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Transpersonal psychology is the study of the human psychological impulse toward transcendence. The evolution of consciousness toward more unitive, involved and altruistic perspectives and behaviors is expanding exponentially, requiring the inclusion of the transpersonal dimension in psychological understanding. No investigation of the human experience is capable of truthful or comprehensive conclusions without considering the spiritual longings of the soul for meaning and the expansion of potential. This search for meaning, illustrated by the ancient Greek dictum, “Know Thyself,” incised on the entry to the temple at Delphi and illuminated by the common esoteric core of all major religious traditions, directs us to look within ourselves and discover the truths of our nature which naturally align us with the harmonious flow of cosmic process. There is an “awakening” to this search and a concurrent re-ordering of our lives on every level, a task transpersonal psychotherapy supports and guides. The redirection of our lives from excessive materialistic concerns toward more holistic, unitive interests and pursuits is the most difficult and rewarding task we can undertake. It requires passion, dedication and perseverance. The psychological shift from ego driven personality to soul directed reality is often accompanied by tectonic shifts in life circumstances, not just on a personal level, but culturally and globally as well. The development and union of head and heart which leads to wisdom rather than mere knowledge is a personal task enabling us to fashion a future for the earth and all its inhabitants, reflecting our highest and most evolved aspirations and potentials. One of the consequences of personal commitment to this work is a deep and satisfying relatedness within our selves and with our fellow human beings, and a dedication of our lives and talents in service to the whole. This deep satisfaction is evidence of the evolution of consciousness resulting in the experience of “heaven on earth”, where reverence for truth, love of all creation, and respect for self and other will triumph. Eventually, we will no longer experience what we now feel as “other”.
This hard won effort will lead to our rightful destiny as loving, creative participants in the healing we so urgently need, erasing the division and separation between the personal and political. Transformation, creativity, and healing dance together. Cultivate wonder, spend time in nature, seek truth, and decry fear and the promotion of it. We grow by being inspired, rather than giving in to the limits of fear. Courage and creativity expand our possibilities, so celebrate beauty, laugh, love, work hard, help others, and find joy in the details of everyday life, knowing that, as Theosophist Alice Bailey states, “No Glamour, no illusion, can long hold the man who has set himself the
task of treading the razor-edged Path which leads through the wilderness,
through the thickest forest, through the deep waters of sorrow and distress,
through the valley of sacrifice and over the mountains of vision to the gate
of Deliverance. He may travel sometimes in the dark (and the illusion of
dark is very real), he may travel sometimes in a light so dazzling and be-
wildering that he can scarcely see the way ahead; he may know what it is
to falter on the path, and to drop under the fatigue of service and of strife, he
may be temporarily side-tracked and wander down the by-paths of ambition,
of self- interest and of material enchantment, but the lapse will be but brief.
Nothing in heaven or hell, on earth or elsewhere, can prevent the progress
of the man who has awakened to the illusion, who has glimpsed the reality
beyond the glamour of the astral plane, and who has heard, even if only
once, the clarion call of his own soul.” |
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EVOCATION OF THE POSSIBLE |
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We are all the artists of our lives, and as a work of art, our life, no matter its particular circumstances, has the potential of becoming a beautiful vessel of creative meaning. Nurturing the quality of what we are creating in response to the world which informs and participates with us in our creations is an empowering and integrating endeavor, one which is necessary for our individual health as well as for the collective health of all creation. The process of creativity involves a bringing into life the intuited and unseen elements of unmanifest energy.
Creative response implies a choice of form from among infinite possibilities. Artists choose their media, aware of essence, color, form and light. Poets select words which give body to the experiences of sensual contact. Chefs choose ingredients, blending color, fragrance, taste and texture. All of us, as creators, choose our responses to our environments in much the same way, selecting certain possibilities and rejecting others, consciously and unconsciously. As modern science has indicated, we are the co-creators of our realities, an echo of the mystical truths underlying all major religious traditions We are by nature responsive, creative beings. Inspiration and expiration, the bonded twins of our first breath, are the primal creative responses we make to the wonder of emergence from the womb. There is no life, no possibility without this primal exchange. The creative response is action in relatedness with all that exists. Our seemingly independent selves are actually participating intimately in the great chain of cosmic creation, the flow of the universal process of birth, growth, decay, death and rebirth. We are a microcosm of the infinite possibilities of the macrocosmic creative response, not imitators of the divine source, but participators. With our breath, we receive, transform and return the essence of our own embodiment, the creative flow of all life. By design, we are both receptors and initiators of our creative response.
The gift of our birth, by its very act, calls forth a reply. Our first response is a holy act of receiving and returning the gift – inspiration and exhalation; receiving Life, offering a life. A response is a reply, an answer, a promise in return. What exactly is this to which we feel compelled to respond? Creativity is a response to the Mystery, the unknowable essence which we embody and in which we are immersed, the glimpse of the infinite beyond the doors of perception. This mystery, although unknowable, is what we contact in moments of wonder. A profound resonance at the depth of our being is activated, a bond which Albert Einstein knew to be the most important experience we can have. It is in the eye of wonder where we encounter what is central and unknown, where seer and seen become One.
It is precisely at this junction that transpersonal psychotherapy offers guidance and support for the artistic exploration of life issues and transitions leading to the construction of the bridge between personality and soul. It is at times of trial and despair, the notorious ”Dark Night of the Soul” known to all mystics, that the Threshold is approached and a new, expanded potential is possible if a sacrifice of the ego is made. As John G. Bennett, British philosopher and mathematician said, “The fruit of sacrifice is freedom, which is no less than the possibility of a creative act.” This freedom is the fruit of the Evocation of the Possible, a journey toward expanded individual consciousness and the creative manifestation of that life, the most healing offering we have with which to invite the future together.
On Venus’s Watch
In the Holy Hour
even the Sun sinks
in longing for
the Mystery.
A moment’s grace in equipoise –
gold, vermilion, orchid
hesitate,
sliding silky into the sea,
Neptune’s sweet and secret darkness….
each one shivering with the certainty
of death
and relying on the ecstasy of dawn.
Claudia Helade |
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