In all the time I have spent in the personal growth, therapy, spirituality field, I have noticed the words honored and privileged routinely used by practitioners, therapists, healers, and guides. We are all of us it seems honored or privileged to be working and helping another with their personal process. Does it ever occur to anyone that behind closed doors at the end of a working day of grueling healing attempts at personal improvement and recuperation, feeling  frustrated and at least a bit jaded, the practitioner may in reality feel anything but honored or privileged?

The practitioner may feel exhausted and overwhelmed or think "I wish I didn't have a week of these people ahead of me" or even "I have had enough."

Therapists, counselors, healers, and guides require a lot of resilience to fulfill their roles. Typically they must be ready each day, clear in mind and heart, able to receive, let in, listen -- stay awake! -- process, empathize, resonate, discern, feel compassion, perhaps sympathize, be congruent, confluent, feel loving, accepting, open-hearted, considerate, receptive, responsive -- not reactive, non-judgmental, aware, not critical, authentic, and present... and this list is not exhaustive!

To offer all this, to bring all this and more to the healing encounter, to make yourself available as a practitioner, a healer, and a human being... is this truly an honor and a privilege?

I never felt it necessary for my therapists to tell me this. I never felt it was even appropriate to be thought of as providing them with this honor and privilege experience. I merely thought we were involved in a transaction, a contract, a meeting in an appropriate endeavor.

I am sorry to say I very often feel when therapists and healers enunciate this rather grandiose sentiment that it may be an inverted expression of ego. For example, someone sends me the following from a piece written by a therapist-healer in which among other words and phrases is written:

“I have been honored to witness this unfolding, illumination, and transformation in many over the years, who were kind enough to allow me to accompany them into the inner realms of dark and of light.”

What do we make of this? Let me tell you what I make of this. It is a subtle (and possibly unconscious) manipulation of the unwary potential client whose ego-self is preened on the warm glow of the manipulative practitioner seeking clients, followers, and adherents. Can we not call this kind of presentation out once and for all?

First, what is this "unfolding" and so on he refers to? Well, it's not at all clear from the full text. Perhaps something to do with love, birth, or rewiring apparently. Second, what about this word "many"? This practitioner has been working about half as long as me and he has witnessed "transformation in many over the years." While it is not at all clear how he is using evocative words like unfolding, illumination, and transformation, stating that he is by implication capable of facilitating these states in many is not only vague, but also highly unlikely, as well as powerful self-promotion. And what about "kind enough to allow me to accompany them..."? Wow! If I could be as effective as this teacher in dispensing illumination and so on, it would surely be a privilege and an honor for the "many" to work with me... if I was kind enough...

This presentation (and this is only a part of it) is rife with subliminal controlling suggestions. If you don't feel your ego being unconsciously stroked you are not worthy of the description: an individual human being.

So, if it's not a privilege or an honor, then what is it to work with another's "unfolding"?

It's a necessity. It's a remedial project. It's hard. It's painful. It's full of trust and courage. It's pertinent and apposite in a world of adults who are psychologically children. It's crucial. It's hard work and it may be joyful, filled with elation, and feel like the best thing -- the only thing -- you want to do sometimes, yet at other times it may be the darkest, sludgiest, nastiest, repulsive, nightmarish activity you could imagine.

Let us reserve sentiments like it's an honor and a privilege for other exalted levels of inner work and personal discovery. While we are in the sludge of human existence, let us be unassuming and just say, "This is hellish. Let's get through it as soon as possible." Enjoy it by all means, retain your sense of humor, but suffering is suffering. Beyond the Threshold of Transformation (see Your Essential Self). There's another world of truth and honor, reverence and deep respect for life, responsiveness to life, immersement in life, compassion, genuine love and authenticity shining like a beacon.

Reach that beacon! Swim toward it! Do not be distracted, deviated, or thwarted and when you arrive you will see what an honor and what a privilege it really is to be alive in the realms of Reality itself.