Rattling your Soul Cages: An Interview with John Welwood

John Welwood is a practicing psychotherapist and clinical psychologist who lives and works in Mill Valley with his wife, Jennifer. Through their seminar work, based on the experience of their own marriage, they offer a unique psycho-spiritual dimension to the realm of couples consciousness.

The author of two earlier books on relationship, Journey of the Heart and Ordinary Magic, Welwood's newest book Love and Awakening focuses on relationship as a spiritual path. John Welwood also teaches at the California Institute for Integral Studies in San Francisco.

CG:You practice a psycho-spiritual approach in your work. How is that different from traditional couples counseling?

JW:Traditional couples counseling and most "how to" books on relationship have a focus on problem-solving. The classic American way is to find the problem, find the solution, and get on with life.

And that's fine for certain things. But if you just take the problem-solving approach, you often lose the opportunity the problem offers to actually look at something deeper inside yourself. My approach is to see every psychological difficulty as a chance to contact yourself in a deeper way. Every problem that comes up in a relationship is really just a symptom that you're out of touch with a deeper resource inside yourself. You can attack the symptom with a psychological band-aid, but it won't really heal the underlying cause. The symptom will simply resurface in another way.

Relating to another person is really about relating to yourself, with the full range of who you are. That's how we can see the full spectrum of our being. But we all have parts of ourselves that we're cut off from, and that's what shows up as a problem in a relationship. The truth is that you can only be as intimate with another person as you are with yourself.

By meeting yourself in this place where your sense of value is missing, you can be unconditionally present with yourself. You don't have to go outside yourself to prove your worth or gain approval. When you can face your own fear, you can regain what you have lost. You can fill the hole where you've been disconnected. As you begin to reconnect with yourself, you awaken to your own energy.

CG:Do you think that certain people are attracted to each other because they have things that they need to work out?

JW:Unconsciously, yes. In my book, Love and Awakening, I talk about a "soul connection." A soul connection is where you recognize that you are in each other's life in order to grow and expand. There's a mutual and intuitive recognition that you can fulfill your potential in this person's presence. It's like a seed that wants to blossom and bear fruit - but it needs certain conditions in order to thrive. Love is the primary nutrient required for the seed of the soul to develop.

A soul connection is more than the new age notion of finding a "soul mate," which is really just another version of Prince Charming. No one's going to rescue you and magically transform you into a being of light. But a genuine soul connection does activate the seed.

CG:What is the difference between a heart connection and a soul connection?JW:You can have a heart connection with anyone walking down the street. It refers to a general openness of being. A soul connection goes deeper. You can have a heart connection with almost anybody, but a soul connection is something you share with a very few people in an entire lifetime. There's a feeling that you are meant to be together.

CG:Would you explain the dynamic between expansion and contraction in a relationship?

JW:When we fall in love, we start to expand. It's a natural process. As the seed starts to expand, it hits the shell its contained in. The seed wants to break out of its shell; that's love's call to awaken. And when you start to break out of that shell, the false self has to die. It's what the poet Ibn al Farad meant when he said, "Death through love is life."

It's inevitable that you're going to encounter obstacles that are in the way of that expansion - the old identities, the old beliefs about who you are. As the seed expands and hits the shell, it hurts and that's the cause of contraction. It brings you up against the prison walls of your own self-image, your patterns, your fears, your limitations. This endless cycle of expansion and contraction happens all the way along in relationship. It's a matter of learning how to work with that dynamic. The point where the seed hits the shell is what I call the razor's edge, and that's where the growth can happen.

CG:Does your inspiration and insight come from a particular person, philosophy or realm of experience?

JW:Yes. My first book, Journey of the Heart describes my personal path. It begins with the end of my first marriage, like so many of us who are coming from unconscious relationships. I felt like I really needed to understand why it didn't work out, and what relationship is really all about.

I knew I didn't want to settle down into the traditional Ozzie-and-Harriet suburban routine. So I had to ask: How do you go about creating a relationship that's really going to last? Is it even possible?

It was the early 1970s and I had no teachers, no models. I had no answers - just all these questions. I had just finished graduate school at the University of Chicago and hadn't even begun my own practice. I discovered that all my teachers and colleagues had their own share of misery in this area.

In my quest, I delved into spiritual literature - both eastern and western. I found a few books here and there, but not much about intimacy as a connection between body, mind, soul and spirit. None of the classic religions really talk about the dynamics of relationship between a man and a woman. So, I felt a personal need to explore what I call the sacred psychology of the couple. I had to write a book that didn't exist yet so that I could learn and understand what being in relationship really means. I didn't have a clue.

That's why it took me 10 years to write Journey of the Heart. Ironically, I was a practicing therapist and was involved in various relationships during those years. As it turned out, everything I was writing about was right there in my life.

I met my wife, Jennifer, in 1985 and we have been married for 10 years. My new book, Love and Awakening, comes more out of our relationship. It is more about a soul connection and the psycho-spiritual work that is involved in maintaining that kind of relationship. I must say that most of my work is influenced by what I refer as the sacred mystical traditions - especially Tibetan Buddhism and Sufism. It's all about the intersection of the human and the divine.

CG:How does your work differ from writers like Thomas Moore, John Gray, and Stephen and Ondrea Levine?

JW:First of all, I value all of them. Each approach has its own gift and it's a matter of finding which one resonates with you.

My work is different from Stephen and Ondrea's in that theirs has more of a spiritual approach, whereas mine bridges into the realm of psychology. My work is not just about how to forgive and love and open your heart. It's embraces all of that, but it's more specifically how to work with - and work through - all the old identities from the past that may be inhibiting your ability to be fully present. I teach how to be present with those old patterns and communicate about the issues that arise, so that you don't keep repeating the same cycle.

Probably because of the sacred Buddhist traditions which lay at the foundation of my work, my books do not offer solutions. Unlike John Gray's books, mine don't present any strategies for how to make your relationship work. So many of the self-help books on the market today tend to project an ideal of how things ought to be. It's as if to say, "Here's how successful couples do it. So, let's graft this onto you." But if you're not at that same stage of development, how can someone else's solution work for you? What works for one person may only make another feel worse.

Instead, my operative principle is to start where you are and learn how to be present with the difficulties that area already there, what feelings you're not able to open up to. As you begin to inquire about what lies underneath these obstacles, certain resources become available to you. That's the catalyst for growth and what allows you to be more present in a relationship. These inner resources are like rooms in a magnificent palace, whose doors have finally been unlocked.

I'm probably more akin to Thomas Moore than the others you mentioned. I share Thomas Moore's sense that there's no real fix-it approach, and that every difficulty is an opportunity to look within. I think that my definition if soul is a little different than his, which is more Jungian and has to do with the imagination. My view has a more eastern flavor. I see soul as a window to the divine and relationship as a path to recovering our essential nature.

CG:Do believe in karma or destiny?

JW:I try and stay close to my own experience when it comes to my belief system. Although karma is an interesting idea, I don't really have an experience of what that means. When you start talking about past lives, you are usually talking about something you believe.

But I can really only talk about this life. I do see how karma operates in this life; it's the principle of cause and effect. Everything that's happened to you in the past does affect who you are and what you do in the present. The patterns in our relationships were laid down in early childhood; our relationships with our parents were our first relationships. All the blocks and fears were laid down like a template. And that's the karma that you bring into your relationships that needs to be burned up.

CG:Do you advocate any particular lifestyle?

JW:Once again, I avoid the trap where people try and live up to something they think they should be, whether it means being vegetarian or celibate. I am immediately suspect and any teacher or writer who says "Here's what you should do" or "Here's how you should live." They just become the next guru on the block.

I don't want to be a part of that. I just try and help people relate to their own experience of life. The seeds of our wisdom, the answers about where we need to go in life are all contained in our experience.

CG:What are the shortcomings to the new age approach to relationship?

JW:All relationship seems to fall at one end of the spectrum or the other - either all heaven and no earth, or all earth and no heaven. The conventional, fix-it approach tends to be practical and very down-to-earth: Here's how to have sex, here's how to make money, here's how to succeed in life. Set goals and make them happen. But there's often no sense of a higher purpose: What is a couple? What does it mean for two people to be together?

On the other end is the new age approach, which tends to be more ethereal: See God in your partner. Share your love with everyone. Don't be attached to anything and don't desire anything. Just accept what the universe gives you. Open up and everything will be just fine.

Love is the answer.

But I don't think love is enough. Love is what's needed, but we also need to awaken. We need to be aware of the conditioned structures we are asleep in. The new age approach doesn't really talk about the day-to-day reality, the nitty-gritty struggles of what we are trapped in. The usual answer is: It's only your ego. Just let go of it. But that's all heaven and no earth. So I try and bring heaven and earth together. That's what the psycho-spiritual approach is all about.

CG:How can an obstacle become an opportunity?

JW:When a you are in a fight with your partner about something, there's usually a fight going on inside you that has triggered an old identity, an old pattern, an old experience. The bottom line is that you can't listen to someone else until you can listen to yourself. So the challenge - or gift- is the chance to go within and find out what's really going on.

For example, a couple is fighting about doing chores around the house. She asks him to help around the house and he resists, because he feels like she's telling him what to do. He feels like a child whose mother is trying to control his freedom. That's the real issue - not who really takes out the garbage. If he can understand what is causing his resistance and she can understand why he responds that way, they can have a different kind of conversation about the chores. Maybe she can tell him how she feels abandoned when she has to do the chores herself. Then they can negotiate and find a satisfying resolution.

Another typical scenario is when one person is jealous of a partner whose role is to be the life of the party. Remember that we tend to project our own inner issues by criticizing the same in another person. So, when someone's jealous, what's really getting triggered is their own insecurity, their own lack of self-worth.

The real message is: I have less value than others. This is the inner resource that's missing. So, it becomes an opportunity for the jealous person to recover a sense of value, instead of trying to change the behavior of the other person. If the jealous person can say, "When you flirt with someone else, I feel my own lack of value," then they're telling the truth. If their partner really cares, they'll hear that truth and can respond with empathy. Then there can be new understanding and greater sensitivity.Ironically, the one who's the life of the party may really be masking the same insecurity. Perhaps the only way they feel worthwhile is to be outgoing. When you get right down to it, both are expressing a lack of self-worth. Although they're at opposite ends of the behavior spectrum, they are often working on the same issue.

CG:What if one partner wants to have children and the other one doesn't?

JW:That's a very difficult situation, because it's a case where two people have very different visions of what they want from the relationship. And it usually doesn't work. Two people have to create a shared vision. Or one person will have to give in if they want to stay together. If two people are willing to reconcile these differences, then there's a chance.

CG:What do you mean by "sacred combat"?

JW:Sacred combat is when two people begin to rattle the bars of each other's soul cages. They can start to see their conflict as an opportunity to break out of their shell. It's not just a battle of egos or a power struggle. As they come up against each other's old identities, the friction loosens up the patterns. It becomes a challenge is to inspire change rather than stay shut down. And that is its higher purpose.

CG:In your book, you say that relationship can help us recover lost dimensions of our being. What do you mean?

JW:Let's take an example of a man who felt helpless in his relationship. He would often blame his partner and get verbally abusive. He would accuse her of trying to control him, even if she was just being herself. He was trying to change her naturally assertive behavior, rather than relating to his own helplessness. As he began to be present with his own helplessness, he started to feel grounded and was no longer running away from real intimacy.

Ironically, when we begin to acknowledge that we aren't being truthful, that is the beginning of honesty. Being present with fear is the beginning of courage. Admitting helplessness allows the recovery of strength. Facing the problem and connecting with the loss is always the first step to recovering a lost resource.

CG:Why is it so difficult for some people to make a commitment and easy for others? Is it a fear of intimacy?

JW:There's no one answer to a question like that, just like there's no one reason why people have affairs. People are very unique and everyone has their own dynamic. But often the fear of intimacy has to do with some unresolved connection with their parents, an emotional tie that hasn't been severed. In a way, they're already committed elsewhere. Or they're afraid of recreating the same dynamic they had with Mom or Dad, especially if a daughter was dominated by her father or a son by his mother. It could be that a man who was always a good boy to his parents doesn't want to have to play that role for his wife.

In therapy, we have to honor the fact that someone honestly isn't ready to make a commitment and see if that dynamic can be worked with. If someone is willing to ask themselves why it is so difficult to make a commitment, then the old identity can be deconstructed.

CG:Why do people sabotage the love that they want so much?

JW:Again there are many different dynamics to this issue. In order to really let love in, it melts. It's like letting sunlight nourish the seed. The fear starts to dissolve those outer defenses. So, the one who wants to stay hidden in their shell is the one who's going to sabotage a relationship. It's too threatening to let down those defenses.

CG:Is it possible for someone to love too much? What is your advice to someone caught in this dilemma?

JW:Loving too much is a way of saying that a person is grasping onto a relationship. It means that a person is more attached to holding onto a relationship than to taking care of themselves. It's another example of trying to get something out there that you don't have in here. That's the biggest delusion in relationship - seeing our partner (or potential partner) as the source of our happiness or of our suffering.

CG:In some circumstances, do you think it is better for a couple to break up? What is the point of no return?

JW:In some cases, yes. Having a shared vision of the relationship is essential - and the willingness to work through the stuff that comes up. Without either of those qualities, it's hard for a conscious relationship work. A couple make compromises and stay together, but it's not always the healthiest choice.

CG:How does your newest book Love and Awakening complement your previous book Journey of the Heart? Can you use one without the other?

JW:They do work in tandem. You can start with either one. Journey of the Heart was my attempt to look at conscious relationship as a whole. There's are chapters on marriage, commitment, passion and sex - all the different aspects of relationship in a broader spectrum.

Love and Awakening takes a particular line of relationship as a spiritual path, more specifically how its difficulties can provide opportunities for growth. It's much more focused in that way. And it has dialogues in it, that illustrate the issues in the book. In that way, it's more concrete.

CG:How do you discern between love and desire?

JW:They are definitely related. There are many levels of desire, the deepest of which comes from the soul: the longing to realize who you are, the yearning to be whole and recover the lost parts of your self. Love awakens that holy desire. Passion is created when love and desire come together. And unconditional passion is what drives a person to fully awaken. Instead of regarding desire as an enemy, as something to be overcome, I tend to go deeper and find out where it's coming from.

CG:If intimacy is indeed a sacred and natural state, then why is it so elusive?

JW:I don't think intimacy is a natural state. It's sacred, but not necessarily natural. Intimacy as we know it is a very recent cultural phenomenon in human history. People assume that we have had intimacy for thousands of years, but we haven't. It used to be that you could be married and live with someone your whole life and never have a single personal conversation.

You must understand what a new concept intimacy is and that's why it is so difficult for most of us. We have no teaching about it, no guidance, no models, no history. For thousands of years, people stayed together for external reasons. Marriage fulfilled a social and economic function. Its purpose and intention as always created by the family, and in a childlike way, couples did what they were told. Marriage was not about intimacy.

I define intimacy as a mutual recognition and sharing of who you really are with someone. That's a very new concept in what I call couple consciousness, and has only been possible since the Industrial Revolution when people could leave home and make their own living. People didn't even really begin dating until the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. Then we got a very adolescent, romantic model of relationship through Hollywood cinema, followed by the Ozzie-and-Harriet sitcoms of the 1950s. This adolescent stage peaked in the 1960s, when people began to experience "free love" through the sexual revolution, characterized by rebellion, experimentation and idealism.

Then the divorce rate soared, signaling the beginning of what I call the adult stage. If the child stage means doing your duty, and the adolescent stage is about expressing your feelings, then the adult stage is characterized by consciousness and responsibility.

I must credit the women's movement of the 1960s with this transition of consciousness from the adolescent to the adult stage by asking the question: What is it to be a woman? And with that came a deluge of pop psychology books. Before that, psychological language and concepts weren't even available. Our parents didn't have the benefit of those communication tools, which meant that they didn't know how to talk about what was going on in their relationships. How can there be intimacy if a couple can't even talk about what's going on between them?

So, intimacy is not something that's handed down; it's not in our genes. It's not something we know how to do naturally. It's a human invention and that's why we are all having such a hard time. That's why we need to bring consciousness to it.

CG:If you had one message to broadcast to the entire world, what would it be?

JW:Heal the split inside ourselves and reconnect with who we really are. And we can do that by learning to be present with our experience no matter what's going on inside. There's only one war in the universe, and that's between self and other. If we want to heal the planet and regenerate our world, we heed to heal that split inside first. Ironically, dealing with yourself and another through relationship is the best way to do it. It gives us a perfect mirror to work with the inner conflict.

Virginia Lee was Associate Editor and served on the Editorial Board of Yoga Journal from 1980-85, and has been widely published in magazines ever since, including Harper's Bazaar. She is a regular interviewer for Common Ground, and has also written two books: The Roots of Ras Tafari published by Avant Books of San Diego in 1985, and more recently Affairs of the Heart published by Crossing Press of Freedom, CA in 1993. She currently works as a freelance writer in Santa Cruz, CA.