Living mystically

I had a whiff recently of what my recent working life had been about. This is difficult for me as I was brought up not to be full of myself. To have pride was seen as a sin and to be dangerous – ‘too big for your own boots’, ‘don’t get above yourself’. I am after all a grammar school small town kid made good whose parents decided I needed elocution lessons before going to Uni. That was so shameful and embarrassing. But, I need to understand as clearly as possible what I am doing and what affect I have on people for their own sake as well as mine. I recently saw the proofs of Brian Thorne’s new book and he unasked said some lovely things about me. Since I respect him and his opinion I have to listen to these words of his: “Among those present at the 2004 conference was Dr William West from the University of Manchester and it is appropriate at this point to pay tribute to Dr West for his part in the struggle to endow the spiritual dimension in therapy with the importance that it merits. Dr West is currently Reader in Counselling Studies at Manchester and for nearly 20 years he has researched, practised and written extensively on spirituality and therapy. At the same time, he has been a source of inspiration for numerous doctoral students who have been pioneers in this fascinating and often demanding terrain. A humanistic practitioner himself who has been much influenced by the person-centred approach, Dr West has ploughed an often lonely furrow but his books Psychotherapy and Spirituality and Spiritual Issues in Therapy (West, 2000, 2000) have done much to bring about the situation today where what was until recently regarded as an esoteric and eccentric area for scholarly enquiry is now seen as at the cutting edge for therapists and spiritual explorers alike. His most recent edited book Exploring Therapy, Spirituality and Healing (West, 2011), which contains many papers contributed by former or current research students, provides ample and persuasive evidence of the major influence Dr West has exercised and the single-minded determination with which he has committed himself to a field of endeavour which was assuredly not guaranteed to enhance his professional advancement. (184-185) From Thorne, B., (2012, at press) Counselling and Spiritual Accompaniment. Wiley-Blackwell. So what comes to me now is that I have made a difference and it has come out of my living as a spiritual being and finding ways of loving the people I work with and encouraging them to follow their truth. This has been very strange within a university setting! On the other hand this following of inner truth is what universities can be about. I think I have stretched the patience of some of my colleagues no end and I sometimes lack a sense of proportion. But my heart is usually in the right place. Part of this whiff is that my work is not over. Some of the future is becoming clearer (watch this space!) some is not. The not is that I feel there is work for me spiritually beyond academia and I don’t understand this yet. I was given this morning the phrase Living Mystically. Am not sure if it is a book, a course or a way of being!

Response to Josey

I can only build on what I know to be true and I may be mistaken and people I love and trust can help me understand my truth. I can only build my own personal 'theology' on what I experience as true. I'm not always right but other people's answers are no substitute for finding my own. I find my own truth a bit flimsly at times as it does not always immediately answer some of the big questions. It is more that my truth operates outside of them in the eternal now if you like. I hope this makes sense! The word mystic sits with me here.

On being blisssed out

Until a couple of years ago I used to attend a weekly yoga class run by Ananda Marga. It was gentle yoga with a lot of resting between postures and it ended with a meditation. I would come out 'blissed out'. This was different to my Quaker blissed out state - more of that later. I liked the Hindu inspired teachings that were part of the class and the various teachers over the years mostly young white and European were gentle souls. Then things got a bit evangelical for my taste and so I stopped going. But I miss it - the yoga and the blissed out state so I am thinking of going again.

I have always been blissed out from time to time at least since I was a teenager if not earlier. Maybe a briefish dabble with hash helped - it used to bliss me out even on small doses and then it didn't. But getting involved with spiritual healing, meditation and Reichian therapy (an energy based form of psychotherapy) in my late twenties early thirties led to more regular blissedoutness. But I never came to rest quite within a spiritual/religion home.

Then 20 years ago I stumbled across Quakers and felt I had come one. The blissed outness seem part of things and I loved their archaic language and their egalitarianism - I am convinced I was in the English Civil War in a past life and of course Quakers stared in that period - 1652. Many of the people who were Levellers in the 1640s became Quakers in the 1650s.

But I have a problem. I find it hard to talk about my blissed outness to my fellow Quakers. This problem of mine reduces my intimacy with my fellow Quakers. It's like I can't switch out of my blissed outness into ordinary' conversations over tea afterwards. No-one seems to talk about what we have just done together int eh silence of the Meeting. I am also rather lacking in some social skills (we teach what we need to learn!) and I struggle in social situations with people I don't know that well. So after 15 years of attending Manchester Quaker Meetings I still feel on the edge. |Even I've been an Elder and am in my 7th year as Quaker Chaplain so in theory I should be in the thick of things.

Back to the blissed out thing. I guess I became a Quaker because this was a great way of honoring and developing my blissed outness even if we don't really have much apparent Quaker language for it. Unlike say Wilber who offers an all signing all dancing model of human spiritual development. So I was culturally ready for a quaint old fashioned language egalitarian group that was inclusive and which struggled with the word 'Christian' and it also helped me resolve some of my issues around sin.

But I struggle on a human level with this being a Quaker.

OK back to blissed out. Ananda Marga blissed out is different to Quaker blissed out for me. It's calmer perhaps because it is after and during yoga. I come out of the classes often feeling lit up. Quaker blissed out seems different. Maybe it is partially because after the Quaker silence there is usually lots of notices which pulls me back into being cerebral. It is as if I/we can't say 'that was stunning'. Or 'that was stunning for me how was it for you?' I know, I know, people who were not stunned might feel excluded. But not being able to acknowledge I feel stunned is excluding me. OK so I am going to have break that taboo.

Basically I am a mystic as some of you know hence this blissed outness. OK then what is being a mystic? Let's leave that one for another post!

Thanks for your listening to this!

At the cathedral last night

Last night I spoke for 5 minutes in Manchester cathedral - my first and probably only time I will speak there. It was at the book launch of my friend Terry Biddington, the Anglican chaplain to the Universities, whose new book 'Risk Shaped Discipleship' is just out. Follow this link to Amazon for more details: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Risk-Shaped-Discipleship-Going-Deeper-into/dp/089390693X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1286263062&sr=1-1
If you can cope with the Christian language and the references to the Bible you will find this book of great relevance to your spiritual life.

There are some extraordinary people like Terry in the Christian Churches who hold to a different view of the religious life and who claim a different understanding of Christianity.

I also met a good vicar I know a little bit last night. He is doing tremendous work with ordinary people in his parish. He intends to have a civil partnership do in the near future but he is wondering how to tell his bishop! Gay people in the Christian church and Lesbians and women as a whole have my profound respect and love as they struggle for real equality. Despite the oppression and nonsense they get they hold to their vision and their faith. Of course with a more inclusive church their light would shine even brighter. And sometimes the pressures get to them.

As we sat together in the pub afterwards and I felt such a connectedness I somehow belonged among these people even though I can only visit a Christian church once in a blue moon and then mostly to support my mother-in-law.

I know us spiritual and religious people should do it better, our light should shine more brightly we should be examples. AND we are all too human. The same is true of counsellors - surely we should understand human interactions and groups and so our organisations should be so healthy. They are not!

But it is worth searching for a better place inside. It's worth facing one's shadow and demons and reclaiming the energy for a different usage. And when I love people like these friends of mine last night it feels good and I am a better man for it.