Power of Science and Silence – Psychology and Spirituality

 Power of Science and Silence – Psychology and Spirituality

Foundation Topics for Counseling and Healing

      1.   Psychology
2.      Attention
3.      Perception
4.      Learning
5.      Memory
6.      Thinking
7.      Problem solving
8.      Decision making
9.      Intelligence
10.  Creativity
11.  Personality
12.  Motivation
13.  Emotions
14.  Frustration and Conflict
15.  Stress
16.  Human Development
17.  Nervous System
18.  Endocrinal Glands
19.  Genetics
20.  Psychotherapies
21.  Psychological Assessment and Testing

1.      Psychology
Science: Original meaning of Psychology is “Science of Soul”. In Greek “Psyche” means “Soul”. Now, Psychology is known as a Science of behavior.

      Spirituality: Western Psychology is generally used to understand and get rid of past thoughts, feelings, emotions that are present in our consciousness, that affect individuals from expressing their full potential. Spirituality gives more importance to control over Consciousness to easily gain control over thoughts, feelings and emotions. Both Western and Eastern Psychology help in changing our attitude and behavior.

       Application: To transform unhealthy behavior to healthy behavior.

2.      Attention
Science: According to William James, Father of American Psychology, “Attention is focusing of consciousness on a particular object”. Attention is the cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment while ignoring other things.
 
Spirituality: Attention is the basis of Self Awareness. We become unconsciously attentive by external factors, whereas when we become attentive consciously then that is known as spiritual effort. By meditation we can develop attention and able to focus on any action for any amount of time without interference of other thoughts.
 
Application: Anxiety, Stress and other mental disorders have one of the common symptoms as distraction of thoughts, not able to focus on day to day activities or job in hand. Attention or Concentration is one of the important requirements of healthy individual especially for students and professionals.
 
3.      Perception
Science: The psychological process responsible for our interpretation of the world is known as perception.  The process of perception involves three steps when it encounters stimuli viz. (i) selection, (ii) organization and, (iii) interpretation.
 
Spirituality: Perception is influenced by psychological, biological and social factors. But to perceive things as it is without preconceived notions requires effort. And this happens only when we are able to detach ourselves from our programs of thoughts that we had inherited from childhood days till date. Many of our beliefs which we had inherited stop us from moving forward in our life and doing what we are interested in our life.
 
Spirituality helps us to keep our consciousness clean and clear, keep it plain whilst making a new plan or setting up a new goal so that my perception is not hindered by my past limited beliefs and ideas but remains filled up with zeal, hope and enthusiasm.
 
Application: We should be able to understand our perceptions of people, things, objects and situations so that I make modifications wherever necessary for my own development.
 
4.      Learning
Science: Learning is a “relatively permanent change in behavior (or behavior potential) resulting from experience” (Baron, 2001).

     Spirituality: Learning happens by association, reinforcement and insights. So to develop good habits, we need to associate or surround with such people and environment that would reinforce healthy, productive and useful habits. And this surrounding and environment is more important for children. As parents we should see that children are brought up in a healthy environment to develop a healthy body and personality. For this parents should imbibe values in their life and lead a healthy, virtuous and active life setting up an example for their kids to follow.

    Application: Any new development or improvement or transformation is only possible by learning something new and applying them in real life. Otherwise, we remain where we are.

        5. Memory

     Science: Memory process is the ability to encode, store and retrieve the information received by our five senses. And the stored information is called as memory. Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968) equated working of human memory to the working of computers. They proposed that similar to computers, we also possess different forms of memory systems, described as follows: a) Sensory memory, b) STM (Short Term Memory) and c) LTM (Long Term Memory).

    Spirituality: See no evil, think no evil, listen no evil, read no evil, speak no evil, act no evil because whatever we do, it is stored as memory and will affect our thinking, perception and behavior. The most important here is the Eyes. It is the eyes that deceive the most. It is through the eyes the virus creeps inside our consciousness and corrupt our program.
Application: without the help of memory, we cannot retain information to carry out the newly learned behavior. And the memory – program has to be pure and satopradhan. Otherwise Rajo and Sato memories create stress affecting our body and mind causing illness.

6.      Thinking
Science: Thinking is a process by which a new mental representation is formed through change, reorganization and transformation of information stored in the memory. Thinking is divided into Perceptual, Conceptual, Reflective, Creative and Critical thinking.
Spirituality: We human beings used to have thoughts like negative, waste. And these thoughts give rise to feelings and emotions leading to psychosomatic illnesses which is also known as stress. When we have positive and useful thoughts, then we remain free from stress. Spirituality helps to develop positive thoughts, feelings and emotions even if the situation tends to be negative.
Application: We need to identify the negative thoughts to replace with positive thoughts if we have to bring a positive change in our life.

7.      Problem solving
Science: Problem-solving can be defined as behavior of overcoming hindrances to achieve your goal. A typical problem-solving process follows seven steps: 1) Problem identification 2) Problem definition 3) Strategy formulation 4) Organization of information 5) Allocation of resources 6) Monitoring and 7) Evaluation
Spirituality: When we have hope and enthusiasm, we develop interest, motivation and determination to complete a task which is part of the problem solving. We never get stuck in the past failures or various mental attachment not letting go of the past. This happens when we are able to keep our consciousness filled with Spiritual power.
Application: As a counselor, one of the important roles is to help - facilitate aspirants to come out with solutions for their problem.

8.      Decision-making
Science: Decision Making Process involves the following six steps: Identifying the Problem, Generating Alternatives, Evaluating Alternatives, Choosing an Alternative, Implementing the Decision and Evaluating Decision Effectiveness.
Spirituality: When there is clarity in mind by regular meditation, it is easy to take a right decision. Clarity comes from peace of mind, positive thinking with good wishes for self and others. If this clarity is not there, there is over crowding of thoughts leading to confusion before making a decision and may lead to a wrong decision.
Application: To move forward, every step requires making a decision sometimes quickly without delay.

9.      Intelligence
Science: Alferd Binet (1905), the first psychologist who developed standardized intelligence test, defined intelligence as, “the ability to judge well, understand well, and reason well.” As per Wechsler (1944), “Intelligence is the aggregate or global capacity of the individual to act purposefully, to think rationally and to deal effectively with his/her environment.”
Spirituality: Intelligent person in fact is the one who can tolerate, cooperate, accommodate, accept and live a peaceful and balanced life with self and others. An intelligent person lives a virtuous life and shares his virtues with others. An intelligent person has knowledge to maintain a balance in worldly life and spiritual life. Intelligent is the one who imbibes knowledge and maintains balance in all aspects of life whether it is family, friends, mental and physical health, profession, spirituality and life skills. In Ayurveda life style diseases are called as diseases caused by intellectual error. When our Intellect is clear with spiritual self identification, then we lead a balanced life with right knowledge of all aspects of life, leading to health, wealth and happiness.
Application: Intelligence is enhanced through Spirituality to lead a balanced life because health of mind and body depends upon the knowledge and application of psychological, biological and social factors of life.

10.  Creativity
Science: The act of creating an original and novel idea or object is known as creativity. It includes the process of preparation, incubation, illumination and verification.
Spirituality: It is said all new inventions are invented when a person goes into the depth of silence. It is called as incubation period in psychology. From the depth of ocean of silence, we come out with the treasures of creative ideas. More we practice silence in our day to day life, more creative and intuitive we become day by day.
Application: Human beings are the creators. The more we create new inventions more comfort one has in his/her life. We never get stuck in old way of thinking and living, every moment is fresh and new for a spiritually identified person and like a bird, he/she keeps flying not holding on to any single branch of the tree.

11.  Personality
Science: The word personality has been taken from the Latin word persona – the mask used by actors to represent characters during a theatrical play. As the character changes, so does the mask of the actor. Our behavior is not always constant or predictable. Sometimes we behave as predicted, sometimes we behave quite differently in a familiar situation, and sometimes our behavior becomes completely unpredictable. Due to our ever changing yet stagnant behaviour, there is a widespread confusion over the definition of personality.
According to APA, “Personality refers to individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving.” It further states that “the study of personality focuses on two broad areas: One is: understanding individual differences in particular personality characteristics, such as sociability or irritability. The other is: understanding how the various parts of a person come together as a whole.”
Spirituality: Although there are various ways to define a personality in psychology, all are based on the information that we have stored in our memory. And it is also said that human beings behave differently in different situations based on which part of the brain is active at that moment, in other words human beings are considered of multiple personalities in psychology. But Spirituality says that not only a single person has a single original personality but whole of mankind has a common individual original healthy personality. And this original personality is of peace, love, happiness, bliss and powers. The more we experience our natural original personality in our day-to-day life, we tend to remove the masks of various acquired personalities and become mentally and physically healthy.
Application: The only real help we can offer others is to help them come back to their original personality of self awareness with constantly alert and conscious of innate virtues and powers.

12.  Motivation
Science: Motivation can be termed as a driving force or it can also be stated as a process that starts and drives various activities, whether physical or psychological (Gerrig and Zimbardo, 2006). Needs, drives and incentives contribute to motivation.
Spirituality: It is said, need, drive and incentives are the main factors of motivation and these factors also create various competitions leading to anxiety, stress, worry, fear and less efficient in performance. When a person becomes spiritual, his motivation becomes more intrinsic, natural, unconditional and service oriented with good wishes for own self and others. Even if there is competition, a spiritual person will focus on giving the best without any feeling of being competitive free from expectation because he enjoys every moment and every situation with hope and enthusiasm which is his natural personality. And this person has the possibility to reach greater heights because there is no anxiety, stress, tension, expectation that hinders his performance from giving the best.
Being spiritual, a person develops intrinsic natural motivation with constant zeal and enthusiasm without expectation for the result without the influence of need, drive and incentives.
Application: We need to identify what motivates a person based on motivational theories to improve the performance related to profession and studies.

13.  Emotions
Science: Emotions can also be termed as motivators of human behavior (Feist and Rosenberg, 2015) and as such behavior can be directed and activated by emotions as well (Nolen- Hoeksema et al, 2009).Feldman (2015, pg. 312) defined emotion as “feelings that generally have both physiological and cognitive elements and that influence behavior”.
 
Spirituality: Feist and Rosenberg (2015, pg. 418) defined emotions as “brief, acute changes in consciousness experience and physiology that occur in response to a personally meaningful situation”. When there is only experience in consciousness without physiological disturbance, it may be called as feelings. Feelings may be experienced either in pleasure or pain. Emotion disturbs the homeostasis (balance). Spirituality helps in experiencing more feelings and those who are never exposed to spirituality experience more emotional disturbances.
 
Application: The emotions what we had experienced since childhood are to be vented out with understanding to develop a healthy personality. The charged emotions of the past affect our present behavior if it is not neutralized by psychotherapies or self analysis.
 
14.  Frustration and Conflict
Science: Frustration or Anger is experienced when a desire to achieve a task is blocked by some reason. Conflict happens when we need to decide on only one task but we are in fact interested in two tasks at the same time. And there are also personal and role conflicts.
Spirituality: Frustration happens when we are not able to detach our thoughts from whatever we had expected or desired to experience or achieve.  Goal conflict happens when we are not able to let go one desire for another. Personal Conflict happens when we focus or expect too much on external values rather than internal spiritual values. The main reason for these is the attachment of our mind. When we know that it is the Consciousness that creates thoughts and when I develop the power over thoughts or desire to create and stop as per my intention, when I have the will power through spirituality by giving more importance to spiritual values, then I become free from frustration and conflict.
Application: Counseling others to identify the cause of frustration and conflict with techniques to overcome them will help a person give his full attention to the task at hand. Where there is total concentration, success is always guaranteed.

15.  Stress
Science: Stress may be defined as anything that disrupts or disturbs a normal person’s sense of equilibrium and well being. There are instances when people actually perform better during times of stress. This is because they are able to harness stress positively to improve outcomes.
Spirituality: Stress is known to be one of the main causes of Non-communicable diseases like Diabetes, Cancer, Stroke, Heart Diseases, Hyper Tension and Addictions. If we are spiritual, then we can live a stress free life protected from these life style diseases.
Application: In fact, we can do any action without experiencing stress. When we have love and good wishes for self, others and the actions we do which are beneficial for the human kind, even a big task seems to be small and easy. When there is no love and good wishes, even a small task creates a lot of stress within us. We need to develop unconditional love and unconditional motive if we want to live a stress free and healthy life.

16.  Human Development
Science: Human Development explains the development process of human being in all aspects – Psychological, biological and social. In psychology, Human development is explained by theories of Freud, Erikson, Maslow, Carl Roger, Pavlov and Skinner focusing on thoughts and behavior.
Spirituality: In fact the true development happens only when we identify ourselves as a spiritual conscious being who was an ideal self, is an ideal self and always an ideal self. All other forms of human development is like trying to fight our own shadow where we never gain victory, never overcome limitations to reach to the ideal self. When there is spiritual self awareness, the human growth reaches its full potential when all those learned ideas, beliefs, attitude, perception, emotions, motivation are replaced with original values and virtues. The real Human development or transformation happens with spiritual self awareness and not by transformation of unnatural ideas and behavior.
Application: As a Counselor, the current issue that is being experienced by a person has to be analyzed from overall (psycho-bio-social) human development - from childhood till date.

17.  Nervous System
Science: Descartes (1596-1650) introduced the concept of a separate mind and body. He believed that all mental functions were located in the pineal gland. Hippocrates quote is “From the brain and the brain alone arise our pleasures, joys, laughter and jests, as well as our sorrows, pains and grief’s”.
 
The nervous system is responsible for all our behaviors and thought processes. The nervous system of the humans has two major divisions, namely, the Central Nervous System (CNS) and the Peripheral Nervous System (PNS).
 
The central nervous system comprises of brain and the spinal cord that work together to make behavior possible. Peripheral nervous system is responsible for connecting CNS with rest of our body. The PNS is further subdivided into somatic nervous system (SNS) and autonomic nervous system(ANS).
 
 The Autonomic Nervous system, another part of PNS, regulates emotional behavior, other organs and glands.  The somatic nervous system conducts all sensory and motor information to and from the CNS. It is responsible for voluntary movement.
 
ANS has two divisions, sympathetic division and parasympathetic division. These two divisions are very different from one another but work in conjunction with each other.
 
Sympathetic division is located primarily on the middle of the spinal column (top of the ribcage to the waist area that is thoracic and lumbar areas). The sympathetic division is responsible for "fight-or-flight" mechanism (fight : anger; flight : fear).It helps the person or animal to deal with stressful situation (sympathy with one's emotions). In stress, the sympathetic division becomes very active, and starts sending its impulses very rapidly to defend the body. It also stimulates the adrenal gland to produce epinephrine and norepinephrine which help to enhance heart rate, blood sugar level, and increase the blood flow to the skeletal muscles to deal with stress.
 
The parasympathetic division is active most of the time and controls various functions of the body in non-stressful situations or when everything is all right, that is in day-to-day functioning. The activities of sympathetic division are replaced by the parasympathetic division when the stress is over. It helps in repairing the body systems and bringing them back to a resting state and restoring the body to normal functioning after arousal. Parasympathetic division restores the
energy that is burned by the sympathetic division.
 
Spirituality: The pineal gland in the brain, we can say is the location of soul, the consciousness. And more we experience our original spiritual qualities of peace, love and happiness, we activate the parasympathetic system which keeps our body and the bodily functions relaxed and balanced. When we get disturbed, then the sympathetic system activates fight and flight stress response to bring our body to an emergency mode.
 
Application: We need to teach relaxation techniques from Science or Spirituality to calm down the nervous system by activating the Parasympathetic system. Stress (Sympathetic System) affects our nervous system and relaxation methods (activation of parasympathetic system) helps where knowledge or spiritual guidance never works. Especially it is more helpful for the people of old age.
 
18.  Endocrinal Glands
Science: The endocrine system along with the nervous system helps to maintain homeostasis. There are various endocrine glands in the body which secrete their hormones. A specific quantity of hormones is required for normal functioning of the body. There are two types of glands, namely, endocrine glands and exocrine glands. The glands that affect behavior are known as endocrine glands, whereas, there are glands that do not affect behavior, like salivary gland and sweat gland, which fall in the category of exocrine glands.
Hypothalamus /  Pituitary Glands controls the other endocrine glands known as Pineal Gland, Thyroid Gland, Parathyroid gland, Adrenal Gland, Pancreas and Gonads
Spirituality: Glands secrete hormones controlling the physical and mental health mechanism. A spiritual life style with practice of spiritual values in life enables our hormonal rhythm function effectively harmonizing the function of endocrinal glands.
Application: Early morning meditation activates the pineal gland (third eye) which controls the biological circadian rhythm and positive emotions with healthy life style balances the secretion of hormones in endocrinal glands.

19.  Genetics
Science: Genes play a major role in thinking and behavior of human being along with the influence of environmental factors. It is something like human beings are not really an independent being to live a life of his desire.
Spirituality: The main difference between human being and any other creature is the self awareness. Irrespective of whatever role a person performs in the world, he can be conscious of his true nature and express divinity, values and virtues in his interaction with self and others. Spirituality and its values are the main qualities that differentiate human being from a creature.
Application: To accept the genes or the destiny as it is but give our best with cheerfulness, self awareness and without expectation of the result having faith in self, God, people and situations.

20.  Psychotherapies
Science: Psychotherapies of different approaches like Psychoanalysis, Individual Psychology, Analytical psychology, Psychodynamic theories, Humanistic approaches and latest empirical models all contribute to the mental health of a human being in dealing with the emotional issues and developing life skills transforming thinking, perception, attitude, beliefs and external situations.
Spirituality: The real change, self transformation happens only with transformation in consciousness which is the creator or source of these thoughts, perception, attitude and situations. So, we need to work on retaining our Self awareness and its natural consciousness along with the application of Psychotherapies for mental and physical well-being.
Application: Psychotherapies helps to understand the thoughts, feelings, emotions, perceptions, attitude of past and present, whether they are positive or negative, helpful or harming, beneficial or losing, strength or weakness, health or illness. Unless we know something is wrong, we never take action to correct it. Awareness, Acceptance and Action is the rule for Healing.

21.  Psychological Assessment and Testing
Psychological assessment is a process that involves the integration of information from multiple sources, such as tests of normal and abnormal personality, tests of ability or intelligence, tests of interests or attitudes, as well as information from personal interviews. Collateral information is also collected about personal, occupational, or medical history, such as from records or from interviews with parents, spouses, teachers, or previous therapists or physicians.
A psychological test is one of the sources of data used within the process of assessment; usually more than one test is used. Psychological tests are used to assess a variety of mental abilities and attributes, including achievement and ability, personality, and neurological functioning. For children, academic achievement, ability, and intelligence tests may be used as tools in school placement, in determining the presence of a learning disability or a developmental delay, in identifying giftedness, or in tracking intellectual development. Intelligence testing may also be used with teens and young adults to determine vocational ability (e.g., in career counseling). There are tests to measure Emotional Intelligence and Spiritual Intelligence.
Example: When we do Case Study for Counseling and Healing, it is an Assessment and it also includes few Psychological tests.