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The following paper on Dialogical Spirituality is an excert from a document I have recently presented at The European Conference of Gestalt Therapy in
Athens . Through various experiential exercises I then invited the workshop participants to contribute to this paper.The final product will then eventually become an co-created Dialogical article on the nature of Spirituality in Gestalt Therapy.
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DIALOGICAL SPIRITUALITY
Introduction
“This is the exalted melancholy of our fate, that every Thou in our world must become an It” (M.Buber 1958)
I would like to start by adding to Martin Buber’s quote above, by saying that it is also the diminished ecstasy of our creation that every It in our world must become a Thou.
In this introduction to Dialogical Spirituality, I invite you to explore and hopefully, celebrate both I-It and I-Thou as dualities and the Paradoxical dance between them which moves beyond duality.
It is so endemic to our society in these times to be someone doing something. Such is the desire to dress up the ego self that something of our true being; authentic self or inner essence is lost. We are lost to our deepest primordial selfless self. This is what Buber called I-It. For the purposes of this paper I shall refer to it as the I-It paradigm.
Gestalt Therapy has one the whole healthily transcended this paradigm (the I-It paradigm)by moving beyond the notion of a fixed self/ego. Concepts such as the here and now, presence, is-ness, relational field, paradox, awareness take us beyond the dualisms of the I-It paradigm. Consequentially, we are thus set sail in the rivers of spirtuality.The I-Thou paradigm.
We are an energy force forming and re-forming, creating and destroying. In my opinion, this takes us into the realms of Spirituality. We are not only the self-form we create in each moment but also the energy force of the universe which co-creates.
Dialogical Spirituality
Dialogical Spirituality* is a beautiful way of describing and observing this co-creational process. The beauty and power of Dialogical Spirituality and Gestalt Therapy is that it both honours duality (I-It) and transcends duality(I-Thou).
Through the nature of human dialogue Dialogical Spirituality honours the polarities of I-It and the wholeness of I-Thou and as such they are contained within both the egoic and Spiritual dimensions of Gestalt Psychotherapy.
The evolutionary paradigm from which we are collectively emerging I have called the I-It paradigm. This has fixed values, fixed self and is a dualistic paradigm of splits, rights/wrongs and polarities.
The I-Thou paradigm we are currently embracing .This paradigm transcends duality. So the Gestalt notion of wholism, field theory and recently relational dialogical thinking, interrelated co-creation are central to this I-Thou paradigm.
To fully embrace this wholistic non-dual I-Thou paradigm we need to transcend and include the I-It fixed dualistic paradigm.
As Gestalt Therapists working towards the inclusion of both I-It and I-Thou we dance a paradoxical dance. We need notions of "peak", "higher self" and "developmental" and at the same time recognise that they are points on an endlessly whole circle, perceived necessarily partially at times as a line of developmental points.
This is what Buber called walking the “narrow ridge” the realm of dialogical encounter which lies “between” self and other. In Taoism this is known as the “ Middle Way”.Similarly, Perls referred to it the “Point of Creative indifference”.
For example, Wilber’s notion of the "pre-trans fallacy" suggests the pre-personal is not Spiritual. However, the pre-spirtual experience is still a Spiritual experience though not viewed as wholly as the transcended spirit views. See here again the power of dualistic thinking and the I-It paradigm-we are always necessarily, comparing, splitting up parts of the whole. What we need to do is to embrace both the pre-personal and the trans-personal. The I-It and the I-Thou.
And so to our crystallised formation of Dialogical Spirituality. Within this structure the apparent pot holes of slipping back into dualistic thinking can at last be incorporated and included in the model of self/other dialogue.
Dialogical Spirituality is then the communion of spirits(common-union), the theatre of the absolute where the balanced dance of parts and wholes take centre stage in the micro arena of the therapeutic encounter : a reflective replay of the universal ultimate ground of primordial being.
Every Thou becomes an It, every it becomes a thou. Form into emptiness, emptiness into form, yin into Yang, day into night, out breath , in breath, self-other, man-woman, and the pulsating primal breath of the universe. This we see in the microcosm of each individual human being.
Consider these lists:
I-Thou I-It
Emptiness Form
Spirit Ego
Creation Destruction
Healing Suffering
Unity Conflict
Assimilation Differentiation
The more you focus on these lists you can also see that they are interchangeable.
There is an emptiness of It and a form of Thou.
Thou can also be seen as destructive, suffering, disharmony.
It can be seen as Healing, harmony and unity.
This is because all forms, its and Thous are multidimensional.
They all have aspects of wholeness.
They are everything and everything has its relational and complimentary counterpart.
All is relational. Mutually co-existent.
You can’t have conflict without unity or unity without conflict.
All poles are mutually complimentary and constantly moving.
“The urge for homeostatic balance and the urge for disturbance and excitement are complimentary opposites that coexist” (Clarkson/Mackewn).
Summary
Otherness: As Unity. (The Paradoxical Self)
Beyond the sometimes fearful mind there is a primal urge for connection, unity and love. A desireless desire to move beyond simply the limiting I-It forms of egoic self structures. An urge to merge in common union without abandoning parts of ourselves.
Here otherness can be seen as the Spirtual domain, the eternal Thou. The domain of our truest being or isness.The simultaneous celebration of the I-It and I-Thou. The Paradoxical Self.
The only way through conflict is to become singularly whole (ownership of all aspects of being) : paradoxically this includes embracing pluralistic differences.(many truths celebrated).
It is the diminished ecstasy of our creation that all that is becomes being. All beings are thus becoming in the vastness of their beingness.
Tim Carrette
Athens 2007
*My thanks to Lynne Williams for giving me permission to use her term “Dialogical Spirituality”.
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