Counseling within a New Spiritual Paradigm

Abstract

Postmodernism has brought an altered outlook that many find unsettling—secularisation, moral relativity, and pluralism. The old, certain world has given way to a new spiritual paradigm that has implications for spiritual counseling. Many founders of humanistic psychotherapy have emerged from religious backgrounds, but most have moved on in their thinking to accommodate the altered outlook and the dilemmas of their clients living in the new spiritual paradigm. Spiritual philosophers and psychotherapists have defined the spiritual in otherworldly or this-worldly transcendence, using terms such as numinous to convey bridged meaning. This article proposes that both may be linked, in that the divine can be encountered through human relations and a sense of “connectedness” with nature and persons. The tool for counseling in the new spiritual paradigm is a lens through which two worlds are viewed and interrelational encounters are re-viewed as theophanies. Client difficulties in terms of dealing with symptoms holistically, answering the big life questions within a framework of trust and exploring personal being in depth, are examined in the light of a vision that suggests that through “moments” of human relational-encounter, the divine may be experienced.