Questing

Aligning Therapy With Life’s One Great Search – Richard Bolstad 1996

Before Robert Dilts wrote the Hero’s Journey, I published this article in Anchor Point magazine. I like his take on it even more in some ways, but for historical interest, here is my own version.

Change And The Search Of Your Lifetime

Behind the seemingly ordinary, day to day challenges of our lives, unfolds an epic story. This story follows a path that inevitably inspires greatness; the path of the Quest. When someone has lost their way in life, when the obstacles seem insurmountable, they turn to guides and oracles as they always have. They seek not mere metaphorical changes, but actual changes in the course of their daily life, their success at work, their relationships and so on. The Quest that we as guides invite them to embark on must likewise be a real one. It must involve real tangible, measurable changes. In this article I will explore the notion of Questing, as a meta model for all human change, including spiritual transformation, and as a way of developing specific, Ericksonian tasks to give to clients and students.

The One Great Myth

Penelope Lively says in “The Mythical Quest” (1996, vii) that “The Quest formula is perhaps the most central and abiding of all story structures…. across the whole range of myths there runs this unifying thread -the fictional elements that crop up again and again. The setting of an impossible task, the intervention of a figure with divine or magical powers, the overcoming of apparently insuperable obstacles.” Joseph Campbell (1968, p30) describes the quest as humanity’s “monomyth” (one myth which encompasses all other myths), explaining “The standard path of the mythological adventure of the hero is a magnification of the formula represented in the rites of passage: separation-initiation-return: which might be named the nuclear unit of the monomyth. A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

Such quests also occur in our dreams, because they represent something fundamental about our human condition, something perhaps needed in our daily life. Campbell (1968, p20) gives an example of the dream of an opera singer: “I was walking alone around the upper end of a large city, through slummy, muddy streets lined with hard little houses…. I did not know where I was, but liked the exploring. I chose one street which was terribly muddy and led across what must have been an open sewer. I followed along between rows of shanties and then discovered a little river flowing between me and some high, firm ground where there was a paved street. This was a nice, perfectly clear river, flowing over grass. I could see the grass moving under the water. There was no way to cross, so I went to a little house and asked for a boat. A man there said of course he could help me cross. He brought out a small wooden box which he put on the edge of the river and I saw at once that with this box I could easily jump across. I knew all danger was over and I wanted to reward the man richly…. When I think of how persistently I kept going straight ahead in the dream, it seems as though I must have known there was something fine ahead, like that lovely grassy river and the secure, high, paved road beyond.”

Carl Jung identified this heroic quest as a journey symbolic of the individual’s struggle on the way to enlightenment, or “Individuation”, and many Psychotherapies have utilised this symbolic Questing. Carol Pearson (1991, p1), for example, says “The heroic quest is about saying yes to yourself and, in so doing, becoming more fully alive and effective in the world. For the hero’s journey is first about taking a journey to find the treasure of your true self, and then about returning home to give your gift to help transform the kingdom -and, in the process, your own life. The quest itself is replete with dangers and pitfalls, but it offers great rewards: the capacity to be successful in the world, knowledge of the mysteries of the human soul, the opportunity to find and express your unique gifts in the world, and to live in loving community with other people.” In therapy, the therapist may be seen as the guide who awakens the hero to her/his quest, and offers help along the way. In such models, the quest undertaken by the client is a symbolic journey, and the tasks are symbolic ones (“Confronting the shadow side of the personality”, “Uniting the male and female aspects of one’s being” etc).

A New Form Of Quest

In the model of Questing I am presenting here though, the Quest is not a symbolic, Jungian one, but is a very tangible and real one. The client does not discover an “inner hero”, so much as they become the hero and engage in an actual Quest in the real-time world. This distinction is important. In using the word Quest, I am not saying that fantasy is more important than reality. I’m not urging some return to a pre-rational and unmeasurable world where change is whatever you pretend it is. On the contrary, I am suggesting that real, measurable, everyday experience is a Quest, and a Quest more heroic than any fantasy was.

Secondly, my use of the term Quest is not meant to imply only a seeking for something already known, like seeking for a lost door key. Both types of Quest have their place; the seeking for an identified goal and the search that has no boundaries*. Spiritual teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986) is an example of a modern day spiritual teacher who spent his life advocating a Quest of a uniquely spiritual nature. In his writing he emphasised that in terms of his Quest, “The process of seeking is not the state of search. The mind that is seeking is waiting, expecting, desiring, and what it finds is recognisable, therefore already known. Seeking is the action of the past…. The awakened mind is the state of search. It’s no longer seeking from a motive; there’s no objective to be gained…. Truth is not something permanent, fixed, therefore it cannot be sought; truth is a living thing, it is the state of search.” (Krishnamurti, 1972, p219-221). Krishnamurti was interested in encouraging a particular type of Quest, then, one in which the hero becomes not merely a God or Goddess, but one with all that is. When Buddha was asked “Are you a God?”, he said “No!” When he was then asked, “Are you a man?” he again answered “No!” When the speaker finally asked him “Then what are you?”, he replied “I am AWAKE!” Such is the conclusion of a search worthy of Krishnamurti’s description.

I consider both types of Quest useful, and it helps to identify which we are on. In the examples below, I will refer both to Krishnamurti’s suggestions and to those of Psychotherapist Milton Erickson (1902-1980). The form of teaching and counselling used by these two men shares many similarities. Each of them was working in a field where the traditional approach involved direct supervision of the change process. Each of them broke away from this style, advocating that their “clients” do most of the change work autonomously, out in their own lives. Both of them were thus put in the position of setting Quests for their clients.

So let’s start! Before you put on your travel gear and begin, though, I want to mention a seminal model which influenced my development of Questing. There is a roadside altar that it’s fitting we pause beside and acknowledge our gratitude to.

Haley’s Ordeal Therapy

Jay Haley uses a model related to Questing in his book “Ordeal Therapy”. Haley suggests (1984, p6-7) that many of the tasks given by Milton Erickson to his therapy clients were “Ordeals”. Haley says “With the ordeal technique, the therapist’s task is easily defined: It is to impose an ordeal appropriate to the problem of the person who wants to change, an ordeal more severe than the problem. The main requirement of an ordeal is that it cause distress equal to or greater than that caused by the symptom, just as a punishment should fit the crime. Usually, if an ordeal isn’t severe enough to extinguish the symptom, it can be increased in magnitude until it is. It is also best if the ordeal is good for the person…. The ordeal must have another characteristic: It must be something the person can do and something the person cannot legitimately object to. That is, it must be of such a nature that the therapist can easily say “This won’t violate any of your moral standards and is something you can do.”…. An example of a standard ordeal is to exercise in the middle of the night whenever the symptom has occurred that day.”

Haley continues on to suggest that all therapy may be considered as an ordeal. Even reframing or analysis, he says, is an ordeal where the client is required to endure the theory of the therapist. In this sense, he proposes Ordeal as a meta-theory at a similar logical level to the theory of Insight (people change when they understand themselves) or Reinforcement (people change when change is reinforced by advantages, and the problem ceases to be reinforced by other advantages).

Haley’s content for the Ordeal technique (the tasks set by the therapist) is the same content I wish to deal with using the Questing model. It was from Haley’s model that I began. His book groups together some important aspects of the design of tasks. However, I believe that the Questing model has two significant advantages over the Ordeal one. These are:

1) Questing is a “Towards” model in NLP terms. It focuses attention on the advantages of the activity engaged in. The activity is not a torment to move away from, but an energy consuming challenge to move towards and succeed through. Jay Haley goes to great lengths in his book to suggest that therapy is inevitably unpleasant. For me, NLP is fun, just as any learning process is, and is as much an exciting Quest as any other exploration process (the word “quest” means search, and comes from the same source as “question”, remember). Krishnamurti comments on the notion of ordeals that “It is an odd fact that followers like to be bullied and directed, whether softly or harshly. They think the harsh treatment is part of their training -training in spiritual success…. All this is part of mutual exploitation, it has nothing whatever to do with reality and will never lead to happiness.” (Krishnamurti, 1969, p119).

2) Questing is a more encompassing term. In mythology, for example, the term “quest” refers to the entire process, whereas the term “ordeal”, if used at all, refers to specific events in that process. Part of a Quest is receiving the inspiring “call” to explore, and equally, part of the Quest involves sharing ones learning with others on one’s return. I believe that Questing sheds light on aspects of Erickson’s tasks which the Ordeal model had missed.

But to understand the basis of Questing in NLP, lets go back to where the term originates, and hear the story of one of the most famous of all Quests.

The Quest of Psyche

The Roman myth of Psyche serves as an example of the one great myth (Lively & Kerven, p24-33). This story was first written down in Lucius Apuleius’ book “The Golden Ass” 1800 years ago. There it is told as a metaphor by an old woman to a young girl, to raise her spirits. Psyche (the Soul, in Latin) was the youngest and most beautiful of three royal princesses. To her sorrow, she was so beautiful that no man dared to seek her hand in marriage. Psyche’s beauty was of a fragile kind, perhaps what we might call today a “Barbie doll” look. Her parents took her to an oracle of the God Apollo, to seek some solution. Here they learned that Psyche was destined to be the bride of an unseen monster, chosen for her by the Gods.

Despairing of her present life without a husband anyway, Psyche went up to a mountaintop and was swept by the West Wind to a beautiful valley, in which lay a mysterious palace. That night, in darkness, a man came into the palace and told Psyche he was to be her husband. She would live with him each night, never seeing his face, and in the day she would have free reign over the beautiful valley. This life was strange, but not unhappy, for the “monster” was kind and loving. But Psyche could not bear the mystery of it, and one night, egged on by her curious sisters, she lit a lamp and looked at her sleeping husband. To her amazement she saw that he was Cupid, the young and handsome God of Love, and son of the Goddess Venus.

Because Psyche had gazed on his face, Cupid was now forbidden to stay with her. Wandering aimlessly and in despair, she came upon a temple to Venus. Venus told Psyche that she could not expect to achieve her heart’s desire unless she worked at it. She sent Psyche on a series of seemingly impossible Quests to prove her worthiness. The first was to sort out a large pile of wheat barley, beans and millet, into four separate piles. Cupid, who was watching secretly, called up an army of ants who did this task for her. The next task was to collect a bag of golden wool from a flock of vicious sheep with sharp horns. The reeds by the sheep’s’ field whispered the solution to Psyche -wool from the sheep caught in the thorns of the hedge, and Psyche was able to gather it from the thorns. Though badly scratched, Psyche was safe.

Her final task was to journey to the Underworld itself, and bring back drops of beauty from the Goddess Persephone. Just as she despaired of ever achieving this, a magical voice taught her how to speak without fear, and with kind words, to the guardians of the Underworld, so they would let her pass. Finally, Psyche managed to get the drops of beauty in a golden box, and after a struggle with the temptation to use them on her own (now rather weatherbeaten) form, returned with them to Venus. Venus was astonished at her success, and Cupid brought news of her heroic quest to Jupiter, king of the Gods. Jupiter ruled that Psyche, transformed by the faith, courage and learning of her Quest, would now become immortal herself. So Psyche married Cupid and their child was called Delight.

Erickson’s Therapeutic “Task”

Milton Erickson MD was one of the extraordinary psychotherapists modelled by the developers of NLP. Erickson frequently assigned his clients challenging tasks, through the doing of which they were somehow transformed. Before setting out how to design such tasks in your practice, I want to give an example, and demonstrate how the core elements of the story of Psyche and the story of Milton’s client are the same. Milton is, in fact, sending his client on a Quest. The following story is told by David Gordon and Maribeth Meyers-Anderson in their excellent study of Ericksonian techniques “Phoenix” (1981, p44-46).

“Quite a number of years ago I received a telephone call from L.A. A young man who told me, “I’m working on a ship as a seaman and I’m awfully afraid I’m going to go into orbit.” I told him I thought it would be inadvisable to continue working on board that ship. So he got a job working in a mine. And he found that even if he were a mile deep into the earth, he was still obsessed with the fear of going into orbit. And he came to Phoenix to see me. I don’t know how he got my name, or why he chose me, but I do know he saw a NUMBER of psychiatrists and they all wanted to give him shock therapy -electro-shock therapy- because of his delusion that he was going to go into orbit. Now I didn’t think he should get shock therapy. I had him get a job in a warehouse. And he was afraid he was going into orbit. And that delusion was so persistent that he couldn’t count as far as ten without having to stop and reassure himself that he was not YET in orbit. He was entitled to perspire because of the heat but not to perspire THAT much! But he was dreading so much going into orbit. I tried to distract his mind by asking him to count his steps as he walked along the street and to memorise the street names. But that, “I’m going to go into orbit, I’m going to go into orbit”, obsessed him…. interfered with him. He couldn’t get very much sleep because he was afraid he was going to go into orbit. And finally I realised I couldn’t do anything for him except settle down with him and EXPLAIN to him “Now apparently it is your destiny to go into orbit. Now the astronauts go into orbit, and there’s always an end to the orbit…. They come back to earth again. And as long as you’re going to go into orbit, why not get it OVER with?” So I had him take salt pills and a canteen of water and I had him walk about fourteen hours a day along the tops of MOUNTAINS around here, and he had to come in at 10.30 at night to report that he had not yet gone into orbit. But he slept well, as you would walking around on mountain tops with a canteen of water and walking for about fourteen hours a day. And finally he began to get just a little bit dubious about going into orbit. Then his sister came to me asking if he could go to California where she lived. She said her husband had a job but that he would not or could not fix up things around the house. And she had a picket fence that needed some painting, a gate that needed to be repaired, some shelves to be built, and so I told the young man that he could go to California because he would be in sight of the mountains and he could take his canteen with him and his salt pills, and if he got a sudden feeling that he was destined to go into orbit he could get up on top of a mountain so he could go easily into orbit. Now a few months later he came back and said “That was a delusional psychotic idea”, and he didn’t know what had made him so crazy and he felt I had saved him from hospitalisation at the State Hospital. And he decided that since I hadn’t charged him for my services, he would give me a portable water bed.”

Tasks as Questing

Like Psyche, Erickson’s client appears doomed by fate. He comes to see Erickson for help, and Erickson suggests various things. Finally he sets him a rather dramatic task. This task requires him to do, in modified form, the very thing he had been suffering from, just as Psyche’s final task requires her to steal yet more beauty from the underworld. But curiously, as Erickson’s client performs the task, he is changed by it. He is able to sleep better, and he actually gets a job that he can keep (because the job is part of his Quest). Similarly, Psyche’s tasks transform her “innocent” beauty into the kind of beauty that the Gods themselves admire. Erickson’s client develops the life skills he needs, almost as a side effect of the tasks; just as Psyche develops her courage and her will to go on, as well as her creative problem solving and communication skills, in the course of her tasks. And there is in both cases a curious metaphorical similarity between the tasks required of the heroes, and their actual goals (think about it, for now, at the unconscious level). Finally, both heroes are in a position to help others on their own quests. They have become adepts; experts; Goddess or God. United with Eros (Love), Psyche (the Soul) gives birth to bliss.

Why Set Quests?

There are a number of advantages to giving your clients or students actual real world Quests, things to do in their daily life. The benefits include:

-ensuring your clients/students are taking responsibility for their own change process. NLP is not something we do “to” clients. Without their commitment, we have no ability to assist them to change. Agreeing to the Quest is agreeing to take responsibility for change; to be at cause.

-creating undeniable evidence that change is necessary and/or possible. Because clients have been trying to achieve only certain kinds of change, and have been coming up against a resistance there, they often believe that change is impossible. The Quest gives them a place to experience first hand the process of change. Skilfully, that change often tends to produce the very outcome that seemed impossible.

-interrupting the strategy which has caused the problem symptoms previously. The client’s previous ways of doing the problem, and their attempts to solve the problem have been using a strategy which doesn’t work, but is habitual. The Quest installs a new strategy.

-installing new strategies which enable new solutions for that situation.

-circumventing conscious interference and “paralysis by analysis” in the change process. As Erickson said, if your client’s conscious mind could solve their problems, it would have. To access the resources hidden in the underworld of the unconscious mind requires an action which has no conscious censorship.

-protecting clients’/students’ ecology by enabling their unconscious mind to find and enact it’s own solutions, rather than trying to reach the therapist’s or their own conscious mind’s solution. The result of the Quest is unknown both to the client and to the Therapist. As Krishnamurti says above, the state of Questing, or Search, is not the same as merely seeking a particular result.

The Journey Begins

Once you have decided to initiate a Quest with a client or student, you need to preframe the Questing process. This is crucial to its success, and involves five steps.

1. Resourceful State For The Guide: To set a Quest successfully, both you and your client need to be in a relatively resourceful state. Questing will be of most use when you begin by clarifying the nature of your relationship as a guide. In ancient myths, this meant appearing to the hero as an Oracle of the Goddess or God. In factual terms, Erickson often insisted that his clients agree to experiment by doing any (ethical and possible) task that he instructed them to. He said of this “When you want to ask your patient to do something, I think it is a very serious error not to ask him first to cooperate with you -unless -of course- you have a specific reason for not doing so….One really ought to ask the patient to cooperate in achieving a common goal. You should keep in mind that that common goal is for the welfare of the patient wherein the patient is cooperating with you to achieve something that is primarily of benefit to him.” (Erickson, 1992, p165-6). If they wanted an ally, then clients needed to be willing to actually live with Erickson’s task. Half way up the mountain is too late to decide to “follow an easier path”, as so many Quest myths warn. In a way, this step is part of contracting with the client.

Krishnamurti achieved a similar result by insisting on the need for a meeting of teacher and student at the same level, with the student being willing, on their own initiative, to do what the teacher suggests. In a discussion about teaching, with Swami Venkatesananda, he says (Krishnamurti, 1973, p140) “You may point out, you may say, “Look, go through that door”, but he has to do the work entirely from beginning to end. Therefore you are not a guru in the accepted sense of that word…. Surely sir, with any kind of relationship that has meaning there must be a meeting at the same level, at the same time, at the same intensity, otherwise there is no communication, there is no relationship.” The result of such meeting at the same level, Krishnamurti says, is a willingness to experiment with the suggestions of the teacher, rather than to agree or disagree with them. He explains (Krishnamurti, 1975, p42-3) “Look, I have done yoga for many years. I’ve had several yoga teachers, and I did it as they told me; which means there was no contradiction between the doing and the listening. If you first create the idea, the image, then it will take an infinitely long time, then you need practice. But if the teacher says, “Do this” and you do it, you are doing it. You may do it badly, but you are doing it.”

2. Establish Rapport: This involves all the usual NLP Rapport skills. Erickson was an expert at building rapport with his clients. Notice how he has paced the man’s model of the world, in the story above, by agreeing that it “seems” to be his destiny to go into orbit. In mythology, the guide who directs the seeker often has magical ways of knowing their situation. Rapport gives the real life guide a real life crystal ball. Krishnamurti suggests that in shared quietness, rapport is built. He says (Krishnamurti, 1975, p94) “I’m not saying you can’t be quiet on your own, but when you’re quiet together, it brings about a corporate action. Doesn’t it? Haven’t you noticed it? Then if someone asked you to go into the kitchen, you’d go.” Like Erickson, Krishnamurti also utilises his clients’ metaphors to build rapport. When Swami Venkatesananda (1975, p139-183) asks him “What is there in human nature that seeks, that gropes and grasps for a crutch?” Krishnamurti replies “The question being, why do people need crutches? … and whether you should give them crutches to lean on.”. When the Swami sums up the session with the words “That is your message. And how to nail it?”, Krishnamurti replies “By driving it in every day.”

3. Specify The Intention Of The Quest: You need the client’s absolute conscious agreement to perform the Quest, although at times it will not be appropriate to tell the person the specific details of their tasks before securing this agreement (in which case you will assure them that the tasks will be ethical, and easy to perform given the skills they are already demonstrating. You may also tell them how much time will be involved).

Psyche performs her Quest for reasons which make sense to her, not to reach the goal of Venus (who in the story appears to be jealous of Psyche). Erickson works in response to the young man’s re-quest, not to meet the goal of the State Hospital. The rationale for the Quest needs to make sense to the client, rather than to you.

At times, a Quest will have a precise outcome. The genie’s first question is “What do you desire?”. When a visitor asks Krishnamurti how she or he can find what they seek, his first reply is likely to be “You say you are seeking. Do you know why you are seeking and what it is you seek?” (Krishnamurti, 1972, p38). Sometimes this elicits a goal. At other times it exposes the difference between “seeking” and “search” as a way of being. Search, in this sense, has no goal, but is what Krishnamurti describes as “A voyage on an uncharted sea” (Krishnamurti, 1972, p196)

4. Open Up The Client’s Model Of The World: This step involves finding out from the client how they are creating their problem (placing them “at cause” in their life), and loosening up that system ever so gently. In exploring the young man’s difficulty, Erickson has him experiment with stopping the delusion in various ways, uncovering it’s power. In setting the Quest, however, Erickson presupposes two slight variations in the client’s model of the world. 1) Astronauts always come down again after being in orbit! and 2) You might as well take charge of your going into orbit! In the same way, Venus accepts Psyche’s apparently impossible love for a God, but points out to her that such relationships require action, rather than just wandering around in despair. Krishnamurti asks “Before we go into the whole question of what it is we seek, let’s find out what we mean by that word “seeking”. What is the state of the mind that is seeking?” (Krishnamurti, 1972, p38)

5. Leading The Client Into The Task Itself: Having completed these four steps, you are ready to set the Quest. If you have a good repertoire, you may be able to do this at your first session with a client. I have some standard tasks that I usually give all clients, such as to take time each day identifying what they are looking forward to, and time identifying what has gone well in their life. Even these simple tasks must be delivered with the resourcefulness of one who congruently values their suggestion. I point out that many clients have agreed to this task and then complained that they feel worse when they perform it. I tell such clients that they have not done the task we set. They have in fact “tried” to think of things they looked forward to, and then told themself off for not being able to easily, and then felt bad about that. Krishnamurti notes (1972, p88) “To try is to oil the repetitive mechanism, not to put an end to it.” And to “try” was not the task I set!

If you’re new to Questing, you may wonder how easy it will be to design a Quest. There’s nothing wrong with taking time out from being with your client, to choose a task. Erickson often took a week or so to design a suitable Quest, and delivered it at the next session. As with most of what he did, Erickson himself was often hard put to explain how he designed tasks. Two excellent books on how to design Quests are “The Answer Within” (Lankton and Lankton, 1983), and “Phoenix” (Gordon and Meyers-Anderson, 1981).Here, I’ll describe two criteria for tasks (achievability and heroism) and list four types of task.

What Makes A Task Achievable?

The client needs to be in a state to undertake your Quest. Solution Focused Therapy (Steve de Shazer, 1985) suggests you use a scaling question to ascertain how committed they are to changing. You might say, “On a scale of one to ten where one means you are only willing to hope and pray that this issue is resolved, and ten means you are willing to do anything at all; where would you rate your current motivation?” The results can be considered in three categories, which I’ll illustrate here with examples of tasks set by Erickson and by Krishnamurti.

Low Motivation: If the client rates themselves at 1-3 (such clients are called “Visitors” in Solution Focused Therapy), then my only task will be that they come back to see me another time, when maybe they will be more interested in change. They are at the oracle visiting stage. Erickson was very willing to allow this, rather than to try and force cooperation. For example, in one discussion (Erickson, 1992, p264) he describes his initial session with a 29 year old man who wet his bed each night: “He wanted to know if I could do something about it. I told him, “Yes, I can, but I don’t think you will like it. But you can listen to me anyway.” I held his attention, and I told him what I could do about it, and he said “Uh-huh.” About three months later he came to me and said “What was that you were going to do about my bedwetting. I think I want you to do it now.” “

Krishnamurti’s individual sessions, written up in case note style as “Commentaries on Living” (Krishnamurti, 1972) give similar examples of people who apparently came for help or guidance but were not immediately involved at the level of emotional motivation. One politician, for example, (p16) concludes by saying “Intellectually, I see that what you say is true, but inwardly, emotionally, I don’t feel the authenticity of it.” Krishnamurti replies that “It is better to admit to ourselves that we do not understand, than to maintain that there is an intellectual understanding, which only breeds arrogance and self-imposed conflict.”, and the politician concludes “We have taken too much of your time, but perhaps you will allow us to come again.”

Medium Level Motivation: If the client rates themselves at 4-7, then the task I give them will involve basically doing what they have already been doing, and noticing what is happening. For example, in one of Krishnamurti’s cases, he worked with a young man who couldn’t decide what to do as a career. Krishnamurti asked him “Aside from the usual careers, what would you really like to do? You must have some interest, however vague it may be. Somewhere, deep down, you know what it is, don’t you?” (Krishnamurti, 1972, p267). But after checking various possibilities, the man still says he has no idea, even though he knows he “should” make some decision. Krishnamurti replies “You think you ought to be something don’t you? -a responsible person, a useful citizen, and all the rest of it. With the understanding of discontent you may be these things and much more. But you want to do something satisfying, something which will occupy your mind and so put an end to this inner disturbance; isn’t that so?…You may discover the solution if you go further into this feeling of discontent. Don’t think about it in terms of being contented. Find out why it exists, and whether it should be kept burning.”

Erickson points out that such tasks themselves cause change (see section “d Quests Which Prescribe The Symptom…” below). He says about uncontrollable gagging, as an example “In this matter of gagging, why not be perfectly honest with your patient by telling him, “You really do gag.” I know it and he knows it. Then I can ask the patient to really study that gag: where does the gagging really start -in the abdomen, in the thorax, in the pharynx?; where do you get that feeling first? You ask the patient to focus on his gagging…. Ogden Nash wrote a very nice poem about the centipede. The centipede was walking along perfectly happily one day, with all of his legs going in proper order, until along came so-and-so who asked the centipede which leg came after which. Now that poor centipede lies in a ditch wondering which comes after which.” (Erickson, 1992, p118)

High Motivation: If the client rates themselves at 8-10 (called a “Customer” in Solution Focused Therapy), then they are ready for somewhat more challenging tasks. In setting such tasks, I tell them that my proposal may seem strange or even contrary to reason, but we are not aiming for reason; we are aiming for change. Erickson’s task for the young man afraid of going into orbit clearly assumes this level of commitment. An example of a more challenging task as used by Krishnamurti is this response to a young man’s despair and guilt following his father’s death (Krishnamurti, 1972, p303). The man asked how he should live his daily life, so as to get beyond this grief. Krishnamurti replied, with an interesting paradox, considering that the man’s obsession is with death: “As though one were living for that single day, for that single hour….If you had only one hour to live, what would you do?… Would you not arrange what is necessary outwardly, your affairs, your will and so on? Would you not call your family and friends together and ask their forgiveness for the harm that you might have done to them, and forgive them for whatever harm they might have done to you? Would you not die completely to the things of the mind, to desires and to the world? And if it can be done for an hour, then it can also be done for the days and years that may remain…. Try it and you will find out.”

As you describe the task, watch your client for signs of congruency; signs such as leaning forward, culturally appropriate eye contact, and often a physiological shift as the task already begins. Avoiding of eye contact and folded arms are correlated with lower willingness to act.

What Makes A Task Heroic?

Not every task is heroic; not every search is a true Quest. To put it another way, my use of the word “Quest” does more than simply provide an unusual synonym for “task”. To be heroic, in the mythological sense, a hero’s attitude to the task needs to meet four criteria; criteria set in my preframing above.

1. Openness To The New: The task is designed to take the client to new territory. Erickson himself was always exploring new realms. In the latter years of his life he found himself still discovering new states of awareness, as he described to Ernest Rossi (Erickson, 1992, p56): “I was in the backyard a year ago in the summertime. I was wondering what far out experiences I’d like to have. As I puzzled over that, I noticed that I was sitting out in the middle of nowhere. I was an object in space…. And what greater joy is there than doing what you want to do? Inside the stars, the planets, the beaches. I couldn’t feel the weight. No matter how much I pushed down my feet I couldn’t feel anything.” Openness to the new was a central concept in Krishnamurti’s teaching and life. He says (Krishnamurti, 1972, p256) “Only that which has an ending can be aware of the new, of love, or the supreme. What has continuance, “Permanence” is a memory of the things that have been. The mind must die to the past, though the mind is put together by the past. The totality of the mind must be completely still, without any pressure, influence or movement from the past. Only then is the other possible.”

2. Determination to succeed: The heroes of mythology are willing to face vast challenges and to endure what would to others be great difficulty, to be true to their Quest. Erickson himself was willing to endure much to live his life mission. As a boy, he overheard the doctor telling his parents that he would not live to see another day. He stayed awake all night to prove the doctor wrong (Walters & Havens, in Zeig, 1994, p176). This ability to “throw oneself into a task” was something Erickson expected of his clients as well. Krishnamurti was subject to an extraordinary physical pain in his head and spine. It visited him repeatedly through his life, and all who knew him record the apparent agony it induced. But he himself said of it (Jayakar, 1986, p132) “This pain makes my body like steel -but , oh, so flexible, so pliant, without a thought. It is like a polishing, an examination.”

3. Optimism in the face of this challenge: The mythological hero believes that they can succeed, despite what others would take as evidence to the contrary. This optimism is not rational (it is not based on “objective facts”). It is, however, enormously functional. It involves reframing any setbacks as temporary, and as containing useful learnings to help one reach one’s goal. It involves reframing any successes, however small, as evidence that success can come eventually. In spiritual terms, this optimism is the dawning realisation that as you are the world, ultimately no harm can come to you. Erickson, who had been paralysed by polio as a teenager and then again in middle age, said of his own life “You see, I had a terrific advantage over others. I had polio, and I was totally paralysed….” (Walters & Havens, in Zeig, 1994, p168).

4. Altruism: A sense of living for others as well as for self infuses all the ancient heroes. In a way, they Quest on behalf of all humanity, knowing that where they go, others will be able to follow more safely. Erickson both modelled and inspired such altruism. Often his tasks involved directly doing something for others. For example, in one case, a construction worker was paralysed below the arms, and in great pain. Erickson had him collect cartoons, comic books and funny sayings, and put them in scrap books. Then he told him, “Each time one of your fellow workmen lands in the hospital, send him a scrap book.” (Walters & Havens, in Zeig, 1994, p174). Similarly, Krishnamurti constantly challenged his students to find new ways to express compassion in the world. One day on a walk with Pupul Jayakar, after they had passed some poor hill tribespeople from an Indian village, he asked her how she “met” people. She was puzzled as to his meaning, and explained that she understood the social tragedy of the tribespeople’s condition. He explained that sensitivity involved more than just thinking rationally about poverty, and concluded with the seemingly irrational instruction “Go and make friends with the trees.” (Jayakar, 1986, p126).

What type of action does the word “heroic” conjure up for you? Open to discovery, determined, optimistic and altruistic sum up for me the very meaning of heroic. Catherine Walters and Ronald Havens (Walters & Havens, in Zeig, 1994, p163-181) suggest that these qualities describe Erickson and the essence of what he taught others. They also note that these are the same qualities which are associated with mental health and long life, in modern research. Being on a Quest is good for you in many different ways.

Walters and Havens say “Erickson was an optimist when pessimism was the psychological vogue. He prescribed action for clients when the most popular psychotherapies concerned themselves with self-analysis. And Erickson recognised the healing powers of social connection when theories of existential alienation were capturing the post-war imagination…. Finally, Erickson was aware that challenge, change, and self-efficacy, the ingredients of psychological hardiness, also contribute to well-being and happiness…. Metaphorical anecdotes, so-called paradoxical prescriptions, and “ordeals” no longer look like mystical koans or clever manipulations of symptoms from the wellness perspective. Rather they appear to be straightforward requests for normal, healthy behaviours.” Such is the nature of a Quest.

Four Categories of Quest

To simplify, I think of four types of Quest (here listed with the Greek letters a b g d ). I will illustrate each type using familiar Ericksonian tasks, and tasks set by Krishnamurti.

a. Quests which prescribe practise of a skill, subskill, metaprogram, or of a change process itself.

These are the most obvious form of Quest. Such tasks are useful when your client is motivated to change, but has no practical experience using the strategies needed to achieve their goal or to live the way they intend. You may set tasks which build on the skills a client has already and extend them in a small specific area. You may break the main change desired into small manageable chunks (with or without giving the client/student the big picture at the start) and set each chunk as a task. You may identify mental sortings (metaprograms, to use the NLP term) which are essential to change, and set tasks which require those sorts. You may rehearse the person through a therapeutic or learning process in the session and have them repeat it at home (what used to be called homework, in schools).

In education, this process is understood very well. If someone has a difficulty, you get them to practise the sub-skills which will help them resolve that difficulty and achieve their goal. In therapy, surprisingly, this has not seemed so obvious, but it is just as true. Tad James tells the story of a woman who came to see him because of difficulty planning her life. He told her he would help her as soon as she could beat him at a game of chess. What do you have to do in order to play chess? Anticipate several steps ahead and plan!

One of the most obvious metaprogram (personality trait) differences between our more distressed clients and those people who are really enjoying their life is whether they sort their experiences looking for problems or for solutions. Steve de Shazer (1985) and the Solution Focused Therapy school have made an art form of developing tasks which require clients to rehearse themselves through the process of sorting for success. They have them do this even before the first interview, by asking the client on the phone to “Notice anything, however small, which improves between now and your first session with us.”

Another important set of skills for clients to acquire are the skills which enable them to run their own neurology, to do the NLP change processes. These skills include being able to chunk up and chunk down, to associate and dissociate. Setting tasks to acquire these skills is discussed in my article on Personal Strengths in Anchor Point Magazine ( )

Krishnamurti advocates a Quest involving attentive observation of one’s thoughts. In teaching this to students, he recommends the following simplified exercise for learning to observe (in NLP terms, this installs the strategy of following the internal dialogue): “If you want to play this game very carefully, you write down every thought you have on a piece of paper and you will soon find out how thought can be orderly because you are finishing every thought one after another. And when you sit quietly the next day you are really quiet. No thought pops up because you have finished with it; which means you have polished your shoes, you have cleaned your bath tub, you have put the towel in its right place at the right moment. You don’t say when you sit down, “I didn’t put the towel back.” So the thing that you are doing is finished each time, and when you sit quietly you are marvellously quiet, you bring an extraordinary sense of orderliness into your life.” (Krishnamurti, 1975, p102).

Erickson tells the story of his work with an alcoholic street person named Harold, who came to his first interview suffering from suicidal thoughts and anxiety. Harold announced that he was a “Dumb moron” and could expect to achieve very little in therapy. Erickson agreed with him that they should not attempt too much. However he pointed out that even a tractor needs regular cleaning…. Harold came back the next week having had a bath. Erickson agreed that the best they could hope for was to get Harold a labouring job, and he pointed out that labourers need physical balance. He assessed Harold’s physical balance and found it inadequate. So dance classes were prescribed to rectify this. Shorthand and typing were skills that Erickson suggested might help with the fine motor coordination Harold was lacking, and needed for his labouring work. Bit by bit, Harold acquired all the basic skills Erickson suggested he needed to reach his own limited goals. But by then Harold had begun to suspect that he was in fact not so much of a moron, He graduated from college, began dating women, and got himself a more responsible job than he had ever imagined.

b. Quests which prescribe a solution for the underlying problem.

These tasks can be given to clients in situations when their is an ecology issue preventing the giving of the first type of task. The client wants to learn new skills consciously, but has some unconscious reason for preserving the behaviour used previously. Solving this underlying reason will free the client up to be able to practise the desired strategies. To identify tasks of this second type, ask yourself and the client “What is the intention behind the behaviour that is a problem?” and identify a more useful behaviour which would meet that intention even better than the problem behaviour used to. Set this new behaviour as a task, and leave the old problem behaviour to disappear.

In education, such traditional responses as giving an attention seeking school student a monitor job fit in this category. As a trainer I often require students to “check in” with another student and tell them how things have been, before we start the session. This meets that need to share experiences and build friendships, which might otherwise result in more challenging behaviour once the session has started. Other tasks to set students for similar reasons could include having them write “affirmations” to each other. When students feel respected and valued, they have less need to prove their value in ways that could disrupt the group learning process.

Much of what Solution Focused Therapy does fits into this category too, because when people find a successful solution, they no longer need the problem that brought them to therapy. For example, a task often set by Solution Focused Therapist Steve de Shazer (1985) is to require the client to “Pay attention to what you do when you overcome the urge to ….[do the problem]”

Krishnamurti had an interesting model of how people maintain negative internal states. He held that painful states persist because the person has built a neurological barrier around the states, preventing them from “flowering” in a natural way, and dying like any flower, so that the next state emerges. Rather than try to solve the immediate problem a person raised with him, Krishnamurti would invite them to deal with this underlying dynamic. For example, questioned about how a teacher could deal with frustration in a student, he replied (Jayakar, 1986, p251) “How do you question so that frustration unfolds, so that frustration flowers? It is only when thought flowers that it can naturally die. Like the flower in a garden, thought must blossom, it must come to fruition and then it dies.” His own student, Pupul Jayakar, describes Krishnamurti’s technique for this. It is reminiscent of several NLP patterns, such as Tad James’ “Drop Through” technique (note that Jayakar uses the word “thought” where we would use “State”: (Blau, 1995, p136) “He would lead you from thought to thought, till there was an ending of thought. He would do this, for example, with the thought of greed. He would do this with a rising of fear. He would keep on saying, “And then what arises? And then what arises?” so that you started observing, “what is”, as it arose. You also observed, “what should be” as it arose in thought. So that one was awake in that instant of “what is”.” This process would then be given as a Quest by Krishnamurti.

Milton Erickson also focused much of his attention on the underlying issues, rather than on the “problem” identified by the person. A twenty one year old woman once came to visit Erickson complaining that she was suicidal. She had never had a boyfriend, and had all sorts of imagined personal defects. A young man showed up at the drinking fountain at work whenever she did, but she couldn’t believe that he liked her. Erickson suggested first that, as she was considering suicide, she should take all her money out of the bank and have one last fling, getting new clothes, having her hair done etc (Haley, 1986, p71). Note the similarity to Krishnamurti’s suggestion to “let a problem flower”, above. This fling, of course, dealt with some of the woman’s problem (her unkempt appearance) without her having to try to achieve anything. But it also let her nurture herself, thus approaching the underlying issue. Finally, Erickson had her practise squirting water through the gap in her front teeth (one of her “worst” defects), thus turning the problem into a skill (see the fourth type of task, below). She was then instructed to go back to work and squirt water through her teeth at the young man, then run away. The man ran after her and kissed her, and two days later they had their first date.

The story of the African Violet Queen is another example (Gordon & Anderson, 1981, p18). In this case, Erickson visited an elderly woman with severe depression. She stayed at home in a large dreary empty house, going to church each week but communicating with no-one. In one room of her house she kept a few flowers -African Violets. This was the only room that didn’t have the curtains drawn when Erickson visited her there. His solution was to get her to buy a couple of hundred potting plants and grow more of the flowers. She was then to note all the births, deaths, weddings etc in her church notices, and send an African Violet to the family concerned. This simple Quest did far more than resolve the depression. When this woman died twenty years later, she had hundreds of friends at her funeral, and was known as the “African Violet Queen of Milwaukee”.

g. Quests which prescribe a metaphor or a puzzling but potentially symbolic action.

Metaphorical Quests are particularly useful for clients who have some motivation, but who would resist a direct request to learn new strategies. The therapist need not have any notion of the underlying reason for this resilience. Almost any Quest can be given as a metaphor. You may tell the person the symbolic meaning of the Quest, or (even better) you may ask them to generate their own meaning (known in mythology as setting a riddle). In the latter case, you tell them to let you know next session what meaning they have discovered. You can then agree that they are right about the meaning of the task (after all, it’s their metaphor!)… but there’s another meaning also hidden in the task. Perhaps they will have found that second meaning by next week….

This process causes the client to search inside for the meaning (a process called in NLP “transderivational search”). As you listen to the results of this search, you can learn more about how they have utilised the metaphorical potential of the task. This process can be diagnostic (it may help you understand their problem more) and therapeutic (it may help the client find new solutions).

Erickson once had a visit from an alcoholic who said that his parents, grandparents, wife and inlaws were all alcoholic. Erickson sent him to the Botanic Gardens, to visit the Cacti house and think carefully about how cacti could survive three years without water. The man’s daughter came to visit Erickson years later and said both her parents gave up alcohol after that one visit.(Rosen, 1982, p81). Having a client carry round a photo of the person who set a rule they have been reluctantly following, or having a person who needs to grieve go to the airport and wave goodbye to five planes also use this principle.

However, often Erickson would prescribe a task which he seemed not to know the meaning of himself, and then wait to find out what meaning the client discovered in that. One time, Erickson was working with a client who had been diagnosed psychotic. No-one at the hospital where he stayed could get him to say more than “Hello” and “Goodbye”. Erickson went up to him and took off both their jackets and put them on inside out. He then got a full verbal history of the man’s situation from the man.(Rosen, 1982, p199). In a similar vein, Jeffrey Zeig suggests giving a stone to a client to carry round for a week. The client is then asked why the therapist gave the stone to them. After their initial comments, the therapist says “Yes, that’s right; and there is another meaning too. Think on it over the next week and tell me then.”

Krishnamurti suggests a similar metaphorical task in the following instructions; but with the more directed intent of discovering the absurdity of religion (Krishnamurti, 1973, p214) “I do not know if you have experimented with yourself. Take a piece of stick, put it on the mantelpiece and every day put a flower in front of it -give it a flower- put in front of it a flower and repeat some words -”Coca-cola”, “Amen”, “Om”, it doesn’t matter what word -any word you like- listen, don’t laugh it off -do it and you will find out. If you do it, after a month you will see how holy it has become.”

Many of the tasks that traditional heroes perform are metaphorical in this sense. Psyche being sent into the underworld to secure the magic source of beauty is one such task.

d. Quests which prescribe the symptom or problem strategy, often with a small change.

The nice thing about this fourth group of tasks is that they can be given to clients with fairly low levels of motivation, because they do not ask the client to change in any obvious or dramatic way. These tasks can also be given in situations where the client’s previous attempts to find a solution have become part of their strategy for doing the problem, or have apparently worsened the problem (eg a binge eater whose dieting enhances their craving).These tasks merely invite the person to continue doing what they always did… with a tiny variation. Any energy that was going into “resisting” change is thus converted into energy supporting the Quest. Simply requiring the person to repeat their problem on demand changes the problem (puts it under conscious control). You may require the person to alter the behaviour in some small way, for example:

1) by over-doing it. Erickson once worked with a very aggressive eight year old boy, who came into his office and stamped his foot on the floor, announcing that he would stomp on anyone who got in his way (Haley, 1986, p219). Erickson first told him he probably could not stomp the floor hard enough to do any harm. When the boy threatened to stomp a hole in the floor, Erickson told him he couldn’t stomp even 1000 times; not even half that. Furthermore, he told him that his stomping would get weaker, and he would find it hard to even stand up while he did it. Erickson then sent the mother out of the room. After 30 stamps, the boy realised he had overestimated his energy, and Erickson offered him the alternative of patting the floor 1000 times. He rejected this and announced he would stand still. After an hour of standing while Erickson wrote case notes, the boy began to get exhausted. When his mother returned to pick him up, Erickson told the boy to do exactly as he told him. He first said “Joe, show your mother how hard you can still stomp the floor”. Joe did so impressively. Erickson then told him not to tell his mother what had happened in the floor stomping contest as it was enough that they both knew. At that the interview ended and the problem behaviours never recurred.. In a similar approach to over-doing the problem, an overevaluative student may be told to write evaluations of the teacher on a specified form, and hand them in each day. A shy person may be told to go to a dance and not say a single word.

2) by specifying a time and place for it. An overanxious student may be required to worry about their grades for 15 minutes at 5pm each day (no more and no less). Someone anxious about meeting people may be told to meet five people in the next week and make a mistake in the first sentence they say, each time.

3) by requiring them not to do the desired behaviour but only the “problem” (which at times means it loses it’s “problem” status, because it was only a problem when they were trying to do something else). In sex therapy, a couple having orgasmic difficulties are often required to have sex for one hour each night and not attempt to orgasm. Erickson’s favourite cure for insomnia was to have the person stay up all night doing jobs around the house that they had been meaning to do but hadn’t gotten round to. Asked how to end sorrow, Krishnamurti points out (1972, p302-3) “Are you experiencing sorrow as strongly and urgently as you would a toothache? When you have a toothache, you act; you go to the dentist. But when there is sorrow you run away from it through explanation, belief, drink, and so on. You act, but your action is not the action that frees the mind from sorrow, is it?…. But if you wish to be free from sorrow, you must stop running away and be aware of it without judgement, without choice; you must observe it, learn about it, know all the intimate intricacies of it.”

4) by adding some humorous or otherwise emotionally incongruent element to it. One time (Haley, 1973, p178) Erickson dealt with a couple where the husband was running the house by threatening that he’d have a heart attack if he didn’t get his way. Erickson had the wife get a collection of advertisements from funeral services and place them around the house whenever he complained thus. She also would add up their insurance policies and discuss the best way to use them. Quickly the husband shifted to dealing with the issues that really concerned him in the marriage, which were then able to be sorted out.

Prescribing ritualistically sequenced argument procedures for couples can be an example of this type of task. Another is having students list 10 reasons why they could never learn some new material (that they’ve been claiming is too hard) before doing it.

5) by specifying the problem behaviour in such a way that it causes the solution to occur as well (a double bind).Fritz Perls was famous for dealing with clients who claimed they could not say “no” to someone, using this type of task. He’d tell them that they had to say “No” to him immediately. Telling a student to make sure they don’t think about an assignment they have been avoiding, and be careful not to think of it for the next 24 hours, is another example.

Krishnamurti often pointed out that if someone really didn’t know what to do, they would do nothing, and thus their fundamental problem would be solved. It’s only the attempt to do something (based on the belief that they do know) that stops the person reaching their goal. He says (Krishnamurti, 1972b, p86) “If you know how to love, then you can do what you like because it will solve all other problems. So we reach the point: can the mind come upon love without discipline, without thought, without enforcement, without any book, any teacher or leader -come upon it as one comes upon a lovely sunset?… But you don’t know how to come to this extraordinary fount -so what do you do? If you don’t know what to do, you do nothing, don’t you? Absolutely nothing. Then inwardly you are completely silent. Do you understand what that means? It means you are not seeking, not wanting, not pursuing; there is no centre at all. Then there is love.”

Verifying The Success Of The Quest To The Conscious Mind; And Exiting

Solution Focused Therapy offers a sorting process for handling the results of Questing. When your client returns, find out how they are handling their Quest. If they are doing the task directly as described, continue in the same course. If they have altered the task, give them a new task with options for changes built into it. If they have done the opposite of the task set, give them a new task which involves a double bind (see above). If they simply don’t do anything, and they don’t change, then tasking may not be appropriate (in fact the whole process of therapy may not be appropriate; check your contract with them).

Often you will need to ask the client several times what has changed in a positive way. As with most unconscious change processes, the client’s conscious mind may take time to catch up with what has happened. Notice that the most important criterion for success is not that the task got done as set; it is that the client got the changes they sought. The client may have avoided the task altogether, and yet totally transformed their life.

As usual with any change, it’s appropriate to check how the changes will fit with the person’s future journey (futurepacing, in NLP terms).

A New Model For Facilitating Change

Questing is a model of change taken from humanity’s one great myth; the myth of the hero who leaves their everyday life to succeed against amazing odds, and bring back something extra-ordinary. Spiritual teachers throughout time have set such Quests for their students. The tasks set by Milton Erickson and other excellent therapists tend to set clients on a similar Quest, putting them in charge of their own transformation, and prescribing the very skills they need to develop in order to live the life they want. When setting a Quest, you first establish a relationship of cooperation with the client. Requiring commitment from the client is giving the first lesson in determination. You build rapport with the client and validate their own situation. The heroic task will also teach openness to the new, optimism in the face of challenges, and altruism. Tasks can involve practising skills that lead directly to the person’s goal; creating a solution for the client’s underlying issue; practising some metaphorical activity; or actually intentionally “doing the problem” with some subtle changes that cause the person to take charge of their actions.

What makes Questing more than just giving a client tasks is the notion expressed by Stephen Gilligan that “The client is up to something big” (Gilligan in Zeig ed, 1994, p 92-97). Gilligan suggests that Erickson’s attitude to his clients was always that they were “up to something big”. He never believed that they were just a “no-good bum” or a “raving psychotic” or whatever. Gilligan suggests that in working with clients we are engaged in stories of enormous importance, with heroes who are kings, queens, lovers, warriors and magicians. He says that the successful therapist communicates three things:

“1. You’re up to something big! (Compliment)
2. You can do it even “more and better”. (expand)
3. As you continue to do it, many possible learnings will develop.(Suggest possibilities/open imagination).”

This is the attitude that Questing is designed to convey. Let me tell you one last, true story demonstrating this attitude.

Hundreds of years ago the Mongol hordes swept across Asia, setting up kingdoms in their wake. In India, the Mongols were known as Moguls, and for some centuries their empires held most of north India in sway. At this time there were, as now, many holy teachers or sages in India, to whom local people came for blessing. One day a young man came to a teacher out in the desert, and asked for a blessing on his daily work. “Who are you, and what do you work at?” asked the teacher. “My name is Shivaji, and I am a thief. I rob travellers of their possessions.”, he replied brazenly. The teacher’s disciples were shocked, but the holy man blessed Shivaji and wished him well.

The next week, Shivaji came back to the teacher, well pleased. “This has been my best week ever!”, he announced. But the teacher was unimpressed. “I would like to bless you more.” he replied. “I suggest that you find another one or two thieves and link up with them. Then, your fortunes will be even greater.” The next week, Shivaji returned to confirm that he was the most successful highway robber in the area. But the holy man was unimpressed. “What could you do if you had twenty such men!” he challenged. And so Shivaji expanded his operation further.

When he came back to thank the teacher for this next blessing, the teacher merely said, “Well, it seems to me that you have not done much yet. If you had a couple of hundred men, now, you could easily throw the local Mogul out of his city and you would be king.” And so it was. The whole area was thus freed of the Mogul oppression. And when the disciples asked the teacher why he had helped such an evil man, he explained … “I have never helped a thief. I only helped a king. But you see, I saw that he was a king the very first time we met.”

That is Questing.

Bibliography

• Blau, E. Krishnamurti: 100 Years, Stewart, Tabori & Chang, New York, 1995
• Campbell, J. The Hero With A Thousand Faces, Princeton University, Princeton, 1968.
• Erickson, M.H. Healing In Hypnosis, Irvington, New York, 1992
• de Shazer, S. Keys to Solution In Brief Therapy, Norton, New York, 1985
• Gordon, D. and Meyers-Anderson, M. Phoenix, Meta Publications, Capitola California, 1981
• Haley, J. Ordeal Therapy, Jossey-Bass, San Fransisco, 1984
• Haley, J. Uncommon Therapy, W.W.Norton & Co, New York, 1986
• Jayakar, P. J. Krishnamurti, A Biography, Arkana, London, 1986
• Krishnamurti, J. Commentaries on Living, Gollancz, London, 1969
• Krishnamurti, J. Commentaries on Living: Third Series, Gollancz, London, 1972
• Krishnamurti, J. Freedom From The Known, Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1972b
• Krishnamurti, J. The Awakening Of Intelligence, Victor Gollancz Ltd, London, 1973
• Krishnamurti, J. Beginnings of Learning, Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1975
• Lankton, S. and Lankton, C. The Answer Within, Brunner/Mazel, New York, 1983
• Lively, P. and Kerven, R. The Mythical Quest, The British Library, London, 1996.
• Pearson, C. Awakening The Heroes Within, Harper Collins, New York, 1991.
• Rosen, S. My Voice Will Go With You, W.W. Norton & Co, New York, 1982
• Wilber, K. A Brief History of Everything, Shambhalla, Boston, 1996
• Zeig, J. ed. Ericksonian Methods: The Essence Of The Story, Brunner/Mazel, New York, 1994

Richard Bolstad

*The traditional Quest was not intended to be a “Spiritual” transformation, although it undoubtably sets the scene for that. Like Ken Wilber (1996, p215), I believe that the heroic journey of ancient times usually spoke about something fundamental to all human experience. Spiritual awakening, on the other hand, speaks about something rare, something as yet new and infrequent in humankind, something which transcends the individual self, however heroic. Wilber sums up the difference, saying “Collective typical is not transpersonal.” And yet, more and more, the Quests we as humans undertake will be transpersonal Quests. Because, as Wilber says, those sages who have truly Spiritual experience of the oneness of all “disclose the face of tomorrow, they open us to the heart of our own destiny, which is also already right now in the timelessness of this very moment, and in that startling recognition the voice of the sage becomes your voice, the eyes of the sage become your eyes, you speak with the tongues of angels and are alight with the fire of a realisation that never dawns nor ceases, you recognise your own true Face in the mirror of the Kosmos itself: your identity is indeed the All, and you are no longer part of that stream, you are that stream, with the All unfolding not around you but in you.” (1996, p43).