Fr Jim Cogley
My own journey into the world of counselling and psychotherapy came about more by accident than intent. Yet, I can see clearly a big element of divine orchestration at work. During the early 70’s the Charismatic Renewal was sweeping the country with prayer meetings springing up in every town and village. With hindsight it was a wonderful opportunity for faith renewal that had it been promoted by the powers that be, and not viewed with suspicion, as it often was, our church would not be in the sorry state of decline where it finds itself at present. During seminary years it was my lifeline, and I became deeply involved. After prayer meetings people would come to leaders for prayer ministry and this became a wonderful learning opportunity at a young age to understand something of the complex world of healing. During those early days the vast majority understood healing only in terms of miraculous interventions and to be fair we did witness many extraordinary miracles take place. As time progressed, our understanding of healing began to deepen as we came to understand it as a journey into wholeness.
One of the truly great blessings of being introduced to psychology and psychotherapy through Charismatic Renewal was that spirituality was its source and always the intrinsic component of the work. There was a very healthy balance of awareness growing between the human and the spiritual. In fact, as our understanding deepened, we came to see the human and the spiritual journey as completely one, that to be a truly spiritual person meant becoming a fully alive human being, and to become truly human was not possible without a spiritual journey. The word ‘salvation’ that is so much part of religious vocabulary, we saw as coming from the Latin word ‘salus’ meaning wholeness. Unfortunately, this was understood by most at the time as getting into Heaven. Slowly we came to appreciate that Christs teachings were more about the here and now than the hereafter, and that salvation was all about the journey of becoming whole in this life. Similarly, we began to notice the interconnections between the words ‘holy’, ‘whole’ and ‘humility’. The latter comes from the Latin ‘humus’ meaning of the earth’ which helped up to see that ‘earthiness’ had not been a feature of our religion in spite of it being the faith system that was fully based on the doctrine of Incarnation.
In ministering to so many during the early days of Charismatic we were learning the basics of counselling skills. It extended beyond prayer to deep listening as to what was really going on in someone’s life and the realization that prayer on its own was not going to fix the problem. Sometimes people had to be empowered and encouraged to make difficult choices. Through listening we could see that people were being enabled to hear what was going on in their lives. So, we learned to listen with the intention of hearing, and not with the intention of speaking. We learned the importance of silent attentive listening where we weren’t trying to fix or give advice. We simply gave the other prayerful sacred space and over time we noticed significant changes taking place. Coming to terms with difficult decisions in relationships often entailed seeing that something might be very right even if it appeared to break certain rules. Then when physical ailments and serious conditions remained, we noticed how the inner disposition became remarkably different. We saw many who lost the battle with a physical condition like cancer, yet we often had the satisfaction that while he or she had not been healed they had become whole, and ultimately that was our primary concern.
Coming into counselling from a spiritual background our language would have been quite scriptural. We used terms like ‘discernment’ instead of ’intuition’. Praying with people we asked for ‘a word of knowledge’ rather than insight to guide us. Being new to the work we had
no experience to back us up, no diplomas under our belt, and very few books to guide us. We simply trusted in Divine Providence, and it never let us down. As some of us who were in leadership roles back then progressed into the world of psychotherapy and formal training, we discovered that a rose was still a rose by any other name. The basic truths were the same, but the language was somewhat different. Being open and receptive to the client and listening with total attention was part of the first module in counselling training. Not being dependent on books, formal training or past experiences was a basic teaching in psychotherapy practice and what we had been doing for years simply because we had no other option. Following a thread of energy in a counselling session was also part of formal training while in scriptural terms we might have used the term ‘allowing ourselves to be led by the Spirit’.
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