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Joan Borysenko, PhD is trained as both a medical scientist and a psychologist, completing her doctorate in medical sciences at Harvard Medical School where she was an instructor in medicine until 1988. Joan is co-founder and former Director of the Mind-Body clinical programs at the now merged Beth Israel and Deaconess Medical Centers.

Guy Spiro: Joan, we last spoke a couple of years ago ... what’s been going on with you?

Joan Borysenko: Well, I’ve recently been married. That’s a wonderful thing when you’ve finally found your soul mate and partner in life. I’m delighted. In the brief time we’ve been together, we’ve founded the Claritas Institute for Inter-Spiritual Inquiry. The first program offered is an inter-spiritual mentor training program. I’m very excited because our first class of about 65 students is starting this August. It is a certificate program in spiritual mentoring that consists of two five-day intensives in Boulder, Colorado each year and a very special online program called Journey-Mapping. The point of spiritual mentoring is a little bit like spiritual direction is in the Catholic tradition, but wider because it’s inter-spiritual, looking for ways of the mystic heart in all spiritual traditions.

GS: What are some of the more significant sources that you are drawing from?

JB: We’re drawing from a variety of sources. For one, Claritas is dedicated to carrying on the work of the late Brother Wayne Teasdale from right here in Chicago. You probably know he wrote a book called The Mystic Heart. It’s based on the perennial philosophy that occurs in all of the world’s religious traditions, what all traditions have in common. In other words, what is the destiny of the human soul and how can we most easily make that journey to connecting with a larger source, and acting with love and compassion in the world as guided by that source? We draw upon all the world’s wisdom traditions in order to do that. We’re delighted to carry on the work of Brother Wayne in this regard.

GS: What will people typically start out working on?

JB: There is a three-part movement in spiritual mentoring. The first is alignment with the force of our being, because if you’re talking about helping to mentor others to connect with the force of being in their lives, the only way to do that is to work on yourself and your own alignment with the source of being. So the first year of the school is really based on our own connection to the ground of being.

     We have people who come from every tradition. We have people who are Buddhist, Catholic, Jewish, Sufi, and many people who are spiritual, but not aligned with a particular wisdom tradition. What we’re doing in this community is based on the dea that we travel together towards alignment with the ground of being as a group in a way that may be a little bit different than we do as individuals. When we gather together as a community of inquiry and spiritual practice, we can really help one another with that alignment to the source. The school is really based on inquiry, and that’s why we’ve called ourselves the Claritas Institute for Inter-spiritual Inquiry.

     The meaning of claritas in Latin is clarity and illumination. That brings us to the second aspect of what we do in the school. After grounding ourselves together in alignment with the source and becoming a community of inquiry and practice, the second movement of spiritual guidance in anyone’s life is the discernment. That is, how do you tell the difference between what your ego is telling you and what you’re hearing from past conditioning and reactivity? This is what a movement of spirit is like in your life. So, the second year of the program focuses in part on discernment and, of course, supervision and spiritual mentoring. What you have after alignment and discernment is spiritual guided action in your life, or true engaged spirituality.

     In the school, people will be focusing on what that spirituality will look like in their own lives, how they can use what we have developed together as a community in whatever they’re doing. Some people are business people, some are therapists, or physicans, or nurses. Many people already have some kind of practice in spiritual mentoring, and some truly feel a calling, or vocation, to do this work with others, to start this kind of work. So, looking at one’s own call in vocation is a part of the action piece that people will be doing in the school. Those are really the three movements, alignment, discernment, and action.

GS: Well, it’s an interesting question when people ask how they can tell the difference between “The Voice” and the typical voices in their head.

JB: There are certainly many ways that different traditions have put that. One of the things that we’ll be doing in this school is to ask different guest teachers from a variety of different traditions the same questions: “What is discernment as it’s been taught in your tradition?” and “How does one make that differential?”

     One of the ways, of course, is the initial discernment exercises, which rest heavily on imagination. I know that many of your readers have done these kinds of exercises in the past. For example, I personally felt guided to start this particular inter-spiritual mentor training program. The question is, what is my motivation for doing that? Does it have to do with ego or is it truly a moment of spirit that I’ve been given to do?

     So one of the exercises that I did when this came up as a potential call was simply to imagine that I was at the end of life, looking back at my life and at this particular call, and imagining what my life would look like if I did, or didn’t do it. What would it mean at a personal level, in terms of my own spiritual development, and in terms of what I might have to offer to others? I think that the key to discernment is whether a thing is something that I’m doing for myself or it is something that I’m offering to a larger source.

     When we think about what is spiritual growth and development, for me the easiest way to look at it is that it’s a movement out of narcissism and out of your own individual desires, and into a progressively more inclusive view of the world and a change to really help and offer your gifts to others. So, that’s one example of a discernment process, to imagine how might a thing unfold, and how it might affect all the different paths of my own life, my children, my husband, my own spiritual development, so I’m looking not only at myself, but at the people closest to me. Beyond that, how might it affect the world at large?

     This was a real calling for me. I felt like we are at such a point of chaos and confusion in the world right now. In order to make it through into a place where we touch one another at a deeper level, I felt this movement toward spiritual mentoring is a very important thing for world peace. Brother Wayne himself said that inter-spirituality holds one of the most important keys to world peace. I really do believe that.

GS: The different teachings all lead to the same place by slightly different paths. When you look at what the Christians call the Old Testament, it’s basically the story of how when the Hebrew’s listened to the inner guidance, they prospered, and when they didn’t, they got hammered.

JB: It’s interesting to look at the story of your own life, to ask that same question. Part of what we’re doing in the first week of this school is spiritual autobiography work. As a spiritual mentor, what you really do is you receive people’s stories. You help them look for the movement of spirit within the stories of their lives and what they’ve done. Certainly, as I tell the story of my own life, I can very clearly see the places where I got really stubborn ... where I knew that there was guidance, and for whatever reason, I didn’t pay attention to it. What generally happened was that, shall we say, I learned really important lessons.

GS: It’s really very simple when it comes down to it.

JB: I think that many times we hear the voice of our intuition, our essence, or our God self, whatever the language is you like to use for that, or synchronicity will be raining around you and you get a sense of what the flow is. So, often it’s not that we can’t hear that flow about what the right direction is in our life, what is unfolding. Often we don’t trust that unfolding, because our worries and fears get in the way and we make another choice.

GS: I like that one line from A Course in Miracles that goes, “The voice of God is as loud as our willingness to listen to it.”

JB: I think that’s a great line.

GS: You can’t do much better than that. The guidance is always there, but we don’t always listen.

JB: I think that’s the value of working with a spiritual mentor. The guidance is there, but until you hear it coming out of your own mouth and you’re received by another person without an agenda, someone who is deep in their own practice and is able to be present to you, nonjudgmental, and simply be a companion on your journey ... then it’s easier for you to really pay attention to that wisdom that is arising from within.

GS: One of the ways that you can tell the difference between the voices is that the real voice never says, “Dummy, I told you not to do that.”

JB: That’s right. The real voice is always compassionate. That, I think, is such an important part of inter-spirituality and of the mystic heart; that voice is the voice of total mercy.

GS: Always kind, gentle, loving.

JB: It is kind, gentle, loving, illuminating. Sometimes when someone says, well, you know spirit is really light and love, it seems so abstract. You say, well, sure, light and love. But when you actually have a mystic experience, you recognize that is exactly right. Then you come back from an experience like that and the challenge is how do I maintain clarity? How do I maintain compassion toward myself and other people in my life? How do I maintain the stance of listening?

     Part of what went into this, because you know, I thought of retiring, was the sense that it’s easier when your companion is on the journey with you. It’s a wonderful thing for people to be able to do this work, make these inquiries, do this special practice in this group kind of format. We support each other on the journey, and if we make our inquiries together, you know, ask the important questions about what is the nature of freedom, what is the nature of love, and we hear other people around us, we’re supported and deepened in our practice and in our understanding through that companionship.

GS: Well, you know, you can forget about retirement.

[Laughter]

GS: Because, truly, when your career is being who you are, there is no retirement.

JB: That’s what I’ve deduced. One of the things that I just want to add is that I really do think that we’re at a tipping point in this world. Chaos ... when viewed rightly, I think, with Eric Fromm, the future is always pregnant with the possible, but the greatest point of possibility is chaos. When the old is disintegrating, you’re left with a little bit of a clean slate. It’s just at these times when things fall apart when things can jump to a higher level of organization. I really do think that we’re at that place where we can make a jump as a world.

GS: I’ve thought at many times that at some point I’d like to have a conversation with whoever set it up so that we learn through suffering.

[Laughter]

JB: We do, but we also learn through joy. I think it was William James who said that true major pathways to growth are crises, that place between no longer and not yet, when the past is gone and the future has yet to become. In that kind of crisis, you have danger and opportunity. Also, crisis is an interesting place to learn, because we live in a society which says don’t just sit there, do something. In fact, the true skill needed at a time of crisis is to do nothing, get quiet. To be able to say, okay, what can I notice about what is unfolding here ... that’s the time of listening and the time discernment. He also said that is the time that we also grow into a gradual wearing away of our false self. I think that it’s true.

     You know, I look now, do you know there is actually there is a field called wisdom research? I’m starting to get familiar with it. There is a handful of researchers around the world who look at what wisdom is and a very large part of wisdom, the part that informs right thinking and emotional intelligence, is self-reflection. The ability to look back on your life and everything that you’ve done, the things that have led you closer to compassion and peace of mind or further from it. And eventually to say, you know, that I’d rather be happy.

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Joan Borysenko presents “Enrich Your Life! Practical Spirituality for Healing and Wholeness,” August 27-28 at the Pheasant Run Resort & Spa, 4051 E. Main St.,St. Charles, Illinois. Please see the advertisement in this issue for more information and to register to attend. Contact 866-259-7386, extn. 124, visit www.conferenceworks.com.

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