Douwe Nutterts 0102
Question: Is psycho-spiritual work the same as transpersonal psychotherapy?
Nutterts: If you talk about transpersonal psychotherapy, the idea of psychotherapy is a lot about problem solving, whereas my work is much more process-oriented: you follow the process that’s there. It doesn’t mean that problems won’t come up, but the idea is not to solve problems. It’s not about problem-solving. I think that problems will arise, but it’s not so much the fact that problems will arise, it’s more about: what is your relationship to that?
And is there a transpersonal dimension to it? Definitely. Is it the aim of the work? In a certain sense it is the aim of the work, but it doesn’t negate that there’s a personal dimension also. In the work there is - and you see that in a lot of different orientations - when you start to work, most of the time you are looking for something that is transpersonal which in a sense is really inside of you, although you search for it in the outside world. And one of the orientations in the beginning is to re-orient your attention and more to start to look inwardly. Because that’s where it is: your true nature, your beingness; where you first recognise it is most often on the inside. So there is an orientation: instead of looking outside, you start to look inside.
But in the beginning, you might have the concept that there is something called true nature or being, or whatever you want to call it, and then there is a movement towards it. And once you start to recognise it and experience it, then it becomes an experience. You start to journey from that place and then you see that it is also outside. And that’s what the whole non-dual tradition is about, there isn’t really an inside and an outside, and yet in the beginning there is a recognition that it’s inside, and once you can recognise it inside, then you can see it everywhere.
In that sense, there’s definitely a transpersonal orientation, but it’s not so much about going after all kinds of transpersonal states, because then it becomes more like what Chögyam Trungpa would call spiritual materialism. And that’s not what it’s about. That’s why I didn’t call it transpersonal either, because in the transpersonal I see a lot of people go after all kinds of transpersonal states, they start to shop for different kinds of experiences, and there is a negation of the personal and the animalistic parts, and all the other parts that are part of us also.
And in that sense my work is much more a broadening of the whole scope, it definitely includes the personal also. I think that’s an important piece of it. Otherwise you get a split between the transpersonal and all the issues in the personal are going to come up, because they go together. It’s always like, when something from your true nature erupts and starts to rise, it brings out all the issues that are related to it, so it’s really about the dialogue between the different dimensions and trying to find a balance in there.
And often you see that either the balance tilts more towards the psychological work and then everything becomes psychological, and while it’s informed by the spiritual there’s still too much of an emphasis on the psychological. Then people stay busy with issues, issues, issues forever. Or else people bypass the issues, and then it’s only about transpersonal states but they don’t like the personal.
So it’s really like finding out how you can embrace both. That’s why I don’t only call it transpersonal. Because I feel like there’s too much of a certain goal orientation there, and it’s really much more about the process and being able to embrace what’s there in yourself.
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