V. The Unhealed Healer P 4
4 Some newer forms of the ego’s plan are as unhelpful as the older ones, because form does not matter and the content has not changed. In one of the newer forms, for example, a psychotherapist may interpret the ego’s symbols in a nightmare, and then use them to prove that the nightmare is real. Having made it real, he then attempts to dispel its effects by depreciating the importance of the dreamer. This would be a healing approach if the dreamer were also identified as unreal. Yet if the dreamer is equated with the mind, the mind’s corrective power through the Holy Spirit is denied. This is a contradiction even in the ego’s terms, and one which it usually notes even in its confusion.
5 If the way to counteract fear is to reduce the importance of the mind, how can this build ego strength? Such evident inconsistencies account for why no one has really explained what happens in psychotherapy. Nothing really does. Nothing real has happened to the unhealed healer, and he must learn from his own teaching. His ego will always seek to get something from the situation. The unhealed healer therefore does not know how to give, and consequently cannot share. He cannot correct because he is not working correctively. He believes that it is up to him to teach the patient what is real, although he does not know it himself.
Journal
I think the last sentence sums up both paragraphs. “He believes that it is up to him to teach the patient what is real, although he does not know it himself.” This is the unhealed healer. He is confused about what is real and what isn’t. He looks at the story for the truth, for clues to undo what he has made real. Making it real is how you keep it, not undo it.
The story is just form and not content, and changing the form will not really change anything. Changing the form is what we do all the time as we try to make the world change to suit us, and it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because it is the content that must be changed, and the content is not found in the form, though the form can lead to the content if one knows to look for it.
The unhealed healer goes into the relationship expecting to get something from it. He wants to be the one who knows, the one who succeeds. He thinks he needs the patient to respond as proof that he has done his job. He may want prestige and money. But giving to get is not really giving. The unhealed healer isn’t sharing and so there is no union and therefore no true relationship. It is in union and relationship that we are healed, because it is separation that is the sickness.
The psychoanalyst or theologian, or me or you, will not do anything of value if our own mind is not healed. No amount of digging around in the story is going to undo the story if the therapist is confused about the true nature of the patient, and is confused about the nature of healing and his part in it.
There are ways to help, though. When someone comes to me for counseling, I begin the session asking the Holy Spirit to work through me for this one. I listen to the story and then guide them out of the story to the true content, to the mind that is confused. I offer them an opportunity to see differently through the Holy Spirit in their mind.
If I share my own story of darkness it is only to share that I got out of it, and to share how I did that. I don’t teach that the darkness is real because I don’t believe it is real. Rather, I teach that what is not real cannot keep us bound. I am not concerned about the outcome because I am not asking them for anything. We are simply joining, forming a union with the two of us and the Holy Spirit. The union itself is healing for us both. That is real healing, I think, when the healer is healed along with the patient.
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