Webinar Video: Preventative Psychological Health for Spiritual Leaders with Mariana Caplan
The Association of Professional Teachers is proud to co-sponsor an educational inquiry group series 2019 with APST member Mariana Caplan PhD, MFT, E-RYT 500:
On December 12, 2018 we (APST) held a special introductory webinar meeting with Mariana to discuss the background and topics that will be included in her inquiry group series. Thank you to all who registered and were able to attend. We all appreciated the interaction in the meeting and your thoughtful questions and discussion.
Below is the video of that meeting, and under the video you will find more details about the online group inquiry series coming up. Enjoy!
Inquiry Group for Spiritual Leaders: “Preventative Psychological Health for Spiritual Leaders: Creating and Sustaining Psycho-Spiritual Health in Spiritual Communities” with Mariana Caplan PhD, MFT, E-RYT 500
This is an online inquiry group open to anyone in a position of spiritual leadership, including but not limited to: spiritual teachers, mentors, yoga teachers, spiritual counselors and guides, clergy, meditation/mindfulness teachers, and leaders from any religious tradition.
Dates/Time: 12 Thursdays from 1:00 – 3:00 PST, beginning January 10 (or when a minimum of 6 participants are enrolled).
Tuition: $600
Meeting Platform: Sessions will take place using Zoom Meetings and will be recorded and available to all group members if you need to miss any sessions.
Register for Inquiry Group: https://www.realspirituality.com/preventative-psychological-health
Topics Include:
- Why Psychological Inquiry and Support is Necessary for Spiritual Leaders and Their Communities
- Projections, Transference, and Countertransference in the Student-Teacher relationship
- The Necessity of Peer Support for Spiritual Leaders
- Trauma and the Body in Spiritual Life
- Boundaries and Confidentiality
- Creating Healthy Systems of Feedback Within Communities
- Cultic Dynamics and Group Mind/Group Think
- Healthy Individuation Among Spiritual Teachers and Students
- Spiritual Bypassing in Teachers and Students
Mariana Caplan, PhD, MFT, E-RYT 500, is a psychotherapist, yoga teacher, and the author of eight books in the fields of psychology and spirituality that have been translated in more than a dozen languages. She consults, mediates, and provide psychological services for spiritual teachers, spiritual emergences and emergencies, and individuals and spiritual communities both in crises, as well as those in spiritual leadership positions seeking preventative psychological support for their communities. Learn more: YogaandPsyche.com and RealSpirituality.com.
4 Comments
Hi Mariana, Jac, Rick, Craig and all,
I don’t think the psychological work and the spiritual work are in reality two separate things at all.
One problem here, is that the contemporary approach of “awakening” is biased and distorted by our individualistic culture and the “consumer society” filter, where everyone feels entitled and always ready to get whatever he wants, just because he is desiring it. That’s the “If I desire enlightenment, I must already be worthy of it” syndrome.
Two other huge biases arising out of our modern society and consumerism, which are polluting our approach of spirituality, is the “I want it, and I want it now!” and “I want it for cheap, and if I can get it for free, it’s even better!”
Out of this, the idea that there might be preliminary stages of preparation, of learning, of maturing, of clarification, of acquisition of required skills, the idea that we should first prepare the ground, that we should first get rid of misconceptions before adding new “higher” ideas or experiences, that we should first heal ourselves from deep rooted basic neurosis and psychological imbalances and shadows, that we should first get to learn to know and understand the conditioned self-centered dynamic within ourselves, to be ready and fit enough to embark the spiritual path in a balanced and effective way, has sadly become almost entirely foreign to us.
Those cultural biases (rooted in the innate superficiality and mediocrity of the ego dynamic) also explain why so many people who had a glimpse, a preliminary breakthrough or opening, or any kind of “spiritual experience”, are so quick to call that “awakening” and to then proclaim themselves to be “teachers”.
As much as the idea of having to be prepared enough so that subsequent spiritual experiences may be integrated correctly in one’s own being, has vanished from our perceptive framework, it seems also that we have lost sight of the fact that there are obviously levels and stages of awakening.
I believe those are the main causes of all the mess we can observe in the “spiritual” community. People want a magic pill, and sadly, a lot of unprepared, imbalanced and unqualified teachers are claiming they can deliver it.
So of course, it’s wonderful that the APST is offering an opportunity to talk about and address the mess (and all the abuse we see) already produced out of this situation, but I think it could be a great thing to try to bring back some sanity and balance around it all, so that maybe, the next generation of teachers and seekers may not fall that easily in the traps mentioned above.
What do you think?
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“There are so many who take the dawn for the noon, a momentary experience for full realisation and destroy even the little they gain by excess of pride. Humility and silence are essential for a sadhaka, however advanced. Only a fully ripened Jnani can allow himself complete spontaneity.” – Nisargadatta Maharaj
“It is very often so with Americans and Europeans. After a stretch of sadhana they become charged with energy and frantically seek an outlet. They organise communities, become teachers of Yoga, marry, write books – anything except keeping quiet and turning their energies within, to find the source of the inexhaustible power and learn the art of keeping it under control.” – Nisargadatta Maharaj
“I am the slave of whoever will not at each stage imagine that he has arrived at the end of his goal. Many a stage has to be left behind before the traveller reaches his destination.” – Jalaluddin Rumi
“When a man is a beggar, he thinks that small change is a fortune. It is not. In order to rise above beggarhood, he must rise above small change, even though he uses it as a means. Used as an end it will become an end.” – Ibn Ikbal
“There is a false sense of liberation that aspirants reach that very few ever go beyond.” – Ramana Maharshi
That was a great webinar, and wonderful comment from JC…
On the discussion of psychology and spirituality, I found the following article from John Welwood to be wonderful….
https://tricycle.org/magazine/psychology-awakening/?utm_source=fb
Here is a brief excerpt:
“Spiritual bypassing often adopts a rationale using absolute truth to deny or disparage relative truth. Absolute truth is what is eternally true, now and forever, beyond any particular viewpoint or time frame. When we tap into absolute truth, we can recognize the divine beauty or larger perfection operating in the whole of reality. From this larger perspective, the murders on tonight’s news, for instance, do not diminish this divine perfection, for the absolute encompasses the whole panorama of life and death, in which suns, galaxies, and planets are continually being born and dying. However, from a relative point of view—if you are the wife of a man murdered tonight—you will probably not be moved by the truth of ultimate perfection. Instead you will be feeling human grief.
There are two ways of confusing absolute and relative truth. If you use the murder or your grief to deny or insult the higher law of the universe, you would be committing the relativist error. You would be trying to apply what is true on the horizontal plane of becoming to the vertical dimension of pure being. The spiritual bypasser makes the reverse category error, the absolutist error: He draws on absolute truth to disparage relative truth. His logic might lead to a conclusion like this: Since everything is ultimately perfect in the larger cosmic play, grieving the loss of someone you love is a sign of spiritual weakness.
Since it is the nature of human beings to live on both the absolute and relative levels, we can never reduce reality to a single dimension. We are not just this relative body-mind organism; we are also absolute being/awareness/presence, which is much larger than our bodily form or personal history. But we are also not just this larger, formless absolute; we are also incarnate as particular individuals. If we identify only with form, our life will remain confined to known, familiar structures. But if we try to live only as pure emptiness, or absolute being, we may not engage with our humanity. In absolute terms, the personal self is not ultimately real; at the relative level, it must be respected.”
Those were great comments JC and Chris. I wish I could write as clearly as you guys. The only thing I would add to JC’s comment is that I think the “gotta have it now” syndrome afflicts many users of psychedelics. A guy who was in the webinar mentioned that a lot of his friends think that one more trip is going to do it for them. Meanwhile, they don’t do a regular practice and their personal lives are a mess.
And I loved the quotes Chris dug up. Here’s an article by APST member Timothy Conway that addresses this nicely: https://www.enlightened-spirituality.org/3_levels_of_nondual_Reality.html. Before I started doing Batgap, I didn’t realize that confusion of levels was so common. Then it hit me like a brick wall as I started interviewing people like Tony Parsons and his ilk.
Another common phenomenon is mistaking intellectual understanding for realization. Read enough books and you may brainwash yourself into thinking that you’ve got it. You can talk the talk, but chances are the corresponding experiential grounding is missing.
So glad to hear what you have to say JC! This paragraph: “Out of this, the idea that there might be preliminary stages of preparation, of learning, of maturing, of clarification, of acquisition of required skills, the idea that we should first prepare the ground, that we should first get rid of misconceptions before adding new “higher” ideas or experiences, that we should first heal ourselves from deep rooted basic neurosis and psychological imbalances and shadows, that we should first get to learn to know and understand the conditioned self-centered dynamic within ourselves, to be ready and fit enough to embark the spiritual path in a balanced and effective way, has sadly become almost entirely foreign to us” reads like poetry to someone like me.
It is worth noting that the error you talk about above is more prevalent in some types of spiritual traditions more than others. Contemporary Advaita traditions (of course many, not all) are more prone to these errors than many schools of even modern Buddhism, for example. Modern yoga is rampant in spiritual bypassing, whereas more serious students of yoga, and many schools of Indian yoga, don’t err on this as much.
I am also so glad that Chris brought in John Welwood’s piece. The whole book from which it is excerpted – Towards a Psychology of Awakening – is a true gem. He was a major mentor in my life, and a dear friend, and I used to use it as text when I taught Transpersonal Psychology in graduate school.
It is the job of good teachers to educate students on the points raised here, only the teachers themselves have to know the truth of it – some do and some don’t. I was with two teachers as a young woman who made it absolutely clear that there weren’t shortcuts, that all kinds of preparatory work was part of the path. But we were taught that, on no uncertain terms, from these teachers. Many contemporary Advaita teachers, or yoga teachers, just don’t have this context or experience.
So glad to read this discussion – awareness as it is being shared and exchanged here – is a stepping stone in the larger cultural healing. One person at a time!