Learning to Let Go (Part Two)

(Click Here to read part one of this article)

For somebody who is spiritually awakening, ideally, you’ll be looking for a therapist who is treating personality as relatively real, not absolutely real.

Here in the West, we treat personality as absolutely real, we really think it’s real. Who you think you are is really real. For example, you were battered as a child and that seems very real, because it’s a strong mental structure in your head and it permeates you and you are carrying your history with you on your shoulders.

At some point you will start to see that each person is presenting who they think they are. It’s like they’re putting on a huge mind net, “This is who I am, this is who I am, this is who I am…” You can start to see it in the way they walk, talk, dress, present themselves; always presenting who they think they are, which has a historical thread running through it.

When you have started to awaken and see that there are other planes of reality that are equally valid to the one which presently exists, you learn how to live more or less with more and more planes simultaneously, which is what freedom is about. It’s not totally standing in one plane, it’s not standing anywhere at all.

Then what you would love is a therapist who has that same perspective, who has that multi-plane perspective all the time. So when I’m working with somebody psychologically and they bring their stuff to me, I hear their stuff. Their, “I was battered as a child. I was abused.” I hear all of that, I hear that they are talking about a plane of reality. I want to talk with them within that plane and empathize and deal with them. However, at the same moment, I want my consciousness to stay spacious enough as an environment that if they were ready to let that one go and recognize that there’s another plane of experience in which they also live, that I’d be right there for them.

Now most therapists, because they think they’re real as a therapist, think their patient is also real. If a patient says, “I’ve had this experience in which you and I are souls,” or “This is all an illusion.” They’ll most likely say, “Well, that’s a defense mechanism.” They say this because they themselves can’t really handle these other planes of reality.

You can’t expect all therapist to be the Buddha, you won’t get on with your therapy. So what you do is you use therapists in the same way you go to somebody to get your car fixed. You don’t go in and expect them to give you the greatest wisdom of the universe but you expect them to help you clean up. You have to be able to use a therapist appropriately. A therapist is a technician, who’s there to serve you about this plane of reality, and it’s not reasonable to expect them to understand all wisdom and be free.

-Ram Dass

Image via Flickr

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