The Divine Companion
Weaving spiritual wisdom with psychological knowledge
One conversation for talking about the psyche and the divine.
Life is often hard; perhaps it is hard for you. Perhaps you feel bad and unworthy of love; or you feel really alone; or your life doesn’t hold much meaning; or unfounded anxiety overwhelms and handicaps you. These difficult issues get even harder when you don’t use all of your mind, both its psychological capabilities and its spiritual capabilities.
Examples of your psychological capabilities are: knowing and revising your core narratives that drive how you respond to challenges and other people; taming your unhelpful default urges and habits, such as addictions, negative thinking; developing a more appropriate attachment style; making wise decisions from a long-term perspective rather than from a short-term perspective.
Examples of your spiritual capabilities are: appreciating what is most meaningful and beautiful in life; elevating spiritual values above material or selfish values; choosing what you do and how you engage with others based on the higher values that you have adopted; deepening your reverence for the Divine One who dwells within you.
This website weaves together psychologists’ and spiritual sages’ wisdom on how you can develop and tap into the full range of your mind’s capabilities. Psychologists like Richard Schwartz (Internal Family Systems) describe how your inner world is home various personas who need your leadership to help them get along. Spiritual sages like Teresa of Avila (The Interior Castle) describe how your inner world has many different ways of seeing and responding to life. Both describe how your inner world is home to a source of wisdom, soothing and companionship that few people are aware of. You access this source by understanding your inner world and cultivating your full capabilities.
Combining both views helps illuminate the beauty of your human nature and your spiritual nature. Combining both views may help you cope better with hard challenges that you face and to
make the most of the opportunities that you encounter along the way.
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​What's on this site....
Booklets
The combined psychological and spiritual view of your inner world is described in more detail in booklets which you can download for free and read using Kindle, iBook, Adobe Reader or MS PowerPoint.
Symbol
Every religion has its own representative symbol. A new symbol represents God’s intimate one-on-one embrace with an individual in their inner world.
Share your Spiritual Experience
Some people have experienced the divine embrace in their inner world. Please contact me if you are willing to share your experience of feeling God as a dear friend who is intimately present with you in your inner world.
Possible Presentations
I’ve presented these ideas in short talks and day-long retreats with the hope of stimulating a dialogue with people who attend. Audiences have included churches, church-adjacent groups and spiritual-but-not-religious gatherings. If you have a small group who might be interested in hosting a presentation about these ideas, please let me know and we’ll see what we might arrange.
Contact
It’s often hard to find someone to talk about both your spiritual and psychological aspects in the same conversation. Please contact me if you are interested in seeing if we might be a good fit for a dialogue that honors both aspects of yourself.
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Weaving together these ideas...
Sisters and brothers,
You are like a castle, a home to many parts.
This castle (you!) is beautiful,
so beautiful that God very much desires to live in this castle with you.
The most amazing miracle in this whole world is God drawing so close to you:
God values you so much that God insists on,
and will not desist from, residing with you!
And the greatest tragedy in this world is to be ignorant of this miracle.
Please never doubt the great value God paces on you.
Allow knowing that God resides with you to erase
any and all doubts of the value of your castle (you!).
paraphrase of Teresa of Avila
(Interior Castle)
Each one of us has an inner tribe of multiple parts or personas. Each one of us can be sometimes altruistic and other times selfish, sometimes strong and other times vulnerable. Sometimes one persona within us can dominate the other parts, drown them out.
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We are healthier when our parts are well integrated, when the members of our inner tribe get along. We also have an essence, our Core Self, who can help tremendously in our efforts to harmonize our inner world if we only invite the Core Self to participate.
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paraphrase of Richard Schwartz
(Internal Family Systems)