~David Brazier
Interessant artikel van de boeddhistische leraar David Brazier over Empathie in relatie tot fenomenologie en de therapeutische context.
INTRODUCTION
The true nature of empathy is a central question for phenomenology. In philosophical phenomenology this is called the problem of inter-subjectivity. "The world of my daily life is by no means my private world but is from the very outset an intersubjective one, shared with my fellow men, experienced and interpreted by others; in brief, it is a world common to us all" (Schutz 1970, p.163) and yet the fundamental questions of what it means to truly understand another person in his or her otherness and how it is that such a process of understanding is possible at all, are complex.
Empathy is the opposite of ego. When I am full of ego, it is my own importance which matters. When I am full of empathy it is the other person who matters. Egotism, self-preoccupation, is the commonest barrier to empathy. Empathy is the most effective remedy for egotism. "To be with another in this way means that for the time being, you lay aside your own views and values in order to enter another's world without prejudice. In some sense it means to lay aside your self" (Rogers 1980, p.143).
Empathy is to be able to enter and experience the other person's frame of reference without appropriating it. If one appropriates the other person's frame of reference then we are talking about identification. In empathy one sees through the eyes of the other. In identification one appropriates the viewpoint of the other as one's own.
Empathy is an accurate understanding of another person's world as seen, felt and understood from the inside. It is a sensing of the other person's private world, their eigenwelt, as if it were one's own, but without ever losing the "as if" quality (Rogers 1980, p.140). Empathy is distinct from identification which is what occurs when the "as if" quality is lost and from sympathy. In sympathy there is an element of agreement and/or pity which are not part of the idea of empathy. One may be able to empathise with both parties to a dispute but only sympathise with one side or the other. This distinction is a modern one, however, and in earlier times the term sympathy included empathy.
Empathy involves a deep acceptance of the other person. This, in itself, is therapeutic. "As the client finds the therapist listening acceptantly to her feelings, she becomes able to listen acceptantly to herself" (Rogers 1978, p.11). Empathy, therefore, has to do with being in the flow of the experiences of the client.
Posts tonen met het label Blogsphere. Alle posts tonen
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Your God is too Big
~Richard Beck / Experimental Theology
As a college professor interested in the psychology of religion I'm sort of an anthropologist of young adulthood spirituality. That is, I listen a great deal to how my students talk about faith, God, Christianity, and church. I'm particularly interested in listening to what moves them spiritually.
One of the things I've noticed in this regard--something, to be sure, not unique to this age group or generation--is the prominence of a focus on God's bigness. Worship that seems to move my college students, and many other Christians, tends to focus on God's transcendence and awesomeness. "Awesome" just might be the most common word my students, and many other Christians, use to describe God.
This focus on God's bigness is often used in worship to create an acute sense of our smallness in relation. Ecstatic worship is often triggered by a felt sense of God's transcendent power, size, and awesomeness. I leave such worship psychologically stunned and overwhelmed by God's bigness. My sense is that a lot of contemporary worship is explicitly aimed at trying to create this experience. And that makes sense. Worship means "to bow down." Thus, to worship God means to "bow down" before God's power and size.
And yet, I wonder about all this. Particularly from a missional perspective. Specifically, I struggle with how the felt sense of smallness I experience in worship is supposed to transition into Christian mission. I do see how an acute sense of our smallness works as a trigger for ecstatic worship, but find it hard to see how that sense of smallness helps Christians learn to eat with tax collectors and sinners.
Put bluntly, I'm wondering this: How does an experience of God's awesomeness help you learn that God is love?
Let me be clear. I think God is awesome. I think it's good, as a critique of human pride, to experience God's awesomeness. I'm just expressing a concern about how this sort of ecstatic worship transitions into missional living.
In light of all this, here's what I want to say to many Christians: Your God is too big.
Here's what I think. I think too much focus on God's awesomeness leaves us ill-equipped to see God's smallness in the world. Perhaps we'd be better able to transition from worship to mission if we started focusing on God's smallness rather than on God's bigness. Isn't it one of the purposes of worship to help us see aright? To see God more clearly? If so, perhaps we need to start worshiping God's smallness. Our God has gotten too big.
As a college professor interested in the psychology of religion I'm sort of an anthropologist of young adulthood spirituality. That is, I listen a great deal to how my students talk about faith, God, Christianity, and church. I'm particularly interested in listening to what moves them spiritually.
One of the things I've noticed in this regard--something, to be sure, not unique to this age group or generation--is the prominence of a focus on God's bigness. Worship that seems to move my college students, and many other Christians, tends to focus on God's transcendence and awesomeness. "Awesome" just might be the most common word my students, and many other Christians, use to describe God.
This focus on God's bigness is often used in worship to create an acute sense of our smallness in relation. Ecstatic worship is often triggered by a felt sense of God's transcendent power, size, and awesomeness. I leave such worship psychologically stunned and overwhelmed by God's bigness. My sense is that a lot of contemporary worship is explicitly aimed at trying to create this experience. And that makes sense. Worship means "to bow down." Thus, to worship God means to "bow down" before God's power and size.
And yet, I wonder about all this. Particularly from a missional perspective. Specifically, I struggle with how the felt sense of smallness I experience in worship is supposed to transition into Christian mission. I do see how an acute sense of our smallness works as a trigger for ecstatic worship, but find it hard to see how that sense of smallness helps Christians learn to eat with tax collectors and sinners.
Put bluntly, I'm wondering this: How does an experience of God's awesomeness help you learn that God is love?
Let me be clear. I think God is awesome. I think it's good, as a critique of human pride, to experience God's awesomeness. I'm just expressing a concern about how this sort of ecstatic worship transitions into missional living.
In light of all this, here's what I want to say to many Christians: Your God is too big.
Here's what I think. I think too much focus on God's awesomeness leaves us ill-equipped to see God's smallness in the world. Perhaps we'd be better able to transition from worship to mission if we started focusing on God's smallness rather than on God's bigness. Isn't it one of the purposes of worship to help us see aright? To see God more clearly? If so, perhaps we need to start worshiping God's smallness. Our God has gotten too big.
The Wall
~Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
A World of Light
In deep meditation I come to a wall. I know this wall. I have seen it many times before in meditation and waking visions. It is a high brick wall. I know what is on the other side of the wall: a world of light. But there is Sunlight and Shadows Above Deilingen, Germanyno way through; there is no doorway, no ladder, no break in the wall. When I come to the wall I walk along it, and then I have to turn away, back to the narrow streets of this world. Sometimes I have made every effort and, clambering to the top, looked over the wall. Or I have just felt what is there—endless expanses of light, and the beings of light who live there. And yet always I have to come back, back into this world, so constricted and full of shadows: the half-light of our existence.
In the summer of 2008 I spent three weeks on the other side, in that world of light. It was a crazy time. I was very ill and hardly slept. When I went to bed and closed my eyes I was in the world of light. There was no need to sleep, no possibility of sleep. There was so much light; light upon light. Sometimes during the day, too, I was fully awake in this world of light. I could see our world from the other side, see its loves and hopes and dreams, its worldly power structures and places of prayer. I could see the spiritual essence of every tree and flower and the patterns of darkness in which people are so caught. And I saw the beings of light that are waiting for us, that want to help us, and I saw how we have forgotten them. I saw this sticky substance of forgetfulness that covers us and drains away any remembrance we may have. I saw how other beings of darkness that belong to this world also drain our light, keep us caught, cover us in greed and desire, hatred and anger. And I saw that this is how it is.
A World of Light
In deep meditation I come to a wall. I know this wall. I have seen it many times before in meditation and waking visions. It is a high brick wall. I know what is on the other side of the wall: a world of light. But there is Sunlight and Shadows Above Deilingen, Germanyno way through; there is no doorway, no ladder, no break in the wall. When I come to the wall I walk along it, and then I have to turn away, back to the narrow streets of this world. Sometimes I have made every effort and, clambering to the top, looked over the wall. Or I have just felt what is there—endless expanses of light, and the beings of light who live there. And yet always I have to come back, back into this world, so constricted and full of shadows: the half-light of our existence.
In the summer of 2008 I spent three weeks on the other side, in that world of light. It was a crazy time. I was very ill and hardly slept. When I went to bed and closed my eyes I was in the world of light. There was no need to sleep, no possibility of sleep. There was so much light; light upon light. Sometimes during the day, too, I was fully awake in this world of light. I could see our world from the other side, see its loves and hopes and dreams, its worldly power structures and places of prayer. I could see the spiritual essence of every tree and flower and the patterns of darkness in which people are so caught. And I saw the beings of light that are waiting for us, that want to help us, and I saw how we have forgotten them. I saw this sticky substance of forgetfulness that covers us and drains away any remembrance we may have. I saw how other beings of darkness that belong to this world also drain our light, keep us caught, cover us in greed and desire, hatred and anger. And I saw that this is how it is.
Hildegard von Bingen
Hildegard’s first theological text, the Scivias, includes this wonderful vision of the trinity:
"Then I saw a bright light, and in this light the figure of a man the color of a sapphire, which was all blazing with a gentle glowing fire. And that bright light bathed the whole of the glowing fire, and the glowing fire bathed the bright light; and the bright light and the glowing fire poured over the whole human figure, so that the three were one light in one power of potential."
And again I heard the living Light, saying to me: ….
"Therefore you see a bright light, which without any flaw of illusion, deficiency, or deception designates the Father; and in this light the figure of a man the color of a sapphire, which without any flaw of obstinacy, envy, or iniquity designates the Son, Who was begotten of the Father in Divinity before time began, and then within time was incarnate in the world in Humanity; which is all blazing with a gentle glowing fire, which fire without any flaw of aridity, mortality, or darkness designates the Holy spirit, by Whom the Only-Begotten of God was conceived in the flesh and born of the Virgin within time and poured the true light into the world. And that bright light bathes the the whole of the glowing fire, and the glowing fire bathes the bright light; and the bright light and the glowing fire pour over the whole human figure, so that the three are one light in one power of potential."
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