An "Integration" of counselling, clienting and meditation. The title begs a few questions in itself. What kind of counselling?, What kind of meditation? - and what is 'clienting' It's a bit of a giveaway to note that a verb form of the noun 'client' is so less familiar than counselling, a verb form of counsellor. It suggests an assumption, somewhere, of passivity in the client in the client-counsellor relationship. This is not assumption made in the Co-counselling Community, - more on that later. I'll offer three very broad definitions of those three activity words in the title. Commencing with the least familiar, the other two definitions follow on.

Clienting: Using the attention of another to alleviate one's suffering.

Counselling: Offering one's attention to another in order to alleviate suffering.

Meditation: Paying attention to oneself in order to alleviate suffering.

The word suffering has a particular significance in the Buddhist tradition; the 'First Noble Truth' is 'dukkha' - from the ancient Pali language. Suffering, or unsatisfactoriness are close translations to the word 'dukkha'. Perhaps 'suffering' could be replaced with 'an unsatisfactory psychological condition' in the above definitions.

As for the word 'Integration', this is not an Inquiry, (I don’t think!) about how to introduce a technique of meditation into the co-counselling session. I'm more interested in looking at how people, - as clients, counsellors, meditatiors, - weave clienting, counselling and meditation into their ongoing path of existential inquiry. It is to be hoped that the vast majority of counsellors/therapists have had plenty of clienting experience; many professional therapists use meditation as a form of relaxation/support/ongoing growth, most transpersonal counsellors will make use of meditation techniques in work with their clients - here then, counselling, clienting and meditation are already strands in the weave of professional life's discourse.

The co-researchers in this Inquiry are all co-counsellors who also practice meditation. Both the co-co unselling communities and most of the various meditation teaching communities share a basic 'self-help' ethos. ie 'here's the techniques/practice, go and work with it and see if it works for you.' Hence the inquiry group members already demonstrate a tendency towards self-motivated inquiry - as distinct from professional interest - which integrates counselling, clienting and meditation. We are coming together to explore the benefits (and pitfalls) of co-operation around an area of mutual interest.

We are also looking at an integration of what is essentially a dyadic practice (counselling/clienting) with a monadic approach (meditation). Looking at the above definitions it at first appears that another distinction is that in meditation, attention has no directional quality - whereas in counselling and clienting, attention is given or received respectively. Unpacking the word ‘paying’, however, in the definition of meditation, we can arrive at two phrases:

a) I give attention to myself.

b) Me receiving my attention.

The second may sound laboured but in these two ways of describing the process another duality is revealed -that embedded in the language (and therefore in the thinking) there are two ways of considering "self" - as an object called me or as a subject called I.

There are moments in meditation when this distinction is transcended; when the witnesser and that which is witnessed are not distinguishable. Here, too, the word integration seems appropriate.

Updated 16 June 99
by Martin Wilks