ABSTRACT
If pushed, I might say that psychotherapy is a great spiritual practice that awakens us to how and why we create suffering and shows us a path toward compassion and interdependence. But I would rather not. I would rather talk about psychotherapy as its own practice: a practice of ordinary transcendence. This kind of transcendence provides evidence and insight that being human means being dependent, and that the life space we inhabit is one of interdependence, not independence. It also shows us that self-protectiveness, isolation, and the ubiquitous human desire for omnipotence produce great suffering. This type of transcendence carries no special labels such as ‘mystical’ or ‘spiritual.’ It frequently goes unnoticed outside of psychotherapy or other practices designed to reveal it, because it goes against the grain of our culture of individualism.
