Development is driven by our attempt to know Spirit. Developmentally, we move from instinct (prepersonal) to ego (personal), and from ego to spirit (transpersonal). Arthur Koestler has viewed this model as a holarchy; that is a series of concentric circles or a nest with each senior level transcending but including its juniors. This holarchy is composed of “holons” or wholes that are simultaneously parts of other wholes. That is to say, we live in a universe that consists of neither wholes nor parts but rather whole/parts…as in a “whole letter” being part of a “whole word” which is part of a “whole sentence” and so on. These holons increase into wider unities and identities; nests within nests. Ken Wilber states that “all is made of spirit and therefore no phenomenon is closer to spirit than any other; it is both the highest goal of development and evolution as well as the ground of the entire sequence.” It is an important concept that the evolution of consciousness is not unidirectional but rather occurs as a deepening and a widening. It appears that as consciousness expands into greater and greater awareness, our ability to plumb the depths of our psyche and soma is also increased and enhanced. The converse is true as well; the deeper we plumb the depths of our psyche and soma, the greater our opportunity for expanded consciousness. And as we shall see, expanded consciousness is made possible through the experiencing of our ground of being. The image that arises for me is that of a germinating seed with its rootlets providing the connection with earth and the sprout reaching toward heaven. Given “enough”, this seed ultimately manifests it’s potential as a beautiful flower, the thread between heaven and earth. One part is not more important than any other. A disruption in one part can reverberate throughout the entire system. That is to say, if the roots, stems, or leaves are lacking or compromised in some way, the blossoming of the flower is also affected. For us as humans, intimately entwined with and arising out of nature, healing is the process whereby we bring to consciousness the distorted holons so the holarchy can return to the harmony in which our full potential can be realized.

Heritage and the Triune Brain

If we observe ourselves through the lens of evolutionary biology, it becomes clear that we have not left anything behind, but rather have continued to build upon what has come before. The GCOB is reflected once again in our physical development as we move from our single cell origins through the developmental patterns of older life forms to arrive at our current complex human form. By way of illustration, and to support the purpose of this paper, prominent neuroscience researcher Paul MacLean’s Triune Brain Model is extremely useful. Dr. MacLean observed that the human brain evolved in 3 major evolutionary leaps that are revealed in 3 primary structures. Together they make up what we recognize as our brain. Simplistically, they can be remembered as representing the body, heart, and mind respectively.

The first and oldest brain, referred to as the reptilian or instinctual brain, is primarily concerned with self-preservation and survival. When threat arises from the environment, this brain’s only options are fight, flight or freeze. In the absence of danger, this brain’s focus moves inward toward quiet, rest, and nurturing of the inner environment. No action, reaction, or physical movement can be carried out without the participation of this basic brain This “low” brain constantly seeks homeostasis and equilibrium, balancing of the yin and yang. The reptilian brain is the source of powerful unconscious forces; it is where the kundalini energy lies.

The second or mammalian brain, home to our limbic system, emerged to support our need and ability to care for dependent offspring, as well as providing survival advantages through community and social interaction. It provides us with our sense of self. It is the place from which our deep emotions originate such as rage, terror, love, bliss and grief. This brain, often referred to as our “health brain”, receives information from inside and outside. It is the part of us that brings significance to relationship and is responsible for our experience of feelings. Emotions are at the root of everything more complicated than a reflex in human activity. They are our motivator and omnipresent guide. This is the world of affect, and it is indispensable in manifesting our heart’s longing and soul’s journey.

The third and most recent brain, the neo-cortex, developed in humans the capacity for logic, words and ideas. Whereas our relatives in the animal kingdom tend to discharge energies in uninhibited ways, humans (as a result of this cortical development) can block our somato-emotional expression by using this high brain to control the flood of primitive forces and emotions flooding up from the older parts of the brain. The neo-cortex can be incredibly useful in crisis, keeping us planning, deciding and processing logical potentials and outcomes. This part of us works to control our experience of the unbearable. It also allows us to disassociate from our feelings and felt senses, and come back to them at a later time. The neo-cortex, hosting the ego with its fear of losing control, can inhibit the unconscious restorative instinctual responses generated by the two lower brains. Life force energy remains locked inside of us, as our high brain continues to disconnect from our felt experience.

Fortunately, the brain longs for wholeness. If we do not trust, nurture, and cultivate the upwelling of our true nature, the striving for wholeness may and often does express itself as symptoms, accidents, or disturbances. An understanding of the forces to feelings to words concept is a very useful way to follow the natural flow of phenomenon through the 3 brains of our experience. The forces and feelings of the first 2 brains are our unconscious. That is to say, if we choose to work with the unconscious, a strong relationship with these aspects of ourselves is imperative. Consider the world of dreams; the nightly news of our unconscious. Dreams are the result of information processed through all three brains. They begin as delta waves in the low brain and ascend to theta waves which are characteristic of the limbic or mid-brain and move into cortical awareness as alpha waves (characteristic of the right hemisphere) and then beta waves (characteristic of the left hemisphere). Forces to feelings to words. We are left then with images, messages, and emotions from an experience that we call dreaming. Ideally, through the high brain, we assign meaning to these and other experiences through language. Words, good ideas, and logic mean nothing to at least 2 brains out of 3. If we speak without the resources or experience of these older parts of ourselves, we are disconnected from our own ground of being. It is important to bring our awareness to our instinctual and emotional brains and spinal cord; those deep regions where we experience creation without words or symbols. As we are able to become conscious of them, we create words appropriate to their expression. As we remain unconscious of these energies (forces to feelings) we are at the mercy of our past and are destined to repeat it. The real language of self begins as nerve impulses start, or our hearts begins to race, or the body expresses itself through gesture or movement.

As we ascend from innate movements, through feelings of pleasure and awe, we find ways to express these feelings as appropriate social gestures or speech. This occurs through a process of meaning making between the limbic and cortical brains. Robert Johnson states the impossibility of living without meaning in our lives. Art, music and poetry provide important bridges for felt experience and meaning making. Neuroscience researchers are clear that “the entire neocortex of humans continues to be regulated by the paralimbic regions from which it evolved.” We can influence our emotional life but we cannot order it. If we value analysis over intuition, logic above feeling; the result is unhappiness and missing out on the nature and significance of our lives.

Newberg and D’Aquili have set forth that Spiritual experience is intimately interwoven with human biology and biology, in some way, compels the spiritual urge. Science is correlating spiritual experiences with neurological activity. Neurology makes it clear; there’s no other way for God to get into your head except through the brains neural pathways because that is how we experience reality. Through a process referred to as synasthesia, all openings are interrelated within the three brain system. Our skin’s pores are the openings that allow energy to come into our deepest brain. The nose, mouth, and genitals are openings into our limbic system. The eyes and ears are openings more directly related to our neocortex. Spiritual experience occurs through the inter-relationship and coordination of all three brains. No single brain system generates consciousness. Our capabilities have arisen out of the evolution of reptilian, limbic, and cortical functions. As human beings seeking to once again arrive at God’s door, we must do so through our innate physiology. This includes the most ancient as well as the most recently evolved parts of ourselves. We need to honor this heritage. Bringing these unconscious parts of ourselves into consciousness creates choice, responsibility, and the possibility of fulfilling our evolutionary potential.

Heritage and Instincts

Our early development arises out of the need for physical survival and the need to relate to the external environment. Depth psychology recognizes 2 basic instincts, the survival instinct and the sexual instinct. Almaas includes a 3rd, the social instinct. All 3 of these instincts involve our physical survival but utilize different experiences, energies, and functions. These instincts are organized by the nervous system and correlate progressively with the first three chakras. Additionally, they may be perceived as the operational underpinnings of the 3 brains respectively (reptilian, mammalian, and societal). Initially, it is only the survival instinct (reptilian brain) that is developed and fully operating. This instinct expresses itself through strength and activity which corresponds to the sympathetic (yang) branch of the ANS. This is balanced by the fundamental merging aspect which corresponds to the parasympathetic (yin) branch of the ANS. We are able to observe this phenomenon in the infant who is distressed, hungry, or in pain as the strength essence floods the organism as the sympathetic branch is drawn into activity. This activity may be expressed as crying or thrashing which brings the caretaker who resolves to eliminate the distress by feeding the infant or metabolizing the forces and feelings that are overwhelming. As the stress is discharged, the dominance of the parasympathetic branch results in a flooding of the organism with the merging essence, with its contented and quiet rest. Throughout this recurring cycle the infant is totally dependant on the caretaker’s ability to autonomically and limbically regulate the child. That is, the mother functions as an auxillary ego (object/relations) for the egoless child. As the child’s ego develops, the child experiences autonomy and independence and through the course of normal development is able to autoregulate or self-soothe, to a greater or lesser degree, independently of the mother. At this point, the sexual and social instincts come into full operation. The sexual instinct (limbic) develops to take care of this charge-and-discharge cycle. As we mature, there is a mutual dependency within a couple for this autonomic regulation. Additionally, the caretaking activities of feeding, protection, and so on are organized by the social instinct (cortical). The individual’s ego is mutually dependent on the community or society for the discharging of these activities. We can observe how the sexual and social instincts are derived out of the original survival instinct experienced by the infant in relation to its mother.

The Prepersonal World

This prepersonal milieu contributes greatly to the template and direction that the infant’s evolution will ultimately take. This pre-egoic reality is established through our primary relationship with our caregiver, typically our mother. This early world of the baby is the land of sensation and feeling. In the first 2 months of life, the neonate has the experience of inside and outside as being the same. There is no Other. The newborn’s physiology is regulated by the adult meeting its physical (reptilian) and emotional (limbic) needs while concurrently being bathed in a world of words. The infant’s world is that of a boundary-less self, essentially undifferentiated from the mother (caregiver). In an ideal world, there is a seamless regulation between baby/mother that soothes or merges. Almaas’ refers to this as the “unity duality”, which corresponds to the symbiotic period as described by Margaret Mahler. The infant experiences itself through this merging and also experiences the mother’s feelings as its own. In the beginning of life, the nervous system is still forming. Our spinal cord, functioning much like an antenna, continually receives information from the surface of our bodies, registering all that is occurring around us. As we grow, our skin continues to be the critical interface between our experience of the inner and outer worlds. In the first year of life the infant learns basic trust or mistrust. The skin registers this and sends signals via the nervous system for the body to respond or react accordingly to the best of its ability. Literally, touch is imperative to survival and it is only through relationship that human beings thrive. From conception, we are a set of potentials being molded and remolded, responding to a constantly changing environment. Our early caregivers are that environment and we depend on them to provide a safe container for healthy development. We know ourselves through being known by others.

Initially, the baby only knows itself as a stream of sensations. Our psychological skin is developed in direct relationship to the efforts of our caregiver to help us survive the torrential forces and feelings that flood our baby-body. It is through relationship that human beings thrive. The soothing effect of the mother’s body, her calmness, her joy at touching her infant – all of these translate directly into the psychological and physical well-being of the infant. Ultimately, these interactions result in the child’s ability to self-soothe and develop appropriate self-care. As regards this early world and its place in the client/healer relationship; the more identified the client is with the pre-personal experience, the more responsibility the therapist has to hold the powerful role of the “good enough” caregiver. We are able to recognize the client’s identification with their prepersonal world through their expectation that others will take care of them, narcissistically filling themselves up with unfinished business. As the client is held within a container of safety and contact, they receive messages of hope within their bodies which hold old limited patterns established when the primary care taking relationship was disturbed or untrustworthy. Importantly, and for good reason, perfect parenting is neither possible nor desirable. What is desirable is that the parenting is in Winnicott’s words “good enough”. Normal development is dependent upon failures within the parent/child dyad that encourage individuation by the child. Additionally, these “failures” support the individual’s movement from a “black and white” reality to one of multiple hues, and one reflective of life’s richness and complexity.

As we continue on our journey toward wholeness we must address these failures or “misses”. We must look back toward our earliest neurology, the seat of our unconscious, the instinctual and emotional parts of our being. At the core of therapy and the primary force behind each adult’s capacity to grow lies in our ability to offer or receive what Thomas Lewis has referred to as love’s 3 neural faces; limbic resonance, regulation, and revision. These “faces” refer to our ability to intuit another’s inner state; to affect or be affected; to be harmonically induced or regulated “enough” to experience an alteration in our way of being. Carl Jung spoke the following words to Robert Johnson, “it is what you are that heals, not what you know”. We must be careful not to overvalue our doingness or undervalue our beingness. It is said that through therapy, the client becomes more like the therapist, embodying qualities and attributes which support a rich and meaningful life. Although it is not possible to change the original parenting experience, through relationship we are able to, slowly and overtime, heal early experiences that may have been damaging. The healing process requires that we limbically “meet it, mourn it, and allow movement to resolution.” This is sound advice for all of life transitions which we face.

The Egoic World

The unity duality or symbiotic stage of development lays the groundwork for what Mahler has called separation-individuation. This is the development of the personality and ego which includes identifications, self-image and self-concept. As identification with personality increases, there is a proportional decrease in the experience of our essential being or nature. As we shall see, this ego self develops in response to the need to protect our essential nature. Overtime, our ego identification becomes so complete, we will do whatever we can to preserve it at the center of our lives. We will stay with what is familiar, for if we don’t, our “protection” will crumble. Our existential fear is that the surrendering or death of our ego means we will cease to exist.

As we follow development we observe the baby’s awareness ascending through and including the instinctual, emotional, and societal brains. The body ego is the first to develop as the infant begins to experience itself as separate. This occurs prior to language within the first year of life and continues to about 3 years of age. During this time, language develops and we observe the ascension of consciousness from forces to feelings to words. The construction of the ego creates a separate self that resists being destroyed by the forces. It is such an extraordinary achievement to develop a personal self, an “I” or ego, which maintains a sense of clarity and continuity. This is extremely valuable, but this “I” comes at a great price. This separate self is responsible for our experiences of separation, loneliness and alienation. Most individuals spend most of their lives in the egoic. From this place, we experience ourselves as small, personal, and limited. Beneath our anger, sadness, and fear, lies the longing for connection; a desire to regain the love that has been lost.

In our modern technological culture there is a tremendous degree of differentiation which makes this split larger and increases the difficulty in bringing ourselves to wholeness. My sense is, if we succeed in our return to wholeness, it is made that much greater for the road we have necessarily traveled. I recall when I was 11 years old my father told me I needed to specialize. I can still feel the sting of his words. I felt if they were true I would lose the experience of who I was and become someone less. From my current point of view, I can observe the wisdom of his words and also recognize the source and wisdom of my resistance. I was destined to leave the world of my childhood and I was reluctant to lose contact with what was and is most important to me; my sense of wholeness and aliveness. Unfortunately, we observe the cost to many of our society’s members for this greater degree of differentiation. This is seen in the astronomical rise of neuroses and schizophrenia due to the experience of greater separation and alienation.

So then, how do we move from our experience of separation to a life of richness, connection, and fulfillment? How does our drive to regain spirit utilize this very necessary separation?

By way of personal example, my partner Michele and I have been working with a specific relationship dynamic (it is in the egoic stage where we encounter transference and projection). When I am feeling separate (that is identified with ego), experiencing unmet needs or expectations (prepersonal), I become resentful when she asks something of me or seems to expect me to take care of her. I may give her what she needs outwardly, but inwardly we both feel something is off. Exploring this issue, I have discovered my early transference with my mother when her needs superceded my own, when she made it about herself and I felt unseen or abandoned. My intuited experience is that when she made it about her, she needed something precious to my being for her own soothing. She met her needs vicariously through me in some way. I notice with Michele, that I transfer these early experiences onto her. This results in my resentment and withdrawal. She then reacts by “making it about her”, which resonates with my original wound and off we go. In a good moment I might recognize the anger and resentment as the ego’s attempt to protect itself from annihilation and abandonment. Through over-identification with my ego, I have experienced this scenario as a threat to my essential being. This is not my essential being but rather the ego that developed to protect this essence. The resentment is the attempt of the ego to protect itself from the original pain, the pain of lost connection. The irony is that this response actually perpetuates separation. As I become aware of this transference, I experience both tears and laughter. The tears are from the early hurtful experiences of not having mother be there for me and being in need of something that I was all too willing to give. The laughter is about the insanity, ridiculousness, and discovery of projecting this onto Michele. These simultaneous experiences leave me flush with insight, freedom and liberation.

This serves as a very good reminder that the small and limited ego does not belong in the driver’s seat. I must learn to humble and quiet my ego. The healthy ego relates to the world rather than becoming identified with it. The ego is properly used as the organ of awareness, collecting data and information, rather than the organ of decision making. Properly applied, the ego is used not for decision making but as the eyes, ears, nose, mouth and hands of God—collecting information, marshalling energies, for the task at hand, providing discipline and courage.

The dilemma is that we must separate from God before we can re-unite with God. We must first separate to create an objective standpoint from which we can observe. This separation is the source of our suffering and alienation, resulting in the experience whereby “rivers are no longer rivers and mountains are no longer mountains.” In the words of Jack Engler: “You’ve got to be somebody before you can be nobody”. We must become adequately differentiated to bring ourselves to wholeness. It takes an observer to experience the existence of heaven. Our journey necessitates the creation of a separate self to experience the flow of love. How then do we restore our unity with God where “rivers are once again rivers and mountains are once again mountains.”? Our evolutionary journey requires that we separate from oneness (the childhood paradise), develop an ego, live a cultural life, and then reunite with the oneness of God. Throughout this journey there is the constant pull backward toward the world of prepersonal unity or what is referred to as the mother complex. The abuse of drugs, alcohol, material consumption, and food are examples of this with physical suicide representing the ultimate form. This is the right problem but we are addressing it in the wrong way; we cannot go backward to paradise, only forward. According to Robert Johnson, many spiritual communes, monasteries, and spiritual practices in the US are nothing but institutionalized Mother Complexes, with selfishness and ego regression running rampant in the name of spirituality. Consciousness cannot go backward, it can only go forward. This regression is dangerous, it is only through progression that we gain our soul. Our journey requires a differentiation that carries us toward transformation.

For the personality to let go and for its identity to dissolve, the individual must deal with the basic issue of survival which lies beneath the functioning of all instincts. As we deal with this survival instinct (prepersonal), this increases our understanding of death, ego, and essence. On the deeper levels, personality develops and forms for our protection and survival, and for the protection and survival of our essential nature. Overtime, identification with the ego develops to the extent that we mistakenly assume it is our true nature. The ego experiences giving up of control and surrendering to the unconscious as tantamount to suicide. As we steadfastly uncover our essential aspects and functions, it becomes progressively easier for the personality to let go. The ego will long for its own death when it begins to notice itself as the barrier to a life of abundance and fullness.

In the words of Goethe:

This disidentification from the personality or the experience of ego death, is prerequisite for the rediscovery of essence. The child’s early environment and its response to that environment are of the utmost importance throughout the life cycle and are a function of how our spontaneous gesture, essence, and going on being are repressed or nurtured. As we mature we may take heart and guidance from “Poem” by Wendell Berry:

The heroic ego has an important call to rely on life. We must utilize the ego to take care of business, the small every day details of life; while depending upon something larger (the will of God) for the big decisions. It is imperative that there be a strong and secure ego before it can be transcended. As we reach a sufficient stage of development, we might even welcome the forces which arise to destroy us!

The Transpersonal World

Wilber states that all things are one with the Divine Ground, the Ground of All being. We are either aware of that oneness or not. We cannot truly lose oneness with this ground, for to do so would be to cease to exist. As infants, we lose consciousness with that union. We are in the prepersonal, not the unconscious transpersonal. We become alienated, immersed in Samsara, and living in an unconscious Hell. Through the development of our ego and the experience of separation, we begin to wake up to our alienation and proceed from an unconscious to a conscious Hell. We awaken to the flames of Hell all around us, to register our own suffering; to become aware of the desire-ridden world that unconsciously dominated our experience as infants. This increase of awareness to a conscious Hell may dominate the remainder of our lives through our behaviors and choices. We may choose to numb ourselves to that which is unbearable and to make the most of the dualistic world in which we find ourselves. There is, however, another possibility. We might continue our growth and development and move into authentic spirituality; “where trees are again trees and rivers are again rivers.”

Where the extraordinary exists in the ordinary. We see then the actual course of human ontogeny:

from unconscious Hell, to conscious Hell, to conscious Heaven;
from subconscious to self-conscious, to superconscious;
from simple to complex to divine or illumined consciousness;
or from prepersonal to personal to transpersonal.

Transpersonal experience

The transpersonal experience is one in which the individual gains an awareness of Self as something extending beyond the ego. There is the experience of knowing oneself from the inside, recognizing an inner energy or core of knowing and being. There is a feeling of connection to a greater flow of consciousness, or being, or God. Through this inner surrender there is a relaxing and healing of the body. The paradox is that as we surrender to our being, we become being, becoming the knowledge in order to know the knowledge. This occurs in our total being as we recognize body, self, and soul as one. In Robert Johnson’s remarks regarding his journeys to India, “I first went to be Spiritualized and I came home Humanized.” All the things we felt as babies are felt and known again--the energy flowing freely in our bodies, the sense of connectedness with Mother, and through her the sense of continuity with all life. Coming back to our bodies, we find that our inner knowledge validates what we experience on the outside and we are able to appreciate and express our internal truths.

After my freshman year at Barbara Brennan’s, I was given and received an incredible gift. Myself and a group of a dozen or so classmates went for a 5 day “Spring Break” stay out on the beach at Montauk. During this time, without agenda and given time to just be, I spontaneously moved into a place of synchronicity, where life has no walls. Existence and my place in it were once again clear. For me it was a time of healing and loving, for myself and others. I knew that your successes and failures were my successes and failures. My heart was open, we were indeed one. I was being offered the gift of discernment. When I moved out of this experience I could very quickly invite myself back to it. This was truly a blessed time.

On my flight home to the West Coast, something very dramatic happened. I was flying home with a friend who had changed his flight so we might continue our journey together. The seat between us was empty and he asked who I would like to fly home with today. I responded, "Christ". He very neatly constructed a symbol of Christ out of the white paper motion sickness bag taken from the seat jacket and placed Him in the seat between us. I had never consciously taken Christ into my life with this level of awareness. As we prepared for take-off, I "knew" that our plane was going to crash. I had known with certainty many things over the course of the previous days that had proved to be true, and this felt like one of them. I believed I was being given choice. I could stand up and say "excuse me, I think I'll wait for the next plane", or scream out hysterically, "we're going to crash!" Or, since Christ was on this plane, I could ride with Him. If this was my destiny, and what I would die for, then so be it. There was much I would miss, much life unlived. Yet it seemed to me that I was choosing life in death, as well as love over fear.

As Jesus said in Revelation, chapter 2, verse 10 :"Be ye faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life."

We took-off, there was fear, there was excitement, there was love. Our plane did not crash! My awareness remained expanded for days following and has returned to this experience of Grace intermittently. For I do believe that this gift of compassion and awareness was indeed Grace, and my conscious journey has become the cultivation of this awareness.

In the words of Stephen Levine from Healing Into Life and Death: "Grace is the experience of our true nature. Grace is the experience of the effusive peace of unbounded being. And though one cannot create Grace with the snap of the fingers, it is potential in each moment. Though Grace cannot be created, it can always be invited by preparing for the present. Karma is Grace. Grace is Karmic. The optimum preparation for death is a wholehearted opening to life.”

Although there is no one death and no one rebirth, Gurdjieff put it this way, “when a man awakes he can die; when he dies he can be born.”
When Jung was asked to define the meaning of a human life he responded by stating it was “to relocate the center of gravity of the personality from the ego to the Self”. This is another way of saying what the apostle Paul observed; “I must decrease that He may increase.”

The following truths are representative of the transpersonal experience:

In 2001, I entered into the world of Bert Hellinger's phenomenological family constellation work. I experience it as relying on the ever-unfolding mystery. I perceive of this mystery as the transpersonal realm. In this ineffable reality there are no limits. A field that once entered, embraces the mystery out of which we arise. I am excited about what lies on the horizon, about what is possible. This work has been such a gift in my life. It has brought a depth and level of compassionate understanding to my own human journey and the journey of my own Soul. It reveals to me over and over again the Mystery that embraces us all.

An inspiration I have received and would like to share with you is the relationship of this work to the human developmental journey, personal and collective. A cornerstone of Family Constellation work is that children, out of a sense of loyalty, concern, and affection, will do whatever needs to be done to "bring order" to an out-of-balance family system. Ultimately this attempt to bring order will fail because the child is the one who requires nurturance to reach his or her potential as a human being. The belief by the child that they may "fix" the family is the result of "magical thinking". The responsibility of providing nurturance and order belongs to those who come before, specifically the parents. Often, as a result of what the parents did or did not receive, their ability to be a nurturing presence for their children is compromised. It becomes easy to see how balance and/or a lack of balance within our current families are connected with the preceding generations. We all come from somewhere, and without the connection to what has come before we are unable to live fully the life that is given us.

"Transcendence arrives when you embrace the life that is given."
- Bert Hellinger

It has been said that it is only doubt and fear that block our entry into the transpersonal realm. I recognize this very clearly in my own life. Carlos Casteneda wrote a brief thesis on the enemies of knowledge in his first book, "the teachings of Don Juan." He named fear as the first enemy of knowledge. "It's only when someone has overcome fear that he or she can see reality clearly." Bert Hellinger describes the means of overcoming this fear: "By being in harmony with the world as it is, and with everything as it is. The person who is in tune with death, with illness, with his or her own fate and with the fate of others, and with the end and transitory nature of the world, has overcome fear and gained clarity." Fear is the providence of the ego. The ego fears its death and in doing so is challenged to surrender its control. As we explore this, we may be blessed to discover that it is only our emotional attachment to these experiences that diminishes. The ego is then free to assume its rightful role of relating to the world rather than identifying with it, of taking its place of honor in service to the Self and the will of God.

Pre/Trans Fallacy

If we are unable to truly surrender ourselves to our spiritual journey or as we surrender ourselves, we encounter the fascinating world of Wilber’s pre/trans fallacy. This is the world which the Romantics and much of the New Age have mistaken for authentic spirituality. In this world, the individual confuses prepersonal experience with transpersonal experience. This is the world of fantasy and magical thinking. Human relationship has been paramount in my life. My love relationships have historically and painfully revealed the pre/trans fallacy at work. I have had the fantasy that the Other will magically complete me in some way that I have felt incomplete. Fortunately, this has and does continue to change. What is clear for me is that we cannot skip developmental stages. What we are able to do, as we mature, is to use fantasy to set our intention and align our will toward our own unfoldment. Fantasy, therefore, can be used in a pre-personal or a trans-personal way. Each of us must continue to observe our relationship with these worlds. We must continue to ask ourselves if our actions are bringing greater harmony and wholeness into the world, or if they are only benefiting ourselves and our beliefs.

The Healer/Client Relationship

The healer's personal journey is of the utmost importance in determining his/her ability to be of assistance to those who have come for care. In my own life, I must be able to hold increasingly boundless states of being while simultaneously being willing and able to penetrate the very depths of my own incarnation, what is unknown to me. This is what is meant in the shamanic traditions as "having a foot in both worlds." In bringing the very essence of that expansion and connection with larger realities to my physical existence, I allow for the ongoing spiritualization of matter. This is a continual process whereby increasing levels of vital energy are retrieved from their hiding places. The reward for this retrieval is the manifestation of greater aliveness and wholeness. This is made possible by continuing to "die my little deaths" and opening to the bardos of daily living; those places where as I die, I grow.

We find ourselves living in a remarkable time in which our knowledge has become greatly differentiated. The price we have paid is the experience of increased separation, alienation, and isolation. Concurrently, we find ourselves on a threshold in which diverse schools of thought are being recognized as different flowers in the same meadow. Science, theology, philosophy, psychology, etc. are merging into exciting new fields that are inclusive of one another. In the words of Ken Wilber “Instead of science telling us about the lower 2 floors and religion the highest 2 floors (in a 5 story building); what if they both told us something different about each and every floor. What if science and religion were related not as floors in a building, but as equal columns in a mansion? Not one on top of the other but rather each alongside the other, all the way up and down.” The GCOB offers us a nest in which to rest the spectrum of human consciousness. The rewards lie in the opportunity to weave and evolve our lives into greater understanding and wholeness. My prayer is that each of us discovers our own path to wholeness.

Bibliography

Balancing Heaven and Earth by Robert Johnson
Emotional Anatomy by Stanley Keleman
Essence with the Elixir of Enlightenment by A.H. Almaas
General Theory of Love by Thomas Lewis et al
Living Your Dying by Stephen Levine
Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram
The Eye of Spirit by Ken Wilber
The Three Faces of Mind by Elaine de Beauport
Waking the Tiger by Peter Levine
Why God Won’t Go Away by Newberg and Aquili

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