Wisdom in Paradox

      Can I, at the same time, embrace "contrasting themes; that of my deepest heart, which feels the intimacy of all things, and the walls the mind constructs, which separates all things"? (Thanissara) In other words, can I embody the nondualistic, unconditioned, spacious, timeless, empty, transpersonal ground of my being WHILE accepting, honoring & holding the dualistic, conditioned, limited, finite, material, personal aspect of my humanity?
     It's terribly common, easy, even comforting, to allow oneself to be magnetically drawn under by destructive emotions into the recurring nightmare of depressive wallowing or anxiety-ridden catastrophizing. This blows the importance of the personal self out of all proportion, thus failing to provide the essential balance that can only come from embodying our transpersonal nature.

     "... all mystics – Catholic, Christian, non-Christian, no matter what their theology, no matter what their religion – are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well. Strange paradox, to be sure. But, tragically, most people never get to see that all is well because they are asleep. They are having a nightmare."
       Anthony de Mello. “Awareness. The Perils and Opportunities of Reality.” Doubleday, 1992.

     "In our world things are always getting broken and mended and broken again, and there is also something that never breaks. Everything rises and falls, and yet in exactly the same moment things are eternal and go nowhere at all. How do we see with a kind of binocular vision, one eye aware of how things are coming and going all the time, the other aware of how they’ve never moved at all? How do we experience this not as two separate ways of seeing, but as one seamless field of vision?" 
       Joan Sutherland. “Koans for Troubled Times.” Lion’s Roar, April 6, 2018

     “The exploration of the highest reaches of human nature and of its ultimate possibilities and aspirations … has involved for me the continuous destruction of cherished axioms, the perpetual coping with seeming paradoxes, contradictions and vagueness, and the occasional collapse around my ears of long established, firmly believe in, and seemingly unassailable laws of psychology.” Abraham Maslow

 

Role of Transpersonal Approaches

     "All transpersonal approaches are concerned with accessing and integrating developmental stages beyond the adult ego and with fostering higher human development. Because of this concern, most transpersonal theories deal extensively with matters relating to human values and spiritual experience. 

     This focus sometimes leads people to confuse the interests of transpersonal psychiatry with the concerns of religion. Transpersonal psychiatry does not promote any particular belief system, but rather acknowledges that spiritual experiences & transcendent states characterized by altruism, creativity, & profound feelings of connectedness are universal human experiences widely reported across cultures, and therefore worthy of rigorous, scientific study. 

     Inattention to these experiences and the roles they play in both psychopathology and healing constitutes a common limitation in conventional psychotherapeutic practice and research."

       Kasprow MC, Scotton BW. " A Review of Transpersonal Theory and Its Application to the Practice of Psychotherapy." The Journal of Psychotherapy Practice and Research 1999; 8:12–23.

 

     See "Critical Spirituality": http://www.johnlovas.com/2012/10/critical-spirituality-holistic-approach.html

 

 

Are There Two Levels of Being? Is This Necessary?

     Are there two very different types of people in this world - living two different levels of existence?

     Does one group assume, and thus live out a self-fulfilling prophecy, that they lack agency over their own psychosocialspiritual development? I suspect the vast majority of people are in this group. What impact does this absolutely fundamental self-concept / worldview have on one's ethics, proneness to: depression / anxiety, addictions & suicide, and overall quality of life? There are probably valid measures of spirituality to "diagnose" this powerful, pervasive form of hopelessness.

     The fact is that the normal trajectory of human psychosocialspiritual development goes far beyond what most of us know or even suspect. What impact would it have if this were common knowledge? What impact would it have if there were skilled facilitators - eg transpersonal psychologists - to help people pass through the glass ceiling of "ordinary unhappiness"?

     See: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.ca/search?q=developmental

Steve McCurry   http://stevemccurry.com/

Transpersonal - Peak - Experiences

     "Humanistic psychologists wanted to study human experience and what was most central to life and well-being, rather than what was easily measured in the laboratory. One discovery in particular was to have an enormous impact and eventually give birth to transpersonal psychology. Exceptionally psychologically healthy people tend to have 'peak experiences': brief but extremely intense, blissful, meaningful, & beneficial experiences of expanded identity & union with the universe. Similar experiences have been recognized across history and have been called mystical, spiritual, and unitive experiences, or in the East, samadhi and satori.

     Transpersonal experiences may be defined as experiences in which the sense of identity or self extends beyond (trans) the individual or personal to encompass wider aspects of humankind, life, psyche, and cosmos."

       Walsh R, Vaughan F eds. Paths beyond ego. The transpersonal vision. Penguin Putnam Inc, NY, 1993.

 

lim yau tong   www.dpreview.com

Life is Infinitely More than what can be known through Science

"Are the mystics and sages insane? Because they all tell variations on the same story, don't they? The story of awakening one morning and discovering you are one with the All, in a timeless and eternal and infinite fashion. Yes, maybe they are crazy, these divine fools. Maybe they are mumbling idiots in the face of the Abyss. Maybe they need a nice, understanding therapist. Yes, I'm sure that would help. But then, I wonder. Maybe the evolutionary sequence really is from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, each transcending and including, each with a greater depth and greater consciousness and wider embrace. And in the highest reaches of evolution, maybe, just maybe, an individual's consciousness does indeed touch infinity—a total embrace of the entire Kosmos—a Kosmic consciousness that is Spirit awakened to its own true nature. It's at least plausible. And tell me: is that story, sung by mystics and sages the world over, any crazier than the scientific materialism story, which is that the entire sequence is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing? Listen very carefully: just which of those two stories actually sounds totally insane?" — Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything, 42–3   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Wilber

Dale Chihuly http://www.chihulygardenandglass.com/