In the modern world we tend to separate psychology from religion. We like to think that emotional problems have to do with the family, childhood, and trauma -- with personal life but not with spirituality. We don't diagnose an emotional seizure as "loss of religious sensibility" or "lack of spiritual awareness." Yet the soul -- the seat of our deepest emotions -- can benefit greatly from the gifts of a vivid spiritual life, and can suffer when it is deprived of them.
The soul, for example, needs an articulated world-view, a carefully
worked-out scheme of values and a sense of relatedness to the whole. It
needs a myth of immortality and an attitude toward death. It also thrives
on spirituality that is not so transcendent-such as the spirit of family,
arising from traditions and values that have been part of the family for
generations.
Spirituality doesn't arrive fully formed without effort. Religions
around the world demonstrate that spiritual fife requires constant
attention and a subtle, often beautiful technology by which spiritual
principles and understandings are kept alive. For good reason we go to
church, temple, or mosque regularly and at appointed times: it's easy for
consciousness to become lodged in the material world and to forget the
spiritual.
Just as the mind digests ideas and produces intelligence, the soul
feeds on life and digests it, creating wisdom and character out of
experience. Renaissance Neoplatonists said that the outer world serves as
a means of deep spirituality and that the transformation of ordinary
experience into the stuff of soul is all-important. If the link between
life experience and deep imagination is inadequate, then we are left with
a division between life and soul, and such a division will always
manifest itself in symptoms.
"Psychological Modernism"
Professional psychology has created a catalog of disorders, known
as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, or DSM, which is used by
doctors and insurance companies to help diagnose and standardize problems
of emotional life and behavior with precision. For example, in the
current edition, there is a category called "adjustment disorders." The
problem is that adjusting to life, while perhaps sane to all outward
appearances, may sometimes be detrimental to the soul.
One day I would like to make up my own DSM, in which I would
include the diagnosis "psychological modernism," an uncritical acceptance
of the values of the modern world. It includes blind faith in technology,
inordinate attachment to material gadgets and conveniences, uncritical
acceptance of the march of scientific progress, devotion to the
electronic media, and a lifestyle dictated by advertising. This
orientation toward life also tends toward a medianistic and rationalistic
understanding of matters of the heart.
In this modernist syndrome, technology becomes the root metaphor
for dealing with psychological problems. A modern person comes into
therapy and says, "Look, I don't want any tong-term analysis. If
something is broken, let's fix it. Tell me what I have to do and I'll do
it." Such a person is rejecting out of hand the possibility that the
source of a problem in a relationship, for example, may be a weak sense
of values or failure to come to grips with mortality.
There is no model for this kind of thinking in modern life, where
almost no time is given to reflection and where the assumption is that
the psyche has spare parts, an owner's manual, and well-trained mechanics
called therapists. Philosophy lies at the base of every fife problem, but
it takes soul to reflect on one's own life with genuine philosophical
seriousness.
The modernist syndrome urges people to buy the latest electronic
gear and to be plugged in to news, entertainment, and up-to-the-minute
weather reports. It's vitally important not to miss out on
anything.
Yet there seems to be an inverse relationship between information
and wisdom. We are showered with information about living healthily, but
we have largely lost our sense of the body's wisdom. We can tune in to
news reports and know what is happening in every corner of the world, but
we don't seem to have much wisdom in dealing with these world problems.
We have many demanding academic programs in professional psychology, yet
there is a severe dearth of wisdom about the mysteries of the
soul.
The modernist syndrome also tends to literalize everything it
touches. For example, ancient philosophers and theologians taught that
the world is a cosmic animal, a unified organism with its own living body
and soul. Today we literalize that philosophy in the idea of the global
village. The world soul today is created not by a demiurge or semi-divine
creator as in ancient times, but by fiber optics. In the rural area where
I live there are huge television reception dishes in the backyards of
small homes, keeping villagers and country folk tuned into every
entertainment and sports event on Earth.
We have a spiritual longing for community and relatedness and for a
cosmic vision, but we go after them with literal hardware instead of with
sensitivity of the heart. We want to know all about people from far away
places, but we don't want to feel emotionally connected to them.
Tags:
constant attention,
emotion,
emotional problems,
fife,
good reason,
life experience,
material world,
modernism,
mosque,
neoplatonists,
personal life,
professional psychology,
relatedness,
religion,
religions around the world,
religious sensibility,
soul,
spiritual awareness,
spiritual life,
spiritual principles,
spirituality,
trauma,
understandings
