SAGE ADVICE

Modern Healers' Debt to the Past

by Phillip Jones

Phillip Jones, MA, LMHC, is a licensed psychotherapist, spiritual teacher, and rites of passage facilitator.  He is currently the senior spiritual counselor for Hospice of Hilo on Hawaii’s Big Island, and also gives lectures, leads seminars, and facilitates longer retreats with his wife to sacred sites. 
Phillip’s undergraduate studies in science and engineering led him to the fields of psychology, philosophy and religion to find complementary answers to life’s pressing questions.
To many clergy, psychotherapy is godless; to many therapists, religion is irrelevant.  Physicians meanwhile are attempting to defend their bastion of respectability, which they see as threatened by anything "alternative," be it therapy or spirituality.  Alternative or complementary medicine, meanwhile, is growing in leaps and bounds.  Many people are demanding more holistic (and effective) treatment from their health practitioners, and (by a large margin) they are asking their therapists to include a spiritual dimension in their practice.

The popularity of "alternative" doctors like Andrew Weil, M.D., Deepak Chopra, M.D., Bernie Siegal, M.D., and Larry Dossey, M.D., are testimony to the changing views of the American public.  These M.D.'s recommend everything from meditation to herbs to yoga to prayer and meditation as important parts of a well-rounded prevention/treatment program for all their clients.  Body, mind, emotions and spirit are all acknowledged and considered in the creation of an effective prevention/treatment plan.

Today -- as many people look to a future incorporating more holistic arts and holistic healing modalities -- is an appropriate time to look to a past when sages were often doctors, scientists were often philosophers, and ministers were healers of body, mind and spirit.  The great Sages of the past have left a large body of wisdom which has in fact inspired many modern psychotherapy practitioners.  Jung was inspired by yoga and the I Ching.  Albert Ellis by Epictetus, the Stoic philosopher, and Karen Horney by Zen Buddhism, to name a few.  As we move forward toward a more wholistic "ancient future," we would all be well advised to acknowledge our debts to the wholistic sages of the past, and to drink deeply of their wisdom as we become the whole person ministers of the 21st century.

Phillip Jones, MA Licensed Psychotherapist
From time immemorial, wise men and wise women have arisen in every great culture to advise, guide, prophesy, teach, and sometimes to judge in the lives and activities of their rulers and the people in general.  These counselors often gave guidance in all the affairs of life -- spiritual, mental, emotional and physical.  Prior to recent centuries, there was a common understanding that these four aspects of self were interactive and interdependent.

Hippocrates was not only the father of medicine, but a great philosopher in his own right.  Buddha was the founder of what became a great religion, but his teachings have evolved into a profound psychological system as well.  And Jesus Christ, in addition to his preeminence as a spiritual giant, was a great healer as well, curing incurable illnesses and even raising the dead.
Since the "split" between science and philosophy/religion, there has come to be a corresponding split between those who give spiritual guidance, those who give physical guidance, and those who give mental/emotional guidance as well; the clergy, the doctors and the therapists.  There have been benefits to this specialization, with each of these three types of "ministers" focusing in depth on the physical, mental/emotional or spiritual health of their clients.  However, there have been devastating effects as well, chief of which is the loss of a holistic perspective on the person, failing to see the whole person as a being with four aspects of self influencing each other.

Many clergy are suspicious of psychiatrists and psychotherapists, who in today's world seem to have been taken over the role of Primary Counselor for a large number of people.  This has traditionally been a role which the clergy held.  On the other hand, therapist tend to be very reluctant to acknowledge the importance of spirit  in the lives of their clients, fearful that such recognition would blemish their profession's status as a hard science.