Philosophy and Process
The Center for Conscious Living is a holistically oriented counseling center
grounded in traditional psychological principles as well as humanistic and
psycho-spiritual/transpersonal principles.
We hold that life is a sacred process, a lifetime journey in consciousness
through certain predictable stages, experiences, and learning opportunities,
persona, and challenges. While there’s a certain predictability common
to all people, there are also differences in how these stages, experiences
and learning opportunities are presented to us individually.
A holistic view of life includes a recognition that our beingness is composed
of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects which interact and affect
each other and our experience of life. While these are separate aspects, they
also interact within the wholeness of our being.
For instance, people come to the Anger Therapy Workshop who have stomach pain,
bodily discomfort or muscle tension. They often find that after they get in
touch with their anger and pain, rage and tears, that not only do they feel
differently about their emotional self, but their body feels differently,
also. Pain which has emotional components and which is exacerbated by holding
on to the emotions will shift and often leave when emotional energy is released.
At this time, your mind has a space in which to look differently upon your
situation and your mental set about it. Then, when you begin to release your
negative self judgments, feelings of hopelessness, guilt and shame, you are
able to begin to ‘consider the possibility’, as a first step,
that you might see yourself through the eyes of unconditional love and open
to your true spiritual nature.
During your process, after you have gained some awareness of what is going
on, and reduced your fear of your emotions, you can begin to access feelings
and intuition, and learn to be more self governing, less concerned about what
you think everyone else thinks you should do and more able to answer the question
of ‘What do I want? What pleases me? What would enable me to develop
the most?’ You recognize that you and only you are responsible for your
life and your decisions. These feelings of personal freedom and the ability
to listen to your own inner truth open the opportunities to be responsible
to Life as it presents itself to you.
Conscious Living is both the goal and the process leading to deeper and clearer
levels of consciousness.
We weave these understandings into our work with the particular life situations
of each client, as is appropriate to their needs and desires. We hold that
you can become conscious of your mental thinking process, comfortable with
the range of your emotional states, learn how to love yourself unconditionally,
and live in a more peaceful, harmonious state. In addition, you can learn
how to have more loving and supportive relationships.
We believe that each of us contains a Divine Spark which is experienced differently
by different peoples; nonetheless, it is the Life Energy that activates and
energizes all of creation. We experience our everyday, ordinary ego self,
which is our vehicle of everyday consciousness, as well as our own Higher
Self which connects us to those transpersonal realms. Each person is led to
a path that is uniquely his or her own that over their lifetime takes them
more deeply into their own nature and their own connection with the inner
Divine.
We’re not affiliated with any religious group. We encourage a psycho-spiritual
consciousness, which an individual can then direct in any way appropriate
for them. Often this work helps heal earlier religious woundings and misunderstandings
of religious experiences. Therapists connected to the Center are engaged in
their own particular path of psycho-spiritual development, and we include
these principles in our work as appropriate with the needs and desires of
the client.
