A MEETING ORGANIZED BY THE FOUNDATION FOR RELIGIOUS RESOURCES IN PSYCHOTHERAPY AND SPONSORIZED BY THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SPIRITUAL PSYCHIATRY
It is with pleasure that the Foundation for Religious Resources in Psychotherapy is able to publish this conference's presentation abstracts. As you read these presentation briefs, it is our hope that you will see the quality and nature of future Foundation conferences and workshops.
Included at the end of each presenter's abstract is a brief biographical note with contact addresses and phone numbers.
Physical disease is the expression of a state of conflict which involves the psychological, emotional and spiritual levels.
It is not possible to treat the body without going deeply into the conflicts which created the physical disease.
Long before the appearance of the first symptoms of a physical disease, areas of tension and contraction can be identified in some parts of the body. Each human knows his/her sensitive areas, those ones which react painfully when a psycho-emotional state appears.
By exploring more deeply the mental tendencies creating this state of tension, what can we find?
First, a deeply rooted habit to live in anticipation. This pattern is revealed by an inability to live the present moment, and an involvement in some mental processes related to the memory content: images, emotions, and projection of a mentally created future.
This reflex of retro- and antero-projection appears as a defense, a need for psychological security. The body carries the scar of this defensive tendency, predominantly as a contracture of the agonist muscles, those which grasp, the muscles of superior and inferior limbs, of the face, the eyes, the ears.
This physical crystallization of psychological tendencies is closely related to the quest for happiness, perceived as something external, a kind of aim or goal which must be reached.
This projective tendency contributes to the habit of living 'in front', in the anterior physical space and in the imaginary space called future.
If we return more deeply toward the source of happiness, we come back to a state of being, independent of the circumstances.
Facts, events and situations act as catalysers, but living happiness is a feeling which has its own existence, and can be revealed separately from any trigger circumstance.
Meditation focalizes the attention toward the source of feelings like joy, happiness and fulfillment. By defocalizing the sensation from the circumstances, the fulfillment, object of each desire, appears objectless, not related to a physical, mental or emotional situation.
Meditation is like a coming back to the center. It is only after a long exploration of the phenomenal world, that the mind is ready to returning to itself, toward the knower of the phenomenal world.
Each thought, feeling and perception find its existence only because of a subject which perceives, a perceiver.
What is this "I" which lies at the heart of observation, listening and attention?
If we can grasp this central I, it means that the I itself has become an object of observation. It is no more the observer but the observed.
It is then necessary to explore more deeply the nature of that which observes, by taking care of not transforming it into an object of observation.
The I then appears as an original matter, an eye which sees everything except itself.
The primordial I cannot be then known on an objective level, but only through a direct aperceptive knowledge: I knows itself. The establishing in this fundamental I means the exit from the manifest world, from time-space, from phenomenal evolution.
Starting from physical matter, we came back to mental matter, for returning to the silent background in which body and thought manifest themselves.
Physical and psychological diseases, by creating an uncomfortable state, are therefore an opportunity to go to the source of the conflict, to return to the essence of the I, in which lies the object of all quests.
We will close the circle with some stanzas offered as an homage to the formless being:
Meditation is not a technique.
Meditation is not an act.
Meditation is not an intention.
Meditation is not a desire.
To what do the technique, the act, the desire and the intention lead?
Breathing dies in the vacuity of silence.
Breathing arises from the vacuity of silence.
What do breathing and the absence of breathing share?
Both refer to a subject.
This subject, what it is?
What is the background in which breathing and no-breathing appear and disappear?
What is the link which unifies breathing, absence of breathing, silence, body and thought?
Physical and psychological diseases are the expression of a friction of energies.
The fluidity of the movement of energies is disturbed by some resistances.
These resistances are the reflection of a fear. Fear is a reaction.
A reaction implicates someone who reacts.
This someone, where is he?
Can we situate, locate him?
Is he real or is he only a ghost?
Returning to the source of the disease needs to go the root of the self.
This ascent against the current of thought and belief prunes the weeds of the mind mirages.
The liberation is a recognition of the impossibility to perceive the perceiver.
The object brings to the objectless subject.
The absence reveals the presence.
"Feelings of oneness with the entire universe. Visions and images
of distant times and places. Sensations of vibrant currents of energy coursing
through the body, accompanied by spasms and violent trembling. Visions of
deities, demigods, and demons. Vivid flashes of light and rainbow colors.
Fears of impending insanity and even death. Anyone experiencing such extreme
mental and physical phenomena would instantly be labelled psychotic by most
modern Westerners. Yet increasing numbers of people seem to be having unusual
experiences similar [to these], and instead of plunging irrevocable into
insanity, they often emerge from these extraordinary states of mind with
an increased sense of well being, and a higher level of functioning in daily
life."
Stanislav Grof
Psycho-spiritual crises are nothing new to humanity. They have been around a long time.
In societies where spiritual experience is assumed as a normal part of living, much of what modern Western psychiatry has considered psychotic (hallucinations and_or visions) has been considered normal.
In Western society, such experiences are labelled psychotic because they do not fit the consensus definitions (as reflected in the DSM and ICD-9) of normal experience.
However, non-Western traditional healers, and such traditional ritual elders as Shamans, Gurus, Bhagwans, Swamis, Pirs, Priests, and Pastors, have long been familiar with psycho-spiritual crises involving religious or mystical content.
Something in deep intense spiritual practice itself can evoke deep psychological and spiritual crises, by releasing energies and states of consciousness with religious content that demands to be taken seriously.
Meditation, prayer, yoga, psychedelic experience, and other spiritual or transpersonal experiences can provoke a deep psycho-spiritual crisis of psychotic proportions. But such potentially transformative crises may also be caused by intense physical and psychological experiences: accidents, surgery, shock, rape, abortion, miscarriage, death of a loved one, being fired from a job, end of a love affair; intense sexual experience.
The common element in this broad range of traumatic experience is that in some way they result in having individual's "world," or "world view" challenged, their self-efficacy, self-image, or life project is suddenly put into question. They enter a transitional or liminoid state, which, without guidance from an adequately experienced and knowledgeable ritual elder, may become a crisis of psychotic proportions.
We shall review the broad range of psycho-spiritual crises which, according to the Grofs' categories include the following types or patterns of crises:
1) Shamanic
2) Awakening of Kundalini
3) Unitive consciousness
4) Psychological Renewal via a return to the Center
5) Crises
of psychic opening (paranormal and psychic)
6) Past Life Experiences
7) Encounters with Spirit Guides
8) Near Death Experiences
9) Close Encounters (UFO-type)
10) Possession states (Demonic Type).
Within this broad range of psycho-spiritual crises, I will select a frequently occurring type associated today (often erroneously) with bi-polar disorder, brief reactive psychoses, and to a lesser extent now with schizophrenia. These are the so called psychoses which entail religious or mythological themes and spiritual preoccupations.
This type of potentially transformative crisis has been illumined from a Jungian perspective by the work of psychiatrist and Jungian analyst John Weir Perry, and myself.
Both Perry and I have drawn from personal clinical experience and Jungian hermeneutics. Hence I shall review this experience, shaped as it is from a Jungian perspective, and bring it into dialogue with elements which derive from the very ancient and time tested tradition of shamanic healing.
Shamanic healing, and Jungian psychology can provide us with some important insights into the nature of this type of experience, and it can provide us with important therapeutic responses which can enable persons undergoing such a crisis to turn it into a transformative process that results not only in adaptive functioning without psychotic symptoms, but which results in a better psychological integration than ever, and in valuable social contributions.
Shamanism is the world's oldest time-tested and effective healing tradition, arising in the paleolithic period of hunter-gatherer type societies of at least twenty-five thousand years ago.
Before there was a pharmacopeia repertoire or scientific technologies, there developed, probably by trial and error, and out of necessity, a technology for helping sufferers of serious psycho-spiritual disorders.
According to Eliade, bone setters, herbalists, midwives, and other healing traditions are also very ancient, and many probably co-existed along side the shaman, but it was the shaman's special province to heal disorders of the soul.
Shamanism has received considerable attention from Eliade, Harner, and others for its ability to diagnose spirit intrusion and soul loss, and to treat these by means of extraction and and soul retrieval.
The work of numerous post-modern Urban shamans today is drawing this ancient technology and is applying it to our Western cultural equivalent of soul-loss: the dissociative disorders, and resulting symptomology related to addictions, depressions, anxiety, and depersonalization and derealization.
While this work is very important, we shall be moving our discussion in a different track by examining traditional shamanism for its analogue of the psycho-spiritual crisis of renewal, to see what we may learn from it. It is the shaman's Initiatory Call, often signalled by some type of crisis, or crack up that is the area most relevant to the renewal crisis..
Not all of these, or even most of the shamanic crises are psychotic, but some are, and the archetypal patterns revealed in the initiatory process auto-symbolically envisioned as death and dismemberment, a cleaning of the bones, putting together of a new subtle body, and learning how to heal self and others in the process is of considerable importance.
In addition, to the youth or initiant undergoing the crisis, the ritual context and leadership provided by the elder shaman or shamans is essential to whether or not the outcome of the crisis is creative and transformative, or merely destructive.
The elements of the Initiatory Illness/Crisis and its therapeutics are reviewed:
1) Seeking out an experienced, knowledgeable, and socially legitimated shaman for help.
2) Receiving a positive frame on the crisis ("you are undergoing a shamanic calling").
3) Receiving guidance and direction about how to relate to the spiritual and psychological themes emerging (in the visions_hallucinations), and being informed of the stages of the process and given some hope that one can successfully make it through.
4) Receiving a new identity and self-image based upon the initiant's new powers as a healer, and his or her value to the community as a healer.
5) Learning techniques of psycho-spiritual mastery, learning how to test- "reality" and "discern the spirits".
6) Cultural hermeneutics: interpreting the experience in terms of the culture's spiritual idiom, so that it is given meaning, and social value.
We turn to the work of anthropologist Victor Turner on transformative ritual structure and process, and to its revision by Jungian analyst Robert L. Moore to understand the vital issues involved in providing a transformative ritual space and effective and knowledgeable ritual leadership of deep transformative psycho-spiritual crises. We examine the structure of ritual space as a "holding environment" of the death_rebirth process of both shamanic crises and psychotic crises of renewal. We shall review the determinants of ritual with respect to making it effective, by shifting from liminoid phenomena to liminal experience via ritual leadership which knows how to constitute sacred_transformative space, steward its boundaries, and provide the guidance necessary to allow the psyche's self-healing tendencies to have their way in the ritually constructed space_time pod.
The Jungian framework in the treatment of psychoses developed by John Weir Perry is reviewed. In the crises of renewal the mythological and spiritual preoccupations involve the following themes:
1) Return to a Center (axis mundi)
2) Death (Themes of dismemberment,
crucifixion, torture, poisoning)
3) Return to the beginnings (e.g.,
to the Garden of Eden, to the origin of the world),
4) Cosmic Conflict
(forces of Good and Evil, light and darkness, etc.)
5) Threat of Opposites
(often comes up in the form of fear of the opposite sex)
6) Apotheosis
as Royalty or Divinity (ego/Self identification & refueling)
7)
Sacred Marriage (royal marriage, conjunction of contra-sexual opposites)
8) New Birth (off-spring of a divine marriage, a prince, a new savior
of the world, etc.)
9) New Society (a new social order is envisioned,
a new Jerusalem, utopia, etc.)
10) Quadrated World (4-fold, mandalic
structure representing a new and more differentiated and authentic self-image).
Following this framework, I present a case from my book "Psychotherapy and the Sacred" in which I shall draw from my own clinical experience in working with a young man who underwent a psycho-spiritual crisis, which involved psychotic loss of reality testing with some hallucinatory and delusional processes, but which quickly became a transformative experience once a therapeutic container and a ritual-religio-symbolic framework for the experience was provided. The patient's hallucinations_visions were filled with religious themes, with Cosmic Conflict, battle between Good and Evil, with Messanic Calling and Apotheosis, with Return to the Center, and so on. But the "patient" who was feeling called to play a Messianic role transforming the world was unaware of his own need for transformation (of his "world"). Several interpretive and reframing moves help to shift this young man's understanding_to "see" that he was indeed undergoing a sacred calling, but one that must begin with his own personal transformation. The patient quickly "moved" from his psychotic loss of reality testing and hallucinatory preoccupation with "Waking Visions," to his "Visions of the Night" (Dreams), and these were placed in a Jungian and theological framework supportive of the death_rebirth process he was undergoing. The story of the therapeutic drama of transformation and return to the social order in a constructive way is discussed. The patient painted his visions and dreams, and color slides of these productions will be viewed, and the mythological_spiritual themes (described by Perry) are exemplified in them.
The concluding portion of the presentation will involve discussions of differential diagnosis from medical disorders (such as neuro-cardiovascular disease, tumor, and organic psychoses, and from other psychotic profiles and from other psycho-spiritual crises. Recommendations for treatment, for how to accelerate the transformative process through spiritual methods and diet, and how to temporarily decelerate the process when the patient is overwhelmed or over-stimulated, by recourse to shifts in diet, temporary lightening or interrupting spiritual practice methods, and through applications of various exercises and methods which serve to ground the individual, thus reducing psychotic panic or over-stimulation without resorting to medication. Issues of medication will be briefly touched upon, and contraindications for this type of work will be discussed. Implications for developing transformative ritual spaces for individuals undergoing psycho-spiritual crises in Western society will be discussed, and the role of InterNet and email support groups as cyber-ritual-spaces (containing and supportive environments for persons undergoing psycho-spiritual crisis) will be reviewed.
Archetypal psychology suggests that the unconscious be understood as imagination, with primary emphasis on images and soul. James Hillman notes that although "soul" is an ambiguous concept which eludes definition, it points to "the imaganitive possibility in our natures, the experiencing through reflective speculation, dream images, and fantasy." (Re-Visioning Psychology, James Hilman)
This presentation will focus on the contributions of archetypal psychology to a non-interpretative approach to dreamwork, to our "befrending the dream" with attention, respect, and responsiveness. This aesthetic approach encourages the dreamer to participate in the dream by entering into its particular imagery, rather than translating the dream into concepts or advice for daily life. Dreamwork can then become a place for soul-making as each dream leads us toward the fathomless depth of the soul. Participants will be invited to share images through which they have been affected by the people and the landscape of a dream.
Down Time: How Do We Sit with Depression in a Manic Society?
Workshop: Our fast-paced, high pressure society rewards individuals who are euphoric, cheerful, enthusiastic, unceasingly interactive, energetic, hyperactive, on the move. We especially are bothered when depression slows us down, when we experience enervation, stagnation, self-doubt, heaviness. Depression feels unpleasant, inconvenient, and non-productive. A society in a hurry then wants short-term therapy, Prozac, and other designer drugs. It is increasingly difficult to sit psychologically with depression with so many pressures to make the psyche active, productive, and socially confident again. It is hard to slow down, turn inward, explore self-doubts, and talk about melancholy, sadness, and despair.
It is important to remember that depression has been understood differently in myth and other cultural settings. "Down time" has been valued as an occasion of depth, beauty, purposefulness, a necessary state of the soul for spiritual growth. Perhaps impenetrable sadness, melancholy, and heaviness are aspects of the human condition which we might befriend rather than a disease to be relieved of. In our discussion, we will share images of depression as we ask, "How can we sit with ourselves and our patients so that soul-making can emerge from even our dark and down times?".
What is the soul? If psychology is the study of soul, and psychotherapy the healing of soul, what is it that we are engaging in? Plato's views on the nature of soul and its importance are being revived in our postmodern consciousness. But is there consensus or conflict among these views? What is the meaning of this revival for psychotherapy and the dialogue between medicine, psychology and theology? This presentation examines the Greek, Hebrew, and early Christian conceptions of the soul and their significance for the 'care of souls' in our time.
New Models of the Mind-Body Connection: An Practical Exploration
Workshop: Short lecture, experiential work, and discussion. Neurobiochemistry and so-called body-oriented therapies are opening up new opportunities for clinicians to be of greater help to clients. Graeme demonstrated how the (a) initial intake interview, (b) establishing goals for therapy, and (c) therapy review session, can be enriched using a mind-body approach. Participants will had an opportunity to use two or three new tools and join in a 'potpourri' of shared ideas.
The construct of the "self" has experienced a long and storied history in psychology. Since the publication of William James' seminal exposition on this topic in the landmark *Principles of psychology* (1890), investigations of the self have been prominent in psycholological inquiry, particularly in the realm of personality theory. Giants in the field such as Freud, Jung, Erikson, Horney, Allport, Murray, Rogers, Kelly and May have wrestled with this concept, employing a diversity of models and incorporating psychodynamic, humanistic, phenomenological, cognitive, social, and existential perspectives. These and other theorists have faced and struggled with the challenge of deriving empirical methods to approach the inherently abstract quality of the self. In spite of divergent theoretical viewpoints, most of these models have included some notion of an awareness of self as a distinct entity that is in some fundamental manner separate from all other human selves. As such, the characteristics of uniqueness and individuality, coupled with a sense of perception of one's own distinct existence, have generally marked various perspectives of the self that have emerged from 20th-century western psychology.
Consistent with these notions, psychological models of the self have often traveresed the domains of philosophy and theology, as the fundamental concerns of these areas encompass the nature of human existence. Questions that are central to the human experience are the province of both spirituality and psychology, in accord with the etymological roots of the latter term ("psyche", from the Greek for "soul"). The contemporary effluence of scholarly activity at the crossroads of psychology and spirituality stands in contrast to the prevailing positivistic dominance in scientific psychology, which for decades was under the pervasive, mechanistic influence of behaviorism. Yet, personality theorists have always stood out as mavericks in the field of psychology, and have long been considered as pioneers in the exploration of psycho-spiritual concerns such as the nature of the self.
However, even the most non-mainstream of personality theorists have strived to maintain some empirical grounding, as this quality is the distinctive essence of the psychological approach. In this manner, personality psychologists have attempted to offer a rigorous view of such complex constructs as the self.
It is in this context that the conceptual system of *idiodynamics* emerges. In this talk, I will attempt to demonstrate how idiodynamics can contribute to the growing body of knowledge on the inter-relatedness of psychology and spirituality. Furthermore, I will show how the idiodynamic view of the individual can expand the psychological understanding of the concept of the self, and place that knowledge in the setting of a richly interconnected universe. The goal of idiodynamics is to restore and preserve the primacy of individual uniqueness in the face of an overwhelming scientific trend towards obscuration of individuality through group-aggregated studies.
It should be noted that while idiodynamics emphasizes the individual, it is harmonious with a multi-tiered view of nature that places the individual at the nexus between biologic and social environments. Accordingly, idiodynamics is consistent with a cosmology that reveres the sanctity of indivuality, but is capable of viewing the place of the individual in a broad, universal setting.
Specifically, idiodynamics is a conceptual framework for psychology that views the human individual as the cornerstone of behavioral science (e.g., Rosenzweig, 1986). This perspective is the creation of Saul Rosenzweig, Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Washigton University. Idiodynamics reflects the integration and influence of diverse sources such as Gordon Allport, for his emphasis on individual uniqueness, or what Allport called the "idiographic"; Henry Murray, for his usage of the life narrative as an empirical means of understanding the individual; Freud and psychodynamic psychology, for the causal impact of life history on contemporary behavior and motivation; and from the philosophy of A.N. Whitehead and the physics of Niels Bohr, for their focus on the dynamic event as the fundamental unit of analysis.
Idiodynamics conceptualizes the individual as a unique universe of experiential events. As such, the focus is on temporality, as opposed to the more static notion of traits which dominates so much of personality psychology. The term *idioverse* is used to describe this universe, and is substituted for the more commonly-used term, "self".
The individual is seen as a matrix that blends organic and cultrual milieus. Three levels of explanatory norms are posited: (1) nomothetic, which refers to universally applicable principles, (2) demographic, which operate at the level of groups of individuals, such as male and female, and (3) idiodynamic, which refers to the unique population of life events that constitute an individual human being, beginning at birth. These three levels are considered to be complementary, rather than mutually exclusive.
In understanding a given idioverse, three levels of communication are explored. First is the *immediate*, which refers to the literal, surface meaning of an event. The next is *intermediate*, which is an allusive level not apparent to a casual observer, but generally accessible to the individual "self". The deepest level is *immediate*, which is generally unconscious, and can therefore only be accessed through exploration of the unconscious idioverse.
These idiodynamic concepts will be be explored and expanded upon to incorporate notions from systems and chaos theory, and placed in a psychospiritual perspective of the self. Specifically, the idea of the intersection of idioverses and how this may relate to the principle of sensitive dependence on initial conditions will be examined. The notion of common principles operating at multiple levels of analysis will applied to the concept of the self. An alternative view that conception, rather than birth, as the "big bang" of the idioverse will be advanced. Finally, a view of God as the "meta-idioverse", a perspective that bears similarities to the transcendentalist notion of an "oversoul", will be explored. In sum, idiodynamics will be thoroughly examined as a means to explore and expand the psycho-spiritual concept of the self.
My name is Jim Jarvis. I am a licensed psychologist living in St. Louis. This fall marks my 23nd year of private practice. I limit my practice to psychotherapy and consulting with individuals, couples, families, and businesses, and have subspecialties in hypnosis and performance enhancement psychology. My educational background includes a doctorate that combines theology and psychology from Christian Theological Seminary and Duke University. I am also an ordained minister in the United Methodist Church. I have always had an interest in metaphysics and have usually, but especially more in recent years, tried to include the "spiritual side" in therapy as the client defines that and desires. Still, I wasn't quite prepared for the change that occurred in my life and work 4 years ago. I had always "sort of" believed in reincarnation but had never really tried to learn more about it. A client named Nancy was nearing the end of her work with me. I had enjoyed working with her and would be sorry to see her leave. She was intelligent, worked hard in therapy, and had achieved some positive changes in her life. One Friday, she walked in carrying a copy of Through Time into Healing by Brian Weiss, M.D.. which is a book describing Weiss's experiences using Past Life Regression Therapy (PLRT) as a tool for healing and self understanding. Weiss is a psychiatrist in Miami. Turns out that Nancy worked with Brian's brother, Peter, who is an oncologist here in St. Louis. Peter had alerted her to Brian's work. Of course I resisted reading the book. But, she kept insisting, so finally one Friday evening I started reading and couldn't put it down. The next weekend, I read his first book about reincarnation, Many Lives, Many Masters, and couldn't put it down either. Since I have used hypnosis in my practice from the beginning, I thought, "Well, maybe I can do this too." Nancy was eager to try. It worked well for her and other of my clients were interested in PLRT also. PLRT has now become about 30% of my practice. PLRT is not a trivial process, and I have great respect for it as well as self-hypnosis. If you want to try it just to see if you had a lifetime fighting in the Civil War, odds are you are not going to see very much unless there is learning there for you. Some people who seek me out for this kind of therapeutic work have some kind of physical complaint (headaches, backache, ect.), that no one has been able to diagnosis and successfully treat. Others come troubled by phobias, addiction, or weight problems. Many have a nagging sense of not having a purpose in life, or are troubled by their relationships.
Rarely do they come out of just curosity. It is not uncommon to see a rather dramatic healing of a physical symptom with PLRT. Nancy had suffered from migraine headaches all her life. No one had been able to discover the cause, and she was constantly taking medications to control the auras and pain. In one of the past lives that she saw/experienced, she was a gentle Greek farmer in an ancient time (a male life time). He was taking his crops to the marketplace in a cart pulled by a mule. The mule balked at crossing a bridge. The farmer pulled and shoved the mule with no success. Finally, the farmer lost his temper and swatted the mule on it's rear.
The mule's response was to kick the farmer in the head at precisely in the spot where Nancy's headaches originated. The farmer died. But Nancy has not had a headache since and I have done follow up for almost 4 years. I am not saying that this kind of healing always happens, and I certainly can't control it. But, I have seen this kind of healing many times.
Another thing that happens frequently with PLRT is that people gain an understanding about an emotion, a compulsion, or an event in their life that traditional therapy has not been able to completely resolve.
For example, many clients who struggle with weight problems discover past lives where they were starving.
One young woman, Cindy, had always dreamed of going to Europe. So she worked and saved a long time in college to make her dream come true upon graduation. She had always had an affinity with England, so the first stop was England. Cindy hopped a tour bus to get a feel of where she might like to spend more time visiting later. When the bus got to a certain section of London, she became so anxious and frightened that she had to get off the bus and take a taxi back to her hotel.
This event was deeply disturbing to her. An athlete and semi-pro baseball player who went to college on athletic scholarships, she had always seen herself as a strong and independent woman who could handle about anything. Cindy couldn't figure out what had frightened her so.
In a regression session, she discovered that one of her past lives had been as a prostitute in London. At age 21 (about her age at the time of this trip), she was brutally murdered by Jack the Ripper in the area of London where the bus had entered. She even recognized some of the buildings. With enormous relief, she finally understood why she had been so scared.
The process of PLRT is facilitated by self-hypnosis. My role is to facilitate, interpret, and document. In other words, help the client enter a state of readiness, help them understand what they receive, and tape the session for them so that they can have a record for further study. I have no control over what will happen and I believe that a person's spiritual guides direct the session once I get them to the state of receiving.
Typically, some of the following will happen. First, the client will see anything that needs to be reviewed or seen in a different light from this lifetime, if necessary. Or they may receive reconciliation or reassurances from family or friends who have already crossed over to the other side. Then they see the lifetimes from the past that are germane to their learning and growth now. It is a very efficient process; that is, you only see the lifetimes that will help you grow or resolve a personal issue.
In the course of the process, people meet and learn how to access their spiritual guides (everyone has at least two with them throughout eternity; others seem to enter and leave as necessary), and get information about their purpose this go around. The typical client will work with me about 5 to10 regression sessions after a couple of preparation sessions, some more, and some less. People seem to gain much peace and self-understanding from PLRT. And a sense that everything is not so darn important all the time. I could ramble on for pages about PLRT, but I will resist that temptation.
Some random observations before I close. It seems, up to this point in history, that if a person need to learn more about power and control issues they chose a male incarnation, and if they need to learn about suffering and compassion, they chose a female life time......I have not come across any famous people from the past or royalty.
Most of the past lives we are shown are pretty humble and difficult. Suffering seems to be a key to learning and growth. The happy lifetimes that are shown usually involve a very simple lifestyle, or even poverty, with much shared community......The most lifetimes I have seen in one person is 182 and the fewest is 3......The spirit guides say that if we choose to destroy the earth, the process will continue in other dimensions and galaxies......We have all had lifetimes involving just about very race and religion which makes prejudice seem pretty ridiculous......It is not necessary to believe in reincarnation to gain benefit from PLRT. It can be approached on as a metaphor..... PLRT is not a concept that most people feel neutral about. People tend to think it is intriguing and wonderful news or are very threatened by the concept and even hostile. This is the first writing I have done about my experiences with PLRT, mainly because others have written well about it already. If you would like to learn more about PLRT, I would suggest either of the Brian Weiss books. Both are excellent.
I do speak about PLRT a lot and give seminars on self-hypnosis as a spiritual tool, and PLRT. I also have a book in process about one of my former clients who has the ability to channel the Masters. Once that is done, I would like to do some research on men and women who have the gift of channeling.
This presentation will focus on the idea of the Self as understood by the constructivists and how their orientation must be expanded to accommodate the topic of true self The issue at hand is how can the spiritual be enlivened in a Post Modem culture. Post Modernism is the result of the Newtonian mechanical world view which resulted in the loss of the mega myths that give culture its spiritual meanings and direction.
Constructivism is viewed as a transition that is needed while we live through this religion of scientism period. Caught in a prison of mechanical science, it is my thesis that we need a new science to remyth a renewed spirituality. For me Sheldrake's hypothesis of formative causation is a starting point. From his work I move into the theory of transactional analysis where I add a phylon state, a holism, that undergirds and supports the ego states discussed by Beme. This phylon state is symbolized by the Tao representing the difficulty people have in seeing the whole. Like the difficulty in science to be aware of the particle and the wave at the same time, people have a difficulty in seeing spiritual and' material existence. This difficulty is explained by Jaynes' work on consciousness, especially the section where he discusses the voice of God becoming silent as the corpus callosum forms and the resultant prominence of the left hemisphere.
From the above formulation comes a concept of Self that is radically different from Descartes' machine man. Sheldrakes' work implies God as creating and evolving. From De Chardin's work the creating and evolving God is seen as moving toward complexification, that is, more intricate structures which have more autonomy.
The human self stands between the growing edge of the creating and evolving God and the more stable habits of the creating and evolving God which we know as the earth and the stars and all other material elements.
This formulation of self has clear implications for the process of cure. Medicine is concerned with cure of the physical body, the more machine like aspects of human life. Religion is concerned with the cure of the soul, our alienation from our Creator. Psychotherapy stands between medicine and religion with a concern for cure of body and soul. The social Darwinism that informs our current psychology results in a politic that demeans the weak, sick and poor as being less worthy of survival. Five forms of psychotherapy can be identified: solution based therapy, social control, script analysis, transformational renewal, and prayer therapy. Each forin of psychotherapy represents an arbitrary point between a scientific world view and a religious world view that results in a particular picture of the true self.
David J. Dalrymple, D.Min, N.C. PsyA. - Dr. Dalrymple is a Licensed Psychoanalyst, a member of the Chicago Society of Jungian Analysts, and serves as Vice President of the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis (NAAP) and has been active in the accreditation processes enabling psychoanalysis to truly be an independent field of practice. He has taught college courses in philosophy, psychology, religion, and mythology. He is a Consulting Editor and contributor to the journal, Shamanic Applications Review.
Bruce H. Friedman, Ph.D. - Dr. Friedman is a research associate and lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Washingon University. His research areas include personality and psychophysiology, and he has published studies on the relationship between anxiety and cardiovascular activity in the journal, Biological Psychiatry. Dr. Friedman recently completed a post doctoral fellowship in behavioral medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, and is currently a fellow of the Foundation for Idiodynamics and the Creative process in St. Louis. Idiodynamics is a conceptual framework for the study of the individual, and is currently the focus of Dr. Friedman's work.
Jim Jarvis - Dr. Jarvis is a clinical psychologist who has been in private practice in St. Louis for 23 years. His doctorate combines theology and psychology from Christian Theological Seminary and Duke University, and he is an ordained United Methodist Minister. Jim has subspecialties in hypnosis and performance psychology. He is also President of the Gateway Mac Users Group and is system operator for UltraLink, a local electronic bulletin board.
Jean-Marc Mantel, M.D., is a French psychiatrist living in Israel since 1991. He is the founder of two non-profit associations: Spiramed, the International Association of Spiritual Psychiatry, created in France in 1994, which promotes spiritual approaches to medicine, psychopsychiatry and psychopathology, and tries to establish the basis of a psycho-spiritual medicine; an the Rambana Institute for Self-Realization founded in Israel in 1992, which diffuses non-dualistic teachings through books, journal, conferences and workshops, and organizes meetings for introducing self-knowledge and self-understanding in the modern religions. He is the organizer of many international meetings on spiritual medicine and psychology, and leads workshops on non-dualistic approaches to self-knowledge, yoga and meditation.
Graeme Edward Sharrock, MA, MDiv - Dr. Sharrock is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Chicago. Having a background in both theology and psychology, he lectures and conducts workshops on the relationship between mind, body, and soul and their role in human healing. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago.
C. Michael Smith, Ph.D. - Dr. Smith is a clinical psychologist, medical anthropologist, and philosophical theologian. He is co-director of Haelan Counseling Center in Niles, Michigan, and is founder of the Foundation for Religious Resources in Psychotherapy. An adjunctive professor of psychology and religion at the Chicago Theological Seminary, Dr. Smith has authored numerous articles in the field, including a pathbreaking book, Psychotherapy and the Sacred: Religious Experience and Religious Resources in Psychotherapy (Chicago, CSSR Press). and the book Jung and Shamanism in Dialogue, (forthcoming fromPaulist Press, the Jung and Contemporary Spirituality Series edited by Robert L. Moore, PhD).
Jonathan Wagner, MDiv, LCSW Mr. - Jonathan Wagner is a Certified Transactional Analyst, author and pastoral counselor with a private practice in St. Louis, MO. He is the General Coordinator of the USA Transactional Analysis Association. In the past 35 years he has been a book store manager, pastor in Montana, chaplain at a state hospital, therapist, printer, and consultant in human relations. His recent conference presentations have included discussions on dissociation in children, sexual ethics of professionals, images of hope and despair, and the interface between Spirit and Mind.