INWARD ARC


Frances Vaughan (1985). The Inward Arc: 

                                         Healing and Wholeness in 

                                         Psychotherapy and Spirituality.


Vaughan (PhD in Psychology) was a psychotherapist who integrated spirituality in therapy...she is the author of three other books...she weaves different spiritual perspectives (Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist in particular) and spiritual perspectives (Freudian, Jungian, Humanist, Cognitive-Behavioral, and Transpersonal) into the themes of the book. The experiential activities at the end of each chapter were my favorite.

One theme was that we need awareness and healing to bring about well-being and wholeness in the 5 areas of human consciousness: physical (care of the body), emotional (acknowledge and express feelings), mental (witness and observe what is arising without judgment moment by moment), existential (come to terms with our aloneness, freedom and choice, guilt, meaning, and death), and spiritual (going beyond the rational to the intuitive level of understanding to contemplate our essential transpersonal nature of oneness, interdependence, and wholeness).


maps of the spiritual path:

Christian Dante's Divine Comedy...hell, purgatory, heaven

Shamanic...journeying throught under, middle, and upper worlds

Hero's journey...from leaving home to returning home

Hindu 7 chakras...visualize the colors within the body and light moving up and down

Zen Buddhist 10 Ox herding pictures as stages of self-awareness


experimental activities included:

envisoning self as radiantly healthy

asking "who am i" again and again

zazen...sitting and watching without judgement

see the self living in different time periods...past, present, and future

listen to dreams for messages from the subconscious

expanding awareness, beginning with self and expanding into ever widening circles unto the universe


 


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