Handbook to Happiness by Charles Solomon Notes (Spirituotherapy)

In this post, I will go over the basics from Handbook to Happiness which is a Christian counseling book on the topic of “spiritual therapy”.

I have personally always believed that while valuable and helpful in understanding our mind, traditional psychology is very limiting and does not touch domains of our human experience in the spiritual realm that are outside our mind.

This Christian approach is a great framework for understanding spiritual therapy in relationship with God.

What is Spirituotherapy

Spirituotherapy: a word coined by Charles Solomon to identify an approach to spiritual counseling that makes the believer’s relationship to the cross of Christ/God and its significance central to its method and goal. 

It is also known as exchanged life counseling. In spirituotherapy, the holy spirit and God renew the mind and transform the life according to Romans 12:2 not the person’s own doing or self-improvement.  

It is a therapy of surrender/commitment and a reminder of alignment in God in each moment and day, not work on strengthening the self which is a typical practice of our modern world and in psychological approaches.

What Plays a Role in Developing Mental Issues

While it’s impossible to know the exact causes of issues as some may simply be biological and some may be due to life events our conditioning can play a role in the development of these problems. In particular, rejection.

Rejection and Its Effects

• Rejection in some form or another is a common thread running through the lives of people with mental and emotional problems
• Sometimes the rejection is more significant and noticeable and other times it is very subtle
• Rejection means the absence of meaningful love or the feeling of being loved for who the person truly is not having to conform to others’ needs to be approved
• The result of rejection is usually the impaired ability to give and receive love
• The overprotected child is also rejected since they are not allowed to make decisions appropriate to their age so they don’t develop confidence in themself or their decision-making ability
• At the core of rejection and mental/emotional patterns is the development of the belief that someone is not safe, not loved, or not capable in who they are so they create compensatory behaviors and ways of pushing out who they are truly

Next, let’s discuss the topic of identity as what we identify with plays a major role in what we look to for support as well as how we view ourselves.

Identity (Needing Approval From Others vs a Child of God)

• Identity is important in any counseling situation because what each person sees as their identity or the identity they want to have will determine where they look for acceptance
• Most people live with an identity that has been assigned to them either positive or negative depending on the extent of rejection or with an identity they have built for themself based on their life experiences
• An identity that is based on things, money, people, power, status, symbols, or the lack of them is subject to change many times and is not a good foundation to live on
• There is a difference between our fleshly identity and our spiritual identity. Fleshly meaning what we are as a result of human resources and spiritually meaning what we are through the holy spirit’s power
• As with the problem of rejection, the cure for an unacceptable fleshly identity is a true spiritual identity, which only a proper relationship with Christ/God can give us
• Some are programmed for money and accumulation, success in business, athletic achievement, sensuality, intellectual prowess, or even religious pursuits. For the believer, all of these are false since our true identity is who we are in Christ
• The solution is exchanging our fleshly personal history identity and the influence of indwelling sin for our perfect identity in God
• This transaction takes a miracle but it is the miracle in which the holy spirit majors. The holy spirit does not enter our lives to patch up our old identities but to put into effect our true identity as redeemed children of God
• Our identity is based on who we are in Christ and it is to be claimed by faith, not by works or self-improvement. We shed the trappings of the past by exchanging our fleshly identity for Christ’s life, by exchanging a life of defeat for a life of victory
• Each of us must define our identity and look at it squarely to understand what we must lose to live out our true identity in Christ. We must lose our baby which has been in the formation stage for a lifetime if we are to know the joy and blessing of being a child of God

How Spirituotherapy Works

• Our thoughts, behaviors, and emotions derive from an identity we may not have recognized or that was not founded on truth but created from our childhood and views that we accepted unconsciously
• Our motivation for some of our present actions is based on this identity
• Human beings can be thought of in a few parts
  • Body
  • Soul/Mind
  • Spirit
• Our true identity in God is the cure and helps to resolve the psychological and interpersonal symptoms
• We can communicate with God through the spirit if we allow it
• Spiritual death occurs when we block God in our lives
• When humans are in union with God the soul, spirit, and body function optimally with ease communicating in the proper directions
• The soul is our self-consciousness or psychological makeup, the spirit is our god consciousness or where we relate to God, and the body is how through our five senses we relate to the world and environment 
• The soul is composed of the mind, emotions, and the will
• After the fall and when we block God in our lives self-centeredness takes hold of the functioning of the trichotomy 
• The control center is either living out of your resources or out of God’s resources
• At the fall adam and eve’s identity shifted from God to themselves in relation to Satan
• The problem is not the individual acts that are committed but that someone is in an entirely different relationship and sphere 
• The spirit can be dead to God and alive to Satan which happens when we turn away and block the proper flow of the spirit to soul to body

An image of this process before the fall into darkness:

An image of this process after the fall away from God:

Individual Components in Spirituotherapy

Salvation

• Entering into a personal relationship with God through faith in Jesus
• Unless God and Jesus are in our lives changes cannot be made
• Before we trust God in our exchange and surrender the holy spirit must show and convince us in our lives that we are flawed, cannot do this on our own, and are “sinners”
• God saves us when we truly believe and call upon him
• After salvation, we must learn to rejoice in what God has already done and what he will do for us

Assurance

• It is possible to be saved but not assured of that salvation
• Our assurance must be based on the works of God and Jesus in scripture rather than our fluctuating feelings
• The person labeled neurotic most often wants to feel something rather than believe it or they need to feel evidence before believing 
• When the emotions are being controlled by lies the person has been believing, there is no way the emotions will ever agree with the truth. A person may know mentally that they are saved but never feel assurance
• Emotions can start to change once you decide to believe that you know you are saved and trust that your emotions will eventually adjust to that if you live by faith, not by sight or feelings

Security

• Assurance and security go hand in hand
• Our relationship with God is unbreakable and eternal
• If we do not realize this our assurance cannot be solid and we will fear losing it and compensate by trying to do lots of work. As a result, we cease to live trusting in God’s grace and begin to live again trusting in our obedience to the law for salvation and not by faith/grace
• Unless someone is secure in their relationship with God they are unlikely to mature in that relationship
• This is the same as attachment theory in psychology which is based on loving attachment to our caregivers when we are young. Depending on if we had this secure attachment in our lives we will relate to God in this way but we need to forgo our own patterns and have faith in the secure attachment with God that he has shown.

Acceptance

• Our acceptance by Christ does not depend on our works, church attendance, or how much we read the bible it depends on faith in what has already been done and opening up to God in a personal relationship
• A lot of people who feel that no one accepts them come to have the same relationship with God and try to prove it over and over again
• We must take God at his word and believe what he says regardless of how we may feel about it. As we do that, our feelings begin to line up with the facts.

Total Commitment

• Total commitment or surrender to God’s will is the only thing we can do personally as it is our reasonable service after salvation, assurance, security, and acceptance
• It is an act of will telling God that we want his will done in our lives more than anything else
• We may not know his specific purpose for our lives but after we have wholly committed our lives to him, he begins to bring it to pass
• Each person has to accept God in their lives by their own will and not by the doing of anyone else and only the person and God know if they are committed 
• When someone doesn’t commit their life to God they need to see the futility of running their own life or ruining it, as is frequently the case, and come to the place where they are ready to say “Lord I want to take my hands off my life, I want you to run it.”
• This decision is like a marriage ceremony or any initiation ceremony where the people commit to a union or follow the path outlined
• Once we exercise our will things can change slowly over time or more dramatically based on the amount of internal surrender
• Our surrender and faith in God must be complete to where we have given over our control of body, emotions, life situation, and life to where God is controlling it only 
• Upon our decision of total commitment Christ replaces self at the center of our lives
• For a lot of Christians, Christ can be in their lives but not the center of their lives
• If Christ and God is not centered in our lives then someone or something else is 
• Often something that we think will make us happy replaces God at the center of our lives (personal ambition, worldly pleasures, money, success, a person, a human belief)
• Usually, we strive to get something we are putting at the center of our lives and once the newness of it wears off we are left empty with a hollow victory
• Whatever is placed in the center of our lives becomes the driving force that ignites the spirit and changes the soul and body to represent that 
• God does not want us to work and live for him he wants to work through us and ignite us and this is a lesson many Christians never learn 
• This is usually learned through hardship, trial, and suffering until we come to a point where we deal with self and the self is no longer the center of our lives
• We are doing in order to be instead of correctly being in order to do

Challenges We Face in The Soul or Mind

• The following are difficulties people face in the psychological or soul realm:
  • Inferiority
  • Insecurity
  • Inadequacy
  • Guilt (real or imaginary)
  • Worry, doubt, fear
• Faulty faith leads to irrational fears
• Fear can shrink lives and cause people to start avoiding everything 
• The result of all 5 of these internal affiliations is frustration
• The frustration often times is turned inward and if the self is alive it can create chaos and external/internal damage
• Most forms of psychotherapy teach people how to deal with frustration, hostility, avoidance, or external symptoms
• The problem is not in knowing how to handle the hostility but in knowing how to prevent it because the cycle will continue if you just focus on handling the symptoms
• When hostility is kept inside it can affect our minds, emotions, or both 
• If it influences the mind:
  • Fantasy
  • Paranoia
  • Obsessive thoughts
• If it influences the emotions:
  • Depression
  • Anxiety
• The anxiety, depression, and thoughts are usually contained until it starts affecting the body 
• If a person has the peace of God which passeth all understanding he cannot continue to have unabated emotional conflict
• Ultimately, the physical and psychosomatic symptoms are spiritual problems
• To summarize, it is because self is at the center of life that all of this conflict develops and continues to grow. The problems may have been there since childhood, but the fact that they continue means that self is running the life. It may be a good self or bad self or in between but it is still self and self is repugnant to God
• In psychotherapy, the self is strengthened and the defense mechanisms are built greater
• Self-centeredness always gets worse when the symptoms improve with psychotherapy and this is opposed to what God does as he reduces self and it becomes weaker and weaker until he and Christ control 
• When Christ becomes the center of the life instead of the self there is no need to strengthen self to prevent symptoms but instead an exchange is made and the thoughts and emotions can reorient over time to that of God
• When Christ is at the center he can meet our needs as he has free rein to live out his life through us. Christ does not feel insecure, inadequate, guilty, worry, doubt, or fear so those things are progressively dispelled from the life
• If they are gone from putting God at the center then there is no longer frustration mounting up inside us
• If christ is at the center when outer stresses occur we do not react with hostility rather christ in us responds just the opposite- with love, understanding, and compassion and over time the conflict subsides inside and the symptoms ease
• Depending on the damage the body has suffered it can take time to heal
• One thing to note is that when we are in Christ and he is in us we are in his eternal presence and outside time, the events that occurred to Jesus also occur to us when we are with him

Visual of Soul Issues with Self Running Our Life:

Visual When Self is Exchanged for God/Christ Running Our Life:

How Do We Put Christ At The Center of Our Lives

• The will and decision to have faith despite the evidence is the foundation of exchanging your selfish life for Christ
• The will is the vital function since the emotions of people with afflictions are most likely at variance with the facts of God’s word
• As we choose against the world and the flesh and the devil and count upon indwelling Christ to be our life, we are choosing to have our minds renewed by the Holy Spirit
• As a consequence of this decision our emotions and thoughts are eventually brought into congruence with the truth so that we can walk not after the flesh but after the spirit and abide in him
• In some this occurs gradually in others it can be quicker and more dramatic but one thing that starts to happen is they start to know that a new awareness of being in Christ is starting to alter their attitudes 
• We must realize that this identification awareness is an event that takes place at a point in time and experience. The process may be so gradual that we are not able to identify that crisis point but the result is unmistakable-self is dethroned and Christ is enthroned
• We enter in by the cross through the death and resurrection with Christ and we may realize at new birth that not only was he crucified for us but that we were crucified with him
• It’s important to realize that you don’t try to live a Christian life but Christ lives through you and all you need to do is let him live in you 
• There is no way we can live a Christian life, it is a life of faith and we cannot live a Christian life it’s not a set of rules that we keep
• Until we deal with the self we will continue to struggle perhaps even asking him to help us but this is not allowing God to live in us but trying to harness self-life to work for God

What Spiritual Maturity Means

• Maturity is generally defined in terms of refraining from sinful activities and being involved in Christian service, frequently this has little or no spiritual significance in that there is relatively little permanent change in lifestyle
• Emotional symptoms usually start to get worse as the body begins to lose its reserve of physical stamina. In our younger years, we have sufficient strength to maintain our defense mechanisms and be productive in our lives but as we age that declines
• As we age we learn that there is insufficient brain and brawn to fight the internal and external battles
• Essentially total commitment and identification with God/Christ is what propels someone’s spiritual maturity while the average person who is “Christian” just tries to follow laws and Christian customs and maintains an average or below average position in Christ and never commits 
• Primarily because of ignorance, the cross of Christ doesn’t become a practical experience for many until years after the life has been surrendered to Jesus. God uses adverse circumstances along with enlightenment in his word to bring us to the end of our resources. 
• The transformation may be gradual or sudden and occasionally there is a period of near euphoria because of the peace and freedom the person has realized which may last for hours or days but inevitably self-sneaks back into control 
• When self sneaks back into control and the person is down the person is ripe for satanic attacks as satan always hits us when we are down, this is the only time he can get to us
• When we revert to self-control the remedy is the same, to recognize, and to revert our self-control as dead to sin and alive to God
• It is not a one-time experience that ensures constant victory but a daily practice and commitment to God
• We must experience assurance of identification with Christ since unless we have recognition and assurance of identification with God we cannot rest in the finished work of Christ 
• After we have experienced identification however the battles are more severe than before if we try to fight them with our strength

An Image of Spiritual Development:

Intellectual Understanding Then What

• The cross was a place of humiliation, suffering, shame, and loneliness for our lord and it will be the same for us
• We must be willing to commit ourselves to him completely, study, and wait for him to reveal himself in us
  • It may be gradual or take some kind of crisis

Common struggles people go through after surrender:

Total Surrender: any further progress in spiritual maturity and deliverance from enslaving emotional symptoms comes after total surrender which is when we permit our father to take us to the cross. It is an act of will and our emotions may act against it but we know it is the only way

Morbid Introspection: Many people with more neurotic behavior spend too much time looking inward. They may be searching for sin or trying to alter this or that behavior. Those who feel hopeless may spend a lot of time contemplating their worthlessness or seeing reasons why they can’t do things. The more they fixate on their problems the more miserable they become and they think that God will reward them for this effort. We need to allow God to search us not vice versa. 

Spiritual Vertigo: This affects a lot of Christians. This is when someone may have been accustomed to flying and operating based on sight and feel so instrument flying presents a new challenge-they must fly by faith rather than sight and feel. They must have complete confidence in their instrument (God) that the confidence will override their feelings. People with neuroses feel inferior, unacceptable, insecure, and have a set of emotions that are at variance with the facts of reality. We cannot change our emotions and how they developed, it is God’s job and we must put our faith in him and allow him over time to change our emotions to be in line with his truth. God will honor his word and keep his promises even if we don’t feel he will.

Spiritual Surgery: When the experiential removal of self as the master of life occurs it has many similarities to physical surgery. Before physical surgery, there is usually a period during which a person suffers from certain symptoms. The suffering convinces him that there is a problem. Often the patient will try various remedies that suppress the symptoms in a vain effort to avoid surgery. This is the same as spiritual surgery. Christians try everything to avoid the spiritual surgery that needs to take place if they are to be set free and unhindered in their service to the lord. Even after they know that surgery is the only way out they avoid it as long as possible. Whatever painful circumstance we are experiencing it is permitted by God to point out the necessity of spiritual surgery. As the surgeon makes preparations the patient is rendered helpless as the surgeon doesn’t want or need help with the surgery. Similarly, God must take us through defeat, failure, and suffering to render us helpless so that he can do his work. The surgeon of the body uses the scalpel and God the surgeon of the soul uses the cross to the source of the problem, the self.

Putting Suffering in Perspective: Meaningless suffering is agony in extreme but when we can put God’s lenses on our suffering to see the goal he has in view then we are afforded an entirely new view on suffering. God uses these circumstances to force people to the end of themselves. When people realize the reason for their suffering they can quit fighting god and allow him to do with it until he accomplishes his purpose. God will co-operate with you until he takes you to the cross and sets you free.

The Death Blow: Suffering takes place over a period of time as the cross does its work but there must come a time when self yields completely to the cross. Sometimes there is a period of deep anxiety before the end. As in physical death sometimes there is sudden death without a struggle. Even though a believer realizes that he is being drawn to the cross, it is almost as if the lord has to drag him all the way, while the person clutches at everything he passes. It was only after the suffering that Jesus entered the resurrection life. Prolonging the suffering is not going to do any favors. In our spiritual journey, the crucifixion’s suffering precedes the resurrection’s power. We must experience and enter into his life before we can experience his life manifest in us. Many times we try to rescue ourselves because we dread the pain and humiliation but one by one God eliminates the things that provide some relief. When we fear that there is no way out but death we have arrived at the truth. God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness.

The New Life: When the process of this crucifixion experience is consummated the result is spiritual resurrection life. It could be a gradual or a crisis revelation but the transformed life with its freedom is the proof that the Christ life has become a reality. The manifestation of his life is different in each person. It’s important to note that self will have a tendency to come back into control and it takes an effort of our will each day to reckon ourselves dead to sin and allow Jesus to express his life in us. We are not to test every thought and thing each day but instead to commit our life each day to God and trust him to control us and each situation to his glory. Committing, trusting, and reckoning.

The Great Exchange

• The two identities: one designed by the world and one by the spirit

World identity is designed as we develop as persons and begin to view ourselves as others see us or as we think they see us and sometimes as we would like for them to see us. This assessment of ourselves may be unrealistically positive or negative. In either case, it is an identity built on people, performance, possessions, power, and our past. Such an identity is built on doing for ourselves and others. 

We are doing in order to be.

Godly Identity from the scriptures has nothing to do with the way we see ourselves in relation to others or what our behavior is or has been. 

It is an identity based on being in Christ and finding our life in him. It is being to do instead of doing to be. Such an identity is not earned but learned through the holy spirit and obtained by faith.

• The identity assigned by the world is based on doing and the identity based on God is dying and being resurrected with Christ.
• Christians are not naturally prone to stand in line at the cross to die. It is much more palatable to gain an intellectual understanding of our identity in Christ and to attempt to live out of it without going through the trials of the cross.

The Ups and Downs After

• Often we will regress into our fleshly patterns even after experiencing the exchanged identity
• We must take into account the fact that the flesh (self) can never be improved- even after the cross has become a reality in the believer.

The process of a downer:

• Victory and living through the spirit may be maintained for some time
• When we approach obstacles and trials most often people will regress into the fleshly life
• Most of the time the first step in the downward spiral is becoming too prideful or arrogant and forgetting God/ not committing each day to allow Christ to live through you and instead trying to do everything in self
• Since you have been in control of things for most of your life it is easy to fall back into living through self and not God
• Understanding your own sequence over time gives you a spiritual altimeter 
• When we are doing well the devil or satan sees us at the front line for attacks so it’s important to know what those look like
• Also, uppers can be just as deceiving as downers as riding the emotions too high when we are doing well can lead to a fall 

The Downward Path: