PREFACE

Human life is complex, composed of multiple dimensions. We exist in a precarious ecological balance between these dimensions. We must balance our own lives as individuals with the lives of our friends, family and acquaintances; the institutions and society in which we are members; the body that sustains our biological life; the planet we all share and that is our home; and the spiritual world of meaning and hope. Is there really any doubt that we struggle to reach and maintain a balance between these often conflicting demands? Is there any question that problems are present during this on-going quest for balance?

The answer is, of course, that there is no doubt. Life is difficult. There are problems. We fail at times. We all feel the sting of pain and hardship. At times we suffer from tragedy, loss and insecurity. We inevitably die. If fortunate we amass many happy, healthy and fulfilling years before our demise.

We try to put the best face upon our difficulties. We are trained from childhood to value what is objective and rational, and so we often become alienated from our passions, from our core of vitality. Strong feelings are often ignored, repressed or simply not understood. The answer to questions of meaning and the quest for human fulfillment evade us. We cover up our pains, our failings and our fear of the unknown. We all do our best to cope, to find happiness and fulfillment, but many of us fail. All of us, if we are honest, know that our lives should have something else, should be something more. All humanity shares this mortal link: it is the reality of death that shapes our common search for answers to our deeper questions. Deep down we know that we have settled for something less than the promises of our youthful dreams.

The problem is that we don't know what the "more" is for which we long. We lack perspective to understand and transform our difficulties. We tend to understand life's hardships through the view of pop-psychology. We accept the answers given by the self-help talk shows which abound in our media world. But pop psychology cannot provide answers to the questions which plague our inner hearts. How do I find unshakable meaning? How do I respond to my symbolic imagination which longs for creative transformation? How do I respond to my essential longing for transcendence? How might I satisfy my unrest which seeks a broader connection to trans-personal realities, such as are hinted at by various religious beliefs and rituals?

We evade the big issues and indulge in a glorification of immediacy. Intense experiences feed our fast-paced adrenal-charged lifestyles. We become obsessed with our bodies and our levels of endurance and fitness. We settle for spiritual experiences that will fit with our quick and exciting lifestyles. Numerous quick fixes abound: pop psychology, self-help, channelling, experiential trances, healing crystals, fundamentalistic religion. The new age and born again movements are vivid examples of this heightened need for mysticism, security and special trance states.

Such attempts all to often miss the mark. There are no quick fixes to the problems that face people in search of meaning and fulfillment. The human is imperfect. All of us suffer from various pathologies and dysfunctions. Shame, addiction and depression are common examples. New age mysticism, fundamentalism, and other approaches only allow for temporary escapes from our personal failings. They offer only short term satisfaction for our needs of personal growth.

There is wisdom to be gained from a fuller experience and awareness of our pain, bondage, and enslavement to personal and communal pathologies. Addiction, which has been called the disease of our times, is a prototypical example of modern enslavement. Our society's many addictions create unprecedented levels of suffering and pain. The paths to healing and recovery involve more than wishful thinking or experiential trance states.

Transformation is rarely easy or quick. Growth and renewal takes effort, understanding, and requires skills. The human journey towards meaning and balance must proceed through a more rigorous path of change and personal growth. We can use the image of stages of mystical experience to serve as a metaphor for the difficult paths leading to healing and recovery. These stages are: purgation, illumination and union. Purgation is the stripping away of denial, dishonesty and illusion. It is the cutting loose from egocentricity and material comforts. Following this is increased awareness, knowledge and wisdom--the illumination. Finally is the union, where the human connects to broader meanings, ultimate purposes, and experiences a more lasting transformation.

We live in a functional world. We have become slaves of the pragmatic, the useful, and the productive. In many cases we have reduced the complexity of our lives to being mere functionaries. Time is precious and we hurry through our busy routines. After all, our culture places highest value on productivity and efficiency. We are driven to perform and accumulate material goods. Unfortunately, our deeper aspirations are lost and smothered in these hectic pursuits.

In this context we set our personal goals, but usually after attainment of those goals we feel vague dissatisfaction. Once success is reached we are often rewarded not with feelings of fulfillment and satisfaction, but with emptiness. As a society we have lost the vision of a fuller and deeper life. We pay a high price for this. Depression, anxiety and many medical illnesses related to an unhealthy lifestyle abound. There is an epidemic of addictive disorders which have proliferated in the aftermath and vacuum created by a functional world view. These health problems arise in what T.S. Elliot refers to as the Wasteland of the modern world.

Why is it that in our social interactions, in our political dealings, and as individuals we rarely think about, discuss or ask the "big questions?" Questions about the meaning of life or the purpose of our existence? What is happiness or fulfillment and how do we get it? How are we healed from the tragedies and painful memories which can grow to haunt us? How do we survive our own illnesses and cope with our eventual death?

Many people greet such concerns with an amused, patronizing, indulgent smile upon their face. Many people think its too heavy--don't put a damper on the party. Many people think they've found the answer to such questions. They find it in Jesus, money, career, children, drugs, crime, sex, art, sports. After all there are countless paths to health, happiness and fulfillment in our society. But often if you question people quite seriously about their paths you often discover superficiality. In these cases the paths offer little more than a security blanket. They are ways of avoiding the hardest, deepest questions life asks of each and every individual. Such paths avoid deeper issues. Questions that have been asked since the beginning of time are treated as if we know the answers.

Of course, we don't know the answers to these deeper questions. That is why we avoid them for simpler paths and more immediate results. These questions are difficult, shrouded with uncertainty and paradox. These deeper questions have been met with as many answers as people who have ever lived.

We ask questions about how to get to the moon, how to make a car go faster, how to create a better sounding stereo--and we find answers! Why is there such little progress on a question that has been continuously asked for thousands and thousands of years? Why such little progress on a question that is relevant and meaningful not just to a specialist, or a special interest group, but to each and every individual who has ever lived? Such a question is important to you.

Oh sure, perhaps in our late teens and young adulthood we were "idealistic." But that doesn't make it in the "real world" does it? When someone is labeled as being idealistic it isn't quite a compliment, is it? When a younger person, full of fire and determination espouses idealistic views we smile bemusedly. Perhaps we remember when we were like that--ready to change the world. Should we have so easily given that up? Doesn't the world, in fact, need to be changed? Wouldn't you agree that so much of our lives should be--could be--quite a bit better?

So many individuals and political regimes resort to oppression and closed-mindedness. Perhaps this is because we are, after thousands of years, afraid to risk accepting our ambiguity. Life is filled with much uncertainty. There may be no answer to many of our questions. Our ultimate longings are always clouded by an essential unknowability. The objects of our deepest longings are beyond our rational and conscious awareness. We don't take the questions of human health and fulfillment seriously. We often slip unknowingly into surrogate beliefs. We accept pseudo-spiritualities such as civic nationalism, materialism, money. We willingly accept and lose ourselves within political, religious, racial, or nationalistic responses to the questions of human life. We are afraid to seriously address the "deeper questions."

Part of the problem is that we lack a contemporary language for our deeper aspirations. In this area language has become hollow, a bare skeleton. Our language is functional, stripped of transcendent possibility. After all, it reflects our prevailing world view. A world view dominated by money, commerce and measurement demands a merely functional discourse. Language expressing the transcendent dimensions of human life is pushed underground. This symbolic substratum is often exploited by the institutions of advertising and the media. Transcendent symbolic meanings have become commercialized. They infiltrate the horizons of our lives unconsciously through the power of media. We are manipulated. We are told to buy a car because this vehicle is an "ultimate value." We are driven to consume. In the vacuum of a transcendent language that would nourish our deeper aspirations, our desires seek material, functional and consumer outlets.

Our potential for deeper experiences has been restricted and trivialized. Our culture does not value fidelity and meaning. We are not given permission to explore and develop our spiritual selves. Human feelings and understandings have become one dimensional. Our experience of meaning has been flattened to the merely functional. We have become entrapped in the plane of commerce and materialism. We avoid issues such as death, loss and boundary because we know we might never find an answer. After all, some of the greatest geniuses throughout time have attempted to discover the secret to human health and fulfillment. All have, in some way, failed. People have written utopias--ideal visions of people living together--but none have worked. Byzantine Christianity and today's Soviet socialism were grand experiments in the utopian tradition. They failed miserably.

Is there so little hope for humanity? We have made such grand technological progress, but so little progress concerning our real needs for health and fulfillment. We do live lives of quiet desperation. Let us courageously ask these deep questions. Let us discuss them at the office, at the dinner party, on the street. Let us not accept unacceptable answers. Let us not settle for answers that lead us to hate and injustice. Let us use our common humanity to guide our questioning.

The business person in search of profit who then ruins other's lives is unacceptable. The black feeling entitled to take from a white is unacceptable. The white feeling entitled to hate a black is unacceptable. The religious who condemns the non-believer to hell is unacceptable. The educated who disparage "the masses" is unacceptable. The worker who resents the intellectual is unacceptable. The political leader who remains in office because of the actions of a secret police is unacceptable. The person who reduces the complexity of human life to a single issue is unacceptable.

This book is about these "deeper" questions about human life. The authors are concerned about human health and fulfillment. Admittedly, this was originally a selfish concern. We both have experienced pain in our lives--as we know you the reader have also. But as we looked for satisfactory answers, and as we grew older and refused to ignore the questions, and refused to accept less than satisfactory answers, we both became very much aware of the incredible pain other people carry. This is true even for people who seem to "have everything," and is especially true for those who have so very little.

Our individual searching is what brought us together. We were both moving towards similar conclusions. Does this mean we have found "the answer"? No. But it does mean that we have each searched quite diligently. We have searched each in his own way and through his own interests and we have arrived at the same place. We have not discovered an answer to the perennial human questions, but we have discovered a way to renew the question. A way that can perhaps renew hope in the real possibility of human health and fulfillment for both individuals and communities.

Between the two of us we have both sought satisfaction through ideals, career, education, money and religion. None worked, but we received some good leads that have enabled each of us to continue our individual searches. It is these leads we would like to share with you. We warn you from the outset that this is not going to be an "easy" book to read (a warning we will repeat), but with a little effort we think you will be vastly rewarded. Our personal searching has rewarded us enough to motivate the sharing that this book represents.

We have uncovered and developed what we call the "field approach." as a guide for the human and health sciences. Health is a search for meaning and balance in a four dimensional field composed of divine, social, natural and subjective dimensions. Human suffering and illness demands a deeper response, a total healing which we will refer to as recovery. This shall be explained to you. Having found in various writings this "field approach" we then develop and expand the model. We offer theory and practical applications. We sought to answer the questions: What will the field approach mean for our lives, for the human search for health and fulfillment, for the encounter with pain and suffering? What does it mean for addiction and recovery?

Since pain and suffering elicit the great questions of humanity we have centered much of our discussion within the confines of Western biomedicine. This, of course, is the dominant institution in our society that shapes our cultural myths concerning suffering and pain. Biomedicine serves as an easily understood, and as the best illustration for many of our points. It is the area in life we most clearly encounter boundary and limit, pain and suffering. It will help center many of the discussions that follow.

Do not be impatient as you read this book. Many ideas that are at first only mentioned are more fully developed in later chapters. While the theory at times may be complicated we feel it is necessary and rewarding. If you are willing to struggle with the theoretical sections the practical aspects will be enhanced. Understanding theory is an essential element for later mastering the practical applications. We separate theory from technique. We offer both but you must be grounded in the first for the latter to have lasting benefits. Much of the self-help literature, particularly in the fields of holistic health and addiction is weak in theory. Self-help tools are provided, but without adequate background or context. Even the best self-help advice will only provide temporary or short-lived benefits. Inevitably all techniques will fail because people change and environments shift. Life is a dynamic process. What works at one point will be ineffective at others. At a time such as ours, when old techniques are failing, a general context and theory is invaluable. This provides direction and a background on how to shift and change with life's visitudes. It gives you a perspective on what to do next. Mastering theory gives maximum flexibility in developing your own tools for recovery.

As we mentioned the book at times might appear complicated. Do not feel as if you have to read the book in proper order. One avenue of approach might be to skim the entire book to get a feel for the project and then go back and read carefully from the beginning, but this is only a suggestion. You will discover themes that surface in one topic only to be submerged and re-surface elsewhere in another context. Try and reflect upon your own life experience and see how the ideas fit. Our introduction provides a preview or a general feel for the scope of the book, some of the main ideas we shall be discussing, and some of the theorists upon whom we rely.

More