According to researchers anxiety disorders are the biggest mental health problem in the United States. As a psychotherapist, I have observed that what people are most afraid of is the truth.
Truth haunts people, if not consciously, then unconsciously. Experiences have been buried deep in the psyche and the truth of them leaks out creating a terror that is confusing, unexpected, baffling, and seems foreign.
The psychotherapist gently and supportively asks the client to re-member those things the person has repressed and alienated from his/her conscious awareness. The truth has been kept in the dark and because of what the darkness hides, people become afraid of the darkness itself.
The release from darkness entails two stages: first the recognition that darkness can only hide the truth so long and that eventually the truth will find its way to the light either with conscious articulation or in symptoms, and second, that the energy it takes to hide the truth is a waste and that life is lived much more easily and happily once the truth is set free.
Setting the truth free from the darkness is a relief and in the long run brings much peace and bliss. When we come to accept that "it is what it is" we are born again onto the path of the spirit and we leave the path of the ego behind.
The idea of the Perennial Philosophy of Aldous Huxley leads one to the idea that God is too big for any one religion. How is it that sometimes people outgrow their religion of childhood? James Fowler, among others, has mapped out a model of spiritual development. Osho says that a person cannot enter into a spiritual life until he/she rebels against childish religious beliefs. Notes On A Spiritual Life intends to explore deeper understandings of an authentic spiritual life.
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