Body, Mind, Soul and Spirit
Essential Wholeness is the sum total of what it is to be a human being. We are human and we are being. Our Essential Wholeness includes body, mind, soul and spirit. What is changing and what is unchanging. What is changing is like an ecosystem. As human animals we are imbedded in and dependent on the rest of nature. Our wellbeing as humans is dependent on living in harmony with our own nature, which is at one with all of nature. We are also Being. Our deepest nature is spirit or pure awareness. There is only one spirit, which is the unified field of energy and information out of which all of creation arises and disappears back into.
The bridge between spirit and body is soul. Soul allows us to experience the connection spirit and the rest of creation is soul. It is soul that awakens to its true spiritual nature while manifesting full creative potential through the human mind and body.
Mahayana Buddhism refers to these three aspects as dharmakaya as the Absolute; the unified and unmanifested essence of the universe. Sambhogakaya (soul) is what is in the process of realising enlightenment through spiritual practice. In Eastern traditions, it is what reincarnates for lifetime to lifetime. Nirmanakaya is the body that appears in the world. Dharmakaya (spirit) is like the atmosphere, sambhogakaya (soul) is like clouds, and nirmanakaya (body) is like rain. Clouds are a manifestation of atmosphere that enables rain. These dimensions are sometimes referred to as causal, subtle and gross. They are present in deep, dreamless sleep and silent meditation (dharmakaya), dreaming, imagination and trance (sambhokaya) and ordinary waking consciousness (nirmanakaya). The unified field of these dimensions is referred to as svabhavikakaya. I like to refer to that as Essential Wholeness.
Instincts
The self-concept or ego is identified with the body and its primary focus is on our survival by satisfying our instinctual drives. The Enneagram system traditionally recognizes three basic human instincts: self-preservation, social and sexual. In other words, focussing on survival of the body with food, shelter, etc., survival of and within society (we cannot survive without the clan), and survival of the species through procreation. The ego is a collection of habitual beliefs and behaviours that dictate how one survives by acquiring things, our place in the group and sex. Healthy egos, thanks to prompting from the soul, evolve over time and coincide with changes in how we relate to our survival. A healthy ego is going to have different concerns at eighty years old than it did at fifteen. The development of healthy egos has historically been the focus of most psychotherapy. Symptoms usually arise in our lives when our egoic self-concept is more concerned about its survival than even the survival, let alone thriving of the body. For example, if I identify with being the kind of person that thinks my career and money are the most important things for my survival, and consequently use most of my social relationships merely to further my career; I may find myself in the therapist’s office wondering why I’m depressed. In the process of therapy, I will understand that I’ve been ignoring my developmental needs for friendship and sexual fulfilment.
The soul is the realm of the unconscious and what Jung referred to as the collective unconscious. It is the realm of archetypes and myths that inform and organize our human existence. At the most basic level we can think of soul as the universal laws that govern a self-organising universe.
Biochemist Rupert Sheldrake coined the term “morphic field” as that which organizes the characteristic structure and pattern of activity of systems and their members. Soul manifests at different levels. There is the individual soul, the soul of a family, a soul of an organization, a soul of a nation and the soul of the planet. There are in essence individual souls nested in collective souls. This mirrors the ways life is organised with cells within bodies, bodies within communities within ecosystems, etcetera.
Time Travel
Tibetan Buddhism urges us to take refuge in the Buddhas of the three times and ten directions. I believe this most aptly refers to accessing resources in the nirmanakaya or the dimension of soul. Buddha in this case refers to mind’s full potential. The three times are past, present and future. The ten directions refer to all of space. In other words, it is the ability to realize our full potential in infinite time and space. In the dimension of soul, which we experience through imagination, memory and our sensing of now, the past, present and future all exist simultaneously. This is why we can be feeling emotions in this present time and location in reference to a past event in a particular place; while planning for a future when we’ll be in another place experiencing something completely different. Effective psychotherapy helps people travel to other times and places whilst utilizing different archetypal intelligences in order to live a healthier or more soulful life now and in the future.
Demons Becoming Allies
It is also suggested we take refuge in the dharma, the realized sangha, the yidams and the dharma protectors. Dharma translates as the way things are, or the truth. In other words, to let go of any concepts that would blind us to the way things actually are. The realized sangha is like the collective unconscious wisdom that has been realized by those who have come before us. Yidams are archetypal images that represent essential qualities of soul like compassion, wisdom, healing, etcetera. Wisdom protectors are those wrathful looking deities. It is my understanding that they were once demons that became enlightened and serve to protect the truth. We can think of them as the wisdom of the soul that presents itself as demons, creating problems and challenges that force us to more fully realize our essential wholeness, or else suffer. Milton Erickson, M.D. who became a prolific writer and master communicator, was so dyslexic that he didn’t realize the dictionary was alphabeticalized until he was fifteen. This meant that whenever looking for a word, he began at the beginning or end of the dictionary and continued reading until he found the word. When it finally dawned on him, Milton thanked his subconscious that had tricked him into studying so thoroughly. In some Native American philosophy, this aspect of the soul is referred to as the trickster coyote. Illness serves the soul’s agenda.
Effective psychotherapy helps people to be honest with themselves, helps them tune into their unconscious wisdom or even read wisdom books. It will utilize and help people access states and meta-states (how we feel about how we feel) that transform their perceptions and deconstruct problematic repeating patterns so people can learn the lessons their soul is trying to teach them. An Ericksonian therapist will even set up ordeals to help their clients grow.
A healthy ego serves soul, which in turn serves spirit. Opening the experience of soul is often experienced as a loss of identity for the ego. The opening to spirit is often experienced as a loss of a sense of an individual self for the soul. In our essential wholeness we are spirit experiencing soulful existence in human form.
For most of life the soul looks after the body, but there are times that the soul may demand that the body be sacrificed for a greater purpose. Martin Luther King, Jesus, Amelia Earhart or a mother sacrificing her own life to save her child’s could be examples of this. A healthy ego listens to the body as a way of staying in touch with the soul.
Excerpt from ‘Essential Wholeness, Integral Psychotherapy, Spiritual Awakening and the Enneagram’
