Integral Psych NY

Welcome! I believe that three things are necessary if a person is to be really happy in adult life.

The first is to have good, deep psychotherapy, to heal leftover emotional suffering from past traumas and wounds. Also to have couples and family therapy as needed, to keep relationships strong and pliable as people change over time.

The second need is to grow and mature throughout life. There’s no age at which we’re done. Ken Wilber, philosopher of consciousness, pulled together over 100 theories of development (Integral Psychology, 2000). The research supports 3 broad levels of development in adults, grouped as immature, conventionally mature, and post-conventionally mature. Immaturity makes us more selfish, more confused and easily hurt by life. Maturing, we build pain tolerance, self-control, objectivity and wisdom, so we can be happier in situations that would stress a younger soul.

The third need is for spiritual experience. If we believe that only a mechanistic universe of space and time exists, then we have been brainwashed by the current scientific paradigm, which denies the existence of anything we can’t observe with our 5 senses. But let’s admit the obvious: we possess consciousness. It makes no sound. We can’t touch it. But when we quiet all the other senses, we “feel” it. It is pleasurable. It feels spiritual or akin to it. If we don’t regress to immature religious doctrine, we enter the world of higher Self. Spiritual experience expands your world view. Post-conventional maturity is permeated by it.