

One problem for most of us is that having formed these patterns unconsciously, we are often entirely unaware of their operation in our adult lives. If we are functioning relatively well most of the time, they may only become apparent and start to affect our lives in negative ways when we are under stress. Another problem is the power that the patterns have, both because we do not recognise them and because of how they were developed, at a time when they felt necessary for our survival. It is extraordinarily difficult to shake patterns we barely understand and that feel like what stands between us and annihilation.

Responsibility

The balance to a stance of non-blame is a commitment to the truth or to reality, to the evidence of cause and effect and to taking up our reasonable responsibilities. Many writers address the central role of responsibility as a spiritual discipline. If you would like to read about it further, I suggest Scott Peck’s The Road Less Travelled.¹⁵

Regardless of the origins of our patterns of self-focus, we have developed these patterns and the associated ways of being in the world. Our patterns, as they intersect with those of others, lead to conflict with others and with ourselves, and it is these that contribute to our experiences of anxiety and depression. It is true, of course, that in many parts of our lives we may be ‘more sinned against than sinning’ and hurts of accident and malice from others may initiate, contribute to or act to maintain our own responses and patterns. Eventually though, whatever the cause of our pain and suffering, as adults with a degree of understanding and volition, we are responsible for our own healing. There is much we cannot change, but there is also much we can change, in circumstances and in ourselves, if not immediately, then over time. At a minimum, we retain that last of human freedoms, as Frankl called it, the freedom to choose our attitude.¹⁶ I am saying this directly because in my observation unless we accept a measure of responsibility for change it is unlikely we will take committed and continued action towards something different.

The good news in all this, I believe, it that regardless of whether our emotional and spiritual pain is the result of our anxious self-focus, our actions, those of others or the product of accident or chance, the path to healing is similar. This takes us to the focus of the next Reflection and the remainder of this book.

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Invitations

Invitations follow each of the Reflections in this book. They are invitations that you may take or leave. They are included to assist you to think through and respond to the material you have read.

Often the Invitations include ‘Questions to consider’. These are open-ended invitations to connect with your own responses to the material. Every reader will have a different set of responses. The invitation is to notice your own responses.

The Invitations also include ways of ‘experimenting’ with the life of love, so that you can test for yourself whether these principles are useful and relevant to you. As I noted in the Introduction, some readers have told me they preferred to read the Reflections straight through before returning to particular Invitations later. Others liked the structure of Invitations and felt that reading and responding to them as they went along deepened the experience for them.

Questions to consider

Let us begin with some questions:

What stood out for you or touched you in this Reflection? It may have been a word, phrase or idea.

How were you affected? Were there positive or negative emotions attached to your response?

What do you think or feel about the idea that looking beyond ourselves and our own habitual self-focus might be part of healing?

Thinking about your own life, what are the places of ‘life’, where you feel connected to something or someone beyond yourself? You may want to list those that come to mind.

If this question feels difficult, list even the smallest experience or encounter that you know lifts your mood slightly or that acts to distract you from low or anxious mood. If it feels like nothing currently does this, list the experiences or relationships where this used to happen for you and the experiences, activities and relationships that feel or felt ‘good for you’ or consistent with your values.

An activity

In the spirit of ‘experimenting’, the invitation is to look at the list you created in the previous section and to pick one activity or relationship where you connect to something other than yourself, which you experience as ‘life-giving’ or at very least a positive distraction. Commit yourself to engaging in that activity or spending time giving to that relationship at least once before you read the next Reflection, even for five minutes. If you plan to read these Reflections once a week, consider engaging with one of these places of ‘life’ at least once each day over the next week. When you do this, even if the activity or relationship is part of your daily routine, be deliberate in your intention and remind yourself that this activity or relationship is a place of ‘life’ for you and part of your journey into the life of love.

Reflection 2: What is life-giving?

In Tibet we say that many illnesses can be cured by the one medicine of Love and compassion.