In the movie Star Wars, the wise Obi-wan Kenobi invites young Luke Skywalker on a journey.  The universe is in dire trouble.  The Republic has been taken over by a tyrannical Emperor who is using his imperial forces to spread a system of darkness over the entire world.  This system is being resisted by a small but determined band who is valiantly struggling for justice and freedom.  The story begins with Luke’s “call” from Kenobi to become part of the resistance.  He must decide just what he is to do.

     Great courage will be required to say yes to this call, as Luke must learn to tame his many fears about this quite unknown path.  He will be asked to leave the comfort and security of his hometown, the only world he has ever known, to fly off to a whole other world.  Luke will also need careful discipline to school his unruly mind and body.  Luke’s ways are those of self-assertion and control; the ways of the Jedi Knight, which Kenobi promises to teach him, are of sacrifice and surrender.

     After much soul-searching, Luke decides to answer Kenobi’s call, leave his childhood home, and learn the ways of his teacher.  The lessons Luke must learn in his “education” are initially very difficult for him.  He is homesick, and he doesn’t understand much of what Kenobi is talking about.  In a scene on the Millennium Falcon, the ship they are traveling on, Kenobi has Luke practicing with his light saber on an electronic “remote” that zaps him with painful light beams if he’s not careful.  Kenobi tells Luke to “feel” where the remote is and to anticipate its next act by relying on “the force.”  The force is an unseen energy field that surrounds everything and guides all actions in the right direction, if only we let it.  Luke is having trouble “feeling” for the remote and gets himself zapped.  He is discouraged.  Kenobi encourages him soothingly saying:

You must try to divorce your actions from conscious control.  Try not to focus on anything concrete, visually or mentally.  You must let your mind drift, drift; only then can you use the force.  You have to enter a state in which you act on what you sense, not on what you think beforehand.  You must cease cogitation, relax, stop thinking…let yourself drift…free…free…”

Luke’s mind wasn’t on their imminent arrival at Alderaan.  It was burning with something else, something that seemed to grow and mature at the back of his brain as he dwelt on it.  ‘You know,’ he murmured, ‘I did feel something.  I could almost see the outlines of the remote.’  He gestured at the hovering device behind him.  Kenobi’s voice when he replied was solemn.  ‘Luke, you’ve taken the first step into a larger universe.’

The Monomyth

     Among its many riches, the Star Wars story contains a structural pattern that the linguist Joseph Campbell has observed in most of the world’s “hero” literature.  This pattern can be broken down into three parts.  First, there is a “departure” where the hero must separate him/herself from his/her previous way of life, from everything that is comfortable, familiar, and secure.  Very often, this movement of departure is symbolized by the hero’s having to leave home and family to go up to a mountaintop, out into the desert, or even to the edge of the earth.

     After the hero has departed from the familiar and the mundane, the next phase of “initiation” begins.  Here the hero is ushered into another world, a whole other way of being and seeing.  Sometimes this initiation takes place through an instantaneous vision.  Sometimes it is the result of an elaborate journey to the heavens above or the underworld below.  However it occurs, the hero is radically transformed as a result of the realities that he or she is initiated into.

     When this initiation is complete, the third phase of the hero’s journey begins.  This phase is called the “return.”  During the return, the hero must go back to the world he or she came from.  Very often this is not what the hero wants to do and must be gently pushed by a sympathetic guide.  However the hero makes his or her way back, the return usually results in the transformation of the world that was initially left behind.

     Why all of this exploration of Star Wars?  First of all, I love the story, but more importantly it helps me share with you what really matters to me.  I see this same mythological dynamic of “departure-initiation-return” at work in the process of undergraduate or graduate education, as well as in any other helping relationship.  This is to say that the hero dynamic is at play—or at least should be at play—in all the traditional areas that we psychologists deal with.  Among the things that matter to me most about Psychology is accompanying the people I work with on this three-part heroic journey in the time that I am with them.  Yes, you are a hero.  You really are.
 

The Dillonian Cosmos

     In order to understand what I really value about Psychology, let me share with you my “cosmology,” or my overall way of looking at the universe.  From here you can see how Psychology fits into my world and why I am so excited about it.  The assumptions I am about to present operate behind everything I do and say as a person and a psychologist.  I present them not as being “correct” so much as to share with you something about me so that you will understand what I am saying a little better.  There are four major assumptions that I am aware of bringing to my experience.  To begin, I do not see the universe as a vast, inert, and mechanical thing.  Rather, I see it as a living Body, a cosmic organism.  Second, I experience a vital tissue flowing through all parts of the organism that holds them together as a single living body.  I call this connecting tissue “Spirit.”  Third, I believe that this cosmic organism we are and live in has a nature and a purpose. Fourth, Spirit guides the different parts of the Body along different paths according to their nature and to fulfill their purpose.  All parts contribute toward the overall healthy functioning of the Body, but each part has a different and vital role to play in the life and purpose of the cosmic organism.

     All beings have a path.  A tree does what trees do.  So it is with giraffes and potatoes and everything else.  When it comes to human beings however, the issue becomes a little more complicated.  It is not as easy for us humans to merely “do our proscribed thing” like a potato or a giraffe.  We have a different sort of nature than they do.  We need to search and struggle to find our way.  We get lost, found, and lost again.  We are strongly influenced by culture and significant other people in our lives.  Very often these others hinder our ability to find our path.  Far from being some sort of extraneous ingredient to human nature, I think that struggle to figure out and live according to our nature and purpose is actually part of our nature and purpose.

     I believe that the fundamental task facing each person is to figure out just what the Spirit is calling him or her to do as a member of the cosmic organism (and then to do it).  Given that we need to struggle and search, our society has wisely decided to set aside time for its members—although regrettably, not all of its members—to reflect, discern, and listen to the call that is attempting to express itself in each and every one of us.  What is kindergarten after all but time set aside to be free from the demands of work to “play in the garden” and discover one’s likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses?  For that matter, what is elementary school, even secondary school?  Granted there is a lot of vocational training going on in these settings, but there are also rich opportunities for reflection and discernment.  How would we would feel if Congress decided that all of the playing and discovery of kindergarten was a big waste of time, and that five-year-olds should start pulling their weight and work like adults?  We would be incensed if our children were robbed of a time so vital to their development.

     Like kindergarten, I believe that college and graduate school can be among the most valuable periods of time we set aside for reflection and discernment of calling.  If we miss the opportunities presented by college and graduate school, or if our college and graduate school only trains us for work, it is like the kindergartner described above: we are robbed of something vital to our development.
 

Psychology, Higher Education, and Vocation

      At its best, higher education is the time we set aside for discerning and listening to the call of Spirit that is seeking to express itself in each one of us.  In higher education, we learn to fix our gaze on—well—what is higher.  Given that Higher Education is itself the time we set aside for our citizens to reflect upon and discern their callings, I think that Psychology has an absolutely critical role to play and much to offer in this process of helping people come to be themselves.  Here are seven ways that I think Psychology can contribute to the overall mission of discovery in higher education.
 

Practicing the Art of Silence

     Silence is the Spirit’s most powerful language.  Those of you who have tried to be silent and alone for an extended period of time know that silence is much harder than it sounds!  I recall going on an eight-day silent retreat in college.  As I was driving to the retreat house, I thought naively to myself how peaceful eight days of quiet were going to be.  Was I ever surprised!  For the first three days I could not calm my mind.  I was anxious to the point of tears with all of that silence.  I had trouble sleeping at night, and I didn’t know what to do with myself during the day.  Thankfully, by the fourth day, a calm and peace descended upon me.  But this was only after great agony and struggle with the initial silence.

     Here is an exercise to gauge your tolerance level for silence.  Close your eyes, and sit alone in silence for just 5 minutes.  Perhaps you can set an alarm for yourself to mark the time, preferably with a watch that doesn’t tick.  Put the book down now and try it.  Come back to the book after you are done.

     How was that for you?  Did you find that your mind was racing?  Were you distracted?  Did you keep looking at your watch?  Did you find the silence difficult to tolerate?  Perhaps you liked it.  I like to think of being silent as a muscle we have deep inside of us that gets more developed the more we use it.  With good training, we get to the point where we actually come to crave silence and resent the noise and distraction that previously took up so much of our time.  When the muscle is “out of shape,” we dread being silent and alone more than almost anything else.

     I believe that our inability to deal with and actively seek silence is one of the major problems in our modern society.  We just cannot listen to the call of Spirit if we are doing all of the talking.  When we are not listening in silence, we are lost.  Psychology can teach us how to live with and actively seek silence.  We seek this silence not for silence’s sake, but to put ourselves in a frame of mind where we are be able to listen to the rhythms of life that are trying so desperately to express themselves in our lives.
 

Embracing Solitude

     The psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott observed that people’s incapacity to “be alone” was a major cause of their suffering.  People would rather do almost anything but embrace the deep solitude that is within them.  They flee from solitude into pseudo-connections like their ethnic or racial group, their nation, their school, fraternity/sorority, or romantic relationships.  It is a difficult and painful lesson to learn that no friend or lover, no community or commune will ever be able to put to rest our deepest cravings for unity and wholeness.  At the heart of our being is an inner emptiness that can take many decades to truly embrace.  But it is only from this place of inner emptiness that we can truly listen to what Spirit is presenting to us and reach out to others in genuine (rather than parasitic) relationship.

     Embracing solitude is an ability that arrives only after much practice.  It comes as a result of the development of ego strength and the establishment of strong interpersonal boundaries.  Psychology is responsible for a vast amount of insightful literature on how to develop ego strength, how to draw good interpersonal boundaries, as well as the empirically demonstrated consequences to well-being of not drawing good boundaries.  I believe that during this set-aside time for reflection and discernment, Psychology can help people to develop a true capacity to be alone.
 

Letting Go of ‘Inordinate Attachments’

     In my study of the process of human development, I have learned that each step we take in the direction of growth involves our letting go of something that we are desperately clinging to.  Growth nearly always involves renunciation and loss of attachment.  Sometimes, the attachment is a memory of a bad experience that we just can’t seem to get past.  It replays itself over and over in our minds, interfering with our present and with our ability to interact with people for who they are.  We live in the past and are unable to meet our real and present needs.  Sometimes we are attached to certain characteristic modes of feeling and responding to particular situations.  In other cases, we are attached to a bad habit like smoking, drinking, or a drug addiction that has come to take on a life of its own.

     Psychology knows quite a lot about the origin, nature, and transcendence of inordinate attachment.  For example, we know quite a lot about the effects of early childhood trauma on the course of human development, and we know much about how to recover from these tragic experiences.  We know about irrational fears, delusions, obsessive needs for power, control, and esteem.  And we know how to overcome them.  We know much about the etiology of addiction and the path of recovery.

     We psychologists are in the position of being able to help people let go of their inordinate attachments.  We do this work not to embrace the schizoid ideal of “not being attached to anything,” rather, we struggle to liberate ourselves from inordinate attachment so that we will be in a freer space from which to listen and respond to the promptings of the Spirit.  We cannot hear the call of spirit if we are ensnared in the drama of playing out a traumatic experience, if we are obsessed with power, security, or esteem, or if we are addicted to alcohol, drugs, sex.  Freeing ourselves from inordinate attachment allows us to form genuine attachments to the call of Spirit.
 

Developing ‘Interiority’

     I have a program that I run for first-year undergraduate students.  It is a yearlong “learning community.”  In learning communities, students take all of their classes together, live in the same residence hall, and engage in a host of off-campus social activities.  I coordinate the community and teach a template course each semester of the academic year.  I spend a lot of time with these students.  After their first year is over, many of them continue to drop by and see me.  The program is now in its fourth year, so I have had the pleasure of watching a generation of college students grow from their freshman to senior year.

     I have observed that students change in many significant ways over this period of time.  From my point of view, the most drastic and noticeable of these changes occurs in their emotional life.  Students enter college having little access to their feelings, thoughts and desires.  They often look to others to tell them what to do, how to feel, or what to think.  But in nearly all of the cases I have seen, over the precious years of college, students begin to develop ways of tuning into what they are feeling, thinking, and wanting.  Further, they begin to be able to identify patterns of behavior and thought that get them into trouble.  This is what psychologists call “meta-cognition,” the ability to think about one’s thinking, feeling, and behaving.  The colloquial term for this ability is “psychological-mindedness.”  Most undergraduates become more “psychologically-minded” and “emotionally literate” over time.

     I believe that Psychology, perhaps more than any other academic discipline, is in the position of being able to facilitate the development of psychological-mindedness or “interiority” in the people it works with.  In Psychology, a number of factors come together that can produce these stunning results in the people we work with.  These factors include: an emphasis on critical thinking skills or what the philosopher Paul Ricoeur called the “hermeneutics of suspicion,” a focus on the role of non-verbal interpersonal dynamics in human relationships, an emphasis on the power of the unconscious and early childhood experience in motivation, a valuing of personal growth and reflection, and the explicit goal of many psychotherapies to facilitate insight, meta-cognition, and meta-communication in people.
 

Discernment: Separating Inner Wheat from Chaff

     The call of the Spirit presents itself in the depths of our being.  Unfortunately, the call of the Spirit is not the only voice that is sounding in our hearts.  There are also the voices of significant others in our lives such as, parents, teachers, coaches, pastors, rabbis, priests, etc.  These voices often combine to produce negative patters of thought and feeling, the “bad tapes” that we replay in our heads over and over again.  We also find in our hearts the voices of larger cultural narratives like “men don’t cry,” or “women should defer to men,” or “you are worth what you produce.”  There is also the actual noise of the world that can cause our hearts a myriad of distractions.  Given all of this “chaff” among the “wheat” of our inner life, it is necessary for us to develop the skills to discern what in our hearts is true and right for us, and what in our hearts just isn’t.  I think that Psychology knows quite a lot about how to do this and can teach it to others.

     As we confront our inner being, how can we tell which of the many stirrings inside of us are those of the Spirit and which are not?  How do we recognize the presence of Spirit?  Of all the stimuli that stir inside of us, I believe that our desires are the most reliable source for figuring out what is coming from the Spirit and what is not.  So I recommend that we consult the deepest inclinations and attractions of our hearts to find the movements and direction of Spirit in our lives.  I have discovered that if my heart is moving toward the desire to give thanks for life or to serve the concrete needs of other people, I can be sure that the Spirit is somehow present.  If my desire is for anything else, e.g., to advance my own interests at another’s expense, to protect myself, augment my power, hurt or destroy, Spirit is most surely not present.

     It is important to note here that the criterion of thanks and service in discerning the presence or non-presence of Spirit works best for me and is the result of my own scholarship, research, and spiritual practice.  You might use a different criterion formed from your own scholarship, research, and practice.  Actually, I think we can learn a great deal from each other by discussing our diverse criteria for discernment.  What is most important is that you consciously develop a criterion for deciding how to recognize the presence or non-presence of Spirit and not just assume that anything stirring in your heart is worth embracing.

     Let me give you a very simple example from my own life of how I employ the skills of discernment.  A student comes into my office and tells me that she is not enjoying my class.  As you could imagine, many desires are now stirring in my heart.  My most prominent desire is to defend myself by asking her how much homework she is doing, whether she is paying attention in class, etc.  But before I say any of this, I take a fraction of a second to discern whether this desire of mine is from the Spirit or not.  I do this because I have learned from my own experience that my first and strongest desire is usually not from the Spirit.  So I ask myself, will this question about her homework be giving thanks for her presence in my office and for what she has just shared with me?  Will it serve this student’s concrete needs?  I honestly can’t see how it will do any of those things, so I look deeper inside myself for any other desires that may be stirring in my heart.  Besides, when I consider that option, I feel a strong tightness in my body.  It just doesn’t feel right.

     I can feel a quiet desire over there in the corner of my heart that actually wants to sympathize with this student rather than defend myself.  After all, it must not be very pleasant to have to spend three hours a week in a place that you really don’t want to be.  So I quickly discern this desire to sympathize by asking myself, would letting her know that I understand her difficulty be giving thanks for her presence in my life and for what she has just shared with me?  Will it be serving her concrete needs?  After doing this, I find that this desire to sympathize really does seem to honor and serve the student.  I know this because I am filled with a sense of warmth and consolation in my body.  This one feels like the desire the Spirit wants me to act on.  So I say, “So this class is really horrible for you huh?”  The whole conversation takes a completely different course than it would have had I taken the initial defensive route.  I believe that we psychologists can teach our students, clients, and the other people we work with these vital skills of discernment so that they can become the people they are called to be.
 

Making Decisions: Tuning into Consolation

     The people I work with always seem to be in the midst of wrestling with major life decisions: what should I major in?  what should my career be?  should I date this person?  should I break up with this person?  am I ready to get married?  should I take that job in another city?  These questions can become the center of a person’s life, and they can be difficult and emotionally wrenching to deal with.  I have great confidence and excitement in Psychology’s ability to help these struggling people to make major decisions in their lives.

     In what follows, I will give you an example of how I try to help people make decisions.  It serves not as a definitive answer to the decision-making process, but as an illustration of what Psychology might do for people.  There are six steps to the method I teach.  It is very practical and may seem a little unnatural at first.  I always remind my students when I teach them this method not to be afraid of being “unnaturally practical” when it comes to making the major decisions of life.  Sometimes we spin a problem over and over in our heads and get absolutely nowhere with it.

     Let’s say that we are deciding whether to make a big commitment like getting married.    In making good decisions, I believe that we are seeking not just to know whether we want to do something or not, but whether it is something we are spiritually “called” to do.  So the first step is to recall to mind that we are in the presence of a guiding Spirit and we declare our intention to open ourselves to the Spirit’s inner promptings.  We next need something that will focus our attention because consciousness will be like a deer in headlights when it faces an overwhelming decision.  We therefore formulate what it is we are to decide about.  I recommend writing it down.  State the issue very clearly and in positive terms, e.g., “I will marry George in June of next year.”

     The third step is to use our minds to reflect on the statement.  We make a list with two columns of all the pros and cons of accepting this decision.  I know it might sound corny, but this is what I mean by being “unnaturally practical.”  Try it.  We include everything that comes to mind either for or against the decision.

     Fourth, as we look at the list or pros and cons before us, we consider each item and try to really reflect on the movement of the deep desires in our hearts as we consider it.  It is important in this step for us to be alert and well rested.  We ask ourselves, “Which of my desires seem to be following from the influence of the Spirit and which do not?”  Recall my criterion that Spirit is present if we deeply desire to give thanks or to serve the concrete needs of other people.  Usually one or two of the alternatives on the list will rise to the level of one that appears to be influenced by the Spirit.  What rises to the top might surprise us, as it may not be the alternative we had initially planned to choose.  The item on the list that moves our desire toward thanks and service is the option we tentatively decide upon.

     With the fifth step, we ask the Spirit to give us some sensible consolation as we imagine ourselves making this decision.  Usually the feeling of consolation will be one of deep peace and calm.  Finally, we live with our tentative decision for a while to see whether our mind, will, and feeling continue to be drawn in the same direction of peace and calm over the next days or weeks.  Here we adopt a “look-see” attitude in which we are not too strongly committed to our option.  If we continue to be drawn to the decision, we accept it; if our heart falls away from it over time, we might have to revise it or choose a different course entirely.
 

Sharing Wisdom

     It is a peculiar quality of modern life that we feel we must be novel and original all of the time.  We often have a very ambivalent, and at times hostile, attitude toward the notion of “tradition.”  Faced with the complexity of life’s struggles, we modern people find ourselves often going it alone, trying to reinvent the wheel.  This seems a pity to me.  There have been so many noble lives before ours that have struggled mightily with just the issues we wrestle with today.  A few have come to remarkable and creative insights that they have shared by telling others about them or by writing them down in books for us to read.

     I believe that one of the great services that Psychology can perform is to present modern people with the valuable treasures from the world’s spiritual and religious traditions.  We can teach others how to unwrap these great gifts and use what is inside to help them answer Tolstoy’s perennial question, “How then, should we live?”

     We psychologists also have so much valuable information coming to us from the 60 or so years of “Health Psychology” within the Humanistic tradition.  Abraham Maslow, one of the founders of the Humanistic movement, wanted Psychology to spend more time and energy studying “healthy” people, those who were functioning optimally, rather than focusing only on what goes wrong with people.  As a result of this research, we now know quite a lot about the characteristics of “transcending personalities,” those individuals who have managed to transcend the limitations of their group membership and realize a great deal of their unique human potential.  We have isolated several of these characteristics.  For example, we know that these people are intrinsically motivated, can tolerate and even resolve paradox, they live in the present tense, have emotionally complex lives, transcend and make meaning out of suffering, and live for spiritual values.  Psychology can help others study transcending personalities and receive all of their wisdom.

     In this chapter, I have discussed seven gifts that Psychology has to give: practicing the art of silence, embracing solitude, letting go of inordinate attachment, developing interiority, discernment, making decisions, and sharing wisdom.  These seven gifts can combine in educational settings to facilitate a movement of “departure” in the student from the familiar and commonplace.  They can “initiate” students into another way of being and seeing that will transform them to the core.  From this place of renewal and transformation, students can “return” to the world to enlighten and change it.
 

What Matters to Me about Psychology?

     In short, what matters to me about Psychology is you, the human person in all of your depravity and all of your beauty.  At this point in my life, what really matters to me are graduate and undergraduate students who come to me at critical developmental junctures in their lives.  I try to help them to learn to be silent and alone, to free themselves from inordinate attachments, to develop a literacy about their inner lives, to discern the directions of truth in their hearts, and to learn from the jewels of the world’s great wisdom traditions.  I want students to be able to learn to listen to the guiding rhythms of Being that are calling to them in each and every moment of their lives.

     This process of discovery and transformation can surely happen individually, but I think it works best when it occurs together in community.  So for the past 10 years or so, I have been working very hard to learn the best ways of creating what I call “communities-of-persons.”  Communities-of-persons contain three dimensions.  First, there is the physical space where learning and development take place.  This includes the college or university, the department, and the classroom.  I have been very interested in finding out what kind of physical environments facilitate learning and personal development in students.  Second, communities-of-persons include the academic curriculum, degree programs, syllabi, and the reading material we choose to present to students.  I am interested in developing the best courses of study with the richest textual materials to optimize student learning and development.  Third, and perhaps most importantly, communities-of-persons include the human relationships that are formed during our time together.  I have committed myself to trying to learn how to form relationships with students and how to help them form relationships with each other that will best facilitate learning and personal development.
 

Building Blocks for Communities-of-Persons

     I want to conclude this chapter by sharing with you a few of the most effective ways that I have found to build a vital community-of-persons, one that nurtures student learning and personal development.  Vital communities-of-persons:

1.  Create a sense of safety and stability.

2.  Respect and value silence and solitude.

3.  Have an open atmosphere of questing after truth rather than a closed atmosphere where truth is simply presented by the teacher.  Stifling atmospheres also include those where the teacher tries to convince students of the “truth” that there is no truth!

4.  Are hospitable places, that is, they make room for and cherish the unfolding of human persons.

5.  Teach and are filled with much Love.  Love, to paraphrase Harry Stack Sullivan, esteems and affirms the unconditional and unique value of the other, acknowledges and tries to fulfill the concrete needs of the other, and forgives and forgets the failings of the other.

6.  Encourage intimacy, which involves a movement out of our personal comfort-zones toward self-revelation and a real sharing of Being.

7.  Value, model, and practice careful study and scholarship.

8.  Promote liberation from inordinate attachment.

9.  Teach the skills of discerning an inner source of guidance.

10.  Initiate and affirm play, which is joyous, purposeless activity.

     I have found that the more I put these building blocks to work in the communities I help to form and teach in, the more that students learn and grow.  I still have much to learn and I am excited to learn it.  You might try and put to work those building blocks on my list that seem valuable for the
communities-of-persons you form and are part of in your own life.

     Let me conclude by saying that I believe very much in the promise of Psychology.  I teach this discipline because I have a positive vision of life that I want to share with people.  You have your own visions that you can share with me, your fellow students, and the wider world.  Now is the time, and the learning community at West Georgia (or wherever you are), is the place where you can separate yourself for a precious while from the busy-ness of the world around you and become initiated into a transformative vision that will enliven you and the rest of the world.  What a joy and a blessing it is that we can come together to become part of communities that serve as vehicles for the reception of guiding and nourishing wisdoms that are larger than ourselves.  I feel very grateful and honored to be part of one, and I wish you my very best on your journey.