Living in the NOW: 8. Does Meditation or living in the NOW make psychiatry superfluous?
After reading the various articles on this site you might think: when living in the NOW do we still need those expensive psychologists with their relaxed sofas? Is not it about time for us to start re-educating our shrinks in India and make gurus out of them? The answer is: no! On the contrary. Knowledge of the human psyche is of great benefit for mankind and even for our own purpose. Psychotherapy helps people to get healed from the diseases of the ego. It helps to solve inner conflicts that cause trouble in our minds and it helps us to experience more inner coherence.
The essential difference between our approach and the approach of psychotherapy is that within out philosophy we do not take the human being as a starting point, but another way of looking at things, another attitude to life. Looking at any situation from the viewpoint of the NOW helps us to cure the disease that is formed by the ego itself. The solution does not lie in looking for a method to change our thoughts, it lies in another way of looking at them. When we start to look for the causes and solutions for our suffering by means of theories or explanations from science we actually add something new to our ego.
If through circumstance X in our youth we were damaged to such a degree that we now experience problem Y, we have to apply technique Z to solve the problem. To give an example: last night we drank too much, today we wake up with a bad headache and the quick solution is an aspirin. We do not accept the present situation and do everything we can to deliver us from our suffering. As we have seen before: the ego loves this kind of situation and it may well be possible that this is another situation where our ego uses tricks to help us escape from our real problem.
This reasoning also holds good for many people that seek their future happiness in spirituality. Take care that the search for happiness is not a trick organised by your ego to run away from yourself. No matter how many gurus you consult or how many books you read that tell where you can find the solution to your problems, you will never solve the fundamental issues until you face them and accept them. Erik van Zuydam: 'As soon as this being present in the NOW has become your strongest point of reference all your psychological problems are solved. Your mind is no longer your master, but you use your mind as an instrument for your daily life.'
Our starting point is: things are as they should be, nothing is negative or positive, bad or good. Traditional psychological theories and techniques can help us to make our life much more bearable and easier in spite of our being imprisoned by our thoughts, our self and our ego.
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