Anxiety occurs for a reason, but we do not understand it. “I am never upset for the reason I think” is a door-opener for enlightenment. The admission of ignorance is necessary if we want to break out of our cyclic identity story. To stretch our mind even further, we must consider that anxiety is our friend. Mind- stretching is called curiousity. If we do not arouse our curiousity, we will remain stuck in our mediocre unawareness.

Spiritual psychotherapy operates on the radical assumption that everything happens for a beneficial reason, including all of our symptoms and suffering. No exceptions. That is why it is called radical. No exceptions. If you admit one exception, you have let yourself off of the hook, and nothing significant will change. Anxiety will continue on its gruesome path like a stranger in the night, and you will seem to be its irresponsible victim.

Anxiety is a wake-up call and so are all of its attendant symptoms. Whatever else you think your problem is, is mistaken. As long as you mis-diagnose your condition, you will mis-treat it. Mis-treatment is abuse. No wonder life is considered to be a tale of abuse. No wonder we act like excuse-makers, complainers, blamers, and punishers!

Spiritual psychotherapy is a reversal of the human story. If you want your story confirmed, you will not find it in spiritual psychotherapy. Not one thing will be confirmed in such a therapy except that anxiety, like everything else, happens for your benefit. If you have reached the point in your life where you are tired of excuse-making and matrix-thinking, you may be ready for your conscious journey to enlightenment. This journey involves anxiety-awareness, anxiety analysis, anxiety-appreciation and anxiety-transformation.

The shift from anxiety-avoidance and anxiety-condemnation to anxiety-appreciation is radical. You will have to change from faith in the known to faith in the unknown. The known only comprises 1% of life; the unknown 99%. That is why the control game can never work, and that is why anxiety is epidemic. Don’t kid yourself, healing is not finite patchwork. A complete make-over of your story is required. That make-over I call the discovery of the Infinite Good.

A couple came to me who were fighting about the pain of his unfaithfulness. When I attempted to show them that they each have a story they need to deal with before they can work on their marriage, they refused, saying this makes them uncomfortable. They were already uncomfortable to the point of suicidal ideation, and so there must have been a certain familiarity in their story which they did not want to admit. When I introduced self-responsibility, that scared them, and they resisted. That refusal was their therapy for now.

“Our problem is communication” is the most common one-liner in marriage and family counseling. But do people who have been trained in communication really use those skills? Not when the showdown comes. As long as the communication techniques seem to support the ego story, it is okay. But when that story is threatened, out the window go the communication skills; fight or flight takes over.

What is this ego story that controls and contaminates communication? The ego story is who you think you are. Every symptom arises from that problematic belief. That communication skills are needed cannot be denied. But why can’t people communicate? What is poor communication a symptom of? Can the ego communicate? Is the aim of the ego to communicate and connect? Is poor communication a symptom of ego identification? When the ego wants communication and connection, it has to support the ego’s story. The ego is committed first of all to its own survival and to its story about itself. The ego can even be polite and sacrificial in order to get its way. If you observe closely, you will see that communication is often the servant of power struggling. Ego operates on the notion that we are separate.

When you say communication is the problem you are mouthing the fear-based belief in separation. What are you prepared to let go of in order to communicate? Is communication an attempt to find communion, or does communication arise from communion? If you assume the former, then communication means trying to get someone to agree with you. If we know that we are one, then communication flows out of that knowledge. When we assume separateness, we are already anxious about some kind of loss.

Of course there is a communication symptom, but it is not about talking. It is about the anxiety–ridden thinking which produces the talking. How we talk is how we think, and how we think is based upon what we assume, and what we assume is based upon who we think we are. Our communication perfectly reflects our confused, ambivalent, anxious state of identity and thinking.

Communication presumes separation, and separation is a myth, a fiction. There is no separate person to communicate with. We are all dreamers who believe in separation and in the anxiety that arises with separateness. There is no one who could be broke, who could lose, who could be cheated on or left out. There is no one who could be rejected, or hurt or victimized. It is all a dream which blames our anxiety upon poor communication.

Anxiety is your enemy or your friend. There is no middle ground. Every day we make that choice, consciously or unconsciously. When you make it consciously, you have begun your adventure in consciousness and your life will begin to work.

Spiritual Psychotherapy is the process of learning through my symptoms and suffering how to appreciate the awesome fact that everything in this intelligent, compassionate, and purpose-ful universe is exquisitely designed for my Self-realization.

Spiritual Psychotherapy occurs when you address yourself not simply as a social/bodily ego or a reactive stimulus-response machine, but as an infinite spiritual being, a god in the disguise of a human body and personality, who has, through forgetfulness and mis-imagination, created a flawed and incomplete self-image and worldview, and is now suffering the pain of some form of unconscious symptomatic self-victimization.

This symptomatic self-victimization is understood as an invitation by the Creator of this intelligent, compassionate, purposeful universe to transcend our temptation to repress or self-medicate our pain, and instead to inquire and look within our pain for the path to wholeness. This inquiring and inward-looking process of self-realization is called spiritual psychotherapy.

Sight is our outward-looking conditioned ego story which results in the victim experience and leads to symptom formation.

Vision is our inward-looking unconditioned non-story which results in true spiritual knowledge and the transformation of our symptoms.

Spiritual Psychotherapy addresses the suffering seeker as an infinite spiritual being in a finite physical body and a social-psychological personality system.

Spiritual Psychotherapy seeks to help the seeker identify the true meaning of their symptoms and suffering, and to erase the main cause thereof. The seeker, however, unconsciously addresses himself/herself and the world through the eyes of victimization.

Jesus is perhaps the best model for spiritual psychotherapy since his entire effort was devoted to the release of the human being through forgiveness from the experience of self-victimization.

"Poor Me" and "Ain't it Awful" are the two major games people play which set the stage for suffering and symptoms. The victim experience is held in place by three beliefs (judgments): separateness, lack and entrapment.

These three assumptions form the seeker's psychological story about the self and the world. This seemingly true story is illusory, dualistic, limiting, fear-driven and toxic.

Any religion, philosophy, science, medicine, politic or psychotherapy which unwittingly supports this dualistic story about human identity is, to that degree, inadequate in its approach to diagnosis and treatment of the human condition.

Victim symptoms arise because ultimately we ignore our spirituality and divinity. The anxiety which arises from this ignorance drives the compulsive search for comfort and control, but such solutions cannot be found within the story, but only as we awaken from such dramas.

The techniques of Spiritual Psychotherapy are techniques of awakening through shock, disillusionment, letting go, and a radically penetrating awareness of the difference between our story and the truth.

Spiritual Psychotherapy teaches and demonstrates the awareness that there are only two processes in life: fear and love, and that one of them is not real. It is the simplicity of this awareness which cuts through mis-diagnosis and mis-treatment and lays bare the purpose of all symptoms and suffering, which is Self-realization.

While it is true that we are moving into a new paradigm in the 21st century, in many ways psychological and religious thinking is still stuck in an old theory box, especially in the area of diagnosis.

Even though Jesus brought us A Course in Miracles in the 70's to address this theory dilemma, psychotherapy is still floundering in the same de-energized story as the culture in general.

Spiritual Psychotherapy is an attempt to address this story deadlock in a direct and forthright manner that challenges both religion and psychology to take a calculated leap into the rich territory of infinite imagination.

"The final frontier is not outer space, but the human imagination." -- Boeing

Infinity theory is an an-depth inquiry into this stuckness, particularly about diagnosis. Diagnosis is not an armchair speculative matter.

Everyone self-diagnoses his problems on a daily basis and prescribes his self-medicating solutions, and experiences the consequences therefrom.

Spiritual Psychotherapy is as much a challenge to the patient as to the doctor. Both patients and doctors assume they know what causes symptoms, but according to my research this is questionable.

It has been my experience that we don't know what causes our symptoms and that we treat the assumed cause with the wrong medicine. A Course in Miracles says that all illness is mental. While cognitive therapy has made some important strides in this direction, there is still a spiritual leap ahead that has rarely been taken.

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