what is philosophy counseling?
Let's start out by defining philosophy, and see where that takes us...
Philosophy is defined in a few different ways. In it's most original meaning, it is simply the love of knowledge and learning. It also commonly means a way of thinking, or a set of perspectives about how the world works. Philosophy is also considered the arena where the thinking, cognitive, conscious, analytic, and reflective mind roams. Psychology, on the other hand, is generally the realm of the feeling, emotional, sensual, intuitive, subconscious mind. We all have both the emotional and the intellectual minds in our selves, and both elements need to be working well for us to be whole and healthy.
Philosophers have traditionally focused on either Western or Eastern ways of thinking about the world. Historically, the West has focused on external knowledge and understanding, using the hard sciences and our eyes, ears, mouths, noses, and touch to look at the world and come up with theories. And the East has focused on the soft sciences and carefully observing our internal experiences to understand the world better. However, more recently many philosophers have begun to integrate both of these ways of observing the world - from the inside out and from the outside in. Combining these two broad perspectives gives us a better view of the world, and allows us to have a more complete understanding of how we ourselves works, and how the rest of the universe works - just like looking at the planet Earth from space, in addition to seeing it from the ground, gives us a better insight into our round, blue world.
Counseling is sharing advice, knowledge, and wisdom about something. We seek counsel from others whom we believe will see our questions in a different light and notice things that we may have missed when we looked for answers by ourselves. Counsel can come from elders, who have been through many trials and tribulations in life and can offer wisdom about what has worked well in the past. Counsel can also come from youth, who have more open and experimental minds and can offer creative ideas for new approaches that may work better than the usual old bag of tricks. Counsel can come from intimate friends who know you like the back of their hand, and it can come from complete strangers who simply see you as a person with a question...
So, philosophy counseling is sharing advice, knowledge, and wisdom about how you can help your intellectual mind be healthy and continue developing smoothly. Having a healthy conscious mind will also help your subconscious, emotional mind work better, though philosophy counseling may not be able to cure your emotional ills, if they are very serious. However, exploring philosophical counseling in addition to psychological counseling may be especially effective at bringing your life into a happy balance. And if you feel reasonably healthy emotionally, then philosophy counseling can really bring your intellect up to peak performance - like an mental gymnast who can do an intellectual triple back flip and still stick the landing solidly with both feet.
The Wise Turtle's Philosophy Counseling brings many different perspectives to your questions - from East, West, inside, outside, top and bottom, left and right, and everywhere else - so that your future endeavors can be more productive, enjoyable, rewarding, fun, and truly meaningful.
Now that you have an idea of what The Wise Turtle can offer you, are you ready to ask a question? Or maybe you'd like do so some exploring right now?
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