Guest Post from Dr. Ortman: Change of Heart

 



CHANGE OF HEART

“I will give you a new heart and place a new spirit within you,

taking from your bodies your stony hearts and giving you natural hearts.”

--Ezekiel 36: 26

 

“I hate change!” If I received a dollar for every time a patient said that to me, I could work for free.  They often add, “Change replaces the familiar with the unknown. The unknown scares me.”

In response, I remind my anxious patients, “If there is no change, you are dead. The future is always unknown, of course, because it does not yet exist. You are now in the process of creating your own future.” I also ask them,”Why are you here meeting with me, except to change?” They tell me how miserable they feel and powerless to do anything about it. Frightening change is the price of relief.

Therapy is for healing and growth. Some of my patients imagine that their trying life circumstances cause their distress. In our work together they learn that only changing their minds and hearts, their outlooks, attitudes and behaviors, gives them the contentment and freedom they seek.

As a practicing psychologist, I accompany my patients in their struggles for healing and growth. I am fascinated by the many twists and turns on the road to peace of mind. As a former priest, I have been impressed at how spirituality (or religion) and psychology overlap. Both are paths to a renewed life. Therapy leads to wholeness, to living life more fully. Authentic religion calls us to holiness, a deeper communion with God and others. It is not merely about right rituals, beliefs, and morals. Our spiritual practices serve to cultivate an increase of faith, hope, and love. Both also expand our consciousness (We psychologists are not shrinks.), either a Christ-consciousness or a more mature engagement with life.

My patients often lament, “I don’t know how to improve my life. What specifically do I need to do?” That question has haunted great thinkers of all times.

CHANGE PROGRAMS

Two iconic figures answered that question of how to make constructive personal change. In more recent times, Bill Wilson (1895-1971), the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, proposed the Twelve Step Program to recover from addictions. St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), offered a similar method of personal conversion with his Spiritual Exercises (tr. Louis Puhl, New York: Random House, 2000). Both programs blend psychology and spirituality. Both recommend having companions on this perilous journey. Both promise contentment and freedom.

These paths for healing and growth grew out of the founders’ experiences of misery and conversion. Bill Wilson was a hopeless drunk. He despaired of ever becoming sober and suffered from a suicidal depression. During one of his many psychiatric hospitalizations, he had an overwhelming spiritual experience that gave him hope. Consulting with others struggling for sobriety, he formulated the Twelve Steps as a way out of the impasse of addiction.

Ignatius was a Spanish gentleman and soldier. During a battle, his right leg was shattered by a cannon ball. He nearly died and spent a painful year in recovery. To pass the time, he sought books of romance and chivalry, but none were available. Instead, he could only find books on the life of Christ and the saints. His life was in turmoil as he lay in bed considering his future. Would he continue to seek worldly glory or follow Christ? From his personal struggle to make a major life decision emerged his Spiritual Exercises.

Both Bill Wilson and Ignatius of Loyola advised a three step process for personal transformation. Alcoholics Anonymous, which offers many wise sayings, describes this process as: “Trust God; clean house; help others.” This corresponds with the exercises proposed by Ignatius in his four week retreat towards personal conversion.

TRUST GOD

A change of heart begins with an act of faith. We feel powerless, imprisoned in our distress with no way out. Where can we find relief? We can escape only if we rely on some Power Greater than ourselves.  That Power may come from within or outside ourselves. It may be a personal God or some Force in nature. Einstein famously said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Faith opens our minds and hearts to being transformed.

The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous begin with an admission of powerlessness and pain. We then cry out, “God help me!” Only then can the process of recovery begin. Addiction is so powerful that only a Higher Power can restore us to sanity. I like to think of that Higher Power as our innate consciousness, our wise mind that is really God’s Spirit dwelling within us. The Steps encourage us to call upon that Power regularly: “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry it out.” (Step Eleven)

The Spiritual Exercises were designed as a four week silent retreat with a spiritual director. However, these exercises can be used individually at our leisure. Each week has its own theme. Ignatius expresses the first principle and foundation of the program: “Man is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul….Our one desire and choice should be what is more conducive to the end for which we are created.” (23) The one thread that runs through the retreat is an experience of God’s loving presence and need to surrender to His will. The change of heart sought echoes what St. Irenaeus noted, “The glory of God is the human person fully alive.”

The retreat consists of exercises of prayer and meditation on the Scriptures and periodic conversations with a spiritual director. Ignatius explains a method of Scripture reflection similar to the traditional “lectio divina,” divine reading of the sacred texts. He recommends that in reading a Scriptural passage we use our imaginations and experience the recorded event with our minds, wills, and affects. It is as if we are there as a participant. We ask God for what we want, such as guidance, healing, or forgiveness. We slowly read the words and let the meaning sink into our hearts. The Scriptures are God’s love letters to us. We hear the message of His love and respond wholeheartedly. Our reflections often trail off into silence, and then we thank God for the favors he granted.

In the fourth week of the retreat, we contemplate the events recorded in the New Testament between the Resurrection and the Ascension of Jesus. We enter imaginatively into each event, such as the encounter of the risen Lord on the road to Emmaus. Our hearts burn as we experience listening to Jesus’ explanation of the Scriptures and his breaking of bread. Ignatius writes: “We ask for the grace to be glad and rejoice intensely because of the great joy and the glory of Christ our Lord.” (221) Reflecting deeply on the appearances of the risen Lord, we experience His loving presence in every moment of our daily lives.

CLEAN HOUSE

Awakened to the power of love, we then realize how much we have failed to love in return. In fact, the brighter the light of love, the more exposed is the shadow of selfishness. An honest self-examination inevitably follows and leads to a recognition and admission of our character defects. We are flawed human beings in need of forgiveness. Only our pride keeps us stuck in the illusion of our innocence and self-righteousness.

The fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous teaches that the heart of addiction is “self-centeredness in the extreme” and “self-will run riot.” Any addictive behavior is really only a symptom of some unacknowledged character defects. In indulging our addictions, we seek only our own pleasure and love too little. Therefore, the next steps toward authentic happiness and freedom involve cleaning up our acts. We take a moral inventory, admit our faults to another, and make amends. Step Ten recommends an ongoing examination of conscience with honesty and humility: “Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.”

In the first week of the Ignatian retreat, we make a thorough examination of conscience, ask pardon for our faults, and resolve to make amends. We consider whether all our thoughts, words, and deeds conform to the ideals we profess. We may reflect on the Ten Commandments, the list of what is forbidden, and the Beatitudes, the measure of our highest aspirations. We ask with honesty and humility, “Am I living as God calls me to live?”

In the third week, we contemplate the passion and death of Jesus. Ignatius writes: “Here it will be to ask for sorrow, compassion, and shame because the Lord is going to His suffering for my sins.” (193) Standing before the cross, we experience sorrow for the suffering our sins have caused Jesus and others in our life. We identify with his suffering. We also realize the magnitude of God’s love for us, that Jesus died for our sins. In the face of such a wondrous love, we are humbled and shamed. What little we have given in return. The shame and remorse motivate us, not to beat ourselves up, but to repent and change our lives.

HELP OTHERS

Finally, we have hope we can build a new life for ourselves. We move gradually from a self-centered life to one of caring for others. That describes growing up. Hope sustains our efforts to overcome our vices and replace them with virtues. The power of habit enslaves us. The work of cultivating wholesome ways of reacting, thinking, and behaving frees us. Unencumbered by the weight of the past, we open ourselves to new possibilities of living we never imagined.

The Twelve Steps emphasize the need to make amends for all the harm we caused by our addictive behaviors. We need both grace and effort to accomplish this. We both surrender to our Higher Power, our enlightened consciousness, and work to create a better life for ourselves based on our truest values. We choose freely how we want to live, rather than react automatically according to our addictive urges. The Twelfth Step proclaims: “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.”

In the second week of the Ignatian retreat, we contemplate the various events of Jesus’ life recorded in the New Testament. We contemplate the mystery of the life of Christ who reveals the glory of God’s unconditional love. Through our imaginative reading of the Scriptures, we glimpse the mind and heart of Jesus in his interactions with others. We witness his unfailing kindness, compassion, and forgiveness, his association with outcasts. Ignatius writes: “Here it will be to ask for an intimate knowledge of our Lord, who has become man for me, that I may love Him more and follow Him more closely.” (104) We seek to imitate Jesus in his virtue, his unconditional love of all.

THERAPY

In my clinical practice, I use the principles of the technology of change of both Bill Wilson and St. Ignatius. Their methods reflect timeless wisdom. I encourage my patients to approach their lives with attitudes of faith, hope, and charity. I begin by asking them to believe in their higher nature, their innate wise mind, which shares in Divine Life. Most come to me lacking self-confidence and believing in their worthlessness. I invite them to spend time alone with themselves and pay full attention. Silence can be healing. If they take the risk of truly listening to themselves, they will discover a Higher Power within. That Power enables them to heal and grow.

Secondly, I invite them to have hope. Many come to me on the brink of despair. They felt stuck for many years and now feel helpless and hopeless to escape the confines of their misery. Some believe they are prisoners of their traumatic childhoods and will never move on. Painful memories enslave them. Together we examine their memories as just thoughts about the past. We focus on the present moment and what they truly desire for themselves now. As they are slowly released from the grip of memory, the seeds of hope for new life ripen.

Finally, I encourage them to recognize and embrace the power of love in their lives. Many of my patients view themselves as unloved by God or anyone else. They see themselves as unlovable and unloving, too fearful to trust anyone. Together we explore the obstacles to their loving themselves and others maturely now. That is the work of cleaning house. My patients come to recognize their immature thinking and behaving from childhood. Therapy becomes a process of unlearning what has not worked from the past. As the healing progresses, they experience loving themselves and others unconditionally, wholeheartedly.

We acknowledge that change is unavoidable, yet often resist it to our own peril. If we refuse to make adjustments in our lives, we become memory’s slave. Fortunately, authentic religion and therapy prescribe methods of personal transformation. They teach us how to heal and grow through acts of faith, hope, and love. We believe in the Power of Love (God) that motivates us to correct our faults and create a new life in hope. If done wisely and well, change brings lasting joy and freedom.

Dr. Dennis Ortman has five books in print with MSI Press, three of which have won awards:



Book of the Year Finalist
Kops-Fetherling Legacy Award in Psychology








                                            
USA Best Books Award finalist

Book of the Year finalist




 



















For more posts about Dennis and his books, click HERE.

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