Therapy As Theosis: Beyond Health and Illness
On this page, I want to expand on my views of therapy and therapeutic ideologies, what therapy is, how it has historically existed, and develop the basic formulations of my own model for particular-universal therapy.
I have developed this form of therapy from my own continual experiences of coming to greater health and extensive study of mysticism, psychology, theology, and the artistic personality.
I have found that all health is the seeking of truth, that Truth is Health', that therapeutic ideologies are all that which profess truth and a means of acquiring it and that true health is a continual internal process of reckoning for oneself what is true in the world.
Firstly, the concept of health implies that there is illness. Theosis is the going beyond health and illness. Health implies union, illness implies division: going beyond health and illness is the achievement of a union between duality and non-duality.
There are three basic principles to this form of therapy:
* Reclamation of external projections of God
* Unification of inner opposites through reflective awareness
* Conscious self-authorship
These are not necessarily in order but rather, can be concurrent and interrelated.
The self is not ready made or once and for all discovered: it is a continual and developing process of coming to greater consciousness of the inner world and the progressive realization of the creative power to author oneself. One must be authored before they can author - one must be directed before they can direct. At the end of the book written for you, you write your own book.
In short, this form of therapy can be summarized as becoming God: theosis. It seeks to integrate the various therapeutic ideologies of the world, though they are not conceived of as such, through the concept of "health as seeking truth" and articulate a dynamic self-referential, recursive, other *and* self oriented process of growth of self, growth being the fruit of seeking truth.
If I am to articulate a general logical sequence, it would appear in this general phases, which one may revisit, remain at, return to, or elevate from at varying paces and pathways. Some may cycle for quite a long time, and some may learn the lesson once and for all. What is central is the particularity that eventually transforms itself into universality: development is always and ever a spiral.
Phase - Projection
The division of the human: the birth of the human. The will is externalized: God is projected into external reality. The self is felt as divided. The externalization of will, agency, volition, meaning, value, authority. Unconscious projection: longing, worship, idealization. Therapeutic ideologies - religion, political ideologies, etc - provide comfort at the cost of freedom and selfhood.
Phase — Mirror
A young man came to Rumi and asked him to help he seek God. Rumi asked the young man if he had fallen in love. The young man replied that he had not. Rumi responded, "Do that first."
In mystic traditions, the object of one's love, the beloved, can often form the clearest mirror in which one can see themselves. Through this most powerful of projections, the possibility of collapse is always present and its occurrence is a blessing.
This does not have to occur through a romantic partner, but can indeed be a friend, a family member, an associate, etc, etc. What matters is the fact of projection onto a figure and the collapse of the projection. In therapy, the therapist seeks to become this figure for the individual being therapized. That is, the therapist seeks to become the total projection screen upon which the suffering individual projects God. The therapist is the mirror - they reflect God back at the individual. This is meant to be temporary: the purpose of therapy is its end. The end of therapy is always the separation experience: the shattering of the mirror. There are many therapists who do not know they are therapists.
In this phase, the object of projection often moves from something abstract - God is ideology - to something physical, concrete. This is because the physical/concrete can be lost. However, the mirror of projection for some individuals can be abstract: the worship of an ideology/institutional religion. To root out blindness here - to demonstrate to the individual that they can only see themselves/are blind to God and others - is often more difficult. No longer merely a source of comfort, there is a strong attachment to the abstraction as the source of one's identity, meaning in life, and self-affirmation. Here, knowledge does not do much, if anything, for all that is contrary can be rationalized, as we are working with rational creations, in such a way that present beliefs remain in tact. Often, only a traumatic experience - in the sense of disruption - can enable an alteration, however, there still remains the risk that the trauma makes the rigidity even more strict. Ideologues are often the most difficult to have a conversation with because they never realize they are only talking to themselves; that is, ideologues are the most difficult to speak with because you cannot speak to them.
Phase - Shattering of the Mirror
The mirror in which one sees oneself in the external world, the thing they are most in search for, the narcissism which masquerades itself as love, is shattered. Separation from beloved one/idea. One's world-view comes crashing down: the attachment that secures life dies/reveals its emptiness.
After the collapse of the projection in the separation experience, the individual falls into the void of superposition. Here, there is confrontation with nihilism: God is no longer in the world outside. The projection has shattered, the ground has crumbled - one can no longer walk on water and drowns. The blessing is that without anywhere external to search, one may finally look inward. However, it must be understood that often the individual projects onto a new mirror, repeating the cycle; that is, seeking a new external object of idealization and attachment to secure one's fragile ego. Separation from ego has yet to occur. Borderline personality disorder is an extreme version of this idealization, collapse, idealization cycle.
In collapse, the individual experiences, perhaps for the first time, *freedom* and this is unbearable. The one from whom you seek total understanding is you - God is the God relating God to God. The only ground you can stand on is yours, and your ground is eternally recreating itself.
Phase — Reclamation of God Projection
If God is not projected externally once more in the experience of freedom and responsibility - though this will inevitably occur a number of times - the individual begins to reclaim their God projection by discovering that they are God. They realize their projections are products of their seeking of self/God, their need of self-affirmation, and the fruit of the experience of the loop/spiral is this recognition: that the only one who can affirm them is them. This means seeing that they were projecting inner identity, meaning, value, affirmation, onto external entities, and that they are the Messiah.
Phase — Collapse of Opposites
Now that the individual is in confrontation with themselves, they can begin to integrate internal opposites. Since they recognize that they project inner division externally, they can begin to work on the source of these projections of inner division. An individual will exit and return to this phase over and over again. They grapple with the reality of their external projections, discovering the false oppositions within themselves, consciously creating themselves. The collapse of opposites is akin to walking on water. It is the recognition of higher logic: A is both A and not A. It is the realization that there are no contradictions.
Phase — Creative Authorship
This phase overlaps with the collapse of opposites but no longer runs the risk of projection and externalization. The individual has come to a much greater understanding of themselves, others, and the world. In progressively integrating their opposites, they can begin to see themselves and, most importantly, other people. Now, they begin to author themselves, their identity, and consciously reorganize themselves, aware of the difficulties of the process, but also of its spiritual necessity. Creative pursuits are the expression of their inner integration - creativity is an expression of unity -, and they seek to transform the world into a place where everyone realizes they are God, becoming part of the therapeutic process of theosis of others. Their own particularity increasingly interests them less and less: universality becomes their vocation. This universality, having passed through the phases of particularity, understands the depth and difficulty of the process of integration as it occurs in others and acts accordingly. This phase is ongoing until death: there is no end to growth.
Phase - Eternal Recurrence
In the course of theosis, the individual will reoccur endless times. That is, they will divide and separate themselves over and over again. If one recalls, the basis for projection is the recognition of an internal divide. The other half is to be found in the world. The greatest insight of theosis is that it is an endless process. One is not integrated once and or for all, and integration does not imply wholeness - integration is the union of unity and division. Divisions continue - they are the means to growth. The self is not that which is unified or divided - the self is the relation relating itself to itself: it is the union of nonduality and duality. God is perpetually becoming man then God then man then God: God is perpetually re-membering himself. God is the man who could not live without once more, for the first time, becoming a child. In recognizing and internalizing this dynamic - that one continually re-members oneself - one is able to continue to grow rather than freeze into a static state. Rigidity, imbalance, dogma - these are threats to be cautious against. One comes to know oneself, know they are God, having passed through oneness, tension of twoness, witness of threeness, and unity of all three. Health is truth, and health is only achieved through illness. One that can will health *and* illness will have stepped beyond this first and last of dualisms. That is, one who can lay down their life can create it anew.