Sacred Bond: A Model of Spiritual Transformation for Therapists, Clients, and Seekers

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

PREFACE

SACRED BOND PART 1—INTRODUCTION

SACRED BOND PART 2

SACRED BOND PART 3

SACRED BOND PART 4

SACRED BOND PART 5

REFERENCES

The Sacred Bond

By Richard W Hanhardt

The Sacred Bond Symbol

Nick Hanhardt who, among many talents, is an excellent creative designer, created the symbol for Sacred Bond. I asked him after the symbol was created and published if he had a meaning for the symbol during or after he created it and he said that he did not. As such this process has instructive value about the way in which symbols work in the human psyche. The image emerged from his unconscious after his careful contemplation of its use and the book for which it was originally created. It has meaning for him and for me in and of itself. This meaning may vary from one person to another but the important thing is the instruction about symbols—they have value that exceeds and transcends our understanding of them. They are whole and complete. Interpretation and understanding them intellectually splits and limits them; interpretation is an interesting activity only after the symbol has been given time to sink down deep into our souls and find a place to live there and to begin to generate meaning. This inner dwelling of the symbol is healing.

With this understanding I will offer my interpretation.

From the left, as we enter therapy or the transformative process, we arrive at the starting point from a place of more darkness and from a lower place. This representation of our client or seeker as a soft ribbon, which can flow, is a beautiful symbol of the fragility and yet flexibility of these searching people. In the care of another this suffering person becomes protectively wrapped in a new relationship. The three bands represent for me the power and gentleness of the Trinity in this process through the healing person. Notice that although very protective, the bands do not touch the client thereby creating a space that is both protected and safe. Finally the client emerges changed, lighter and in an upward movement.

For all my teachers along The Way

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The dedication is to all my teachers along the Way; they know who they are so I won’t try to mention all of them here. However the book is really a collective product filtered through my psyche from these teachers, clients and their families, other writers of many traditions, other people of spiritual force, colleagues, mentors, and many who have found a path and helped me to understand their Ways.

However the most special acknowledgement must go to my wife who knows most of what is written here intuitively and has always lived her life responsive to a spiritual standard that has placed a light on the path I tried to learn so many other ways. She has waited lovingly and patiently for me to resolve my struggles with my spirit and watched quietly while I explored and wandered before finding my way back to my spiritual home. She has also taught me about children in a deep and real way I could never learn in study or think my way into. She possesses this knowledge at a level I have always envied.

I also have been guided by my four children in learning important faults in my approach to them and myself. In loving relationships they have taught me humility and compassion. Much of what is reflected in the book has its roots directly in these relationships. Despite my occasional (frequent?) clumsiness in parenting and mostly attributable to my wife’s constancy and skill they all have become outstanding young adults whose lives are lived with great skills in the outer world and incredible sensitivity in their inner lives. They are all on spiritual paths of their own.

My gratitude goes out to: Katie, my daughter-in-law and Karen, a secretary at Christian Haven, where the programs I help to manage are located, who both assisted in the typing of the manuscript. A special thanks goes to Nancy Smith, my secretary, who has assisted tirelessly in the formatting, advising, and final preparations for the publishing of Sacred Bond.

The schematics, logo design, cover design, visual presentation, web design of Sacred Bond LLC, and the internet-based Spiritual Development Assessment Report process (on-line soon), were all done by my multitalented son, Nicholas.

PREFACE

Two thousand years ago, in Jesus’ culture, there were slaves, and because many of the slaves came into homes by virtue of their skills and education, which often exceeded the people they lived with, they were accorded a different status to that we would usually associate with slavery. Some became beloved members of the family with true freedom of movement in the community. Often they were given legal freedom, and no longer had the status of slave. Certain of these freed men and women chose to remain with the family they loved and took the status of bond servants. This new legal status meant that they agreed to be both free and bound to those they loved, out of choice, loyalty, and love. These former slaves would signify their status as bondservants in a dramatic and visible manner. They would drive an awl through their ear lobe and into the doorpost of the home they belonged to. After taking these vows, they commanded the respect of all in the community for having taken this open and demonstrative action of the piercing, declaring love which was bound by an action of undying loyalty for the rest of their lives.

This is the model for Christians: we are bound by undying love to the family and person of Jesus. This means the ultimate in freedom and, at the same time, commitment and loyalty through love and obedience to the Trinity, and especially Jesus, in a personal relationship. The Trinity returns awesome and supernatural gifts to us which help us to live, to understand what it means to be truly human, to experience boundless joy and then, through worship, to return our joy to its source. This two-way, deep, intense and healing process is a sacred relationship. Like the freed bondservants, we come into a covenant relationship with our creator; we develop a Sacred Bond.

The Sacred Bond is a key part of being human and it becomes a key method by which we invite spirituality into relationships and the lives of others. These bonds live in us, becoming a critical part of the person we desire ourselves to be. In them we discover what it means to be human in all its forms, and the inborn human seeking for God can freely surface in us. The Sacred Bond exists between:

• God and humans (and, more specifically, between us and each person of the Trinity)

• Marriage partners

• Parent and child

• Christ’s church and its members

• Mentors and those being mentored

• Therapist and client

I have spent the past 40 years focused personally and professionally specifically on the relationship between therapist and client. This has included an in-depth look at the spirituality of many cultures and traditions as reflected in this special focus of ours: the coming together of two or more people with the intent and purpose of one helping the other with growth in the hope of overcoming suffering. The last 17 years have been focused on how that relationship is perfected when made conscious in the realm of the spiritual in Christianity. If there is any discovery revealed in this writing, it is based on intensely personal spiritual study and life experiences, but theologically and professionally I walk a path that many have worn smooth before me. With all the work and study I have been privileged to undertake, one thing is clear now:

Therapeutic relationships are sacred and spiritual whether we acknowledge them as such or not.

They must be so because the nature of treatment is to look deeper into the suffering of the person seeking help, and even a casual look will stir the spiritual. This process must also be bonding if it is to be of any use. Although some relief can be offered in other ways, this spiritual bonding in therapy is the only truly healing work we as professionals can offer for the suffering of souls. This book will focus on that healing which is encapsulated within the Sacred Bond. In the introduction I will reveal more of the learning of the Way (the path of Christianity) and how this path opened to me personally.

SACRED BOND PART 1—INTRODUCTION

Introduction – Terms – Development – Therapy – Mary’s Story

Outline

The introduction to Sacred Bond contains the following sections:

1. Personal Introduction

2. General Introduction

3. A Special Introduction for Seekers and Clients

4. How to Use this Book

Personal Introduction

I trust that the reader will allow me some time at the beginning to discuss how I arrived at the point of writing this book; in directing readers to the spiritual there should always be some understanding of where the director has been. It would be hard for me to pick a date from somewhere in my personal past to establish as a starting point for this book. All of my life there has been an ongoing spiritual process that has led me to many beautiful and also many horrible places; so it is, I have heard, from anyone on a quest. The Native American vision quest successfully occurs under the influence of remarkable deprivation, in places of fear, and when all the traditional sources of refuge and dependency are removed from the young warrior to be. The potential fears are both personal and meant to be shared, and they are both real and imagined. The vision is found in immersion in nature and with the requirement of independent survival. My spiritual quest has had many of these factors and also the reward of dream visions. Many of these have been turning points for my internal life and a few have changed my outer life. Many are private only to me and some will be made public here and I have come to understand that the writing of this book may also be another turning point.

The most significant direction change occurred almost 18 years ago and it occurred in a dream. I have learned to understand my dreams through immersion in the writings of Jung and the neo-Jungians and others writing in this tradition. Of course it follows that dreams have remained an important part of my life for 35 years or more. At the time of the dream I was also pursuing an in-depth study of Eastern religions, learning not only the teachings, but also about meditation (as much as one can learn meditation when it is actually an unlearning of the traditional flow of thought). The dream also came at a time when there was a great deal of external stress, life changing events occurring, which will remain mostly private memories for me, not that I can assume they would matter that much to others but I have learned when a powerful event occurs internally, it generates a great deal of energy, and, if it is told, the energy is lost. Here is the dream:

I am a knight in a medieval army fighting a battle to the death with an enemy army. It was a horribly bloody mess and all around me are the dead, men who are severely cut and soon to die, moaning pitiful cries for help. In the distance there is the din of metal on metal as the swords continue to clang on other swords or armor, swords seeking flesh through the metal plate. I am standing, finally alone, having killed my latest opponent. My armor is covered with the blood of others and the dirt and dust of the battlefield. I know that my assignment is to rejoin the front and continue the fighting but I am also aware that I can barely lift my arms, I am totally spent and thoroughly exhausted and disgust has filled my soul as nausea has filled my body.

Suddenly I find myself walking away from the battlefield, deserting the cause. Desertion is punishable by instant execution; I don’t care. I walk and walk, aimless with only one direction, away from the battlefield. I am no longer wearing armor; the decision is made. I come to a hill and climb it and as I come over the top, I see a man below. As I approach I see the man and recognize that he is seated in a posture of meditation, and he is aglow, bathed in a light that makes it hard to see him. This man, I finally recognize, is Jesus Christ, and I fall to my knees in front of Him. I am on holy ground. Jesus gestures that I should come and sit next to Him, which I do. He looks deep into my eyes for what seems like an eternity. He looks away, and says only this: "Rich, it is time to stop fighting."

This dream changed my life. At the time of this dream I did not know Jesus in the sense that Christians talk about knowing Him, and it set off what is now a 17 year immersion in Christian experience and theology. Outside of the world of quotidian work, I have done little else and the fascination continues. Throughout my explorations in Jungian thought, including a seven and a half year long analysis with a Zurich trained analyst and one of the most remarkable men I have ever met, an equally long study of Eastern religions, and a lifelong interest in the spirituality of the Native Americans, I have always looked at how what I am discovering relates to the therapeutic relationship, and there are applications of great value from all these spiritual paths. None overpowers the other and none is in any way threatening to the others if one takes the time and an unbiased approach to learning about them. I am convinced that the combined benefit is the most powerful explanation of how to understand psychotherapy, this most unique of relationships, but the teachings of Christ are perfect, and the experience of Christ personally is unlike any other offering. I will never again immerse myself in another system of thought; I am finally home.

The reader will find my insistence on presenting the spiritual as an essential for psychological treatment to be based on these 40 years of experience with this spiritual study and practice of therapy. I have always tried to be very honest about what actually occurs in this work especially when therapy does not work. Almost from the time our field was separated from the church where soul work was done for the last 2,000 years (and continues a revival today) the scientific approach to therapy has taken the unfortunate and destructive approach that if our client does not improve it means that the client was too sick or too defensive or too something else and that is the reason therapy was not successful was the fault of the client.

Finally I stopped the ongoing practice of therapy and vowed not to return until I found a way to answer this challenge. Then I looked into my ongoing spiritual work and finally it dawned on me that the current predominant scientific practice of therapy was improving and with medication and hard work, and therapy could take a client to a better place perhaps to a place of even feeling better, but healing, a condition far beyond feeling better was only possible with spiritual psychotherapy. Only the spiritual heals and actually this has been known from the beginning of time. Even the ancients with a shaman chanting and story making and causing earth symbols to emerge knew something of the manner in which soul sickness heals and that this healing is in the realm of the spiritual. Despite our attempts to locate the work in the scientific, the soul refuses to go; its home is with God.

There has also been some damage. When we abandoned the quest for the spiritual and substituted the myth of scientific modernism with its demand for exclusivity in explaining all things, we left behind the wounded human soul and its real needs. It is impossible to estimate the actual loss of what we would now know about the healing of the soul if we had not gotten so far off the path for so long, but there is a resurgence of locating this work back within the religious sphere of influence from many traditions and very powerfully in Christian churches and counseling organizations. It is my prayer that this book will be an aide to all therapists and counselors who have become interested in the spiritual and what it means to treatment.

I have also tried to make the book accessible to clients and others who are seeking the spiritual as a way to deal with loss and pain in their lives. This has meant trying not to write in the language of psychology but in a manner accessible to all. After speaking psychology as a second language for so long this is not easy to do, the reader will have to judge my success or lack of it. One reason to do this is that we do not have any good reason to keep anything from our clients; this honesty is something the general practice of medicine has embraced entirely (some would say to the point of brutal honesty). The other reason for being as open as possible is because you, as clients and seekers, must own the process of this work, there is nothing of benefit to you to have your therapist, teacher, etc. pretending they know more about you than you know about yourselves; you must not cast them into this role or accept it. The Buddhists say, If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. This means no one should set himself or herself up as an expert regarding your soul. You may look to another to get help but you must remain the expert on yourself. The quest toward healing is your journey and it is also my prayer that clients and seekers will find the information here assistance on your path.

Therefore this is not in any way a self help book; the work of the soul is much too deep to allow words from a page to do the work for you. This book is written to present a model of the spiritual and how it might be envisioned in your walk along the Way toward healing. This model will take you through the typical (sequential) process of treatment, but will be unique in that its entire focus will be on spiritual therapy and growth. In this process, we will look at the four components of treatment (expanded introductions of each will follow later in the introduction):

1. Terms and Processes. Although this is not typically a part of what a therapist would look at, we will examine these here because of the specialization of the writing on spirituality and the desire to make the writing accessible to all. The rest of the model will depend on the special understanding of the terms presented here.

2. Diagnosis. Here we will look at the process of spiritual development, where and when spiritual needs were to be met, and what needs last for each of us into the present time.

3. Spiritual Psychotherapy. I will introduce a unique model of understanding the structure of the spiritual psyche and the interventions of this approach to treatment.

4. Mary’s Story. I will conclude the book with a look at how the whole therapeutic process is revealed in story. Prior to modern times, the identified healer in the social group had the skill of storytelling and stories were based on the need(s) of those in his/her care. I will tell a fictional story and interpret it, reflecting back to the model of care presented in Section Number 3.

As with most books, this work will be autobiographical to the extent that it reflects the process of my own development, including both the depth to which I have reached into some spiritual traditions and my ignorance of others. As I have looked over the decades of study in this material, I have tried to be disciplined in immersing myself deeply in one study and spiritual examination at a time, digging several deep wells instead of many shallow ones. Here is a brief personal history:

• In childhood, I had an honest but rudimentary and off target Christianity, and a very deep pantheistic understanding of the Creation. God was always a certainty.

• From age 20 to 29, following a vacuous training in behaviorism, I indulged in a sort of sarcastic atheism (I have not yet found another kind).

• Then, an extended study in Carl G. Jung’s work and those of his students and contemporaries, and the expanded thought by the neo-Jungians. This included an analysis by an incredible man, a Lutheran minister trained in Zurich at the Jung Institute, who is and was my spiritual mentor. This began multiple searches and a beginning and continued practice, which continues in the analysis of my dreams.

• A study of Native American spirituality and the beginning of my collection of the stories of this tradition. I have expanded my collection and interest to include medieval fairy stories and stories from many other cultures.

• Study in Eastern practices, including, especially, Tibetan Buddhism, Taoism and, to a certain degree, Zen Buddhism.

• In the last 17 years, following a dramatic conversion, an immersion in Christian theology and experience.

I will try in this work to take on the daunting task of bringing to the surface the jewels of these traditions as they relate to the therapeutic process within the scope of my understanding. Remarkably, most of them do relate to therapy. The more I have studied and experienced, the more I have become aware that this very special healing relationship has always been spiritual, and still is today, even if it is not acknowledged as such. The implications are enormous: what I am saying, again, is that even in therapy in which the spiritual is never mentioned the process is still profoundly affected by it. This unconscious process has great power and it can be made conscious, and when it comes to the surface a vast resource of energy that our clients need becomes available to them. The surfacing of this subterranean energy is of critical importance.

General Introduction

There have been many great thinkers in the development of the understanding of our humanity since we experienced a separation from the Natural Mind in Eden. (We will discuss Natural Mind in detail later.) In Eden, our thinking was totally engrossed and determined by nature, by God in His creation. But there is something uniquely human that demanded an answer, and we were cast out into a world of ignorance still clinging to our desire to know. This desire has led to great discoveries by these great thinkers. All of them have looked deeply into what it means to be human, what our place in the cosmos is and who we are in relation to the Eternal, as we say in the West, God.

When appropriate for this writing, I will reference how some of these thinkers have observed and classified these aspects of the collective consciousness (Jung’s idea of a certain type of consciousness that we all share) and discuss how these thoughts relate specifically to psychotherapy. I believe that our clients will all be doing some of this same work in a personal and, at times, emotional way, and will have been looking into these issues in a predominantly unaware way before therapy. As with most material our clients present, we, as therapists, are better prepared to help when we are conscious to some degree of that of which our clients are not. Our consciousness of such matters comes from our openness with ourselves.

This work has been focused on the ways in which all these areas impact the therapeutic process, the mysterious process by which certain events take place in the psyches of both therapist and client when one human sits down with the express intention of helping another who has sought help. Each of the traditions and philosophers I have studied have peered into the psyche of man and honestly seen a portion of what is there. This is like many people each looking at a facet of a diamond. Christianity has proven to be the diamond itself with inherently perfect qualities. These studies are diverse, for example:

• Primitive men and some of the earth cultures and pantheists (who believe God exists in everything) have dramatic experiences of the power of God’s Creation and would be able to help with a client either lost in creation or completely disconnected from it. (The disconnected are especially dangerous.)

• Freud peered into the unconsciousness of the Victorian morality of his time and saw an enormous cauldron of repressed sexuality. He went on to postulate sex as the primary driving force of all humanity. Psychoanalytic theory states, correctly, that everything important that happens to us is that is denied becomes unconscious. But the illogical jump from that to seeing sexuality as the source of everything about us was a huge mistake. In short, he was partially right and mostly wrong.

• All cultures communicate psychological truths as stories, each of which is a glimpse of the Self. We will distinguish between self (small s) and Self (capital S) later, for now large S: Self = self + the spiritual. Dreams are personal stories, although some belong to the entire culture and are largely, perhaps totally, ignored. Carl G. Jung looked into the unconscious, past the sexuality that Freud saw, and found the World of Meaning, archetypes, the spiritual diversity and wealth of mankind. He also discovered several methods to make these conscious, such as stories, dreams, archetypes, symbols, etc, which are of great healing value to us. Christ’s teachings and actions are saturated with these meaningful methods.

• The Taoist religion, which has been largely subsumed under Buddhism, looks into the diamond and sees humans struggling with a myriad of opposites and suffering to the extent we are impaled on either extreme of them. The process of healing occurs by our tolerating the pain of opposites in us until they yield their gifts. This healing process is identified as integrity, and this new healing energy is a great benefit to us. We will explore this process and show how Jesus’ life was an incredible gift to the world in the healing of the major opposites in the world. We will see how this benefit can be practically available to us in our work.

• Buddhism, while seen by some as a competitor to Christianity in our culture, actually views Christ and His teaching as a great gift to the world. Buddhists do not acknowledge a God in the universe and deny that their practice is a religion, but see it rather as a science of the mind (the Dalai Llama). This science is meditation practice. Christ taught prayer. Christians historically have greatly valued both meditation and prayer.

These are some of the traditions and approaches that will be used in this book to describe a spiritual approach to our personal searching and our counseling approach to our clients. In my study and observation, Christ has become known as the diamond itself and He thereby completes the picture as the diamond shines through each of these diverse facets but is contained in none of them. Throughout this book I will attempt to make this understanding available. This book is not a study in comparative religion, nor is it a theology or a defense of the faith of Christianity, but these will occasionally flow through the subject material. Looking at one facet of a diamond is not wrong. It may shine beautifully, but it is incomplete; there is only one diamond.

There are, then, in this book, new ideas presented regarding the formation of a spiritual model of the understanding of how our souls are developed and grow, and how they can be derailed by the paucity of spiritual focuses in our lives. We are suffering, as a culture, with the image of having grown beyond these needs in all things, but the impact on the need for healing remains unparalleled. For example, medicine has made major breakthroughs in understanding the healing forces of meditation and prayer, but much of the established offerings in this field remain unarticulated or misunderstood. This is very unfortunate, because the combination of science and the spiritual is the ideal approach to our profession.

The reader will not only be left with an understanding of how important the acknowledgment of the spiritual is in healing our suffering, but the model will also continue to convert the process into story form. We are ultimately all made up of the stories of our lives, and when we are together with others the activity we share is storytelling. Therefore, I will tell stories and as they combine into an overall tapestry of the psychotherapeutic experience, and hopefully the reader will feel more comfortable in remembering and sharing their unique stories with those who would hear and help. We will examine the importance we attach to this process of being heard and help discover the courage to tell personal stories to save and protect people.

Finding a person who is safe, protecting and truly interested in us is one of the great gifts of life. As we become increasingly isolated by our fast-paced culture and loneliness which has become a social epidemic, finding such special people has become an increasing challenge, making the healing process of being heard and the rewarding process of hearing others a lost art. Many of us no longer have the skill of listening to others, and in many conversations we are focused on what we will say next rather than truly listening intently to others. We are convinced we have only so much time and we have to get our points heard rather than listening. Being heard has become a commodity as valuable as gold, and we are increasingly desperate to share the internal pain of our lives with someone who will listen. The historical institution of expressing our needs within the religious community with a concerned group of trusted others has been replaced by online chats or brief coffee shop meetings and, when necessary, the employment of a therapist. This creates tremendous responsibility for the therapist to be fully present for our clients and to capture precisely what they are trying to communicate.

The therapeutic relationship is a sacred trust, and the damage that can occur when the boundaries are breached is profound. Often, our clients are making their last attempt to confide in another, and this trust is so fragile that there is no room for any breach. This is well known in the therapeutic community and there are—appropriately—severe professional and legal sanctions for violations. This is mentioned here because the boundaries for spiritual work are equally pronounced, and perhaps even more severe, because the work transcends other interventions and touches a place very deep inside, by definition beyond the personal. These breaches are, unfortunately, well known, and include crossing the boundary of no physical contact, especially sexual boundaries, and the rigid keeping of confidentiality. We will look at the devastating issue of betrayal in uncovering wounds from our clients’ past. The sacred trust must never add to the issue of betrayal for our clients.

When any of us sits down with another person to seek help from that relationship, we begin to talk about and share the areas of our lives where there is great pain. Since none of us have had perfect parenting or perfect spiritual development, growth in understanding ourselves is a search we all undertake; it is why we become seekers. This seeking life exists in both personal life issues and in the realm of the spirit. Often we don’t know anything about the underlying spiritual issues, but have awareness that, apart from the conscious problems we face, there is a vague something else that is wrong. We may have even solved some of the external issues of which we were fearful or angry but find ourselves still wandering. If we are fortunate, we will find a person who did have perfect parenting and perfect spiritual development—Jesus. His teachings and His offer of Himself to us becomes our best hope. Wounds in the spirit, however, are almost always reflected in the relationships we have with others, and so we seek out healing in the same place—with a therapist, and this is both logical and appropriate for us to do. When we seek this healing relationship there should be at least these two pieces that fall into place before we continue:

1. We need to seek someone who has moved down the path of their spiritual lives to a point of significant comfort and the ability to be aware and compassionate of our struggles. This is important because most (one study estimates 90%) of those who cross the threshold of a therapist’s office are seeking the spiritual even though they do not yet understand that this is their true search.

2. In a session or two, we must feel that this relationship will work, which means we must sense an alignment of goals and a click, a sense of trust with this person. We need to feel free to stop the work if this is not present, and good therapists will explain this option in the ground rules for therapy. Our therapist also needs to be honest enough with us to say if his/her personality won’t be able to proceed well and claim the responsibility. The client must not view the problem of the therapist’s inability to proceed is a result of their being an untreatable person.

An Initial Definition of the Sacred Bond

In the preface above I have listed many of the formal sacred bonds that we may form in our lives. These are typically formed with the utmost care and, because they are so intense, they contain vast potentialities for healing and growth, or destruction of our personalities. We will address these potentialities and how they are maximized in detail in the book, but it is important to notice some other characteristics of these bonds before proceeding too far into the work.

First, the bonds are established and they work to balance opposing forces in our lives. For example, when we pledge our life-long covenant to God and to our spouse in a marriage vow, we are setting the stage for a structure to balance the opposite forces in the male-female split and we do indeed begin a process of bringing our spouse to a better understanding of precisely what it means to us to be male or female. All of the sacred bonds have the same massive healing and enlightening potentials. The work that is done in therapy is often necessary in situations where the bonds are threatened or violated. We will look at many of the violations of these bonds and, over time, Sacred Bond LLC will address itself to many of the interventions possible in each of these relationships.

Second, when we form these special relationships we must understand that the dynamics of the bond necessarily mean that we have dissolved a part of ourselves into the other, and the relationship is thus no longer only dyadic. We are used to looking at relationships in a binary manner:

In a religious relationship with another person: I and Thou.

In philosophy: self and other.

In the science of psychology: subject and object.

Personally: you and me.

However, all these relationships change when a sacred bond is formed because there is now the third essence that each share. I will call this essence the mystical middle space; "mystical because we don’t have words to totally describe it (and actually we don’t totally understand it) and middle" because it lives between the two, a place of great power. Most religions claim the same two characteristics (and others) for their teachings, but they have a special application in the work of therapy and the formation of sacred bonds in our lives. Without these special and unique human creations, we live powerless lives devoid of meaning; the bonds are everything to us, they are in the end what we live for, and the mystical middle space is the place we love best to live in, even as it brings pain to the surface, forcing us to grow and truly care about our lives.

Third, there are many more bonds that we create during our lifetimes that have great potential for healing but without the same level of commitment or personal involvement. Some of these bonds are between:

Our actions of generosity and the needy recipients of this action

Our actions of compassion and the suffering that will benefit

Our actions of nonreactivity in situations where we could respond with negativity

Our actions of peace in the face of violence

Our actions of hospitality in face of loneliness or need

There are obviously many more of these kinds of bonds that we form that are more short-lived for us, but it is important not to dismiss the importance of the healing potential for us in beginning and completing these actions. Yes, the giver benefits as well as the receiver. Early in treatment we can begin to recommend to our clients that they search for these opportunities to give to others, which are abundant in all human cultures, to begin to experience the healing potential of these bonds while we begin work on the other bonds they want to establish or repair.

For example, let’s take a closer look at the benefit between actions of generosity and the receipt of this gift by the hungry and needy people of the world. In our culture there are many people who give freely and who enjoy the benefits of their gifts. I believe this benefit is a result of the vicarious experience of watching their gifts being received by another. This is truly a win-win relationship. Many of the same processes that we hope to be present in spiritual therapy are also present in generosity: love, compassion, and the growing of a sense of trust in the world. The bond of generosity carries no risk for our client and grants immediate rewards. But what about those who do not give? (In this discussion there is an assumption that there will always be those who need the resources and love from others and, unfortunately, many who do not have the desire to give, despite the fact that we all have certain abilities to give, even if only our time and compassion.)

The action of choosing not to give, which we will see often in our clients, carries significant problems for them. We must constrict our lives if we are not generous; constriction of self and non-generosity are two sides of the same proverbial coin. This constriction carries with it the characteristics of avoiding others, a sort of desperate clinging to our possessions or time, hoarding, and fooling ourselves about what we actually give. There is a kind of internal embarrassment and non-acceptance of this aspect of our personalities and we try to deny it. The point here, as with all the types of bonds that we form, is that the right formation of the bonds can be remarkably restorative of a healthy approach to our lives, and that the opposite also holds true. Often we wonder, as therapists, what we can do in the early stages of treatment to begin the healing process: beginning with generosity to others and helping our grasping, clinging clients to first open themselves in this way is amongst the best starts we can make.

The final universal characteristic of sacred bonds is that they are only formed by compassion. This unique exchange between two or more people is the highest level of human expression and it is the only way to heal emotional wounds. It is exemplified and cherished by all religions that have evolved beyond terror of their gods, and reaches its pinnacle in Christ’s choosing a brutal and debasing death for his people. Our God sacrificed Himself for us! This is the ultimate expression of compassion. When we join with another in the compassionate endeavor of treatment, we have this as our goal and our model, and we must realize, as we enter into this important work, that the compassionate bond will be demanded of us. To the extent that we can be true to the task, we will have all the rewards and struggles of these bonds. It follows, then, that this writing will necessarily accept the challenge of speaking of compassion in great detail.

These further preliminary remarks about the sacred bond function as an introduction to the overall goal of the book, which is to explain the sacred bond in therapy and in seeking people, and to try to capture the beauty and value of this relationship which is so universally needed, and often created, but far too often not made conscious or maximized.

A Special Introduction for Seekers and Clients

Those who are suffering and seeking must first realize that you must not try too hard. What you seek has been made known to others who have found The Way and they will help you. Focus on being rather than becoming. Grasping will only deepen your struggle; opening and trusting are the ways to begin.

Although this book was written to address the spiritual needs and events that occur in the therapy process, I have wanted also to respond to the needs of others who are not on a path and are not finding their Way. Some of you will be able and focused on doing this work alone, or perhaps with a group of other seekers, and my hope is that this book can be a resource for you, following the same model I have suggested therapists consider. I have discussed many tools and given many practical suggestions for you and for therapists, and the book itself can be a study guide, using these tools and certain lists as starting points for meditation and study (see discussion of lists just below). Please understand, however, that these are serious issues for most who undertake this work, and you must seek the help of a therapist if the process begins to frighten you.

I believe that the conscious acknowledgement of the spiritual in therapy and for those who search is essential because it is, in my experience, a universal need, and all of us who experience suffering bring spiritual needs associated with the other problems in our lives to the therapy office. Suffering automatically means the spiritual has entered our lives, that there is a purpose for the presence of our emotional pain. All of the world’s religions emphasize the need to deal with the uniquely human trait of suffering by way of a spiritual approach. Although many of you may seek therapy for a different problem at first, it is usually very early in the treatment process when these spiritual needs emerge. Some therapists do not deal with these issues, but you will be experiencing them nonetheless. Here is my position on this issue:

All human suffering has a spiritual basis and as such we cannot completely heal from wounds without addressing our spiritual lives. We can get better in therapy by dealing with skills and abilities and personal pain, but we will not fully heal or discover the purpose of our suffering without God. The meaningful connection at a deep level with another human is very important in times of suffering, but does not finish the work our suffering started. This work is beyond the human level.

In treatment without a spiritual focus, you would typically be left to sort through these matters on your own or in a different setting or relationship. Therapists understand that there is a great deal of importance in whether something becomes conscious or remains unconscious to you (outside of your day-to-day awareness). The work of treatment is to bring to consciousness some areas of your life that remain unconscious and which have claimed energy that you need to get through the outside problems you are facing. This lost energy is almost universally negative if it causes you to suffer. It is evil in both its nature and its intent to harm you.

But the situation is not hopeless, because there is also a source of positive energy in you and all other humans. This is the energy of love and its source is from God. God made us this way and is waiting to open the place in you where love is, and to allow it to flow out and defeat what is harming you. This is not an idle promise; this healing has been going on for the entire history of mankind. If you have the courage to do this work alone and find yourself at the point of having to take on the innermost evil places, there is one major precaution: in most cases, do not do it alone! This evil means to seriously harm you and you must take on this struggle at the level of warfare; it is a spiritual battle that needs to be fought. You may find you have started this war alone or the process has started almost spontaneously, usually initiated by a severe loss, but be prepared to find a helper if you begin to find yourself in over your head. In this book the focus will be almost completely on the spiritual battle and the manner in which this war is fought.

One way of defining therapy is to describe what it is not, and it is important for all who might read this to understand these limitations:

1. Therapy is not advice seeking and giving. If you need advice about a particular concern you might go to a counselor skilled in a particular area or seek help in the Bible with a leader who is skilled in leading your search. Advice is not bad or wrong, but it is all future-oriented and content-related. This will be explained in greater detail later in the book, but for now let us focus on the opposites of these:

2. The opposite of future (or the past, for that matter) is the present-moment. Therapy and healing can only take place in the present-moment. Events from the past can stir present-moment emotions, as can hopes for the future, but your work and experience is always in the present. Therefore, therapy is not healing in the past or future.

3. Content is the opposite of process. Content comprises the events, stories, descriptions, etc. we bring to the therapist. Process is what happens between the client and the therapist, and is ultimately far more important than content, because sharing content, though it may help the process, does not heal.

4. Therapy is not focused on the external events of your life. While your initial problem may seem external, you should discover quickly that the internal events are more meaningful and relate more directly to your suffering. The internal events stir emotions, the pathways to the healing places in the psyche, as you will see when we discuss the structure of the spiritual psyche.

5. Therapy is not diagnosis. Although most of the therapists you work with will need to enter a diagnosis for you in a chart of information, which will usually include notes, history, medications (if you also see a physician who feels they will help), etc, diagnosis is far from treatment.

Please consider Chart 1: Therapy vs. Diagnosis:

It is easy to see how far diagnosis is from our immediate experience of suffering and healing, and despite the usefulness of seeking a category to account for your behavior, and the resultant ability of professionals to speak in a special language to each other about you, the words that result are not useful for you. We will discuss the reason for this in detail below, but the primary consideration is (again) that healing occurs only in the present moment. All of our efforts, applied in a vast variety of techniques, are meant to achieve the single purpose: that we can exist comfortably in the present moment while we do this work. This is where we find healing, because God lives in the present moment and does His work with humans in the immediacy of this space and time.

In summary, first realize that, if you suffer in any way, the spiritual is trying to awaken and find a life in you, and only the spiritual will result in ultimate healing. Secondly, healing only takes place in the present moment and in relationship(s). Third, be aware that the initial reason for seeking help, for content problems, will probably not be what you actually need help for. Finally, therapy is not diagnosis, and change only occurs in the present moment.

How to Use this Book

Above, a brief introduction to the structure of the book was offered, and in this section, as promised, we will look at each component in more detail. Again, there is a specific order to the book that is designed to approximate the therapeutic process. This structure is consistent with the goal of making the content of the book available to the therapist, client and those who are exploring their spiritual growth on their own. You have read an introduction, which clarifies many of the goals and expectations I had for the book when I first decided to write it. The content will also make clear the Mission Statement of Sacred Bond LLC, which is exemplified in the content of the book. This company mission, reflected here in written form, is to make the target audience aware of the unique unfolding of a spiritual quest inherent in the pursuit of any kind of therapy or transformation.

After the Introduction, as stated above, the book is divided into four distinct sections. Although the sections are separated artificially, they reflect the process of psychotherapy, each being based upon the former just as therapy is divided into these distinct phases of growth. These sections are:

1. Terms and Processes

2. Spiritual Development and Diagnosis of Loss

3. Spiritual Psychotherapy

4. Mary’s Story, A Synthesis and Integration of the Approach

When a client seeks help, this is the process that typically ensues, and these sections will now be explained in more detail.

Terms and Processes

The therapist must be aware of the language of the therapy world and the client world. There are many cases in which the client may simply tune the therapist out because of a language difference. For example, in our treatment programs we often need to ensure that our kids have actually heard directions given to them. The staff would then repeat what was said, insisting on eye contact, and finally ask the child to repeat the instructions to ensure that they were understood. The same emphasis must be placed on the therapy offices in all settings.

One of the core beliefs espoused in this book is that the Sacred Bond between therapist and client is the essence of the power of psychotherapy, which is ultimately focused on spiritual development, a fact which must be made conscious for both therapist and client. This is a common belief for most therapists, but the history of our field contains significant periods of time in which this was not the case. At the present, for example, many therapists simply want to do their work from the relative protection of professional distance. One of the most difficult potential sources of separations between therapist and client is simply the language used in the field. Therapeutic language is so different from normal speech that we, as professionals, may become unaware that this language is foreign to most of the rest of humanity and creates a tremendous block between our clients and us. Those who enter our offices have little or no understanding of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual containing the interpretation of that language. We need to be aware of the difference. For example, when I go on vacation, one of my goals is to speak with plenty of people who know nothing about our profession and who could care less for how important we think our work is.

I have dedicated the first section of Sacred Bond to the presentation of an understanding of the terms used throughout the book, and I have attempted to phrase them in language that is universally understood. I have also taken the liberty of giving unique meanings to some of the terms and processes, as they might refocus us to the spiritual mission of the book.

Spiritual Development and Diagnosis of Loss

A basic assumption