My cat is throwing up on my mother’s rug while she’s in the bathroom having a dementia meltdown.
My brother is yelling at me because I took his clothes out of the dryer (and put them in a laundry basket) so that I could put my mother’s clothes (that I gathered and spot sprayed and washed) in the dryer.
I finally get my mother settled in her recliner to watch the Catholic mass on EWTN. The priest is already in the middle of his sermon, disparaging global warming because of something to do with God putting the sun up there for us.
While I make my mother lunch, I am half listening to what the priest is saying, and it sure sounds like unrealistic nonsense to me — admonitions to live by the Church’s rules, a disempowering assertion of who’s the real boss of you.
I can’t see how any of that sermonizing can be of much help to anyone searching for guidance in how to give personal meaning to the actual time he/she spends on this planet.
What I believe is that where psychology and spirituality (not religion) overlap , it is at that broad intersection where one can discover one’s own power as an individual living in this place at this time. I am not using the word “spirituality” in any theistic sense, but rather in the sense of our animating energy, whatever it is that inspires us, awes us, puts a fire in our bellies. One’s own “spirit.” “Soul.”
The shaman of ancient cultures knew how to create that intersection. I think that the best of today’s therapists understand how to do that for today’s seekers.