Spirituality matters, I believe, because all of the challenges us humans face, such as: financial trouble, loss of meaning or direction, anger, sadness, discord, loneliness, addiction, co-dependency and confusion – can all be construed as spiritual challenges. All arise from our inner conflicts and disconnection from parts of ourselves.
But this is not the predominant view held by people today. Our societal Modus Operandi is materialism. We operate off a belief that says: ‘if only we can ‘make’ our world a certain way – if only we can configure it just so, develop the right technology, find the ‘right’ set of values for everyone to agree on, or the ‘right’ set of rules that is ‘objectively best for everybody’ – then we’ll be OK.’ The externalities of this approach are becoming undeniable in the damage being done to our environment, our dysfunctional economy, suffering mental health and chronic disease which we try to regulate with pharmaceuticals. Meanwhile new discoveries in physics suggest that our consciousness plays a role in what appears to us as happening in the external world. The number of data points that don’t fit the model is compounding, and is a testament to the unsustainability of our attempts to wrangle with the world whilst neglecting our minds. The adverse real-world results of the materialist view are gradually compelling people to open up to other paradigms for understanding what it might mean to live a good life.
The fundamental flaw at the heart of the materialist view and approach is that is misses the role of the mind and consciousness. It infers a material world from experience, and appropriates this for the real thing. When, as a matter of direct raw experience, all we can truly know is our own minds.
This is acknowledged on some level in today’s science. We might be told that what we are experiencing is neurons firing in the brain, for example. We consider the role of the mind in medicine when we talk about ‘psychosomatic’ symptoms, or when we account for the effects of placebos in clinical trials. Still, we consider these as auxiliary factors to an otherwise materialist model.
In truth, whatever really ‘exists out there,’ nothing we ever experience happens outside of our mind. This includes the material world, as well as all our pain, our suffering, meaning and joy.
It stands to reason then that, if we are to live well, we would do well to look at the mind itself. We might regard our challenges not as material challenges to be overcome but spiritual challenges to be resolved. The mind certainly plays *a* role, and this is something we can all agree on.
If the challenges we each face can be construed as spiritual challenges, then any solutions for these challenges can be construed as spiritual solutions. And if we are able to frame them as such, we can craft real solutions that bring about lasting change by getting to work on the mind itself.
What is Spirituality?
The great psychologist Carl Jung once said:
“I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among those in the second half of life – that is to say, over 35 – there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given their followers, and none of them has really been healed who did not regain his religious outlook.”
Today we might say their problem in the last resort was ‘spiritual,’ as opposed to religious (bearing in mind that Jung initially said this in the early 1930s, in German). Since then our associations with the words ‘spiritual’ and ‘religious’ have diverged somewhat as organised religion has continued to come under fire from modern science.
And yet for all the importance of spirituality to our lives, we no longer seem to have agreement on what ‘spirituality’ actually means.
Is it tied to religion? Can you be spiritual without religion? If science has dispelled religion as we used to know it, then what exactly is ‘spirituality’ and where does it fit in our modern lives?
The Collins Dictionary defines “spirituality” as follows:
1. the state or quality of being dedicated to God, religion, or spiritual things or values, especially as contrasted with material or temporal ones
2. the condition or quality of being spiritual
3. a distinctive approach to religion or prayer
It further defines “spiritual” as
“relating to people’s thoughts and beliefs, rather than to their bodies and physical surroundings.”
Most people on a journey of spiritual growth, or who have found lasting solutions to their apparent worldly problems, will find these definitions quite unsatisfactory with their references to belief and religion. But this difficulty in defining spirituality is not surprising given what science and psychology have brought to the table over the last 150 years, the changing role of organised religion, and the hole it has left in the modern psyche.
I’m now going to describe how I think of spirituality, taking into account these modern developments.
Spirituality is an interest in aligning oneself with ‘what is,’ beyond the Ego. It is:
- built on the innate understanding that there is more to ourselves and existence than our immediate experience suggests, and;
- involves an openness to the notion of, and interaction with, the unconscious mind.
This definition incorporates knowledge from the last 150 years of psychology, from thinkers such as Freud and Jung and the understanding of the unconscious.
After all:
- there is more to existence than the conscious Ego purports. And the misalignment between the Ego and this greater whole is both the origin of suffering and the source of meaning;
- this understanding is innate, and something we spend our entire lives trying to come to make conscious sense of;
- there is such a thing as the unconscious, although not best described as a ‘thing’ at all, but vast expanses of mind and potential of which we are not aware, and that religion has historically provided a vital means of engaging with;
- it is therefore possible to practice a spiritual life without necessarily being ‘religious.’
It is spirituality, as understood in this way, that provides the path towards meaning, wholeness, congruency and becoming our true selves. There are no problems outside of our mind. In fact, there’s nothing we experience outside of our mind. The world is not the problem. It is how our mind relates to experience that creates the perception of a problem. And you can do something about it, because your mind is giving rise to it.
We can address our issues by addressing our mind, and making the unconscious conscious. This is what materialism misses.
Making the Unconscious Conscious
All religions and spiritual traditions ostensibly serve as a vehicle for navigating the predicament we find ourselves in. They provide a method, a way of life for spiritual growth and a means of engaging with our unconscious mind. In doing all of this they provide a source of meaning as an antidote to the otherwise ineradicable suffering that accompanies life.
Religions, like all objects in life, can be both a vehicle for our growth and a trap. And our modern understanding of the unconscious mind can explain exactly how religions have become traps – where they are no longer being used as a vehicle for growth, but as another object to be clung to, as a means to power, or in any case are an obstacle to the genuine development of consciousness.
But that does not mean that we ought to throw out everything religion stands for.
There are common elements to all religions that do genuinely serve to advance consciousness to a point. There is a lot we can learn from observing what works, whilst using modern psychology to understand why it works.
We can observe that all forms of spirituality, whether we are talking about Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, new age or even secular spirituality, tend to be concerned with three key cornerstones of life and practice.
The first cornerstone is wisdom, or understanding – A mental model and attitude, to ground us in experience, help us make sense of what we are experiencing and provide a map of how to progress. Wisdom helps us to discern what progress actually consists of, and points the way so that we can decisively move in that direction.
Secondly, spiritual traditions are concerned with our conduct in the world – a system of ethics, how to treat other people and creatures. How to speak. How to engage with the substances and temptations of the world. How to approach our livelihood. And what is considered moral.
Thirdly, spiritual traditions teach mental discipline. In the Abrahamic religions this comes in the form of prayer, as well as restraint in daily life. In Islam, prayer is practiced especially actively, generally five times per day. In the eastern traditions, such as Buddhism and Hinduism or the earlier Brahmanism, meditation is practiced. Although the original sansrkit word, from which we take ‘meditation,’ is “Bhavana,” which actually means something closer to our word “cultivation.” All forms of prayer and meditation are a kind of mental cultivation – a practice of training the mind and connecting with the whole beyond the Ego.
These three cornerstones – wisdom, conduct and mental discipline – are three components of the same path. Any spiritual practice that serves to help you out of your challenges and suffering, and towards wholeness and congruency of mind, will incorporate all three of these cornerstones.
Without wisdom, there is no map, and any movement in the direction of wholeness will be happenstance and temporary. Likewise, you can have insight, but, without embodying wholesome conduct in daily life, you are still going to be acting on your mind in a way that gives rise to conflict in yourself and in the world. Lastly, without mental discipline, you will have no chance of executing in bringing conduct and understanding together and reaching higher levels of Consciousness Development. Without mental discipline, there is no way of deeply connecting with ‘what is’ beyond the Ego.
All religions and spiritual practices seem to ‘work.’ They seem to produce results in the person following them.
But why do they really work?
Conventionally, a religious practitioner might explain the benefits of their practice in symbolic terms pertaining to their religion. They might say that they are experiencing the “grace of God.” Or they might say they have “good Karma.” About prayer they might say they are “talking to God,” or “sending prayers or love to those in need.” And they would not be “wrong” in any of these statements.
Challenges arise however, when we do not realise that we are engaging with symbols and not the deeper reality – when we misappropriate symbols and language for the real lived experience. We use symbols, including language, as a way to navigate experience. The symbols themselves are not the ‘real thing,’ which they represent, but are a way of connecting with it.
We might come to explain what we are doing in terms of the symbols, and mistake them for the point. We arrive at some idea of what produces favourable results for us, but can only explain the why in terms of the interactions of the various symbols. The more we become attached to mere symbols of spirituality, the more we disconnect from the real thing – the more the what seems to deviate from the actual why, and the more conflict creeps back in to our own mind and between people and groups. We have, in short, come to believe that it is about ‘being a certain way,’ rather than simply ‘living without conflict.’
And hence why we have conflict between groups of people and religions who, at their core, would seem to agree on many underlying principles. Two different religious groups may both practice kind intentions, speech and actions but, for this confusion, are unable to be consistently kind to each other.
Religions provide a framework that brings a person’s mind closer to a state of wholeness. They work to reduce inner conflict in the individual by giving them a way to engage with their unconscious mind, their true selves, the whole, beyond the Ego, and a sense of purpose to unify their minds around. Even by practicing a few basic spiritual tenets, like speaking honestly and practicing generosity, you can greatly improve the state of your mind and your lived experience.
Religion and spiritual practice work because they work to make the unconscious conscious, and to the extent that they do the same. But in the absence of an understanding of the unconscious, these traditions bring their own challenges.
They may appear to work and produce beneficial results over and over again, and on that basis you might assume they are “the truth.” But unless there is an accounting made within the model itself to say – ‘the map is not the territory’ – then it can only take you so far. It is likely to even land you in some very difficult spiritual traps, or even trauma when the lived experience fails to meet up to the ideal.
We are encouraged to project our own inner Sage onto religious figures, mostly preventing us from realising it in ourselves. And not just the Sage, but all archetypes and experiences are projected onto the external world. We engage with our unconscious through the world, but do not realise that what we are experiencing is part of us.
The same applies to experiences of evil, as well as beauty. When the Buddha for example encountered Mara, the Buddhist ‘devil’ figure, the texts presume he was indeed meeting a literal devil, and not a projection from his own mind. And God knows how much harm has been done in the name of ‘good,’ whilst projecting ‘evil’ out onto other religious groups.
It is precisely this missing piece of the unconscious that has made religion and traditional spiritual practice pervious to modern science.
Whilst all religions teach the value of renunciation and ‘letting go,’ none have any reliable way to discern genuine ‘letting go’ from mere repression. This is fatal, since the outcome of both can *appear* to improve the state of one’s mind, at least in the short term, but only the genuine integration of unconscious contents can lead to lasting freedom.
What psychologists like Freud and Jung realised is that the cause of all our suffering and neurosis has its roots in the unconscious – from the disintegrated psyche being unable to meet all the disparate needs of its conscious and unconscious aspects.
What any legitimate spiritual tradition seeks to do is to integrate the psyche – to reduce inner conflict by enabling a relationship with the unconscious.
So for all the benefits that religion has brought, as an antidote to the suffering of life, it leaves out this vital component – a nuanced understanding of the mind itself, including the notion of an unconscious. For this reason, religion, if followed ‘to a T,’ can only take a person so far in the development of their consciousness. In principle it encourages its followers to remain with the map, always falling short of the territory. Invariably, the true Sages of religion are those who managed to break beyond the doctrines and conditioning imposed on them by the short-sighted herd.
What the true Sage seeks to do is to make the unconscious conscious.
Someone who has done significant work on their mind in this way is living an enjoyable and peaceful existence. They are resilient to chaos in the world because they have straightened out their mind enough that they are in control of their lives.
The work of Jung can help our understanding here. He and his contemporaries made huge leaps in the discovery of the unconscious mind and the role it plays in both our suffering and our wellbeing.
Jung coined the term ‘individuation’ – which is the name given to this process of coming to consciousness – of growing beyond the ego, attaining to wholeness and discovering your true Self. This is the goal that all religions aspire to. As well as the solution to our challenges.
The path of individuation is the process of making the unconscious conscious. And this is what religion had missed.
Individuation is a Way of Life
Jung did not consider himself a mystic. By trade he was a psychotherapist and spent much of his working hours with patients helping them to cure their various neuroses. His remit was not really to teach people how to live in a way that is conducive to individuation – that would have been to ask a lot from Jung whose work towards understanding the mind was already prolific and ground-breaking.
That said, Carl Jung himself was someone I would consider a true Sage. Not only did he have a deep understanding of and took responsibility for his own mind, he carried himself as someone who lived by that understanding. The way he spoke was upfront and honest. His writing was expansive, yet nuanced and precise. He gave himself fully to his livelihood and generously brought new concepts into the world. He lived a modest life in a comfortable home by Lake Zurich. Lastly it was clear he was a proponent of mental discipline, in particular Active Imagination exercises which he practiced on himself and with patients.
As much as Jung was not here to teach us about daily conduct and mental discipline, you will not find a single Sage who does not practice these cornerstones, including Jung himself. It was in fact his own adherence to a spiritual way of life (whether or not he regarded it as such) that made him such a proficient spiritual leader in all but title.
Jung’s work was primarily concerned with what I now call the first habit of the Seven Habits of individuation, which is to Take Responsibility for Your Mind. Moreover, it’s not just about taking responsibility for our mind, but understanding that we are responsible for our mind. And that when we put all Seven Habits into practice, we will come to see through our direct experience, that this is our mind, and that, as a matter of direct raw experience, all we really know is the mind.
Of course, our perception doesn’t give us this impression by default – the Ego constructs a compelling narrative to help us survive and belong socially. We can also use our experience of living in the world as a way to objectify ourselves and make the decisions that lead to our individuation.
If there was a line in the sand on the individuation journey, it is this moment where you begin taking responsibility for your mind by regarding everything you experience, whether painful or pleasant, as part of you and as having a purpose.
Whilst no habit on the path of individuation is any more important than any other, because they are all essential, this first habit is the foundation and the map that unifies all other habits.
So as essential as the understanding offered by Jung is to the individuation journey, you simply would not be able to individuate without wisdom, wholesome conduct and mental discipline.
As discussed earlier, these additional cornerstones have traditionally remained the remit of religion. And these traditions do provide an excellent system for improving the state of your mind – a benefit we lose when we throw them out completely in the name of science.
But in the absence of understanding individuation and the unconscious, religious practices can come to be seen as ‘rules’ of behaviour, punished by the wrath of God or similar, rather than as guidelines for understanding and integrating your mind. What Jung helps us to see is that these are not ‘rules’ to be followed, or broken, but to be understood.
To tell a lie, for example, is not inherently ‘bad’ or ‘wrong,’ it is just not conducive to wholeness. We don’t speak the truth in order to not upset God, but because not speaking the truth will lead to conflict and a disintegrated mind. It harms others, and aspects of our psyche that remain split off through lying will bring harm to ourselves.
When understood in this way, we come to see that ‘lying’ is not merely something we can do with words, but also with our intentions, our tone and even with our bodies. That is why Habit 3, Skilful Communication, is essential to the development of consciousness.
As Jung said:
“We have not understood yet that the discovery of the unconscious means an enormous spiritual task, which must be accomplished if we wish to preserve our civilization.”
This spiritual task is the path of individuation, and it is a way of life, not just something you do during the hours spent with your coach, therapist or spiritual group. It permeates every aspect of life, and involves understanding, conduct and mental discipline. How we relate to the world is a reflection of our minds, and The Seven Habits are how we get to work on our mind through how we interact with the world.
When we take the task on, we notice life open up with opportunities to integrate our minds. Synchronicities that we might have previously dismissed now become frequent and impossible to explain away. Challenges present themselves in a curiously symbolic way, and the beauty is that we can now approach them with a method and the confidence. After all, if we weren’t capable of figuring them out, they would not have arisen. The task is enormous, but so are the rewards at every step.
This is the part that sits outside the remit of psychology as it is practiced today.
The Seven Habits, in Brief
Without a map, and an understanding of what to do and why we’re doing it, it can be very difficult to execute on any decision that would serve to reduce our inner conflict. Knowing what to do is half the challenge.
We tend to like one-size-fits all answers so that we can consider our problems ‘fixed’ and be done with them. But there are no simple answers to the challenges faced during individuation, nor any unbreakable ‘rules’ to apply in all situations that will meaningfully move us forward.
Much of the real work is emotional, energetic work. If it was possible just to act out individuation, there would be no real work involved and no real growth or changes to the psyche.
For example, communicating what is ‘kind’ in Habit 3, does not mean we blanketly act ‘nice’ all the time. To ‘act’ any way at all would be to push something else into the unconscious. In the case of ‘niceness,’ namely unkindness, harshness or similar would be cast into the Shadow. And this ‘niceness’ would not be appropriate in all situations – situations such as: precisely the kind that our unconscious will inexorably bring about as challenges for us. Until we make both sides of this spectrum conscious, the world will present to us in a way that compels us to integrate what we’ve hidden.
To be kind, at its heart, is not about being ‘nice,’ but about treating others as ourselves, being open to what we find painful and facing up to it skilfully without pushing it away. Likewise, this does not mean defending ourselves with impulsive anger, because that would also be to hide something from ourselves.
The majority of challenges we encounter will demand a more subtle approach – a middle way. They will not be resolved with one-sided use of what we previously relied on, but will call on us to integrate our opposites to find a new, transcendent approach that is measured, conscious and congruent with the challenge as it presents itself. Only then can we finally resolve it in ourselves and the world.
Sometimes speaking firmly, but nonetheless kindly, might be exactly what is required of us in order to ‘make it conscious.’ Whereas to merely cover up what is hidden, with a façade of ‘nice,’ or by ‘turning the other cheek,’ does nothing to transform ourselves or the other spiritually. It does not resolve the situation in a way that prevents it from reoccurring.
Here are the Seven Habits, in brief.
Habit 1 – Take Responsibility For Your Mind
Habit 2 – Cultivate Wholesome Intentions
These first two habits form the wisdom or understanding cornerstone.
Habit 3 – Skilful Communication, and;
Habit 4 – Contribute Your Unique & Specific Value
These two pertain to conduct.
Habit 5 – Manage Your State;
Habit 6 – Mindfulness, All Day Every Day, and;
Habit 7 – Meditate Daily.
These final three habits are to do with mental discipline.
The Seven Habits all subsume to the overarching task that is to ‘make it conscious.’ They are a modality for moving our mind towards a state of wholeness, without conflict.
Practice of the Seven Habits puts us face to face with our inner conflicts. For example, if we catch ourselves about to tell a ‘white lie.’ Then, by choosing to speak what is true instead, it prompts us to look at what was really compelling us to lie. In turn, we face up to a feeling we were previously unwilling to feel, make it conscious, and set ourselves free from impulsively acting on it.
Conversely, when we find ourselves unable to perform the Seven Habits, it gives us insight into aspects of our unconscious that we otherwise would have been unable to see. If we find that we are not contributing our unique value through our livelihood, Habit 4 can lead to insight as to why that might be and what we might be resisting in ourselves.
In other words, the Seven Habits act as both the practice that we execute upon, to create and respond to opportunities for integration, as well as the guide – the warning light on the dashboard of our mind, flashing up signs of misalignment that we would otherwise have been unable to see.
They are not ‘rules’ to be followed, but guidelines to be understood, and incorporated in whatever way you need for your own unique mind and situation.
They are habits. They get easier the more you do them. And they become part of your psyche with little need to think about them.
They are a go-to when you’re not sure what to do, or why something isn’t currently working.
Of course, the idea of a way of life, that is conducive to spiritual growth, is not new. But bringing it together in a way that combines this modern understanding of the unconscious mind, and the wider life practices needed for individuation, I feel is pertinent to the needs of today.
The Seven Habits are my attempt to deconstruct and systemise the wisdom of Sages, people I have known, and from history. They seek to convey not only what works for spiritual growth, but why it works, so that anybody can apply ‘the principles of coming to consciousness,’ regardless of faith, tradition or lack thereof. The model is inherently resistant to corruption – or to the map being confused for the territory.
The inspiration for the Seven Habits has come from three primary sources:
- from many spiritual teachers, psychologists, and coaches I have had the privilege to work with;
- from my reading of psychology and various spiritual traditions and;
- from 20+years of personal spiritual practice, and experience of what has helped to resolve conflict and life challenges for me.
These challenges have included an intense corporate career, running an online business whilst travelling to different parts of the world, and my escape from two years in a Buddhist-inspired cult wherein I had become its leader’s “closest student.”
I have been reminded time and time again that the real challenges are in the mind, that the way forward is to make it conscious, and that individuation is, indeed, a way of life.
Thank you for reading this article. If you would like to learn more about The Seven Habits of Individuation and start putting them into practice, you can download my introductory guide here.
