Existential concerns such as what it means to be a material being of spirit and the meanings life generates regarding who we are in the world may be a predominant theme for many of us. In fact, concerning oneself with such themes, in some ways, characterizes the zeitgeist of the times in which we live.

People experience spirituality in ways that are as unique as each individual. In my understanding of spirituality, to be spiritual is to simply acknowledge that there is a breath of life that animates us all and is a basic fundamental principle of being alive. It may very well be the case, as acknowledged by Jungian psychotherapists and shamans as well as mythologies and religions the world over, that as members of the human family, we live between two worlds: the seemingly material world of everyday life, and a spirit realm that is a land we inhabit in dreams and other states of unconsciousness and non-ordinary consciousness. Being mediums between the material and spirit worlds, we generally live our lives in such a way that the material world is more easily identified than the spiritual. In the spiritual domain, it is as if we can only see through the glass darkly at intimations of what exists in this ethereal realm.

When a patient identifies one's spiritual journey as an area of investigation in therapy, the collaborative inquiry of the therapeutic conversation explores the nature of this journey. The hopes, goals, and wishes of the person are given further consideration and acknowledgement. One objective of the treatment then becomes integrating the joys and travails one endures along such a path into the fabric of one's life.