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Where ‘religious’ psyche-technes such as devotional or meditation practices are intended to cultivate ‘emptiness’, ‘secular’ disciplines such as psychoanalysis aim for ‘the absence of neurosis’, “which is essentially an interfering with the unfolding of life and the desires of the deep soul,” notes Thomas Moore, “…nothing more than anxious attempts to prevent life from happening.” From both religious and secular perspectives then, the complementary intent is to recognize our defensiveness and address ‘repression of the life force’ in ways adequate to the task of birthing a higher sanity.