Hi Everyone

I guess I don’t see the differences between spiritual and therapeutic paths. It is just different parts of the journey. Is the beginning any less valid than the end? Not to say that one is more valid than the other.

This forum is for everyone and I think it is good for people to have access to information that can help them at any stage in their journey.

It just takes mindfulness. If something doesn’t suit it is okay. Perhaps it is not for them, perhaps it might be for someone else. ❤️

Hi Alessa

I didn’t really notice the differences between the spiritual and therapeutic paths until the notion of detachment from ego or dissolving of self was being experienced as discounting someone’s suffering and even triggering which was never the intent. So I sat with the tension I felt and did a little research to try to discover why I was senses this disconnect.

The Therapeutic Path: is one most people do their ‘work’ where the self is treated as an object, something that can be observed, understood, healed, and integrated.
• the self here is a construct made of language, memories, patterns, roles, and wounds.
• The therapist and client explore this object together: its history, its defenses, its needs.
• The goal is often to strengthen or stabilize the self, to make it coherent, resilient, and functional.

When on the Therapeutic Path the focus is on healing, integration, and psychological well-being with the goal of reducing suffering, increase resilience, and foster a coherent sense of self. All good things!
• Practices: Talk therapy, somatic work, trauma healing, shadow work
• Orientation: Ego-strengthening — helps the self become more whole and functional
• Key Feature: It works within the self-system to resolve wounds and build capacity

The Spiritual or Contemplative Path: the self is not a fixed object but a rhythm… a flowing, impermanent pattern of arising and dissolving.
• It’s seen as ephemeral, like breath or waves, appearing in awareness, then fading.
• The focus is not on fixing the self, but on witnessing its movements without grasping.
• The rhythm includes thoughts, sensations, identities… all dancing in and out of view.

When on the Contemplative Path the focus is on awareness, presence, insight and relationship with the sacred, the divine, or ultimate meaning. The experience being Direct experience of reality, often beyond conceptual thought and union, surrender, transformation, or alignment with a higher reality… Contemplation listens deeply, not to control the melody, but to realize the silence beneath it.
• Practices: Meditation, mindfulness, silence, self-inquiry, koans, centering prayer.
• Orientation: Non-dual or transpersonal… seeks to dissolve the ego or see through it.
• Key Feature: It’s not about fixing the self, but seeing through the illusion of self.
(note the conversation where we ask not to be fixed)

As I mentioned in Mirror thread it can be disorientating when your in conversation with someone who defines the words your trying to point past… and you don’t quite notice that’s what happening. You leave the conversation wondering if you been heard and frustrated which might even feel like boundaries weren’t respected… This happens quite a bit on forums…

Naming this ‘gap’ between Therapeutic and what I’m calling the Contemplative Path i hope to point out the “different parts of the journey” but are not always noticed when communication moves from one to the other. The experience of the movement from one to the other is to me is as if two people assuming they are speaking the same language and are puzzled because they are unable to understand one another.

In the posts above I noted Jung’s thought that ‘it takes a healthy self/ego to let it’s self/ego’ The Therapeutic part of the path works on the healthy sense of self, lets call it living out of the heart charka, and then when the work is done, transition to the Contemplative path to experience the other charkas… Confusing the two part of a paths in dialog I find really disorienting…

Why I think this matters: (Sorry this goes back to the conversation with my in-law I pointed to in Mirrors posts and something I’ve been wrestling with so I’m going to transition to the Christian language that I inherited. I know I can be confusing.)

In the Christian traditions I was brought up, the cross was taught as a fixed event, as a historical object. I was thought that Jesus died so that we wouldn’t have to. A teaching that did not serve me well.

As a fixed event the self is spared, preserved, even protected from death. The focus is on belief in the event, not participation in the pattern aligning with the view that the self is something to be saved, healed, or made whole but not surrendered.

This I observed can lead to two distortions:
• Rejection of the cross: “Why should I suffer if Jesus already did?” and or
• Clinging to the cross: “I must stay in suffering to be faithful.”
Both miss what I’ve experienced as the deeper rhythm.

For me the contemplative path reframes the cross not as a static object, but as a dynamic rhythm where the birth-death-resurrection cycle is present in every breath, every letting go, every transformation. Here the self arises, dissolves, and is reborn moment by moment. As a rhythm the cross is not a place to stay, but a passage to move through, resurrection not a reward, but the natural unfolding of surrender where “Take up your cross daily” becomes not a burden, but a rhythm: inhale (birth), pause (death), exhale (resurrection)… the sound of OUM… “prayer without ceasing”…

You’ve seen how first teaching can freeze the cross into a fixed point and how that can cause people to either reject it or cling to it. But the contemplative insight invites a third way, when the self is healthy/ready. The cross becomes not a transaction to believe in, but a rhythm to participate in. The self is no longer a something that avoids dying, but something that dies and rises continually with each breath…

This joins the paths where:
• Therapy helps us face the wounds that make us fear the cross (the dying of ego small-s self)
• Contemplation helps us see that we are not the one who dies, but the space in which dying and rising happen.
• Spirituality becomes the art of trusting that rhythm, even as and when it breaks us open…