God is a Provocative Therapist: Provocative Therapy and Spiritual Development

One of the best psychotherapy books you're likely to read is a book called Provocative Therapy, written by Frank Farrelly and Jeff Brandsma. However, if you suffer from one of the great maladies of our age: political correctness, then this book is not for you (unless of course you've now begun to sense a deep longing to be free of the madness of such neurotic ruminations). You see, Provocative Therapy is, as the name suggests about provoking, challenging, clients who present for therapy out of restrictive ways of thinking and acting and into states of emotional and psychological emancipation. Provocative Therapy is definitely not for those who merely want to be 'mollycoddled' by their therapist, which is what sadly happens in what sometimes passes for 'counselling' these days. Provocative Therapy will instead meet you head-on, and if you're holding yourself back due to imposed, or self imposed beliefs, which are unhelpful and inauthentic (meaning they don't represent who you really are, or who you really can be) then you'll find your ego-defences assailed, literally shocked out of such self-defeating patterns and towards a more authentic appreciation of yourself as you really are, and, importantly of who you can become: as, liberated you now begin to develop more emotional and psychological equilibrium in your life.

Provocative Therapy was developed by a genius called Frank Farrelly.  Frank is one of these rare people to be given the honour of the status of being recognised as a genuine professor.  He worked for years in a psychiatric hospital, getting results with patients that others couldn't reach.  His methods have been modelled and applied extensively by the developers of NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) Drs Richard Bandler and John Grinder. And he's lectured widely around the world.

But what's all this got to do with the spirit world and God, you might ask?  Lots actually, hold on and you'll find out soon enough...

Before I trained to become a counsellor I chanced upon Frank's book in (of all the unlikely places) Bournemouth Library. To this day, I'm glad that luck, fate, chance, or Spirit(?), call it what you will, brought this gem of a book my way.  At the outset of my learning it set me free from the restrictions inherent within much of modern psychotherapy training. I learned that people are stronger than they might realise (or are led to believe sometimes by those who've been trained in professional 'mollycoddling'). Many occupations are believed to have dieties associated with them, the field of communication for example is associated with the god Hermes (Hermes being the messenger god). If Provocative Therapy has a deity associated with it then, it must, I suggest be Kali, the goddess of destruction and regeneration.

Surely though, talk of spirit beings shouldn't be mentioned in the same context as serious discussion about a cutting-edge form of psychotherapy like Provocative Therapy, should it? You couldn't be further from the truth.  You see, Frank Farrelly (a former professor remember) works with and talks to his spirit guides when doing psychotherapy.  It's one of the core elements of his approach.  And to all you skeptics out there who like to imply that people who truly believe that they interact with a spirit world are deluded or stupid, take it from me, Frank is a bona fide genius, down to earth and probably one of the brightest people you're ever likely to meet.  Or, to put it another way (as John Edward, the famous medium, says with regards to skeptics) 'bite me!'

Okay, okay, I know, we know Frank Farrelly is a Provocative Therapist, but aside from the fact that he created this approach, which is an attribute he shares with God (creating) surely I'm not implying that Frank Farrelly is God? No, you're right, I'm probably not asserting such a proposition. But I am asserting that the way the Spirit World works, and the way God/Spirit works in particular has a lot in common with the way Frank has intuitively been led to work too.  And like Frank, God/Spirit (naturally) gets good results with the provocative approach.

The field of research into spiritual states of being and the experiences associated with such states indicate, time and time again, that God/Spirit can be very provocative in His/Her approach when working with us.  Shamans and mystics have repeatedly recounted how God/Spirit used very provocative methods to break down the limiting barriers erected by personal ego in order that these souls might become free of the restrictions imposed by ego and to, therefore, grow spiritually.

You may already have read of terms elsewhere like 'Dark Night of the Soul', 'Shamanic Death', 'Meeting God in the Abyss of the Divine Dark', and so on, to describe this process, all of which indicate experiences in which men and women have met God/Spirit and been challenged, to the extreme, sometimes literally dying and coming back from the dead (Near Death Experience), or undergoing extreme crises of other forms, such as physical or psychological illness, that bring a person to 'Death's Door' so to speak, and which cause each soul, in those so afflicted, to let go of the ego defences to which he or she may have been desperately clinging (such as a false sense of identity, shallow values, erroneous beliefs, etc) to embrace a truer understanding of Self and of God/Spirit.  Before enlightenment, before the 'Mystic Marriage' of the soul with God/Spirit there comes a symbolic (sometimes literal) death. A true mystic, a true shaman has been tested by God/Spirit in a violent way: and survived!  And this process has a lot in common with Provocative Therapy, although, rest assured, human Provocative Therapy, testing though it can be is a 'walk in the park' when compared to God's/Spirit's version of this method.  Yet, just as human Provocative Therapy can lead to psychological and emotional wellness, so too Divine Provocative Therapy leads to all of this, and more: it leads to a unique, deeply all-encompassing close relationship, a 'Mystic Marriage', with God/Spirit.

God/Spirit has to destroy, it seems, what we won't or can't destroy ourselves of that which holds us back from becoming everything we're destined to be: at One with God/Spirit.  And this means that God/Spirit loves us so much that He/She is prepared to use a 'tough love' approach to save us: from ourselves!

Do you ever wonder why God/Spirit seems to be acting tough with you sometimes?  Well, maybe, now you know: God/Spirit is a Divine Provocative Therapist who loves you so much that He/She won't let you sell yourself short and is prepared to do what it takes to help you wake up, even if it means meeting you as Kali; first tearing down, in order to finally build up.

When you reach the end of a course of human Provocative Therapy 'miracles' will quite likely have occurred (see Frank's book for some amazing examples).  At the end of a course of Divine Provocative Therapy even greater miracles are likely, including the greatest miracle of all: a Unitive relationship with God/Spirit.

A Moment in Time

Here's a photo of (from left to right) me (Kerin Webb), June Farrelly, Frank Farrelly and Gill Webb taken at a Provocative Therapy training course in the UK (due to my admiration of Frank's work I arranged to fly him over from the USA to present a four day training course for our company, an offer he kindly accepted).