The Heart Centered Counseling Theory of Healing

THE HEART CENTERED COUNSELING THEORY OF HEALING

By Karen Schipani - Tedrahn, MA, LMFT

The Heart Centered Counseling Theory of Healing is based on a Path of the Heart. A Path of the Heart means learning to choose love over fear, and learning to embrace all parts of the self, including those parts we judge as bad or wrong. It means learning to Unconditionally Love Self and committing to being in Truth, the truth of who we are. The essence of who we are is Spirit, encased in a bodily form with a Mind. As such we are already whole and have just forgotten. We do not need fixing, advice, judgements, or opinions.

We are all on an evolutionary path to Enlightenment whether we are conscious or unconscious of it. Enlightenment can be described as realizing we are One with the Light, One with God, that we are in fact God Made Manifest in Physical Form. As such we have all of the wisdom, resources, and answers inside ourselves to heal ourselves. We incarnate lifetime after lifetime learning our respective lessons, clearing our issues, until we claim who we are. Each of us is totally unique and no one knows better than we do how to heal ourselves. We are our own highest authority and responsible for our own healing process. We simply need to learn how to access our own Inner Wisdom and apply our own Loving to our own hurt. The soul knows the quickest and safest way back to the remembering of who we are. Although this is simple to state, it is not necessarily simple or easy to do.

 In order to “remember our wholeness” or experience it, we must re-claim those parts of ourselves we have denied and separated from and identify with our true nature. I will discuss how to do that shortly. A “whole” or healthy person has a high degree of awareness of his thoughts, feelings and behavior. He is comfortable with who he is and has achieved inner peace. He has learned how to give and receive love and how to satisfy his own needs. Whenever he is not at peace and has been thrown off center, he knows immediately “school is in session” and it is time to do some work on himself. He is committed to working his process in order to get backto his center. A healthy person has leaned that whatever is in his outer reality is a reflection of something in his inner reality. Through looking at his judgements and owning his projections, he has learned to reclaim those parts of self which have been denied. By re-claiming and embracingthese denied parts with love and learning to forgive judgements, he has achieved a high degree of

integration.

A “healthy” person has leaned to identify himself as Spirit, as that which is unchanging, eternal, pure awareness. This pure awareness is also known as the supraconscious which is the source of man’s highest aspirations and dreams: the arts, culture, as well as the source of the highest form of altruistic love and service. He has learned to dis-identify himself from his personality, thoughts, feelings and anything temporal in nature. Through the discovery and creation of this central spiritual core, he has learned to achieve at the very least a personal psychosynthesis, and is working towards a spiritual psychosynthesis. Such a person is comfortable with living life with one foot in familiar territory and the other on unfamiliar ground. He can live with uncertainty without anxiety, comfortable with change. He is continually growing and self-actualizing, able to develop his full potential, and capable of making creative adjustments to meet his needs in the environment. Ultimately, a healthy whole person knows he is the creator of his own reality and he takes responsibility for everything created in his world. In order to facilitate such a powerful and integrated healing, a therapist utilizing this healing approach must himself be whole and well integrated. He / she must be spiritually inclined and an experienced traveler on the path of spiritual integration and Self-Realization. He knows how to work his own process and is committed to his own growth. He has healed and resolved his own personality conflicts, achieved a personal psychosynthesis and is integrating his spiritual psychosynthesis. He has reclaimed the denied parts of himself and has learned how to

apply forgiveness and his own unconditional loving to himself. He knows how to give and receive love and how to satisfy his own needs. When working with a client, the therapist understands that he is not the healer. The client heals himself through applying his own loving to his hurt. The therapist merely bears witness to the client’s pain and by demonstrating unconditional love and acceptance toward the client, the client learns to unconditionally love and accept himself, applying love and compassion to his own hurt. It is the love that does the healing. That is why this theory is called the Heart Centered Counseling Approach to Healing. The therapist understands that every human being is on a spiritual evolutionary path whether they are conscious of it or not. Therefore facilitating growth on this path is viewed as sacred work. When working with a client, the therapist has an attitude of holding and creating a sacred space for spiritual transformation. He does this by setting an intention, by dispensing with judgements, by practicing Empathic Listening and Seeing the Loving Essence within the client. He comes from the space that he is God listening to God, the Light touching the Light, Love flowing to Love. Obviously he works from the level of the Inner Counselor which is just another name for the place of inner wisdom. By holding this space of God listening to God,powerful transformational “miracles” happen and the client comes into the remembering of who he really is - Spirit, God Made Manifest in Physical Form. This remembering is fleeting at first, but it becomes stronger as the client shifts his identity from his personality traits and the roles he

performs to an experience and understanding of his essence as Pure Awareness, that which is unchanging, eternal, blissful Spirit. The therapist is completely present for the client, focused in his Loving and Compassion, but he does not get caught up in the client’s story. He recognizes that the client created the story on a soul level as a means of learning a particular lesson. Therefore, the therapist comes from

the viewpoint that everything is perfect and divinely guided, even if in the moment things may not appear that way. The therapist’s primary objective is to encourage the client to take responsibility for his life, his healing process, his behavior, and his feelings. This position is the true position of power. It empowers the client to create his life the way he wants it to be. Besides Seeing the Loving Essence and Empathic Listening, the skills most congruent with the Heart Centered Approach are: Asking Open Ended Questions, Perception Checking, Positively Reinforcing: Prizing, Silence, Exploring Feelings, Reflecting Feelings, Reframing Issues as Blessings, Facilitating the Owning and Accepting of Projections, Facilitating Self- Forgiveness, and Accessing Intuition. The techniques used in the Heart Centered Counseling Approach to Healing begin with Focusing on the Here and Now as a means of increasing awareness of what is happening now. This means looking at what is present in one’s feelings, consciousness, bodily awareness,

behavior, and thoughts now. The therapist asks questions such as: “What is happening now?” “What are you feeling in the moment?” He promotes now awareness by encouraging the client to use “I” language, to take responsibility for feelings and behavior in the present tense. Historical information is looked at in terms of present situations. It is not necessary to dig in the past for things to heal. Whatever is unhealed will come up in present situations. Using “I” language also helps the client to see how he communicates to other, and what kind of relationship he has to other since true communication involves a sender and a receiver. The client is encouraged to see whether he truly relates to others making genuine contact or if he avoids contact through his languaging and behavior. Does he feel connected to people or alone

and abandoned?

As a client becomes aware of different conflicts and aspects within his personality, he is encouraged to place these aspects in a chair and give them a voice. By allowing the aspect to have a voice, the client is able to express feelings and behavior which he may not have been aware of before or would not allow the expression of. He can find out what the aspect really wants and what its highest intention is for the client. These aspects can then be up-leveled. Often they have useful information for the client as well as gifts and talents. They help the client to access parts of himself he has denied and to reclaim those parts on his journey to wholeness. Since the outer reality is a reflection of something which is going on in the inner world of the client, he is encouraged to see the outer reality as his projection and to own it. Where or how

in his psyche does this denied aspect play itself out? Owning the projections is a powerful process which is very liberating. The next technique involves Assagioli’s Exercises for Self-Identification and Dis- Identification. These exercises help people to understand the difference between the self and the contents of consciousness. Since our thoughts, emotions, desires and sensations are constantly changing, as well as the roles we play in life, we must learn to dis-identify with these false identifications and align ourselves with our true identity which is unchanging and permanent, the center of pure awareness and power.

This is our Self level or Spirit, the essence of who we are. When we experience our true identity, it becomes easier to see and accept that our behavior and fears are not who we are. We can be more objective about them, less overwhelmed by pain and more forgiving. The last technique I will discuss is called the Inner Dialogue. It is based in the understanding that each of us has a Higher Wisdom which we can access. This Higher Wisdom knows all of the answers to whatever problems or questions we may have. If we were granted an interview with this Higher Wisdom, what would he/ she tell us about our problems. This is our Inner Counselor, our guide on our path to inner healing and Enlightenment. The stages of healing in the Heart Centered Counseling Approach begins with: Stage 1) Gaining a thorough knowledge of one’s personality.

 We must learn to recognize that whenever each of us is off center, we are in a process. Our class is in session. It is now appropriate to focus on the Here and

Now and increase our awareness of our current experience - explore feelings, behavior, thought patterns, the “dark forces” of the lower unconscious. It is important to maintain balance and not get caught up in the “darkness”of our situation - so it is also appropriate to access the wisdom of the higher unconsciousness or supraconscious and learn how to use this higher wisdom for our own healing. Stage 2 involves: Gaining awareness of the games we play and the roles we play. Explore the Idealized Self Image, or mask we present to the world to keep people from seeing those parts of ourself we judge as bad or unacceptable. Understand that this is not who we really are. We are timeless, never changing pure consciousness, pure awareness, dynamic eternal beingness. Stage 3 is: Understanding and accepting that everything in the outer manifestation of our reality is a reflection of something going on in our inner reality. All judgements about other people are merely reflections of judgements we have about ourselves. All judgements, whether for self or for other are denied aspects of self. Stage 4 is: Actively looking for and owning the projections. Stage 5: Once we own the projections, we can then reclaim and embrace these denied aspects through self-forgiveness and applying unconditional love and acceptance to self. In Stage 6, we experience more fully the true self - the discovery or creation of a unifying central core. We begin to experience the truth of: “I am Spirit, I have a Mind, and I live in a Body.” In Stage 7: We integrate all parts of self around this central core to create a personal psychosynthesis - the formation or reconstruction of the personality around the new center, aself actualized person who is comfortable with who he / she is, who continues to grow and explore their world, and can satisfy their needs. In Stage 8: Achieving Spiritual Psychosynthesis. After further integration, the personal consciousness expands to the transpersonal or universal level. We experience ourselves more and more as Spirit and One with the Creator or Godforce. We know on deeper and deeper levels we are God Made Manifest in Physical Form. This process continues until we reach full Enlightenment and experience our Oneness with God and all of creation. We know the truth of the Hindu saying “I am That, Thou Art That, All This is That.” I am Pure Consciousness, thou art Pure Consciousness, all this is Pure Consciousness. Or in western words: I am God, You are God, All this is God. Everything is God. We are swimming in the ocean of God, and the waves of the ocean are Love radiating out from God, to God, through God, and for God. All there is, is God. The Heart Centered Counseling Approach focuses primarily on the Spiritual and Emotional levels. The theory itself is based on the idea that we are all Spirit and are already Whole, we have just forgotten. It comes from the viewpoint that our spiritual essence is the source of our Higher Wisdom which naturally moves us in the direction of greater integration, greater and more complex development, and greater levels of happiness.

The client is able to access this Higher Wisdom and heal himself when the therapist comes from this spiritual viewpoint. On the emotional level, the client is taught to explore feelings, look at judgements, see the outer as a reflection of the inner, own the projections, discover parts of self which have been denied, embrace and re-claim those parts through forgiveness, love, and acceptance, and integrate those parts into a new wholeness or a “remembering of wholeness”. In this theory it is Love that does the healing: love from the therapist to the client, and love from the client for himself, his pain, his process, and his Magnificence.