I trained as a psychotherapist, and I still practise as one. So this is not an outsider’s attack on therapy. It is a view from a non-dual perspective, from someone who has spent years inside both worlds: the clinical world of psychotherapy, and the experiential world of meditation and non-dual inquiry. Seen from there, the limits of traditional therapy become very clear, and so does what lies beyond them.
Therapy completely has its place. The human, relational side of it is very real. Caring for someone is real: listening, understanding, being there. Helping somebody, talking through their problems with them, is real. But traditional therapy cannot take someone to a place of permanent happiness, permanent freedom or permanent contentment, because that place exists outside of the mind.
Outside of the mind there is no conceptual self. Yet the whole of therapy, the whole of psychology, is built on the belief in a conceptual self. All psychological suffering comes from that conceptual self, so any work with it can only ever be a stepping stone. It cannot lead to lasting freedom, joy, peace and love, which come from letting go of the conceptual identities we hold about ourselves.
Changing the channel
Imagine you are sitting in a tiny room with a television on, very loud. The room isn’t very nice, and you are locked in. Sometimes the television plays a channel you don’t like.
So you go to a therapist, and the therapist’s job is to help you change the channel, so the television plays something you do like. That is what happens in therapy. The therapist works on changing a narrative you have about yourself, or a belief you hold because you don’t like the thoughts that come with it. Or they help you develop new identities. If something goes wrong in your life, a new identity is built: someone with a new job, a new career, a new partner.
It is just changing the channel. And it misses what is right in front of it: all the problems are caused by the television in the first place, by listening to it at all. We have to step outside that room entirely.
A house of cards
Someone holds a belief about themselves that isn’t serving them, and they don’t like the thoughts that come with it. The therapist questions it, explores it, and replaces it with a different set of beliefs. But each time, it is building a house on quicksand.
If somebody believes they are a bad person who doesn’t deserve nice things, the therapist will help build up their self-esteem and help them see themselves as a good person. But that is just another belief system. Another set of thoughts. Another stream of noise from the television. It may well be a better one, but it is unbelievably limited in where it can go.
Why new identities are dangerous
Any identity is ultimately fictional, and any identity we build rests on something external. Nothing external is stable. Build an identity on a relationship, a job, your place in a group of friends, being a good father or a good wife, and all of it is subject to change. When it changes, that identity suffers, sometimes terribly. An identity is a promissory note to the future that can never be paid.
This is why it is dangerous when someone in crisis climbs out of it by constructing a new identity. We all recognise the rebound relationship: someone is left, and they rush straight into someone new. Building a new identity after the old one has been battered is exactly the same, and it will eventually crumble too.
Even an identity built on something stable, a good marriage, a good career, is never satisfied. It always has to expand, to get more. The nature of ego is to need more. It is always trying to find peace, stillness, contentment and love. It just doesn’t know how, so it looks for them in objects and achievements, in time and space, when their true home lies outside of that.
Traditional therapy can go round and round, building layer upon layer, until there is a huge crisis and someone realises their life is completely different from what they thought it was. That crisis can be a deep push into spiritual awakening.
What about existential therapy?
Existential therapy, the approach I trained in extensively, explores freedom, meaning, death and the question of who we think we are. It can look as though it goes beyond the mind. It doesn’t.
It still works on the premise of an individual self. And while there is an individual self conceptualised in the mind, there will always be lack, separation, comparison and division, which are all states of the ego. Feelings of not being good enough. Feelings of needing more. Whenever someone is living in a self-conceptualisation, there is never contentment.
Instruction versus experience
Some therapies teach people to observe their thoughts. But there is a very big difference between doing this as an exercise from a book and doing it from experience. Observing thoughts is very challenging. It requires a very expanded awareness to do well, and everyone meets their own hurdles along the way. Asking somebody to observe their thoughts can itself become just another thought.
This is where prescriptive approaches fall short: they are not tailored enough to the individual. When someone hits a hurdle, as they will, that is exactly when they need a guide who has consistently observed their own thoughts and explored the nature of consciousness and self from the inside.
Switching off the television
Once the conceptual identities are let go of, there is no fear, no desire, no chasing. There is no avoidance, no aversion, no lack, no psychological suffering, no feeling of not being good enough. There is contentment, peace, love and happiness, because you are residing as the moment, and the moment is perfect.
If a thought comes, such as I need to make this better, there is no longer an association with the “I”. The “I” is now just awareness. The fictional identity we call “me” dissolves.
It is like switching off the television in that tiny room and suddenly finding so much peace. You no longer need the adverts telling you that you need more things, or the news making you fearful, or the Hollywood film you watch to escape. Peace and contentment come when the mind stops, when the conceptualisation of oneself stops, and one simply rests in presence.
A non-dual perspective on therapy
This is not a criticism of therapists, or of the value of therapy for people. But from a non-dual perspective, from the perspective of realising one’s true nature, therapy is limited. It is not a means for someone to recognise their essence as pure awareness, or to come to an experiential non-dual understanding. And it would never claim to be.
Working on more than one level
As a non-dual psychotherapist who works from a place of awareness, my understanding of mind, thought and identity is both clinical and experiential. That means I can work on several levels. When it is needed, I can work within psychology, but always with the intention of bringing someone to a deeper state, and then deeper still. From a non-dual perspective, happiness, love and peace are our essential nature, and working from that embodied place brings infinitely more to the therapeutic encounter than anything built from the limited thoughts and constructs of the mind.
You can read more on my non-dual psychotherapy page, or read Silence: The Most Powerful Teacher and Healer.
Leave a Comment