painting by Sibel Ozer
By Sibel Ozer
I recently came across a photo of an autumn leaf inside a hand. The veins of the leaf lined up with the lifelines of the palm, blending into one another. A beautiful image of our interconnectedness.
I think of the psyche similarly, as an extension of nature, an invisible landscape with its various terrains, different weather patterns, and inhabitants.
When it comes to understanding and navigating life and relationships there often seems to be an element of “building a puzzle with missing pieces.” In other words, an element of the unknown or unknowable.
Compared to previous generations we know a lot more about a range of topics involving the mechanisms of human thinking, emotions, and behavior from the role of genetics, the functioning of the brain, the impact of the environment, and the place emotions play in rational decision making. And yet, for all the knowledge available to us, certainty around what would be most needed or helpful to a particular person dealing with a unique life situation remains just outside our reach. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t answers to be had, but rather that a journey is needed to reach them.
In a psychotherapy session it is often after something is chosen and pursued that we get to find out whether or not it really was what was most needed by the way our client reacts to it. Some sessions are helpful while others are just what the psyche needed that the mind didn’t even know it needed. I’ve watched over the years how the latter often comes through an unfolding that was spontaneous, as opposed to a meticulously executed therapy plan.
The first decade of my career as a psychotherapist was spent deepening my practice as I continued to acquire information through numerous post-graduate trainings. Our training recommends that we make assessments and follow treatment plans, that we increase our knowledge and techniques, that our sessions follow an agenda based on the study of the client through rational inquiry. As the years went by, and I continued to pay attention to the quality between my sessions with regards to what worked and helped, I found myself prioritizing the emergence and unfolding of sessions in their own accord, which is a far less cerebral process, than the former. The seeking of wisdom, it turns out, is a different endeavor then the seeking of information.
Einstein is attributed to have said that the intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. So, even as it is logical to rely on the rational mind more than intuition because it is the only seemingly reliable source that we can depend on, I have come to realize the wisdom to give more consideration to the suggestions of the intuitive mind despite its lack of controllability and predictability.
It feels harder to go to intuition for advice as there are no guarantees as to what, let alone if, we will receive something. This ambiguity feels very distasteful to the mind. And yet, most seasoned therapists rely on intuition regularly knowing that if we hold on to our carefully mapped up treatment goals or step-by-step treatment protocols too tightly, it is hard to attune to the less concrete factors of relationship.
The real dilemma lies in the challenge of holding on to knowledge as well as tuning into the mysterious unknown that has a capacity to reveal what is most needed simultaneously. So, I am not suggesting that we choose between the two minds, but rather that we allow the reconfiguration of our knowledge base to be new and fresh with each client, which can only happen through the leadership of our inner wisdom.
When I was in training for sensorimotor psychotherapy with Pat Ogden, she would present a concept with great detail—starting with a definition, moving onto applications, and then adding a video example of how she used the concept in session. We would then pair up to practice the concept with one another in an effort to move the theoretical into practice. I remember a particular day I was overwhelmed with trying to hold onto all the pieces of information I had just received as we were moving into the experiential. When I voiced my concern, her counsel was simple. “Let go of everything you just learned, and do what you do.” I remember thinking this must be a bad joke, that somehow what she said was paradoxical—the goal was that I retain the information, not forget it, I was pretty sure.
What she meant, of course, was that I didn’t need to lead from the knowledge or hold on to it for dear life. She meant that the knowledge had already entered my system, would probably need some time to be digested, and that in the meantime I was there to try things on, let things unfold, and learn from that as much as the teachings. The real teaching was hidden in how she applied these principles herself: creatively, with flexibility, no one session of hers looking like another, each one requiring her to combine the principles in a unique way or come up with new ones when necessary. The heart of the teaching was that attending to the revelations of the body over the mind are more effective in working with trauma clients. The way we went about doing that would look slightly different every time.
Allowing therapy to be unique and different with each session requires us to lead not from the mind that likes to commandeer a session, but from a collaborative approach between the mind and intuition. This requires being client centered, being willing to let their psyche decide what matters and how to go about attending to things. It also means being open to the field between therapist and client and all that might be residing there which is invisible to the eye—such as the personal unconscious, the collective unconscious, and the transpersonal realms.
An art piece I created while thinking of working in this way revealed a topographical difference between the mind and intuition. We often think of the psyche in parts and it is pretty hard wired in our minds that there are layers similar to an iceberg, some available to decipher, residing above ground, and others needing digging into layers.
What my painting revealed was the difference in the landscape of the two minds (sometimes also referred to as a left brain/right brain dichotomy). I now think of the rational mind as solid land, which includes the conscious and parts of the unconscious realms, as the unconscious often comprises of what the conscious mind rejects. And I have come to understand that insight and wisdom are to be found in the waters. There is a current of wisdom that runs through the land like a river and this is where we can find our connection to our inner being, what Jung called the Self with a capital S. This is the place where attunement happens, where intuition runs free, and where wisdom is all abound, apart from the knowledge that resides in the mind, but able to draw from it.
This difference is often referred to as a separation between the mind and the heart, the mind being the source of cognition, and the heart, of intuition. The heart, however, is also designated to be the container of emotions, and emotions are more connected to the mind than wisdom. Or rather, emotions appear as the weather patterns on the landscape, having a cyclical nature to them. Appearing, intensifying, and then transforming into something else. We would be remiss to rely on our emotions over our thoughts, thinking they are the source of wisdom. Wisdom is a dynamic in its own right, separate from mind-generated thoughts and emotions.
The current of wisdom refers to the place Yunus Emre, a Turkish wonderer and poet, defined as:
“There is a me inside of me, deeper than I.”
I know that when I enter the waters as opposed to staying on land, I am no longer thinking, but allowing the questions and answers to reveal themselves in their own rhythm. I am not deliberating or commandeering, but rather letting the session unfold as if it were an intuitive painting, getting out of the way so that the current of wisdom can offer its gifts. It is not that I am cutting access to my knowledge as much as letting it configure itself in a creative way, almost of its own accord. It is a practice of allowing the questions and answers to arise, as opposed to thinking them up.
When it comes to grappling with the meaning of life and actions humanity makes individually and collectively, we need the accumulation of knowledge that builds upon itself, some of it changing with time, some remaining as unchangeable as the temperature at which water freezes. We also need to rely on our creativity, our myths, theater, art, music, literature, and poetry, that also change over time, and yet continue to address the mysteries of life, the unknowable and the confounding, the boundlessness of the universe and love, the existential angst and search for meaning that exists in us all, our attempts to come to terms with the harsh realities of sickness, aging and death, our interconnectedness and interdependence with all living things, and the choices we make contrary to reason.
Rollo May wrote The Cry for Myth in 1991, and Thomas Moore’s Care of the Soul was published a year later, both of them clarifying our need for myths suggesting against reason that they are not falsehoods. That they are not products of the imagination that have no value or weight compared to the rational mind, but that they need to be recognized as essential to human health, valued as equally as we would value both sides of our brain.
And yet, western society seems to have overvalued rationality, and often ridicules or dismisses the creative function, as if we are walking around as minds without a soul, or heads without a body. Mental health itself is often neglected compared to physical health, as it seems less straightforward to deal with, let alone heal. Disconnected from the layers of our being, we have lost our connection to other living things, including nature Herself.
I found a most fitting analogy in Mary Reynolds’s The Garden Awakening. She writes about the land being alive, both in terms of teeming with creatures on and below the surface, and also in the way we are alive—conscious, and capable of feeling, hurting, and healing. She is referring to the few remaining wild places left, where the Spirit of the earth flows freely, where harmony and balance exist, where humankind hasn’t changed the natural order of things. As she discusses the difference between an English garden and a wild one, I thought it is not that different from a person who is all Mind, disconnected from their Inner Being.
When we suppress intuition, when we function from cognition only, we cut ourselves off from what makes us truly alive, awake, in harmony, and connected to the rest of life.
In our work as psychotherapists if we rely solely on knowledge and our mind, we lose out on the wealth of information that resides in the currents of wisdom that reside within each of us, ourselves, and our clients. It is not as comfortable to flow with the waters as it is to stand on land, yet it proves to be immeasurably helpful to offer our clients what might be most needed in a given moment.
Sibel Ozer is a licensed professional counselor and board-certified art therapist practicing privately in downtown Ann Arbor. She is a certified EMDR practitioner and a graduate of the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland. She gives experiential workshops nationally and in her country of origin (Turkey) on different art therapy topics. Visit sibelozer.com for more information.
