by Rev Alison Lee Schuettinger

This article is about spiritual companionship as an everyday practice in our interpersonal relationships. The conversation that frames the article reflects a spiritual counseling session with the hope of expanding the readers understanding and integration of companioning others spiritually no matter the context.

Witnessing - The Story

The man in his 40s sitting across the table asks:

“…but what is spirituality, can you define it for me?”

There are a few examples that mystify him and he’s seeking evidence.

He says, “A previous partner shared how Jesus came to her in a dream and I told her that simply isn’t true. That didn’t and couldn’t happen. What’s your advice for something like that?”

Here’s the first internal thought:

Telling a young kid who believes in Santa Claus that Santa is in fact not real, is not helpful. Telling anyone their experience is not real feels about as invalidating as starting a coffee machine and not sipping a warm cup of coffee a few minutes later.

Imagine nothing percolating, no smell activating your nostrils, no caffeine in your system, no warm mug to wrap your hands around, no satisfaction or validation of the desire.

I don’t say any of this. But already I’m yearning for a cup. So, I proceed. There’s a feeling like we both might learn something. And that will feel just as satisfying as a cup of coffee.

Tell me more…tell me the story

As he tells the story, I notice his arms cross and lean on the table. “I’ve known her for ten years and she was never like this and then suddenly this dream about Jesus.” His body shows a defensive posture, his eyes read hurt.

Since it came up so early in conversation, I understand this experience must be at the forefront of his mind and unfinished. A raw rupture looking to be processed.

The man on the other side of the table describes himself as rational, pragmatic, and an engineer by profession. He wears gray and black and says “I want to understand how this can happen to someone.”

He’s fishing for clues in my facial expressions seeking the same validation his partner did when she shared her spiritual experience. Something along the lines of: make sense of this with me. Tell me I’m not alone. That I’m not crazy.

How many of us have questioned the reality of someone’s experience and it became strife that widened the gap in an interpersonal relationship?

Spirituality isn’t Santa Claus or a cup of coffee. But there is a connection of belief to action and maybe part of what solidifies that “match” is a story that is beyond origin, one that becomes atmospheric. Like the smell of the evergreen Christmas tree or the odor of a cup of coffee brewing; pleasant associations paired with ritual and community that make those who believe in it - feel good.

The spiritual experience this woman had is a window into her internal world and how that world aligns with a world beyond herself. This has the potential for what could feel like an embodied match for her. Her experience rubbed up against her partner’s belief and expectations of who she was and his worldview. A mismatch, a friction occurred.

Woman in bed on her side facing away with a white sheet covering her. — Alison Lee Photography LLC

What is help?

The man on the other side of the table continues, “I don’t understand it. How am I supposed to help someone when what they’re saying isn’t even possible?” To which I wonder, how is he defining help and instantly think of the bright red-orange Ram Das and Paul Gorman book called How Can I help?.

How Can I help? is a selected book from One Spirit’s first year seminary curriculum and has become a reliable resource for the work of spiritual companionship. Ram Das provides an alternative to the cultural fixation of fixing; a byproduct from a capitalist economy.

Ram Das reminds us, the opposite of fixing is not absence, but presence. “The Witness, however, is not passive, complacent, or indifferent. Indeed, while it’s not attached to a particular outcome, its presence turns out to bring about change. As we bring what is into the light of clear awareness, we begin to see that the universe is providing us with abundant clues as to the nature of the suffering before us, what is being asked, what fears have been inhibiting us, and finally, what might really help. All we have to do is listen - really listen.” (68-69)

I will never forget the look on her face when the founder and Spiritual Director of One Spirit Learning Alliance, Rev Diane Berke said, “to be a minister is to be a witness. To be decent at being human.” Even the way it was shared, slowly and with a smile, emanated a sense of peace. It’s as if there was a collective sigh of relief in the room. It wasn’t anything more or less ordinary than that, which when practiced feels extraordinary.

If someone is bedridden in hospice care and they want to go to their garden and plant petunias, and you’re wondering how to be decent in that moment, knowing they can’t even get up to go to the bathroom, would you say “Edward that doesn’t make any sense, you can’t even walk.” Is it important to “correct” their thoughts to what’s seemingly feasible or do you go with them to the garden that is in their mind?

To be a spiritual companion is to say, take me with you. What does your garden look like, what color are the petunias? How does the soil feel under your feet?

In what language are they communicating?

The man in front of me struggles to imagine a dream a loved one has had in which Jesus appears in a version of her Garden of Eden. He’s coming to the table as an engineer carrying powerful analytical gifts and he wants to the know the science behind this so called “spiritual experience.”

His world has formulas and this appears to be an outlier.

During a moment of silence, I imagine myself slipping underneath the table and into his black and gray outfit. I try his brain on; imagining a profession that requires me to solve problems, design software, and be exceptionally precise. I imagine millions of people that benefit from the behind the scenes work of algorithms that I’ve created. I try to imagine both the reward and the pressure.

It’s not a coincidence that one of the first things this man said to me following our greeting was, “this is the first time I’m talking to someone today. I haven’t used my voice at all, does it sound weird?”

I imagine being recruited to America from Turkey, assimilating to a completely different culture, learning the nuances of a new language, all the while being somewhat introverted, shy, and working on a computer all day.

What does he believe in that I don’t see? Maybe we’re speaking two different languages. I need to step into his frame and understand his view of the picture.

After our initial session, I go to McNally Jackson’s bookstore on Fulton Street and purchase a book called A Divine Language: Learning Algebra, Geometry, and Calculus at the Edge of Old Age by Alec Wilkinson. At home I read about the divine language of mathematics to see if I could enter the left hemisphere of my mind more deeply and embody the frustration of an “in actual” event.

What I find is a different perspective but not one that contradicts the spiritual experience his partner shared. “Pure mathematics is a form of contemplation different from prayer or meditation, but for Jean-Pierre Changeux, the rigor and stringency of mathematics bring the human mind into contact with notions of God,” (Wilkinson, 169).

Maybe an analytical and mathematic exploration of this spiritual experience doesn’t negate its existence or occurrence.

In God and the Universe, Hermann Weyl writes that mathematics “lifts the human mind into closer proximity with the divine that is unattainable through any other medium.”

Maybe mathematics can be a bridge to the uncertainty of the experience this man has had with his partner. Though the relationship has ended, maybe there is a way to replay that initial conversation of her experience of the dream and perhaps he can join her somewhere in the middle from his own standing ground.

Zoom Out

For much of us in a patriarchally dominated capitalist economy and in a culture built on Cartesian philosophy that separates the mind and body, it can be difficult to imagine or accept an experience that can’t be completely pinpointed. What I acknowledge is this man is not alone. He is part of a culture and ideology that has often placed science and spirituality on opposite sides of the spectrum.

When I sit with someone, I am trying to map out the spheres of influence to a decision, perception, and/or behavior. In order to understand the system around this person’s experience and possible tension with its many moving parts, I zoom out, taking into account ideologies, cultures, and world-views that may influence their thought process and those that contradict it.

Sherri Mitchell, a member of the Penobscot nation, author, speaker, and activist quotes Albert Einstein in her book, Sacred Instructions, saying, “A human being is part of the whole we call the universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself in the thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical illusion of his consciousness… our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion, to embrace all living beings and all of nature.”

Mitchell continues by acknowledging that this belief, of being part of a whole, has been “held by Indigenous peoples since the beginning of time,” (Mitchell, 9). She explores how we are all biologically connected to some degree through the web of life and “when we are connected to source wisdom, we recognize that we are interrelated spiritual beings,” (Mitchell, 29).

For many people, their worldview and culture support science and spirituality as complements not competitors.

There is another sphere of influence and that is the world of dreams and the subconscious. There are remarkable neuroscience studies that explore our sleeping world. According to Matthew Walker, a neuroscientist and professor of sleep patterns, “Certain parts of the brain become 30 percent more active compared to when you’re awake. This includes increases in the visual, motor, emotional and memory centres.”

While certain areas become increasingly more active, the more rationale parts of our brains quiet. “Conversely, the prefrontal cortex — responsible for rational and logical thought processes — is shut off.” Neuroscientists have figuratively described “entering into rapid eye movement (REM) like waving goodbye to the logical part of your brain; it’s as if the usual ‘guards’ have left the building and the mind can now run wild and free.”

With regard to neuroscience, it makes sense that someone can have an emotional and visual experience with a spiritual figure in a dream.

Integration

For the man in front of me, I take these spheres of influence and visualize them as different colors. The red ideology around capitalism overlaps with the blue skillset and temperament of an engineer, creating a purple world that strengthens the pigment of red and blue. There is no significance behind the color choice, other than that it is a color and it is what first came to my mind.

Within this man’s purple world exists a spider web of our interconnectedness. The thing about spider webs is they are often invisible, until we are caught in one and notice a thin sticky-like substance on our skin. So, in my mind. I color this web of interconnectedness orange.

By doing so I am able to visualize this man both separate and together. As he experiences the world differently than me and is at the table seeking a companion.

I bring into mind his previous partner and her sleeping spiritual world. That color is yellow. When a forced mixture of his purple and her yellow happen, it turns into some version of brown. It becomes all muddy and messy. But side by side, they are complimentary colors which, though opposite on the color wheel, are found abundantly in nature, like goldenrods and asters.

It’s a colorful series of worlds and I think I am beginning to see him and the situation.

two people with arms raised on beach looking out over the water — Alison Lee Photography LLC

To Companion Spiritually

“Reason is a fallible human tool for discovering truth or grasping reality. Although reason aims at the truth, it may fall short. The proper question should be, “Is belief in God rational for this person in that time and place?” (IEP, Peer Reviewed Academic Resource).

To be a spiritual companion is the opposite of fixing, it’s being. It’s journeying alongside.

At One Spirit, “Our Spiritual Counselors don't have an agenda. They are not here to fix things or to offer advice without your invitation. They are here to be present with you and to listen to what arises from your inner spiritual explorations,” (One Spirit Learning Alliance Website).

There is no prerequisite to serve as a listener. If someone says “Jesus joined me in a dream” or “the willow tree whispered secrets of how to be in harmony” or “the Buddha on my nightstand told me suffering is inevitable but struggle is not” or “the black nothingness in my closet raged ‘the end is near!’” The spiritual counselor would listen with genuine curiosity and ensure that a safe space for sharing has been created. This is the first step in spiritual counseling.

The key element in being a witness to someone’s spiritual experience is the same element someone is practicing by having a spiritual experience - curiosity and an open heart.

In The Alphabet Versus the Goddess, Leonard Shlain writes, “Humans are by nature a curious lot. Our expansive sense of time and space stimulates us to ponder our place in the scheme of things. Many of us have had experiences in which we seemed to glimpse other dimensions, or realities, and these epiphanies inspire the belief that there is an existence greater than the one commonly described. Attempts to discern the supernatural and experience the transcendent have been a part of virtually every culture.”

It’s safe to say, I can listen, witness, visualize, attempt to understand and empathize with this man’s experience, but I will never fully “figure it out”. I will never know exactly what it felt like to hear his partner share her experience or what it felt like for her to encounter Jesus in a dream. Consequently, I will not be able to embody the rupture that severed their relationship.

In some ways, I am in exactly the same position as he was when his partner shared this dream with him. Neither one of us will have “figured it out”. If we try, we’ll make mud. But if we accept our different colors, maybe we can sit with each other in the unknowing.

“When we function from this place of spacious awareness rather than from our analytic mind, we are often surprised to find solutions to problems without our having “figured them out,” (How Can I Help? Ram Das, 109).

An open heart is required for curiosity to flourish. A closed heart allows cynicism to breed. In Teaching Community, bell hooks reminds us that, “A profound cynicism is at the core of dominator culture wherever it prevails in the world.” When a loved one comes to us with an open heart about an experience and our response is one of cynicism, it reflects a loss of hope. Cynicism manifests not only our disbelief in our loved one’s experience but on a larger scale our belief in anything that is outside the bounds of basic understanding.

Life loses a bit of its color.

Spiritual Companionship and Witnessing - What if, in fact, we’re already doing it?

Parallel to this culture of domination that inhibits curiosity is a narrative of service and spiritual companionship happening in everyday interactions. For example, I’ve known doulas and delivery nurses that serve as spiritual guides for expectant parents. When, for example, a mother is alone and delivers a stillbirth, the nurse and her spend hours listening to music together sharing the same pair of headphones.

I’ve watched a bartender lead a blind man through a crowded jazz bar in Brooklyn to smoke a cigarette outside.

I’ve witnessed one unhoused man take a dollar out of his cup and give it to another person asking for money that appears in more need. The two of them strike up a conversation about their experiences.

Yes, these are very different examples of kindness, but they’re also something else. They’re an invitation to go somewhere together safely. This muscle does not have to be ordained. But it does have to be exercised.

Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way suggests, “We are meant to midwife dreams for one another… success occurs in clusters.”

One Spirit is a gym to stretch these muscles. Because here’s the thing, we’re never not in relationship. Beyond that we’re never not in relationship with people who have different experiences that may bewilder us. We may notice a wild in them that feels unexplainable, even threatening.

We are bewildered by the wild. When the man across the table asks me to describe what’s happening - the clues for what’s happening are within the word that describes our reaction to them. If we are mystified, maybe it’s because something mystical and not completely explainable is happening.

How different would our relationships be if we accompanied our loved ones in their experiences of wilderness? Viktor E. Frankl, an Austrian Psychiatrist reminds us, “The more one forgets himself - by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love - the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself.”

Maybe spiritually companioning another - be it client, stranger on the bench, patient in the bed, spouse in our sheets, or friend in need - is a practice that amplifies our own self actualization.

Rev Alison Lee Schuettinger is an Interfaith Minister ordained with One Spirit Learning Alliance, Faculty of Sustainable Systems at Parsons School of Design and professional photographer. Her systems thinking approach is influenced by her BA / MA in psychology, Certificate in Sustainable Strategies, and additional graduate courses in Women’s Religious Leadership, Screenwriting, and Directing. Alison is interested in creating a more just and joyous world through various mediums of storytelling and service that are grounded in ethical and authentic relationships.

Witnessing in Spiritual Companionship - The Opposite of Fixing