Embodying the true Self: Integrating IFS and Spirituality at a Friends Conference
by Tom Holmes
When Jan Mullen invited me to submit an application to present at the 2024 FCRP annual conference, I was intrigued. The focus she suggested was to present on IFS combined with spirituality as a way to help people to be in relationship to the current state of the world where war and polarizations are so prevalent. She knew I had worked in the Middle East and in Ukraine, offering “Healing the Healer” workshops to support mental health professionals working with those traumatized by war and the refugee experience.
My wife Lauri and I have long been supporters of the FCNL (Friends Committee on National Legislation) and AFSC (American Friends Service Committee), and we have also participated in Friends meetings periodically over the years, though we have never been part of a community of Friends. This invitation coincided with the decision I had made to let go of my IFS (Internal Family Systems) training activities and to focus on using IFS as a resource in a person's spiritual journey and service work. The chance to share at the conference felt like one of those synchronicities C.G. Jung wrote about.
Our experience with the FCRP community at Pendle Hill was like a homecoming, though we had never been there before. There seemed to be a strong resonance between my way of supporting groups coming together, drawing on universalist spiritual practices combined with the IFS approach to bringing harmony to our inner system.
My experience of the event was that a group “heart space” was awakened. The opportunity to meet in the Friends meeting space at Pendle Hill was a gift and very much supported the awakening of this heart space atmosphere. It seems my way of integrating my IFS presentation with Jungian psychology and building the group atmosphere through meditations and the moving meditation of the Dances of Universal Peace was welcomed by the group. The atmosphere, which was created by all of the participants, gave both Lauri and me a feeling of peace and joy in our hearts that is still with us today.
I believe that one of the functions of coming together in this kind of event is to deepen and anchor our connection to the light, to spirit. The shared compassionate energy of that experience can then carry us through times when the turmoil of the everyday world seems to cut us off from those sources.
When, a number of months after the event, the FCRP committee suggested I might come back next year as well, I felt another synchronicity. It felt to me as if my work was being called in a certain direction and that the FCRP would be an important part of that calling, so I gladly accepted. This started me on the second stage of my journey,
Since FCRP had begun with an encounter with Jung, I decided to renew my exploration of Jung’s work, particularly as it related to my exploration of the nature of the IFS “Self,” which for me is what many spiritual traditions refer to as “heart “or “heart/mind.” At about the same time that I received this invitation from the FCRP, an important spiritual guide of mine, Atum O’Kane passed rather suddenly from this world. I knew Jung had always been an important part of Atum’s teaching, but what I had not known, but found out in his obituary, was that the Quaker, John Yungblut, was one of Atum’s key mentors. This gave a new focus to my exploration, and I was delighted to find Yungblut’s work on “Quaker Mysticism,” something that had not been a concept for me before. His teachings fit well with my current spiritual exploration since I have always been drawn to the mystical path of the spiritual traditions I encounter. As I began to explore Yungblut’s essays, I could see how my spiritual guide Atum had deepened his understanding of Jung and Teilhard de Chardin through that mentorship with John Yungblut.
The central focus for me in this exploration is the nature of Self from both a Jungian and an IFS perspective and how that relates to the Quaker belief in the inner light in each person. While I am drawn to the mystical aspects of the spiritual quest, it has always been important to me to be aware of how the spiritual experience affects us in our everyday embodied existence here on Earth. What has always drawn me to the Quakers is how their spiritual and community life support peaceful, compassionate service in the world. My goal for what I offer at the 2025 gathering is to offer what I have learned from my years on this journey of psychology, spirituality, and service in a way that is harmonious with the well-established path of Quaker religious life and service. Together with the FCRP committee, we have decided to call the theme for the conference Embodying the Sacred Self.
Jung talks about Christ being an archetype of Self, what Teilhard de Chardin refers to as the Cosmic Christ. Yungblut wrote that “In each of us is planted a seed of the Christ potential. Jesus of Nazareth was a wonderful flowering of that seed.” (Finn, PP 11-13)i Jung's Self and the IFS Self can then be seen as the unfolding of the Christ potential in each of us. The IFS methodology can be very supportive in the unfolding of this potential.
A deeper understanding of this Self can be found by looking at parallel concepts across a range of spiritual traditions. Jung also points out that the Bodhisatva in the Buddhist tradition is an archetype of the cosmic Self, but at this time, I will limit my exploration to the “Abrahamic” traditions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In these traditions, what we are calling the sacred Self is often referred to as heart or heart/mind. The heart is seen as the home of our essence, or soul, and this state of consciousness has the function of being the mediator between the all-pervading source of light and life and the embodied aspects of our being, the various aspects of our manifest existence.
This all-pervading source is described in the Latin origins of the word spirit. It is referred to in Latin as spiritus, which the Oxford English Dictionary translates as the “Breath of life.” This is pneuma in Greek, ruach in Hebrew, ruh in Arabic, and ruha in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. These words all refer to that original breath of God that gave rise to the world we know. Neil Douglas-Klotz, a scholar of the Aramaic New Testament, points out that in each of these languages, there is a word for this divine breath, the spiritus, pneuma, ruh, and also a word for breath as it takes form in humans. In Greek, the word is psyche; in Arabic nafs. In IFS terms, the English word for this level of the psyche refers to the parts level of our personality. The heart/mind in Greek is kardia or nos, Hebrew lev and in Arabic qalb or lubb, and leba in Aramaic. The role of this heart/mind space is that it contains the essence of a person, their soul, and has the role of connecting the psyche level of our personality to the spiritual source. It was suggested by the FCRP committee that this could be described as the ”sacred Self” which fits for me. I also see Jung’s Self and the IFS Self have this same function in their conceptual systems. Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddhist teacher, would call it the “true Self.”
The ways that IFS and spirituality come together in such a natural way is that as we work to understand the parts of ourselves and bring them into balance and harmony, the Self, the heart naturally opens up. The sacred Self comes into the foreground of our being, and the qualities of quiet, compassionate understanding arise. It is this process of clarifying and getting to know and to understand the different parts of ourselves that can allow us to be more engaged with the world in a way that embodies the sacred Self.
So, especially in the current times of great turbulence and suffering, becoming aware of our parts and understanding them is crucial. Most of us will have angry parts, helpless feeling parts, parts losing hope, and, perhaps, overburdened empathic parts and tired helping parts. The IFS process helps us to notice what parts of ourselves are currently being activated, to understand them, and to find a way to come into a compassionate relationship with them and to care for them. Through this process, we come more and more into the Self space.
When we follow this process in community, coming together with similar intentions, sharing each other's journey with our parts, singing together songs that awaken heart qualities, moving together, then a group “sacred Self” can be awakened. This, I believe, is what happened last year at the FCRP conference, and it is my hope that as we come together again this year, the same compassionate community will experience this kind of resonance again.
Tom Holmes, LCSW, Ph.D.
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i Finn, Charles, C. Jon Yungblut : Passing the Mystical Torch. Pendle Hill Pamphlet 417.
Tom Holmes is an international trainer of psychologists, social workers, counselors and holistic therapists. His specialty is spirituality in the therapeutic process. Tom is the author of Parts Work: An Illustrated Guide to Your Inner Life, which has sold over 100,000 copies and been translated into several languages.
For more about Tom, visit his website: https://www.wingedheart.org/about-tom