A Personal Exploration of the Influence of Compassion on Spirituality in Psychotherapy

Abstract

All human beings yearn to make sense of life, to find meaning in their existence, their purpose of living, and to be liberated from suffering. Ancient wisdoms—both east and west—in philosophy, spirituality, and psychology, all point to the cultivation of compassion as the path to this liberation. Informed by transpersonal and Buddhist psychology, this study focuses on the cultivation of compassion in both the therapist and the client, and explore the interrelationship between compassion and spirituality in the process of psychotherapy. The autoethnographic exploration guided me to follow a process of reflection on my personal experience of spiritual growth, providing personal narrative descriptions of the effects of compassion and spirituality as a counsellor in training and implications in clinical practice.