The School of Spiritual Psychology
The
School of Spiritual Psychology is a center of learning and research designed to
benefit society as a whole by fostering care for soul and spirit in individual
life in conjunction with the renewal of culture as the meeting point between
the human heart and the world. This enterprise focuses on more than technical
training, intellectual comprehension, or individual inner development of a
private nature. The programs and activities of the School serve the formation
of capacities for consciously experiencing qualities of soul and spirit in
oneself, in the profession and work one practices, in home life, community, and
in the larger world. The School has been in operation since 1992 and serves
people from all walks of life. In 2004, the School moved to a new Center in
Benson, North Carolina, near Raleigh. The School operates a program in Sacred
Service, a program in the Sacred Art of Wisdom, offers a Master of Arts degree
program in Spiritual Psychology, and Caritas – Caring for Our Dead. The SchoolÕs website is www.spiritualschool.org The School
also publishes a semi-annual online journal, www.sophiajournal.org
The
concept of a center of learning and research implies that the School of
Spiritual Psychology is a community of learners, that faculty as well as
students, are participants in learning rather than givers and receivers of
information. Insight, newness, discovery and transformation characterize the
action of a center of learning and research. The faculty are more than teachers
who direct the studentÕs progress in knowledge; they are themselves lifelong
learners and researchers into the realms of soul and spirit with an intense
interest in the practical applications of working in the world with such an
outlook.
The
particular approach to questions of soul and spirit taken by the School of
Spiritual Psychology derives from the depth psychology of C. G. Jung, the
archetypal psychology, and the spiritual science of Rudolf Steiner. However, it
is phenomenological methodology that guides the work of the School. Developing
the capacity to be present to experience and becoming capable of describing not
only experiential states, but also thinking descriptively rather than
theoretically or analytically forms the basis for all the work of the School.
The
program in Sacred Service
provides inner training focusing on deepening the understanding and practice of
service, fostering the soul life in serving, and developing the abilities
needed to be of service in the world as practical spiritual work. The program
is not restricted to individuals directly involved in the serving professions,
as service is understood in this program as a mode of being, the way of the new
mysteries, practical work for the transformation of culture.
The
need for serving in the world is vastly increasing. This program in sacred
serving seeks to prepare people with capacities of soul to balance and counter
the current degradation of service into a commodity to be bought and sold. In
this program, the merely horizontal sense of service is deepened with inner
development so that the spiritual worlds are included in the circuit of
serving. Spiritual Psychology, from the outset, was intended to develop ways of
keeping individual soul work in connection with the life of culture. It was
also intended to be therapeutic, but to be a therapy for culture as well as
individual healing.
The
program is a two-year course of studies, taught in five-day blocks, three times
a year for two years. The class meets in the fall, early spring and late spring
each of the two years.
In
the first year we enter into the Ôsoul-beingÕ of sacred service. In the second
year we enter into the Ôsoul-doingÕ of sacred service. We prepare our souls
inwardly and then learn the practice of serving through soul.
The
first session works with
re-imagining the heart as an organ of perceiving others and the world. We
develop the capacity to keep ongoing inner connection with the heart, necessary
to listening to what others need rather than imposing what we think they need.
Exercises and meditations are given which make possible the inner strengthening
of heart-consciousness and keeping the heart in harmony with thinking and
doing. This session also
introduces the imagination of sacred service, works to come into inner
connection with the desire to serve through therapeutic group work, alerts us
to the shadow of serving, and introduces the notion of the prototypal
imagination, the inner soul-feeling of how a time current from the future is
meeting us now and inspires our ideals.
The
second session develops the
capacities necessary to reach a new form of empathy, the ability to relate to
others soul to soul. We describe the empathetic process and engage exercises
for its development in relation to the physical world, the plant world, the
animal world, and other persons. We learn to develop an inner perception of the
other person, make connection through soul and perceive something of the spirit
being that is the other person. We develop further the capacity to enter into
the depth of silence and learn to be present within the interactive field of
the soul living between others and ourselves.
In
the third session we work with
forgiveness and destiny, and the relationship of the threshold experience in
the realm of service. Here we look at the development of our lives from the
viewpoint of what is coming to meet us rather than from what has already
happened in the past. We shift point of view to the future time current, and
learn how it gets our attention. It makes possible the inner experience of
questions such as: What is it that we are to do in the world than can only be
done by us? How can we know when we are on our destiny path and when we have
lost the way? How can we rediscover a sense of our destiny? These questions are intimately
connected to the deep mystery of forgiveness. The soul qualities of forgiveness
are a desperate need in our culture, our communities, and our individual
relationships and are essential for the capacity of sacred service.
The
forth session, beginning the
second year, mirrors the first session of the first year. The work of the heart
is recapitulated in deeper fashion. We learn to live in the aura of silence
necessary to hear the direction of the heart. We enter into a consideration of
the ritual life of serving, the relation of our serving to spiritual beings,
enacted in reverence. We work with the imagination of communion; develop an
inner sense of the four levels of the heart – wonder, reverence, wisdom,
and surrender. We consider how living from the heart reorganizes the body and
leads to a different kind of knowing. We recover the importance of silence for
the life of images, prayer, healthy soul life, and inner contemplation. And we
develop an imagination of the economy of serving from the heart.
In
the fifth session empathy is
deepened with further exercises developing the interactive field of the heart
and differentiating it from other kinds of interactive fields. The pivotal
point of the soul is found where it is possible to be present in soul while
serving others, developing the capacity of remaining in balance between the
inner life of the soul and presence to the soul of others. The particular
qualities of soul needed for serving are described – the qualities of the
assent of the heart, the capacity of witnessing, grace, humility, simplicity,
beholding, holding, and bestowing. The importance of the shadow of these
qualities is also worked with – reluctance, controlling, self-effort,
pride, and our complexes. We explore the prototypal imagination of serving and
work with a series of meditations on this new form of soul life. Students make
presentations proposing a sacred service project.
The
sixth session mirrors the third
session and deepens the soul capacities discovered in that work. In addition,
we enter into the art of releasing something daily in order to become available
to hear in an inner way the direction and ways we are asked to serve in the
world. We develop an imagination of sacred service as soul activism, the
practice of letting impulses enter the soul that are always alive in the world
but are not of this physical world.
Students present a major sacred service project that they have carried
out and show through this project how sacred service differs from other kinds
of serving in the world, complementing those other forms. We develop practices
of the purification of the soul life; the work of making sure our serving is
for the sake of others and the world and is not serving our own needs. We also
learn to keep an ongoing inner connection of the heart across distances, and
develop an invisible community of sacred servants.
Between
sessions class members read assigned books and articles, keep ongoing journals,
write short descriptive papers that help develop the ability to be present to
immediate experience without opinion or judgment, and continue the exercises
presented in class sessions. In addition, class members engage in practical
work with others in which the spirit and soul aspects of serving are observed
and described.
The
faculty includes a distinguished staff of full-time, adjunct, and visiting
lecturers. Robert Sardello, Ph.D. and Cheryl Sanders, M.S., co-directors of the
School of Spiritual Psychology are the lead faculty. Other faculty are brought
in for individual sessions.
Robert
Sardello, Ph.D. is co-founder of
The School of Spiritual Psychology, which began in 1992. He is author of Facing the World
with Soul, Love and the
Soul (re-issued as Love and
the World), Freeing the
Soul from Fear, and The
Power of Soul: Living the Twelve Virtues. He is also co-founder
and faculty member of The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, author of
over 200 articles in scholarly journals and cultural publications, and was on
the faculty of The Chalice of Repose Project in Missoula, Mt. Having developed spiritual psychology
from over 35 years of research in this discipline, as well as holding positions
in two renown Universities, he is now an independent teacher and scholar
teaching all over the U.S., Canada, and the U.K., as well as in The Czech
Republic, the Philippines and Australia.
He is a consultant to many educational and cultural institutions, as
well as dissertation advisor at Pacifica Graduate Institute, Union Institute,
Greenwich University, and Prescott College.
Cheryl
L. Sanders, Ph.D. is co-founder
of The School of Spiritual Psychology and specializes in the spiritual
psychology of the senses, and is currently completing a book in this area with
an emphasis in healing of the senses.
Her work ranges from the necessity for keeping the senses healthy in
children to the development of the spiritual senses in maturity. She is a former addictions counselor
and has worked extensively with women and children as well as adolescence in
addictions, education and healing.
She teaches with The School all over the U.S., Canada, and the U.K., and
has also taught in Holland, Australia and the Philippines. She has published articles and
introductions on the senses in books, journals and magazines, as well as
monographs of presentations made at the Sophia Conferences given by The School
between 1995 and 2000.
Participants
are required to attend the entire six weeks and complete the assignments
between each session, as the components of each class are cumulative. No one
will be admitted to individual blocks. If enrollment cannot be completed, full
tuition is due, as no once can enter the class once it has formed, so your
place cannot be filled. There are reading assignments between sessions, inner
exercises and meditations, and journal keeping that sustain the ongoing inner
soul activity between sessions.
Each
session begins on Thursday evening with an opening presentation. Daily schedule
includes presentations, meditations, artistic activity and therapeutic groups.
The class concludes the following Tuesday at noon. Successful completion of the
program earns a certificate in Sacred Service, issued by the School of Spiritual Psychology. Most
agencies accept this training as continuing education. The School of Spiritual
Psychology will provide documentation of work done in the program to
individuals who wish to seek continuing education credit.
Tuition
for the two years of the program in Sacred Service is $4,000.00.
An additional $50.00 non-refundable application fee must be sent in with
the application. A non-refundable
deposit of $500.00 is due upon acceptance into the program. The remaining tuition of $3,500.00 is
due before the opening of the first week of the course, or a payment contract
can be signed upon approval to split payment in 2, 4 or 6 segments. The School of Spiritual Psychology
makes a commitment to the people who enter into the program, part of which
involves relying on the tuition for the program in exchange for the preparation
and teaching time of the faculty.
If refunds are requested or non-payment occurs, the entire program is
put in jeopardy. If accepted,
please consider this a commitment for the entire two years of your class.
Tuition
does not include room and board fees, which are paid separately and for each
session. Room and board for each
session is $375.00. All rooms are double, in the very comfortable Center For
Spiritual Psychology which is located
on fourteen acres with a pond and a swimming pool.
The
Sacred Service Program is held at the Spiritual Psychology Center located in
Benson, North Carolina. Benson is an easy forty-minute drive from Raleigh where
there is a major international airport. Benson is also located at the
intersection of interstate hi-way 95 and interstate hi-way 40, and thus easy
driving distance from north-south and east-west.
Dates
The Sacred Service Program meets on the following dates:
September 28 - October 3 -- 2006
February 8 - 13 -- 2007
May 24-29 -- 2007
September 27 -- October 2 -- 2007
February 7 - 12 -- 2008
May 23 - 28 -- 2008
The sessions begin Thursday evenings at six and end Tuesdays
at noon.
Application
Please include the following
information in your application letter:
Date
Name
Address
City, State, Zip - Phone,
Fax, Email
Birth date, marital status,
and children, grandchildren
Have you ever done service or
volunteer work; what type; please describe some of your experiences.
1. What attracts you to the program in Sacred
Service?
2. What do you hope to learn and achieve?
3. Describe one or more highlights of you inner
development during the past ten years.
Describe one or more highlights of your outer accomplishments in
relation to service.
4. What kind of growth/challenges do you think this
experience might hold for you?
5. What are you currently doing for a living?
6. Please list all degrees, from where, including majors.
7. If you have a vita or resume, please include.
8. A telephone interview will be part of the application
process. Please state the best
time of day for you for such an interview.
Send Application to:
The School of Spiritual Psychology
P.O. Box 7
Benson, North Carolina 27504