 |
|
WHAT IS TRANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY Part Nine: Transpersonal Education
|
|
Department of Psychology Metropolitan State College of Denver AUTHOR'S NOTE: This section was not published in the GUIDANCE AND COUNSELLING article because of space limitations. I take full responsibility for it since they it not go through the journal's editorial process. Go to the first page in this article. |
|
|
|
How well are the roots of TP reflected in transpersonal education? How do we relate to contemplative and transpersonal practices in our own lives? What is our commitment to our own transpersonal paths; what are our blocks? |
|
|
|
Many conventional approaches to higher education are guided by Bloom's Taxonomy of Education, a hierarchical arrangement of cognitive skills: memorization, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Critical thinking, a "hot item" in higher education these days, attempts to teach students to carry an argument from premise to conclusion, apply abstractions, and examine the evidence and assumptions behind arguments. Affective education is generally not included, and the cultivation of mindfulness, intuition, openness to immediate experience, and compassion are nowhere in these schemes. These approaches rely entirely on rationality and intellect. From the point of view of TP, careful and powerful use of the intellect is desirable, but exclusive reliance on rationality is, at best, limited. Approaches to education and inquiry in general based solely on critical thinking and the rational mind are desacralized, disembodied, disenchanted, and arid. A basic principle of critical thinking is to identify and question the assumptions behind an argument. Examining the assumption of rationality as the best (or only) means of arriving at knowledge, I find it lop-sided and biased. It is biased in the sense that it idealizes masculine, eurocentric approaches to education&emdash; the linear, analytic, etc. When we look at other cultures, for instance, and especially to wisdom traditions, we find them prizing masters of intuition and contemplation more than scholars and pundits, the experts in critical thinking. Educational pluralism values learning styles beyond the linear, left-brained approach advocated by critical thinking, without devaluing elegant, curious, and creative thought. Transpersonal education stands for an integration of critical and contemplative thinking. It is radically ("at-the-root") experiential, a blend of intuition and intellect, trans-rational, evoking enchantment and inspiration, and rooted in mystery and love. TP values not only clear, systematic analysis, but also wildness, chaos, and awakening. Transpersonal education brings to mind Heidegger's term, "true thinking," i.e., inner stillness, the understanding that is before ego-driven discursive thought. It promotes a dialogue with silence. As teachers, we constantly face the challenges of blending contemplative and critical thinking, experience and theory, intuition and intellect. At its worst, teaching regresses into lists of impersonal facts and teachers become authorities and oppressors, tools of the regime of technology. The flip side of this, idealizing experience at the expense of understanding and careful examination is not much better. When we are more clear, teaching integrates theory and experience. We move easily from experience to theory and back again, each balancing, supporting, and completing the other. In the moments when we are most clear, teaching reveals the non-duality of contemplation and thought. The mind, as a brilliant, luminous, crystal clear manifestation of Being, dissolves into Mind, and the moment unfolds. We feel intimate, vulnerable, graceful, alive, and blessed. Intellect becomes another expression of love and joy.
|
|
|
|
A few years ago, I was serving as chair of the Transpersonal Counseling Psychology Department at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, a strong, well-respected, fully-accredited counseling psychology program. While I was there I got a request from a researcher in a neighboring counseling psychology program to include our students in a study of graduate student burnout. As I reviewed her measures of stress and burnout, it occurred to me that many of the indicators of burnout reflect the kind of journey we expected many transpersonal counseling psychology students to take during their graduate programs. What to another program might look like burnout and a problem to be fixed or avoided, looked to me like the necessary breaking down of preconceptions, defenses, and habitual patterns. When I asked the researcher how she planned to handle this difference between program philosophies, she paused and said she hadn't considered it. Since it was not part of her educational paradigm, the questions had not occurred. She chose, for the time being, not to use Naropa's students in her study. This experience points to one of the defining characteristics of transpersonal psychotherapy. In therapy and counseling as well as education, TP sees crisis as an often necessary step in the process of opening. Some kinds of crisis are known as Positive Disintegration (Dembrowski), Spiritual Emeregency (Grof and Grof), and initiations. They have been the subject of much research and theory. One of my students recently did a qualitative research study of a broad sample of people who identified themselves as being on some kind of spiritual path. She was especially interested in what had prompted their searches. It turns out that each of the people she interviewed said that some kind of crisis, trauma, or difficulty had been a precipitating factor in their spiritual work. Perhaps it is not a requirement, but it seems that psychological crisis is a frequent accompaniment to transpersonal work. These crises may be relatively small and contained or major life disruptions, but they are well-known in spiritual and transpersonl development. TP can provide the understanding and support to help make these crises useful and positive. Furthermore, to the extent that therapists have explored their own crises, they will better be able to be present with and skillful with their clients' crises.
|
|
|
|
In transpersonal education, and particularly in training transpersonal counselors and psychotherapists, we offer knowledge and experience in transpersonal content and we help students develop skills in the application of transpersonal processes. We also aim toward personal and transpersonal development of the student, a deeper realization of a transpersonal context. This brings personal contemplative practice into the discussion of transpersonal education. The key element in contemplative practices is that you are learning to be present with and work with your immediate experience, you are developing the capacity to be present in the here-and-now, and you are discovering ways of being that are not directed by discursive and evaluative thought or emotional reactivity. They include a variety of awareness and mindfulness practices such as insight meditation, Christian contemplative prayer, and the ancient art of walking as in Celtic mysticism. Contemplative practices are important in students' transpersonal development in general, and they are central in teaching students to be transpersonal psychotherapists. Beyond their function in training the basic elements of helping&emdash;attention, present-centeredness, empathy, self-exploration&emdash;they provide the basis for the self-realization of the person in the role of therapist. This is the aspect of transpersonal psychotherapy which most clearly sets it apart from other approaches to psychotherapy training. I think ongoing contemplative development is essential in transpersonal education. The development and refinement of authentic being and the expansion of moment-to-moment awareness is the basis of TP. This is as true for teachers as it is for students. Transpersonal education calls us all to our practice. Understanding compassionate and effective means of supporting contemplative and spiritual practices also reminds us that coercion usually elicits resistance; this call is an invitation, not an obligation. TP flows from an orientation to life, teaching, and service that is expansive, optimistic, appreciative, courageous, and compassionate. This orientation may not always be evident on the surface, but it cannot be dismissed. Without it, TP cuts itself off from its roots. Transpersonal education also comes with a challenge: to explore what is truly unique and beneficial about transpersonal psychology and the source of that uniqueness and benefit.
|
     |