To undertake spiritual psychotherapy, you must qualify to become a patient by exhibiting some of the following characteristics:

Symptoms of unexplainable pain or illness

Disappointment and dissatisfaction

Disenchantment with one’s chosen self-rescue plan

Unanswerable questions

Unrelenting guilt, embarrassing shame, irrational anger or ungrounded fear

Failure of our ego tactics to work and to satisfy

A key figure in your drama fails, leaves or dies

Your dreams are broken

You take off your mask

You begin to see that the world is your mirror

You have not yet understood that the universe has only one all-inclusive purpose, your self-realization.

If this list of qualifications seem to exclude 99% of the human race, so be it. This net is cast only for the 1% on any given day, and 25% at best. I have no illusions that spiritual psychotherapy could include everyone. Of course,  if you scratch the surface of consciousness more than one inch deep, this readiness becomes apparent.  But most of us have not yet looked there.

Who is Qualified to Benefit Most from Studying this Material?

If you still think you can solve your problems without awareness of your spirituality, you are not qualified

• If you still think you are or can be in control of your symptoms, you are not ready

• If you still think a pill will solve your pain, you are not digging deep enough

• If you still think someone else is responsible for your dilemma, you are not aware yet

• If you still think everyone else but you needs therapy, you are not insightful enough

• If you have no symptom, you don’t need a doctor

• If you still think your pain has a finite cause and your ego can fix it, go for it

• If you are not disillusioned, you are not yet ripe for healing

• If your defenses of denial, projection and rationalization are still working for you and you are not yet ready for honesty, don’t bother with Infinity Theory

• If something isn’t broke, why fix it?

• The Good News is only available to the imprisoned, the broken hearted, the blind, the bruised and the poverty stricken.

• If the mediocrity of consumerism and co-dependency still satisfy you, then you are not ready

• If you are not yet asking soul-searching questions, then forget it

• If you still have finite human hopes and dreams, pursue them

If you think a better partner, a better job, the lottery, or a better drug will cure you, go for it.

• Don’t bother with spiritual psychotherapy if you think there is a solution to be found in dualistic philosophy and dualistic religion. The path of understanding is only for those who truly hunger and thirst for it.
• If you think you have something finite to lose, why go for infinity, where you risk losing and finding everything
• If you think you have something to lose, you are going to be protecting that finite thing, whatever it is.
• If you think your ego game and tactics can get you what you want, you are not going to be interested in the disillusionment process.
• Infinity Therapy offers only one thing, total disillusionment and total fulfillment. The only thing which keeps us from our divinity is our pet illusions.
• The only thing that constantly devalues and deteriorates our self-esteem is our belief system.
• The only thing that keeps us from salvation is our self-rescue plan.
• The only thing that keeps us from enlightenment is our dualistic sick religion.
• In case you haven’t noticed, I have just planted a psychological bomb under your comfort zone.
• If you are not on already on the edge, you are not going to be willing to see the hidden dangers in your comfort zone story.
• If you haven’t filed moral, financial, and emotional bankruptcy yet, just wait.
• If you are not willing to give 9.6 minutes per day to the disillusionment process and to the discovery of your divinity, then you are not ready.
• Jesus said that only one out of four would be qualified at any given time. Otherwise the seed of truth falls in shallow ground, rocky turf, bird-infested fields, and does not germinate, sprout, grow, flower and produce fruit. And so for some people, it may take four more lifetimes of soil preparation before readiness occurs.
• Our story is a strange mixture of positive and negative illusions and it is very difficult to distinguish one from the other. Only the Spirit is qualified to teach us such distinctions.

Is the Way of Understanding a new religion? Absolutely not. We have over 6 billion religions already in the world, because each person has his own.

What are the characteristics of sick religion?

Each religious viewpoint has its own health or unhealthiness, according to the degree that it allows self-knowledge and awakening to the limitations of our own self-prescribed story. Religion by any definition is one’s spiritual awareness. Sickness by any definition is something unhealthy.

A sick religion would be anything unhealthy in one’s spiritual perception. Religion is as sick or healthy as the viewpoint of the person. Symptoms indicate the degree of health or sickness that is present. The ability to diagnose the meaning of symptoms depends on the spiritual knowledge of the doctor. Every patient is his own doctor, so we are right back where we started, with self-justification.

Leonard Cohen has written a song with the recurrent theme "Everybody Knows":

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded. Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed. Everybody knows the war is over. Everybody knows the good guys lost. Everybody knows the fight was fixed: the poor stay poor, the rich get richer. That’s how it goes. Everybody knows. Everybody knows that the boat is leaking. Everybody knows the captain lied. Everybody’s got this broken feeling like their father or their dog just died. Everybody’s talking to their pockets. Everybody wants a box of chocolates and a long stem rose. Everybody knows.

My point here is that everybody knows that religion is sick, and no one has the courage to say so. What have I got to lose? Let’s face it: what else could be sick? Can you tell me? Man is a spiritual being, and nothing but his religion can be sick. His body is simply a reflection of his sick religion. While it is true that you can treat the body and occasionally make some improvements, the mind will make it sick again if the mind is attached to sick religion. It’s that simple. So let’s quit denying it. Let’s face reality and take responsibility.

Everything Jesus said was addressed to the religious community and to the soul of man. He gave us the dignity of being spiritual beings. He didn’t stoop to blaming it on sociology, psychology, or philosophy. He laid right on the line where it should be: sick religion. And so did William James (the father of modern psychology) in Varieties of Religious Experience, and Soren Kierkegaard in The Sickness unto Death, and Nietzsche in Thus Spake Zarathustra, and Wayne E. Oates in When Religion Gets Sick.

All six billion of us on the planet have probably made our own diagnoses of the illnesses of society. We know something is wrong as we listen to the news’ pundits daily diagnoses of society’s fatal symptoms. This work is chiefly a commentary on the sickness of our religious perceptions. I do hope that the diagnoses here sheds some light on the facts that: (1) that religion is our basic sickness unto death (2) that everyone is religious to the core (3) that God is vitally involved in our human suffering (4) that in reality there can be no victims of this fatal disease.

Sick religion is without a doubt the chief patient. The symptoms of this condition are epidemic and evident to even the most fanatical denier. Everyone has this disease which I have nicknamed "frogitus." Frogitus is the inferiority complex or curse which turned all princes into frogs and froze all princesses into a state of sleep. Everyone has their own brand of frog medicine, which works only about as well as our prescriptions in general.

My best definition of sick religion is simply our ego-protective fear-based story about our human identity. Our stories are no more transformative than their authors.

Summary:

Religion (sick values) is the patient

Our self-limiting story is the germ

Mis-imagination is how the infection spreads

Self-crucifixion (and scapegoating) is the chief symptom

Paradoxical shock is the bedside manner required for healing

Forgiving Love is the cure

Awakening from our anemia and amnesia is the antidote

Resurrection is the prognosis

Jesus Christ is the New Archetypal Physician who has already healed our spiritual amnesia

Jeremiah says that the day will come when

"I will put my law within them, and on their hearts I shall write it; and I will be their God and they will be my people. And they shall not teach again, each man his neighbor and his man his brother, saying : ‘Know the Lord’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more." (Jer 31:33-34).

When that day comes, Christ will have returned.

When Solomon looked at all of our foolish stories, he exclaimed "Vanity, vanity, all is vanity!" When Jesus looked at the same foolishness, he wept. Today when we look at the same foolishness, we have to inquire.