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The HEP Method of Spiritual Counselling
List of Contents
1 A ComplexOverview of the HEP Method 2
2 The HEP Model 6
3 HEP Process, Aims and Goals 8
4 Romantic Mysticism in the HEP Method 15
5 Spiritual Counselling and Psychotherapy 37
6 HEP Aphorisms 42
The HEP Method of Spiritual Counselling
A Complex Overview of the HEP Method
HEP Spiritual Counselling is a form of existential mysticism where the focus of concern is the individual’s immediate experience of being an embodied subject in the here and now.This attunement to immediate, local reality evokes a sense of identity and place in time. It is emergent and phenomenological. It also initiates a dawning awareness of evolutionary movement that is an unfolding of human potential for the individual, a kind of path experience (“I am on a journey”). This involves a sense of deepening awareness of self (“I am a multilayered being”). This deepening journey evokes an increasing sense of multivalent complexity that has a circular, spiral quality of moving into the centre of the self by circling through a set of experiences that are multifaceted, like a diamond. This is a set of contradictions that are typically experienced as dualistic – either, or – with an attendant sense of conflict that can only be resolved through one polarity presiding over the other. The HEP Method calls for engaging these dualistic polarities in such a way that the complementary nature of the contradiction is discovered and enacted, giving rise to an integrative dialectic third, a synthesis, without eliminating the tension of opposites. In the HEP Method this is how the ‘one’ is manifest. ‘It is just the opposite tension of the opposites that constitutes the unity of the one’. (Heraclitus)
The integrative, chaotic complexity of this unfolding path involves not just an evolving sense of identity, but also an evolving sense of reality. The Valentinian Gnostic questions ‘who am I, where am I, where do I come from, where am I going’ are enacted such that the individual moves beyond everyday personal concerns, through engaging the difficulties of everyday personal concerns, into a transpersonal, archetypal sense of identity and reality. Spiritual experiences are facilitated and the imaginal reality of the dream like nature of existence comes into focus, becoming part of day to day reality. Through this very challenging, characterological, evolutionary journey there is a discovery of the authorial level of being and living. This includes what various spiritual and mystical traditions have identified as a divine-human union experience – the awareness of the presence of a divine origin of existence as being not only outside as an ‘Other’, but also inside as an ‘other’. This whole set of experiences has the qualities of what Stan and Christina Grof, David Lukoff and Frances Lu have called ‘spiritual emergence’. This is a difficult, challenging process of awakening to the spiritual dimension of existence in a way that has not previously been present for that individual. It can involve direct experience of the archetypal world (as a felt sense, as an energetic phenomenon, as a being), psychic experiences, a sense of the presence of the spirits of the dead, angelic encounters, cosmological awareness, what seems like knowledge of the true nature of life and death, and of the purpose and meaning of one’s individual life, as well as life itself. A person’s sense of identity and reality transcends that given by the rational, empirical scientific tradition of the Enlightenment model of identity and reality and begins to align more with the Romantic sense of identity and reality. Thus the HEP Method may be ultimately understood as a form of Romantic Mysticism.
HEP is a transpersonal tradition that is a “psychologically-informed spirituality and a spiritually-based psychology” (D.Lukoff, F. Lu, “History of Transpersonal Psychotherapy”, p1, ATP website). HEP sees the spiritual not as an abstract, idealistic regulatory function, but as a vital part of daily life that expresses a deep part of what it is to be human, including qualities of mind such as compassion and caring, the capacity to bring meaning and purpose into focus, and an awareness of the transcendent function. In this, HEP values the conscious capacity to develop through choice and intentionality by responsibly taking up the circumstances of our life and history. This calls for courage, insight, creativity, wonder, skill, wisdom and the willingness to surrender into the complex connectivity of our individual human subjectivity.
HEP draws on the symbolic and metaphoric powers of the human imagination in addressing individual, cultural and planetary evolutionary challenges. HEP recognizes the co-creative evolutionary relationship of nature and psyche, locating the psychological within the natural as an expression of the differentiating tendency of the living cosmos, where creativity and interdependence are the foundation, the process and the goal. In this, individual human nature is seen to be also in a co-creative relationship with the existential divine as manifest in the natural world and in the community of subjects that is human relationships.
The HEP Method draws on humanistic, existential, transpersonal, psychodynamic, archetypal and somatic depth psychologies, as well as the new sciences of holism, chaos theory and self-organizing systems theory. The HEP tradition is also participating in the current re-emergence of spiritual models that draw on ancient cosmologies, from both eastern and western mystical traditions, where nature is seen to embody patterns of integration that link the part with the whole so that everything is understood to be interconnected. In this view, we can see that the world is not a collection of separate ‘things’, but a pattern of dynamic relationships, as life unfolds in the individual, the culture and the world. This includes a complex understanding of the ‘norm of nature’ and ‘healing power of nature’ as expressed in Naturphilosophie, homeopathy and naturopathy. It also includes a focus on Thomas Berry’s geocentric theology with its implicit ecopsychological and ecospiritual approach to the study of earth stewardship. HEP also draws on the Romantic and postmodern traditions in philosophy and culture, modernist art and literature, and Continental Philosophy as a way of understanding human relationship and the place of individuality in culture and cosmos.
The underlying existential and archetypal theme in HEP is the unfolding of individual human nature as soul within the community of World Soul. This may be experienced as a surrender into the self-organizing nature of the authentic, evolving self. The central guiding question is, “What is your experience, what is its meaning and purpose for you, and how is it to be enacted in the world, in the service of life?” The goal of HEP is for individuals to be fully alive and enacting their own unique potential while contributing to the culture, in a respectful and wondrous relationship with nature, responsibly aware of their place in the living cosmos.
HEP isa twenty-first century, embodied, existential, psychodynamic, archetypal spirituality that locates itself in a cultural, ecological and cosmological context. With its roots in the nineteenth century Romantic existential tradition and twentieth century humanistic depth psychology, HEP is a model for the facilitation of the evolution of complex, holistic identity. This theme is based in the transgressive drive for personal freedom via the intense, unmediated desire to know one’s self, and to be known by the other, beyond the boundaries of the socially sanctioned and personally validated self. This gives rise to an awareness of unlimited possibilities for evolution, but also of finitude, limitation, adversity, and death. This is the transpersonal basis of deep, complex individual identity and the evolution of that identity in Western culture, the defining archetypal theme of individuality in HEP.
In the HEP Method, this translates simply as Joseph Campbell’s aphorism “I greet you and wish you joy in your sorrows.” It also translates, more complexly, as a sobering reflection on the goals and outcome of personal evolution – not to idealistically strive to go beyond the pain and suffering of life, but to accept it as part of life, an ecstatic limitation through which we realize a unique individuality, the central theme in the apophatic mystical tradition. HEP recognizes this as the hidden mystical theme in the twentieth century postmodern tradition of ironic, relativistic, indefinite identity, an identity forever in search of itself, a dérive of never arriving that is paradoxically a “sovereign self consciousness that, precisely no longer turns away from itself… a self-consciousness that does not turn away when it is time to explore possibility to the limit.” (Bataille, p?). This ‘sovereign self consciousness’ is the foundation and the goal in the HEP facilitation of individual evolution.
The HEP Model
The HEP Method was originally developed as a psychotherapy method. The account given here of The HEP Method is as it pertains to the evolution of an individual. It can, however, be applied to the evolution of any dynamic energetic system that maintains an identity while interacting with an environment – a family, an organization, a culture, a species – what Prigogine calls a “dissipative structure”, a structure with internal complexity and a complex relationship with its environment, such that it takes in and disperses energy.
The working model is called experiential in that the chief focus of all endeavours is the deepening of the experiential sense of self, via directed intensification of the phenomena of inner experience, and mapping that experience onto various paradigms, disciplines and traditions. The focus may begin anywhere in the experiential field. It may be a dream, a memory from the past, or a story of what happened yesterday at work. It may be a thought, an image, a sensation, a feeling, an emotion. Once the experiential focus is defined, the facilitator’s task is amplification, intensification, deepening, reflection. Techniques of psychodynamic introspection, encounter or gestalt exercises, primal psychophysical release, art expression, psychodramatic enactment or transpersonal practices may be used
The working model is holistic in that its overview is systemic, organismic, holonomic, evolutionary and transpersonal. It incorporates both the Jungian idea of an individuating Self and the persistent diversity of the archetypal, polytheistic perspective. It is dialectic and integrative, moving from contradiction to paradox. Its focus is inclusive, in that it sees the complementary nature of opposites and the one in the many. In The HEP Method, phenomenology is said to manifest ontology and ontology to ground phenomenology. From the holographic paradigm and chaos theory, it takes the perspective of wholeness which relates part and whole in a fractal, scaling, self similar manner, across all levels and states of the whole.
In the holistic experiential process approach, ultimately, what counts is experience, meaning and action – what is your experience, what is its meaning and purpose for you and how is it to be enacted in the world, in the service of life? The creation of meaning by mapping of evoked experience onto various traditions that apply to different aspects of the human condition is a key part of this particular experiential approach. The experience-mapping cycle creates an evolutionary dynamic in which new experience challenges the parameters of the current reality map of the participant (this reality map, most basically, concerns issues such as the sense of self identity, self/other relationships, place of self in life, relation of self to environment, meaning of life for self). This challenge creates dissonance in the reality map, which is experienced as chaos, symptom, suffering, dis-ease. The HEP Method takes this series of challenges to its phenomenological end point, and in so doing completes a gestalt that is, most basically, a kind of ego death and self resurrection theme. In this process, the various chaotic, divisive contradictions of the participant’s experience of life become resolved into the inclusive paradox of increasing wholeness, without, necessarily, eliminating the tension of opposites. Thus evolution of the self takes place. This experience-mapping cycle is the dialectic core of The HEP Method.
From a felt sense of meaning created through the experience mapping cycle comes a felt sense of purpose, which moves the participant toward action in the world. This felt sense of purpose is an experience that goes beyond the self understanding provided by meaning and suggests what is to be done in the world, based on the newly discovered identity revealed by the experience of meaning. This may be a change in how one treats oneself, lifestyle changes or major events such as career change. The focus of one’s life may change toward a more social orientation or a more personal orientation depending on dialectic evolution of past characterological tendencies. Eventually, however, a desire to be of service to one’s community and culture emerges. Ultimately this translates into service to life itself in some way. Some people become socially and politically active, while others serve through the medium of their daily lives. The bottom line is an attitude shift toward participation in life with a major focus on action – what is to be done?
HEP Process, Aims and Goals
The HEP Method involves a deconstructing and reconstructing of one’s personality and life that provides access to mystical themes in personal and collective evolution. It is a deep and challenging process that results in becoming fully present in life, realizing the gifts of unique individuality, finding soul satisfying work, having relationships that are satisfying, being attuned to spiritual nature, attending to health and lifestyle needs and making a contribution to community and culture. People involved in HEP find a deep acceleration and clarification in their transformational work. They find that painful memories and repetitive patterns no longer exert the same compulsive force and power over their behaviour and life circumstances that they once did. Often a clearing of significant psychological and life disturbances, including physical health problems, will be experienced. Many graduates from The HEP Method will attest to this. Some people, however, only need or want to undertake a part of this process. There are opportunities throughout the process where people will naturally reach a level of accomplishment in self understanding and authentic living that will enable them to step out into a new life. There is support for participants to make these kinds of decisions, and also to go as far as they possibly can to fully realize their unique individual human and divine potential.
An immediate aim of HEP is a deepening self awareness, so that the process becomes a process of self discovery, as the participant moves deeper and deeper into the experiential sense of self. As this happens, problems and symptoms resolve into gateways or doorways to self knowledge. In this context, pathologizing is seen as a set of signs or indicators as to what the deeper layers of the psyche are throwing up for consideration in the process of “soul making”, as defined in archetypal psychology. In this process the various chaotic, divisive contradictions of the participant’s experience of life become resolved into the inclusive paradox of increasing wholeness, without, necessarily, eliminating the tension of opposites. Thus evolution of the self takes place as a goal of HEP.
Challenge is a big part of HEP work. Trust in the safety net of evolving personal truth and the synchronistic, existential ground of being is encouraged. There is a strong emphasis on the point of view which says that the conscious, ego self and the unconscious, synchronistic Self both have a valid perspective, method, plan, pattern and purpose, and that they interact dialectically. This perspective encourages people to trust their unconscious, instinctive, intuitive dynamic, and go with the flow, as well as form intentions, make plans and follow through with discipline and commitment. The integration of this into a lifestyle is a major long term goal of HEP.
A significant theme in The HEP Method is recognizing and working with the event/ experience polarity. This suggests that when an evolutionary issue is being constellated in an individual, it occurs both as an event in the world and as an inner experience. Typically, because an evolutionary constellating issue involves disowned painful psychological material, we do not wish to have the experience. So there is a knock on the door –an event occurs in our lives to remind us of the need for an inner experience. This model draws on Jung and Pauli’s notion of synchronicity, where there is seen to be a meaningful relationship between inner and outer world via what Paracelsus, Goethe and the Hermetic Western Mystery Tradition call the “doctrine of correspondences”. It also draws on Brooke’s archetypal phenomenological model of the unconscious as having extension as well as depth. HEP ultimately involves a surrender into life such that a person’s sense of identity extends beyond the ‘skin encapsulated ego’ (Watts) into the life world of the World Soul, Anima Mundi.
One end point of the HEP process is the full realization of characterization, i.e. that we are characters in a life story, and that through our story of characterization an authorial intent is being enacted. In this process of surrender into the victimization of utter characterization, in this ego death, a Self resurrection occurs. Not the self of the character or the self of the author, but rather the characterized author as the authorized character, expressed through the author’s characterological story. A resurrection that is also a mystical birth which reveals the self conceived nature of one’s life story. In HEP it is said that ‘author creates character and character reveals the author’s characterological story, through the authentic lived world of story.’ This recapitulates the Sufi theme of the cocreative relationship between the generative father, who conceives of the all, and the gestational mother, who gives birth to the all from the atemporal, non local, quantum, archetypal world in which conception and birth are co-eternal. The Sufi’s say, “my mother gave birth to her father” and “the mystic gives birth to the divinity whose passion it is to be known by the mystic”. This lived world of story is the integrating dialectic of the soul, the celestial earth of Ibn’ Arabi, the Mundus Imaginalis, the quaternity as completion of the evolutionary differentiation of a primary original unity, as given in the Axiom of Maria.