Client-Centred Therapy

Q: What would be helpful in Client-Centred Therapy for a directee?

A: Client-centred therapy aims to avoid placing the therapist in an authoritative stance, hoping instead to achieve actualization within the client by nurturing what is “real” in his or her feeling-life. Theoretically, then, the organismic self is one's authentic self, operating at both the universal and individualistic level. Every person's viewpoint is valid as being the product of his or her experiences and internal structure.

Spiritual direction might gain from this approach in several ways. There is a strong intersection at the conceptual level between the Rogerian affirmation of the inner self and the biblical doctrine of the Christ within. By helping the client or the directee to get in touch with this “inner voice”, the therapist or the director enables the other to access personal resources as a means to wholeness, thus bypassing the introduction of any value-system which might be imposed from without.

The search for authenticity coincides with the doctrine of “one body, many parts”; all are individuals, all are unique, all are validated. The need to homogenize all neurotic experience as, for example, sexual frustration, is bypassed, as is the necessity of nurturing the shadow-self.

The therapist is encouraged to express genuine feelings, too, as an example to the client. In direction, this might be translated into the director's simultaneously pursuing his or her own relationship with the inner Christ in addition to nurturing the same in the directee. By keeping a prayerful attitude the director will become sensitive to key elements in the directee's own repertoire of spiritual experiences. The moments of most profound joy and ecstasy are grounded in communication with the divine, thus classifying them as genuine Rogerian feelings.

The overlap with Christian ideals is evident in the following directive for the client-centred therapist: “The valuing process is understood to move toward goodwill, positive regard, understanding, love and fellow-feeling...” (Barton, 182). This approach bypasses any judgmental attitude or authoritarian structure, bringing the therapist to the level of a servant. This sits well with the approach given in spiritual direction, as the director serves to foster a dialogue between the directee and the Lord, not between his or her own beliefs and the directee's unformed or neurotic self.

The valuation of feelings is further enhanced through mirroring. Empathy with the directee will encourage him or her to explore their deeper feelings in greater depth- “laugh with those who laugh, cry with those who cry” (Rom. 12:15).

NDEs

Near-death-experiences, or NDEs are interesting in that people often see and hear the same type of thing.  Most report some kind of tunnel with a bright light at the end, and although skeptics claim this is physiological only, owing to an optic nerve effect, what follows is not so easily reduced to small-box paradigm.

NDEers commonly report a life review, as well as having expansive knowledge of everything they ever wanted to know.  Wonderfully, these visions usually involve meeting Jesus, whom they describe as a being of light, a person of infinite love and wisdom.  Some will also have an experience of loved ones who have gone on before.

Some conservatives who take only those spiritual experiences given in the Bible as genuine and dismiss all others as demonic neglect to understand that God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.  If He spoke to people in the past to inspire and comfort, He does so as often as is prescribed to current sufferers.  We are not unwise to test the fruits, however.

Yet when these people return and are filled with zeal for souls and a desire to make amends in their own accounts, one cannot dampen the fire.  What may prove most convincing to the Sadducaic lot (who deny angels or the resurrection, etc.) may be vivid descriptions of the subject while out-of-the body.  People are often able to recount the surgeon's attire and actions minutely, although they had been put under prior to such activity.  In one case, a woman was clinically brain dead for an hour but later astounded the medical staff by providing a graphic description of the entire brain surgery she underwent.

To those who love and fear God such tales serve to mark the path to higher reality.  They remind us that our lives in the present will be revealed in glory and help to live to that end.

Antichrist in Hollywood: 4400

After watching 3 seasons of "The 4400" I was distressed to see yet another antichrist in Hollywood drama.
Obviously a take on the 144000 of Revelation the show spins up an array of supernatural people set to rule the world by force.  Their leader is Jordan Collier (note 'JC'), who, as predicted in the Bible, gets killed and comes back to life.  His new image is exactly the type of fraud people will fall for, beard and long hair.  The only problem is, Mr. Collier is a lawless man.  He is a fornicator, as established in the first season.  He lies.  He is a murderer.  He is a thief.  He also charges money for one of his proteges to heal the sick.  He also lives an opulent lifestyle and has political ambitions.  The show is clearly trying to prepare those who are unfamiliar with Scripture for such an antichrist...

Sadly people will fall for this type of superficial presentation.  There is a former traffic policeman from Russia who has tens of thousands of followers in Siberia, his main claim to fame, apparently just the 'look' - beard, long hair and a robe.  Scripture warns many false prophets will come in the end, even claiming to be Messiah.  But He will come as lightning in the sky, and we are not to seek him in secret rooms, or in the desert.  The dead will rise when Jesus returns.

Don't swallow

As a parent I recently read that toothpaste is dangerous, and this concerned me.  Really dangerous.  A 3-year-old reportedly swallowed a pea-sized dollop of paste and later died in the ER.  The acidity of fluoride is too powerful, yet the makers know kids will use it more often if the flavour is like bubble gum.

It got me thinking then, if ulcers are so common, could it be due to the minute amounts of ingested toothpaste which slowly act on the mucosal lining of the stomach over years?  Not long ago a doctor astonished medical science by proving many stomach problems are due to a simple bacterium, H. Pylori.  The makers of proton-pump inhibitors keep much of the medical community in the dark still but I can happily report that after telling my physician straight up, give me the antibiotics, my heartburn is gone for good.

But if the picture is complicated by fluoride in toothpaste, beware... don't swallow even the littlest bit after brushing.  Rinse well! 

Threads of Reality

What is reality?  If you follow the Bible it seems there is more going on around us than meets the eye... angels surrounded Elisha and his servant but they were only made visible after prayer for revelation.  Quantum physics postulates a universe of infinite possibilities, where an electron has a chance to be at the far reaches of the galaxy.

What is free will, what is determinism?  Are these only compatible in a multiverse, with the soul surfing along one of an infinity of equally-'real' paths?  And what does it matter which way we go?

We read in Scripture that what we do will be made plain in the light of day, that day that is Jesus Christ revealed.  Some will have wood, hay or stubble burned away to reveal gold, silver and precious gems, works of love done in faith.  Others may not enter into the realm of eternity at all, having preferred to live in darkness whilst the light of life was held out day by day, moment by moment.

Often one feels as if one is being nudged along, guided to a righteous path, both in the action of the rational mind, or the conscience, as well as in circumstance which seems beyond the ordinary.  Deja vu, divine appointments, miracles take place every day, if we would take the cues offered to us.

Amidst the chaos there is a still, silent voice, prompting us 'this is the way, go in it'.

Mark of the Beast, RFIDs, New World Order

Why hasn't Hollywood put out a movie based on the warning in Revelation, that anyone who takes the mark of the beast, 666, for buying and selling, in their right hand or their forehead, will suffer torment and hell?
Instead, we see more and more steady desensitization to these very technologies on television and in movies: spy heroes getting their hands scanned, and retinal scans... and consequently airports have sneaked it into real life, under the rhetoric of security.

Our own Canadian twenty, for those who live under the illusion that we are somehow free from the taint of One World Order and the coming reign of antichrist, reveals our treasury's complicity with this pernicious but inevitable evil.  Look at the top right hand of any twenty in Canada and see three sets of raised bumps, like die faces, three sets of six dots: 6-6-6.  Sure, they tell us it's for blind people who can't read braille.. like the average canadian is a complete fool.

If anyone cares and has the resources, make a big screen film about the mark of the beast, microchip implants, etc.  The people need a warning, the signs are getting more frequent: wars, rumours of wars, earthquakes... now we need famines and diseases... they are not too far off, it is a play being played out scene by scene.

Resist the mark and you will be labeled a terrorist, an enemy of the state.  But take the mark and sores will break out on your body and the curse of God will damn you to hell for eternity.  It's better to get beheaded than to suffer God's wrath.  Or maybe Christians who are found worthy will escape the great tribulation.  Pray and watch, the time drawing near.

If there is indeed a pole reversal coming next year with the galactic planar transit, the skies could very well melt with a fervent heat, our magnetic shields no longer protecting us from the solar winds.  Don't scoff at the scriptures or prophecy, only a fool would take the broad path.  Be different and live!

Expanding Earth

Tectonic theory cannot explain perfectly why all the continents fit together not just into a Pangaea-like island, but into a smaller sphere, with all edges meeting.

The logical answer is in an expanding earth theory - work backwards and you will have a much smaller planet, with all sides of all continents fitting together.

But, the skeptic answers, what causes the earth to expand?  The straw man is there has to be more mass falling on the earth from the sky, but there does not seem to be enough by current measurements.

But if the earth's core is hot and this causes the expansion and cooling, it would not only cause separation of plates but it would do so in a manner which just as easily explains their movements.

The challenge of course is to measure the growth - can anyone spare a few satellites?