Spiritual Emergence at CIIS |
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Spiritual Emergence and Other Extraordinary Experiences at CIIS |
Our sangha Exploring the untrodden realms Inner voices communing Secrets untold reveal All Inextricably interwoven Double helix mating snake dance Kundalini awakening Riding the waves of successive lifetimes With gentle intensity Divine Mother You approach my edges One more drop & threshold is reached Unwavering faith In signs, symptoms, & synchronicities Subsumed in paradox Clear like day & promises fulfilled
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As the new semester is upon us, I am reflecting on the amazing summer inspiration for spiritual emergence sanctuaries, respite structures, and alternatives to hospitalization that I got to explore on my trip. First, I visited with Dr. Brack Jeffreys, Ph.D. Executive Director of The Center for Spiritual Emergence in Asheville, NC. From the moment I opened the door, I felt the grounded and welcoming energy of the space. Brack's kind smile and openness made me feel so at home. He shared with me the vision and how it came to be, and the importance of attending to and holding the SE process. One of the categories of Spiritual Emergence may manifest as addiction, and there are resources for working with that as well, although it is not a prerequisite for attending the Center. I was also impressed by his description of the flexibility of time structures, so that if a client needs more than the 50-minute hour, even multiple hours or longer, the Center can offer such a uniquely-tailored program. The focus on sustainability, resourcing, and honoring the process was deeply moving and corrective for me. I was touched by his presence and kindness, and without my planning to, in such a healing environment, I found myself sharing some of my own story. He was open, generous, and happy to connect. I am so grateful to know such a Center exists. For more information, see their website: http://www.centerforspiritualemergence.com I was also able to attend the R.D. Laing conference at Esalen, where the theme was "What is Therapeutic?" Michael, Nita, and Matthew shared their proposal for Gnosis House, a Langian-inspired retreat center for people in extreme states here in the Bay Area. Chuck Knapp presented on Windhorse http://windhorsecommunityservices.com, and Nick Putman on Open Dialogue in the UK. There were other amazing offerings on everything from Zen Koan Phenomenology meditation, Shamanic Breathwork, the Ethic of Care, Empathy and Sympathy, and Science & Spirituality with Fritjof Capra. We celebrated Michael Guy Thompson's book release of the new edition of The Death of Desire, and had powerful evening processing groups every night. I presented on “Holographic Healing, Wholeness Weaving: Self-Care for the Helping Professional”. For me, the sharing, connecting, and networking outside of the structured time was just as vital as the rest of the inspiring content. What an amazing time seeing what offerings and opportunities for alternatives to hospitalization are arising all over! May this wave of systemic evolution continue to provide options for those who need another type of care, another structure of treatment, or a different environment to be held in as their spiritual emergence process unfolds.
Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in. -Leonard Cohen I've been meaning to start blogging about my childhood sexual abuse for. awhile now, but somehow always I'm always finding something else to do. Spurred by my latest impulse, I was going to spend all available time finding the perfect image (there are some great ones of kintsugi) instead of actually writing. I could do that forever, but I'm just going to start writing instead, ringing one bell at least. I'm about nine months into recovery now, as my memories started coming in December of 2013. Feeling solidly past the crisis (more on that later), and occupied by a lot that is actually happening in present time, I told my support group this week that I noticed my mind wasn't on recovery and that I'm not actively in healing at the moment. Truth is, it is always happening, but there are waves, lulls, resting places, and rapids. I will write here not only about sexual abuse and trauma but about the intersect of trauma and madness, the connection between unimaginable wounding and alternative states of consciousness. The childhood experience that left me, in many ways, unable to function for much of my life has given me extraordinary gifts as well, which I am learning to use along the way. What happened to me at age seven was so horrific, and so impossible for my psyche to comprehend, that it packed it away like a dangerous treasure, hidden so deep I didn't know it was there for 32 years. Deep in my psychic subterrain, it created space for itself, like sand creating a pearl, or a foreign body creating an abscess, like water dripping into stone and creating an underground cathedral. As one of my first bodywork teachers said upon touching my abdomen and connecting with my center, "I know, you could go for miles." That space gives useful capacity for moving energy through bodies, and is effective in places where more tangible clinical techniques just won't do the job for my massage clients. I've used energy work as a tool for almost two decades, and I've always seen it as light, usually golden white, sometimes specific colors. Lately, for the last week or so, what I've started to see instead has been patterns of light against darkness, gold and jewel toned webs of flowers of life and other patterns moving between my hands and places of hurt. This has been interesting and useful in my work, and I didn't take it particularly personally. Once this week I laid on a hand to a tight neck muscle, and though I'm usually in control of what I do energetically, I could not stop what happened. Trying to send energy in, energy just poured out, that flower of life web morphing out of control, funneling endlessly into my hand. Unable to change it, I grounded it into the earth and waited for it to run itself out. As soon as it did and I was able to run some clear light back in, I disconnected. So there's been a lot moving this week under the surface, and last night it got personal. I've come to realize, through therapy and support group, that my tendency to think I'm under attack relates directly to my sexual abuse and that the minute I feel threatened or uncared for, I think it's a life or death situation and I escalate accordingly. My beloved (partner of thirteen years, partner in recovery who has played a huge role in my healing, and as my closest companion, most frequent trigger of said fears and most frequent recipient of said escalation) made a joke that felt, to me, disconnective and not gentle, and I, having learned some about stopping the cycle of escalation, opted to sleep on the couch. Along with all this energetic movement, my body has burned with what feels like low grade fever (my temperature is normal) all week. As I lay there on the cool leather, under the ceiling fan at high speed, the heat increased, and my closed eyes started to see, first the patterns I've been seeing, and then those took shape into a room, a recognizable space, which was spinning endlessly, terrifyingly. I saw the room where I was violently raped by my grandfather and two other people, and recognized pieces of the images that surfaced nine months ago, but the images kept morphing and distorting like in a fun house mirror. Terror, sheer terror. Spinning, fevered, heart pounding, nauseous. So afraid. I realized in group two weeks ago that I've never been able to feel, to experience the fear that must have been present for me at the time. It was so much, so extreme, that even recovering my memory, seeing the "movie" of what happened, I could not allow myself to feel the fear. I noticed this with detached surprise last week, and deduced that maybe that's why I always take things so personally, and think I'm being attacked, because I am putting the fear in relatively safe places to feel, or maybe just that it's leaking out because there's so much of it. I've noticed too that I am less fearful of people than I was a year ago, and less likely to perceive attack or take offense where none was given, and noticing how different (and better) I feel than that person I was a year ago. The fear is moving, and getting less overwhelming, and/ or I am getting more able to hold it. Last night was the first time ever that I have been able to feel it. It probably doesn't sound so good, but it's a huge fucking victory. Alleluia, sister, I say to myself. The fear will not win. See Michelle's full bio on the People Page, and visit her personal blog at: http://wherethelightgetsin.weebly.com The cyclic and contrasting nature of manic-depressive illness is perhaps its most defining clinical feature. Indeed a strong argument can be made that the periodicities of the natural world—as well as its great beholdenness to light, its chaos, perturbances, agitations, and violence, its fluctuations, shadows, edges, and upheavals—that all of these find their analogue in the periodicities and patterns intrinsic to the artistic and the manic-depressive temperaments....In fact there is an accumulation of evidence to suggest that those who have manic-depressive illness show an elevated responsiveness and sensitivity to changes in light.[1]
In Winter 2005, I read an article by the artist Jacks Ashley McNamara that touched the core of my identity as a filmmaker. In her story “Anatomy of Flight,” which chronicles her transformation from being a patient of the Western psychiatric establishment to a radical mental health activist, Jacks describes how “the world seemed to hit me so much harder and fill me so much fuller than anyone else I knew. Slanted sunlight could make me dizzy with its beauty and witnessing unkindness filled me with physical pain.” Similarly, my own experience of the world had always been one of visual osmosis; light clung to me like liquid to a dry sponge. As a child, I would frequently stare down the sun, holding my gaze until the sensation was unbearable. Whether holding my hand to hot irons, teetering on the precipice of great heights, or playing Russian roulette with my X-acto blades, I felt invited to reach for places that were clearly unsafe. Was there something wrong with me, or was I in need of models and mentorship that could help me make the transition from having my sensitivities overwhelm me, to having them give me information I could use? While Jacks’s journey and mine have been very different, my simultaneously inquisitive and self-destructive response to the phenomena of the world deeply resonated with Jacks’s notion of the “dangerous gift”, the idea that one’s darker inclinations and experiences might also allow us access to more transcendent possibilities. With the Greek myth of Icarus as her guiding metaphor, Jacks’s mission to “navigate the space between brilliance and madness,” suggests that one’s life could be more integrated and meaningful if managed with compassion and care rather than medicated into submission. This crucial idea helped me reconsider aspects of my own life, particularly my filmmaking practice as it related to the “mad” rituals of play in my youth. Like a moth drawn to flame, I was intoxicated by how far—and how furiously—I could fly. So I began to question what my mixed blessings could give me access to, if I learned to harness them. How could I see the light, rather than become consumed by it? As I began to conceptualize my documentary film, Crooked Beauty (2010), the process of making film blossomed into far more than a manifestation of my primal attraction to light. I recognized a complimentary relationship between film’s literal grasp of light and dark, and the polarities of mania and depression. I also saw parallels between the disease model of treating “mental disorders” and the industry model of mainstream filmmaking, both of which elevate power and profit over integration and insight. I imagined a film that approached mental health issues from unique thematic and visual perspectives—one that would restore authenticity to experiences that are marginalized and stigmatized in our society. Jacks’s testimony would serve as a touchstone for viewers to reflect on their own stories. But portraying Jacks carried risk; she had survived childhood trauma, substance abuse, been diagnosed “bi-polar”, and locked down in a psych ward by the age of 19. How could I recount her troubled history with compassion rather than exploitation typical of films about “mental illness”? The exploitation and annihilation of persons with disabilities in documentary film—from medical films of uncovered epileptic seizures to on-camera exterminations of persons with psychiatric disabilities by the Nazis—has evolved considerably since the first half of the 20th century. Contemporary independent filmmakers have advocated for themselves and their characters with highly personal, complex and truthful representations of mental health struggles. However, many of these films either reference images of despair and self-harming, indulge stylized excess to illustrate a highly subjective view of insanity, or perpetuate the myth of the mad genius/savant. For me, these films ultimately became portraits of “otherness” rather than empathy. As a filmmaker with an experimental background and fresh concerns about representation, I became particularly obsessed with how we would see Jacks onscreen. The traditional model of the featured character speaking to an off-screen interviewer felt contrived and inauthentic because it deferred to an unseen authority. So I began to think outside of representation and more about embodiment. What if I dispensed with a talking head altogether, and found symbols for the face of “madness”? Had I not discovered it by gazing into the sun as a child? Could the archetypal journey of Icarus offer possibilities that were more illuminating than misguided? The “beholdenness to light”, “shadows”, and “cyclic and contrasting nature” that Kay Redfield Jameson cites describes in her book Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament as characteristic to both manic-depression and the natural world are also relative to cinema. From the division of every frame of light on a strip of film by a black line to its intermittent motion through a camera, the mechanics of cinema operate through its interplay of fluctuations and contradictions, unseen by the audience like many conditions of the mind. But where so many films function like over the counter prescriptions for escaping the world, my film returns viewers to it. Crooked Beauty explores natural and urban landscapes for images that embody difference and conflict as visual counterparts to extreme mood states. Connecting the fissures and fault lines of human nature to the unstable topography and mercurial weather patterns of the San Francisco Bay Area situates both the speaking subject and viewer in a broad and complex field of forces and phenomena that shape our collective human experience. The outer world functions as a psychological road map upon which to explore the geography of breakdown and the regenerative power of nature. Jacks’s history inhabits familiar places—her words illustrate the images—transforming the mundane into talismans and the transitory into narrative markers. The edges and agitations where light and shadow and urban and natural spaces intersect would embody what Jacks refers to as the “fragile fire” in her mind. The grammar and syntax of cinema becomes her voice, the film becomes her body. Jacks’s vision for making our own maps in response to society’s prescribed models for normalcy inspired me to cultivate a new process for finding images that authentically embody “madness”. In contrast to the conventions of carefully crafted screenplays and climate-controlled sound stages, I’ve spent hundreds of hours wandering in deep observation, following the signs embedded in natural and man-made spaces alike. I look to birds perched on telephone wires as barometers for the incoming fog; I follow trails of discarded radios, shopping carts, and clothing like breadcrumbs to the margins of urban space; and can almost smell subtle shifts in the direction, texture and weight of light. It’s as if I can hear the shots call me. Am I “crazy" or am I just highly intuitive? Sometimes I will mistake doubt as curiosity, and defer to more obvious paths. I once spent three days shooting in abandoned mental asylums, ignoring the ghosts of the formerly interred, only to realize later that such structures—even in ruin—point too literally to the horrors they once contained. Being offered and denied shots comes with the territory on a map made of serpentine and tangled trails. But these are the ones I must follow for they lead me to the places where incongruous elements overlap in broken harmony and crooked grace. Jacks asserts that, “There would be a lot less mental illness, quote unquote, in our society if people were given spaces to work through emotions like anger and grief instead of denying and suppressing them.” In the mid-19th century, the cramped, poorly lit structures and layouts of mental hospitals were redesigned as sanctuaries of compassion intended to facilitate the patient’s recovery and self-healing. The power of architecture to shape human behavior affected how the patients saw themselves, as well as how they were seen. Similarly, the framework of Crooked Beauty supports a new moral architecture that liberates Jacks from the confines of photographic representation and encourages the viewer to freely integrate the testimony into their own experience. Cinematic space—both onscreen and in the theater—is re-imagined as a collective site for navigating the space between brilliance and “madness”. ~ ~ ~ Director Bio Ken Paul Rosenthal makes film to cultivate a more participatory relationship with the animate world, and build community through live, conscious dialogue. His current projects are poetic mental health documentaries that weave personal and political narratives through natural and urban landscapes, home movies, and archival mental hygiene films. He is the recipient of a Kodak Award for Cinematography, won numerous awards for his media work in mental health advocacy, and holds an MA in Creative & Interdisciplinary Arts and an MFA in Cinema Production. Ken presents Crooked Beauty screening lectures and workshops in peer support networks, hospitals, universities, symposia, and community events worldwide. www.kenpaulrosenthal.com www.crookedbeauty.com www.maddancementalhealthfilmtrilogy.com 1 Kay Redfield Jameson, Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), p. 129. There is a perennial question directed toward those of us who see madness as having a spiritual dimension, and it goes something like this: “How can “psychotic” experiences that are both terrifying and debilitating be seen as at all spiritual? Isn’t it true that looking for spirituality within psychosis is just a case of “romanticizing madness?”
One way to answer this question is just to turn it around, and to point out how the usual psychiatric approach of seeing nothing at all positive in “psychotic” states acts to increase fear of madness, which in turn increases distress and disability. In other words, the usual approach goes to an extreme opposite of “romanticizing” madness, and instead “awfulizes” it. We can then explain that what we advocate for is simply a balanced view, or being open to noticing both what is negative and positive in experiences that go outside of usual cultural boundaries and are seen as “psychotic.” But to fully address the question, I think we need to go deeper – very much deeper! What follows will be my take on how to make sense of some of the deepest issues of our existence which I believe play a pivotal role in key experiences such as those of trauma, psychosis (or madness), and spirituality. In the conventional view, it is believed possible to make a clear distinction between bad or sick experiences, which might be labeled “psychosis,” and positive or growth oriented experiences that we might call spiritual. But the more we look for some clear “dividing line” between the two, the more it seems to be missing. Instead it seems there is a realm of experience that is outside of our cultural norm, that we might call mystery, where people have experiences that are challenging, with a possibility of these experiences being seen as either bad or good, and of having results in terms of life outcomes that may be either bad or good in the conventional sense. Mystery itself can be seen as both absence and presence. When we focus on its dark side, it is absolutely terrifying. But it does have another side, that can be seen as offering absolute security, and as having everything that we actually need. When the Buddhists speak of the Void, they aren’t speaking of something negative, but rather about an ultimate reality that is paradoxical in nature. Looked at from a more human perspective, when we empty the mind in meditation, we find it is actually full (which I like to think is what being “mindful” is really about.) Because we come to the point where opposites come together, and are all present (and absent) at the same time. In some Native American traditions, when the directions are called at the beginning of ceremony, the effect can also be to come together at this place where opposites coexist. In the christian traditions, it is usually thought that God is a presence, not an absence. Rather, hell is where God is absent, and people go there when they refuse to recognize God or to live by principles consistent with God. Satan is always trying to tempt or trick people to do things that will lead them to hell. But a more mystical way of looking at this is to think of heaven, or being with God, as the same place as hell, or the place where God is absent. Hell is just being in that place and not recognizing that it is also heaven. One way of conveying this has been the story that hell is a fabulous dinner banquet, only the food can only be eaten with eating utensils, and all the utensils are so long that a person cannot fit them into his or her mouth, so everyone is frustrated and suffering. Heaven of course is exactly the same place, except that there the people feed each other. (The idea that we get to heaven by believing in God can be seen as the same notion: it’s not so much that believing takes us to a different place, as that it makes us see that the place we are is really a place that has presence, not just absence. I like this notion because it doesn’t paint God as so cruel as to send people to hell for not believing in “him” but rather says people convince themselves they are in hell by looking or believing a certain way, when they are also actually in heaven and were never sent away by God.) In a sense, because God both is and isn’t, because mystery is both presence and absence, then theism and atheism are both true. It’s all in how you look at it. The terrifying absence is true, and the presence is true. In physical science, there is also a recognition at the deepest level that absence and presence can be one. The big bang itself happened out of nothing. And matter and antimatter can mutually arise out of empty space. Uncertainty, another word for mystery, is basic at the most fundamental levels. But in everyday life in our culture, we think we know things, we have security in our homes and relationships and jobs and bank accounts. We don’t think much about the Void, or the mystery, or our fundamental uncertainty about the ultimate meaning of each event. Instead, we have ways of looking at things and ways of acting with which we feel comfortable, and we see our ways and our stuff as the source of what is good, rather than our relationship with mystery. But our security in “things” also creates anxiety: what will be our fate if those things are taken away? We are like the proverbial rich men, who have difficulty finding the kingdom of heaven, because we are attached to our stuff and security. When we encounter trauma, or when illness or drugs or isolation or some form of impoverishment takes us away from what we usually rely on, then we can be taken out of our “security” and be thrust into mystery. Trauma, as someone put it, “throws us into the hands of the Living God.” But when we are traumatized, we generally aren’t in a trusting mood, so we don’t easily notice that we have entered into something that can be seen positively. Instead, we are more likely to be seeing where we are at as hellish, we notice the absence, not the possibility. Or we are so scared of the mystery, of the uncertainty, that we try to fill it in and make it be something, which results in believing things are solidly there when others don’t see them. Or we see the positive side of mystery but we see it as ourselves personally and get grandiose and try to own it, which sets us up for big falls. The mental states that result are problematic and scary, so they get called psychotic. But with just a slight shift of attention, we could see that we are not just in absence but also in presence, that the state of mystery or uncertainty itself can become our security, or as Jesus was said to have put it, “the stone that the builders rejected” can become the “cornerstone.” When one recognizes that one lost everything one thought one depended on, but that everything is still OK and that all the potential of the universe, all the potential that ever existed, is still out there, and in there, then one realizes that there is a “safety net” so to speak, that is the Void or mystery or God or just the nature of energy. This recognition can be incredibly healing, it can give one a source of security and strength that goes beyond anything in our conventional sense of reality. I heard Paul Gilbert relate a Buddhist story that conveys this concept: the story is of two waves rushing to a rocky shore; a big one and the small one. The big one is alarmed and warns the small one that their end is nigh, there are rocks ahead and foam everywhere -it’s all very frightening! The little wave says not to worry, that all will be well. But the big wave insists that it is the one seeing things realistically, while the little wave simply can’t actually see far enough ahead. The little wave replies “do not worry, you are more than a wave — you are water!”” It is the role of healers to help evoke that shift in attention, so people can reframe the mystery of who we are beyond our conventional forms, the basic uncertainties of our existence, as something that can be acceptable and even a source of security. Unfortunately, we mostly don’t have healers like that, instead those who are reeling from trauma and then from encounters with the terrifying side of mystery encounter “professionals” who tell them it is just an illness, and that they should take drugs to deaden themselves down so they don’t see mystery anymore. This sometimes stops the process of reacting badly to the mystery, but it also prevents the healing, it prevents the shift to learning to find security in the mystery, to learning to look at mystery in a spiritual or balanced way rather than a scared or psychotic way. Incidentally, a lot of self harm can be understood as an attempt to leave behind worldly reassurances, which are feeling desperately insecure anyway, to go to the place of mystery where we are somehow OK even though we have lost what we usually think we rely on. In many religious or mystical traditions, it is common to see people depriving themselves of food, of human company, of sex, etc., and even causing self harm by activities like flogging oneself, as a way to show oneself it is possible to find a deeper security in the absence of conventional forms of security. I think many people cut themselves or do other self harm to get that same positive feeling, though they may not recognize it as a spiritual experience. I don’t think it’s necessary though to do such things to have a spiritual experience, it only seems necessary when we are holding on too desperately to things which in our lives are very insecure. I had my own experience with trauma in childhood, and then a journey deep into mystery in my young adulthood. Even though I often floundered with this, at times being grandiose, at other times terrified, I found things to read and also people to relate to who helped me find my way through the experience, and so never got officially defined as “mentally ill” by the psychiatric system. (This was despite the fact that many people I knew, and I myself, saw what I was going through as a kind of madness; I personally saw it as a productive sort of madness, which R. D. Laing and others inspired me to believe was possible.) Because I came through this successfully without professional help, I could look back and define the experience as just spiritual, or just positive. But I know it was more than that: it was really beyond negative or positive, it was an encounter with something that goes beyond our definitions of negative or positive. When people go through a “mad” period and then emerge strong and coherent, there is a great tendency to deny that there ever was a time of being “mad”. The problem with this is that we as a culture then create a false view of mystery, which makes it less likely that when other people do encounter it, that they will be able to trust their process and find the constructive side, it makes it less likely that people will be able to heal. Instead, mystery itself becomes seen as something to avoid at all costs, while we pretend that everything worth anything is contained within the cultural map. People who find themselves off that map feel truly hopeless, and don’t have a clue that there is also something to be found in that wild place. It doesn’t have to be that way. Let’s tell the truth about these kinds of experiences, and demand that those who are having trouble with such experiences be given access to people who have some understanding of how to relate to them, rather than just being exposed to often futile and destructive efforts to suppress them. Thanks to all of you who support real healing around these issues! Ron Unger LCSW specializes in cognitive therapy for psychosis, and has personal experience of, and a special interest in, the connections between psychosis, trauma, creativity and spirituality. His blog is http://recoveryfromschizophrenia.org/ The following is an excerpt of his article entitled "Moving Toward Wholeness: A Personal Story of Integration" in The Inner Door, A Publication of the Association for Holotropic BreathworkTM International (Volume 24, Issue 1. ISSN#15242623X January 2014): My first breathwork experience was by far one of the most powerful experiences I’ve had, besides my NDE. This session involved my birth experience and my experience with dying. It was a combination and reliving of every traumatic, far-out experience I had had in my life until that point. During my experience, I relived my NDE, where I was introduced to “entities” who told me that I would bring my life experiences and my NDE back to teach to my community. I was left dazed and confused about what that meant and the responsibility of that message gave me an uneasy feeling. I didn’t like the idea because, even though I like to talk about my NDE, I don’t at the same time because of the dismissive responses I am likely to get. How does one integrate such extraordinary experiences back into everyday life? What does it mean to integrate such experiences or move them forward? Our lives are often so hectic that it seems impossible to get anything done at times. If we are constantly moving around, how can we begin to process our inner experiences? These questions accumulated over the next two to three years after my first breathwork session. The experience was so powerful and life changing that I decided to keep attending workshops and eventually did my internship for school as a five-day Holotropic Breathwork workshop. Breathwork has been so important to me because of the possibilities of integration it offers. Previously, I had been unable to integrate my psychedelic experiences and NDE; they left me floating around space with no grounding – a lost cosmic explorer, if you will. Breathwork helped me come back to my body and begin to embrace the wisdom and knowledge that came from all my previous extraordinary experiences. This has really taught me the meaning of creating wholeness in my life. Working with these types of experiences with responsibility and respect can create wholeness in a person’s life. Miraculous transformation can take place if we accept the decisions that we have made in our lives. When integration is possible, extraordinary experiences can serve as catalysts for healing, creativity, and imagination—as they have throughout human history. To read more about Kyle's NDE experience, his vision, and his work, the full article is available here: http://www.grof-holotropic-breathwork.net/profile/TheInnerDoor For more information on his practice Setting Sun Transpersonal Breathwork & Wellness: http://www.settingsunwellness.com Kyle’s journey in transpersonal psychology began when he was sixteen years old, when he suffered a near-death experience due to a traumatic snowboarding accident. This event changed the trajectory of his life. Kyle received his B.A. in Integral Psychology with a focus in Transpersonal Psychology at Burlington College. During his time at Burlington College, Kyle researched and explored the potential benefits of non-ordinary states of consciousness, and how they could be used to help foster healing, creativity, and self-exploration and discovery. Kyle focused on two main topics during his years of study — Holotropic Breathwork and shamanic healing techniques. These two interests have been the foundation of creating SettingSun. Kyle studied and practiced Holotropic Breathwork with the guidance of Holotropic Breathwork facilitators, Lenny and Elizabeth Gibson. Kyle also studied shamanism, ecopsychology, narrative therapy, and Reiki energy healing with shamanic practitioner and psychotherapist, Michael Watson, and Reiki master and expressive art therapist, Jennie Kristel. Kyle received his Level 2 Reiki attunement. Recently, Kyle has been working in the mental health field. He was a shift supervisor at a residential home that specialized in crisis stabilization for teenagers for a year, and now works as a support staff for individuals experiencing "first-break" psychosis. This work has taught Kyle the importance of creating a safe container while individuals explore their inner worlds. A safe container can foster transformation and growth. My first memory is from when I was three years old. I witnessed a mass shooting at my hometown mall. My mom and I hid behind a bookcase in the bookstore. Later on in my life, I would read the newspaper archives, something like 10 wounded and 3 dead, including a 2 year old toddler shot right through the heart. The young woman who opened fire was described as a violent schizophrenic.
*** I was diagnosed with Bipolar 1 Disorder in my early 20s (I’m 33 now). I’ve had six, what might be called psychotic episodes in my life (lasting from 3 weeks to several months). These episodes may have been the most meaningful times and the most misunderstood times in my life. This essay is an exploration in unpacking some of the content from these episodes. These surges from the unconscious, which I’d rather call them (than use the term psychotic episodes), contain mystical elements, biblical themes, eastern spirituality. One time in a few short hours I felt I experienced life through the lens of all spiritual, religious, and psychological systems, in an intense confusing whirlwind, from traditions as ancient as Daoism to modern neurobiology, tapping into knowledge that I normally don’t have access to. Also included in these episodes is a lot of nightmarish content. In this short essay, I will focus on the content related to my family and ethnic background and history. I believe my surges from unconscious, this inner inner wisdom and forces, has a huge capacity to heal intergenerational trauma. This essay explores an energies that is especially potent and accessible during these periods of unconscious spelunking. I first met the hostile energy and its bigger-than-life ability to strike fear into my heart, when I was in one of these states. It was attached to my father. I couldn’t even be in the same room as him, I was so paralyzed with fear. This bull like energy was going to kill me, I knew it. My father was very critical growing up, and he did chase after me and hit me a lot, and yell, but this energy was so terrifying, in retrospect, it seemed beyond him. But then it was just how I felt I perceived him in these states. This would continue every time I had that surge from the unconscious- Absolute terror at my father and the archetypical violent force he carried. Later, in these states, I would wake up in the middle of the night several nights in a row, and the whole environment became this hostile energy, and sometimes it was concentrated in something in my room. Even something as insignificant and inanimate as a cereal box seemed hostile, it was as if the entire environment was out to rape me. And I lived with these states of terror in the middle of the night, but thankfully they eventually would subside after a few hours or less. Recently in therapy, my therapist, with my permission, encouraged me to lightly revisit or invoke the hostile, environment-as-rapist state, because I had been experiencing it again. I did, and the therapy room environment shifted to extremely hostile. We only stayed there for a few. Later in the session I found myself while describing a dream as getting incredibly angry, like wanting to flip-a-table angry. My therapist let me throw a pillow. I seldom get super angry, and this feeling felt super uncomfortable for me, and came out in a semi-dissociated way. A few sessions later I was describing being mildly annoyed with someone, and asked to repeat the words, “What the fuck [this person’s name]?” As I did that I noticed some anger and sadness, and then all of a sudden I went into a dissociative fugue from almost the rest of the session, totally lost, not knowing who I was, or where I was but in tandem, having a light grip of reality. When I described that to my psychiatrist, she said it was indicative of suppressed rage, and indeed that night I had tried tapping into the anger around the person, but to my surprise and some horror, my face started contorting into the most grotesque, angry expressions I had every seen. My body was contorting too, so much that I bruised my ribs. I was watching on my computer screen’s live photo program. I couldn’t shout because I was at home with roommates, but I know it would have been blood-curling. And I started talking about rape. When I did this I felt a deep resonance with the mass rapes of women in Bangladesh during the war of 1971. This was not the first time I felt I was experiencing trauma and expressing rage and somatically processing rage and hurt associated with the war. The first time I got more information on the hostile violent force was during one of my states. I had a vision where I saw all my ancestors from the beginning of time in rapid succession lining up back to back. Then I saw my mother and father laying in my bed before I was conceived, and my father whispered to my mother, “What do I do with the pain that happened in Bangladesh?”. And then fast forward to when I was a young child, my father took on that violent energy in the vision, and I stayed in state of terror, knowing of this forces’s impending desire to rape and kill me. My father is one of my role models, and he really taught me so much, if not emotionally available all the time, he’s mentor-like and wise. This energy I realized was not my father. It did impact him, causing him to have a violent temper towards his two young children, but that energy was coming from the genocide. My father’s family was homeless for a year during that period in Bangladesh. His house was raided, and his family was lined up by a rifle squad, but spared. My mother lost her grandfather, who she was very close to, an altruistic doctor. He was shot and killed by the West Pakistani army. I realized that I have the capacity to transmute this energy. I did it that time with the contorted rageful faces and body postures. I did it another time during these states. It is not easy to transmute this energy. Sometimes I think it takes people over. It is really hard work, with the added difficulty of being labeled crazy and pushed into the mental health system. Another time I transmuted the energy was at a cafe called Borderlands (which I also associated with Bangladeshi civil war and the genocide). The vendor outside had gifted me a little orange tourmaline crystal. At the cafe, I had this inexplicable desire to break it. Of course I couldn’t because it’s a hard stone, but I tried, and then I start shaking all over. My friend who was with me advised me to stop. When I got home, I tried it again, and an earthquake went through me. It felt like somatic experiencing on a transpersonal level, a release of trauma. Afterwards, I cried, and cried, and cried. I cried for my mom, who had lost her grandfather, and then made a photo collage about her and her strength. Powerful forces and emotions have coursed through me around this. I thank my ancestors and the sacred feminine creative source, for aiding me along this journey. And I thank my friends and family. Sylvia, the woman who opened fire at the mall, I learned had been sexually molested by her grandfather. She was dealing with a hostile force too. One that had attacked her when she was a vulnerable child. nasimoonstone's Blog A SPIRITUAL ATTEMPT TO INTEGRATE THE REALMS OF THE PSYCHE THAT GO BEYOND THE KNOWN My muse is a nocturnal creature. She comes out late at night to whisper sweet symphonies in my ear. And how do I thank her? By telling her for the thousandth time to go away and leave me alone, because I I’m trying to sleep! Societal norms make me suffocate my one true source of inspiration. My muse is a shy creature. She only comes out at night, because she thrives on the mystery and silence that encapsulates the city during the hours of darkness. She just wants to be heard. See her words manifest and multiply. Come through the open channel of the writer who has no other choice then to succumb to her will. Her will is simultaneously the will of the grand creator through which the stream of creation flows effortlessly. Please, don’t blow out the flame of divine inspiration. She feeds off her expression. Grows stronger and wiser in the process of enlivening her message. She needs you as much as you need her. In harmonious unity, great creations flow forth. If her expression gets denied for too long, she turns into the manic mistress who slowly drives you into madness. The more you push her away, the wilder she becomes. Desperate forces use desperate means. So for god’s sake, give your muse the space she needs to uncover her message through your hands. Her eternal gratitude will wash over you, and make you whole. Her creation becomes your creation, and your collaboration may carry fruits for the next generation. But first: accept her, embrace her, and thank her for always being there for you, even In times when you thought you needed her the least (guess what, those may have been the times where her guidance could’ve saved you). I encourage everyone to write a thank you letter to your muse. Express your gratitude and humbleness to this inner being that contains all there is, and all there will be, the portal to eternity. The one within who notices the beauty hidden in every corner of this blue marble of a planet. Invite her into your life with open arms and ears. Welcome her whenever she decides to pay a visit. Always thank her for her presence, and kiss her goodbye once her flame settles, and her message has been manifested. Then you can safely crawl back to bed, knowing you’ve created harmony within and without. Thank you muse dearest, and good night! May-Linn Hammer, M.A., is a writer, artist, traveler, dreamworker, yoga instructor, holistic lifestyle coach, and consciousness explorer. She holds a bachelor's degree in Psychology from the University of Oslo, and a master's degree in Consciousness and Transformative studies with a specialization in dream studies from John F. Kennedy University. Currently, she continues her love of learning with a Ph.D. in East-West Psychology at California Institute of Integral Studies. She is a dedicated student of life, religion, spirituality, philosophy, culture, art and psychology. Her favorite topics include spiritual awakening, energetic healing, and the Dark Goddess. This post is from her blog entitled "Bipolar Yogini: Highs, Lows, and Flows" http://bipolaryogini.blogspot.com the tides wash in
bringing with them the Shadow playing upon the tips of my soul I am afraid that I will destroy myself and the necessity of that alchemical process what remains when I am no longer there? is there some higher octave yet unseen? trust carries me through the turbulent waters exhausted I lay upon the shore salty with sea, sweat, and potential My story is your story even though you don’t know. Your story is my story even though I may never know the details. I may see them in your face, the way your jaw slants, hear them in your voice, how it’s hard for you to speak at times; I may sense your story as it screams out of you no matter how hard you try to keep it silent, but only because it’s my story too and we always recognize ourselves in the mirror, no matter where we are, no matter how far from home or what time it is or how much or little we’ve slept. I will always know my own story when I hear it, so I want you to tell it, even if you have no clue how, even if you hate the sound of your voice, you MUST remember it’s my voice too and just like you never wanted to be silent about what mattered to you, I never wanted my words to go unread or my voice to fall on deaf ears, or tired ears, so exhausted from the absence of our stories that they can no longer listen to, or hear, anything true. Truth is what I live for, even if it is a moving target, even if it doesn’t exist for more than a moment or a breath at a time, even if I’m living in an illusion which I call truth just because its tune sounds good to my ears and I see myself in its facial expressions. The truth is…all over the place everywhere, yet sometimes nearly impossible to find like a single green pea under many mattresses and feather beds, pillows and sheets, blankets and foam cushions and love and clothes and equipment and make up and grooming and terror and pain and fear and regret and temptation, all rolled up like a sleeping bag in the closet with so much potential yet currently in a state of stagnation, hiding, uselessness. Someday it will come out, someone will invite you on a camping trip and something in you will require that you say yes, even though it’s been so long since you’ve thought about that sleeping bag, all rolled up in the back of the closet with everything, and covering that green pea you forgot about. And when you say yes, someone inside you will leap up, ready to speak, ready to say everything you’ve always thought you’d say someday. Someday. Someday. And someday became your mantra until you started to pray to make someday today, to make someday today, and today again and again TODAY, not another day, not some other time and you started to tell yourself how much you love you, only it wasn’t like you were saying it, it was like someone outside you loved you so much, like a parent or a child, and you didn’t know who but you didn’t care either. You didn’t mind not knowing because this love was so strong and this love knew who you were and loved you no matter what; this voice was the realest thing you’d ever known and nothing or no one could drown it out or be too loud or oppressive for you to hear it. The love was more than anything you’d known before, so strong, so reassuring, so safe and solid, the security and stability you’d always dreamed of like a big slate rock in the woods, in the woods of your mind, your essence, which could get so clouded and uncomfortable and hardly even alive at times. Yet, once this voice of Love told you your story, you knew something else, even in your pajamas, even in the middle of sleepless nights, even after difficult times with family or times you wondered if others thought poorly of you or if you’d perhaps done something really awful because you are so human and have such weird habits sometimes, that don’t make sense, yet you can’t stop them, you can’t help yourself from looking the other way and hiding under your own hood because it’s too much sometimes and you just can’t deal you can’t deal you can’t…No No No NO, get me out of here no. I don’t know, logic can’t always explain our vague morals and logical morals can lead us astray in such an unjust world; justice is so much more confusing that any of us can admit or even come to terms with within ourselves or- If it’s simple we’re doing even worse crimes, the very worst, yet the easiest: lying to ourselves. It’s the very easiest felony; no one is innocent, no one will be innocent until justice has weathered us all and who can even begin to imagine how long that will take? Not you, not I, not anyone you can think of, so you settle for love, you settle to be loved anyway; you settle for being human and looking in this mirror, sometimes foggy, sometimes clear, sometimes steamed up and the window needs to be opened. But even if you don’t, even if you don’t do anything, the voice is there when you listen, reminding you you are loved. Really no matter what at all, no matter what, or what or anything, nothing at all makes any difference at all when you hear the whisper, “I love you so much.” Listen to this post: Audio PlayerDownload File http://chayagrossberg.com/my-story-is-your-story/ Chaya Grossberg is a writer, teacher, coach and group facilitator living in San Francisco. She teaches classes and leads support groups on coming off psychiatric drugs and alternatives to psych drugs, as well as coaching individuals in person and by phone. She has been working as an activist for change in the "mental health" system and worked in providing holistic mental health alternatives for the past 10 years, starting as a Freedom Center organizer for six years in Northampton, Massachusetts. She has worked with the Western Massachusetts Recovery Learning Community, Massachusetts PAIMI council, Windhorse Associates, Alternative to Meds Center and Portland Hearing Voices. Chaya has taught at numerous conferences on Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs including NARPA, INTAR and Alternatives. She studied creative writing and experiential education at Hampshire College and is a Kripalu certified yoga instructor. Chaya is a psychiatric survivor and has publicly spoken, written and bloggedabout her experiences and perspectives. She has also written poetry and created art and performance pieces to open the public's mind to mental diversity and the importance of educated and informed choice. |
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