A Kalachakra Workshop on 6 Raglan Court
Just to let you know that we have heard you – many gave us feed back
that the Elizabeth Island Workshop sounded lovely, but they couldn't
come.
A non-residential 5-day workshop, otherwise with the same content will
be held in our usual space 18 – 22 June. For further details, see http://www.starbridge.com.au/en/workshop/kalachakra.htm
We recently received a feed back on our Online Transpersonal Counselling course : Are you prepared to take that quantum leap into the void?Into the nothing?
Because nothing is the truth.
And all the entertaining distracting worldly information that you provide in your first module of the Transpersonal Counselling Course is not going to help anyone get free of their unhappiness, except for a brief moment.
Is
that good enough?
Prayer and visualisation only creates more
problems, Look at the mess the planet is in.
Why not check our Barry Long website
Thank you for reading this
(signed)
Thank you
for this email, it inspired me to collect my 30 years of professional
experience in the field into a set of comments in point form, rather
than a long articles as there are already several (and counting)
commenting this and related areas on our website.
Someone writing an email like the above could just as well have suggested other solutions than Barry Long, since most people that work in these areas have their own personal preferences in regards to therapist, therapeutic method, religion, meditation praxis etc., so the answer is more broadly relevant than just his followers.
The writer has a point in her doubt about the effectiveness of Transpersonal therapy. I would in fact broaden this doubt to include all types of personal and spiritual techniques.
Firstly, only a small fraction of people is interested in this sort of work, most just live more or less happy according to their set ways, guided by custom, upbringing, peer group-identification etc.
Secondly, the ability for those interested in the field to not get it, to know about rather than to live, is sadly obvious as can be seen in all the quarrels and topdog-underdog discussions re which method is better etc. we have everywhere – For example: “My belief is right (for example Christianity), so therefore I can call myself Christian and still go against the teaching of Christianity (eg Sermon on the Mount), and argue for pre-emptive strikes , Jihad, etc. etc.- (USA currently, Ireland recently, the crusaders, Inquisition earlier etc. etc.) The idea that some external villain (“a terrorist”, Communism, someone with a religion I don't like, my neighbour, my husband/wife) is the problem, is the classical way of avoiding our own pain, by projecting our garbage unto the world.
No “knowing about” can ever make someone happy. The fact that you can analyse a joke does not make you laugh, the fact that you may understand the composition of the air that causes certain colours to appear in the sunset does not help you appreciate its beauty, etc. etc.
How has this malady come about? One way to describe this in Jungian terms is that the hitherto suppressed personal and a good part of the collective unconscious is now coming forth, being played out interpersonally, forcing us to either cop the consequences or work with our inner counterparts of these forces.
Another - related – way is to look at how humans develop, again using a Jungian term (actually Goethe was the originator) – Archetypes, we can say that our problem is that our divers archetypes has grown alienated to each other, they do not need to change their essence, they need to be integrated as conscious life-energies within ourselves.
Humans have devised a number of techniques to counteract our inner negativity, (and no, it is not enough that your neighbour uses it if you want to be happy, since your happiness depends on you taking responisibility for you).
The two most important types of technique utilises sound, or picture/objects as the basis for conetmplations, for example music, prayers affirmations, or contemplations on Icons, Tangas, Holy objects, Crystal balls etc. The reason why all these techniques work if you use them, is the law of resonance. Your inner nature is and has always been divine, so if you contemplate a sound or object that resonate with one of your doors to your divinity, you strengthen that path. and thus enables Higher Consciousness with true bliss and wisdom to come through.
Another aspect is that the ordinary mind uses these techniques negatively on a constant basis The deception of advertisements utilises this fact, our “ego-mantras” (for example, I'm to fat, too thin, too poor, too.are also all too familiar examples).
This whole area of responsible development is elaborated at length in our online courses and the articles here, for example the Earth Changes article:(http://www.starbridge.com.au/en/articles/2006/12/17/earth-changes.htm), Stanislav Grof has written a must-read article about the same topic “Planetary Survival and Consciousness Evolution” (http://www.primalspirit.com/Grof_PlanetarySurvival_art.htm).,
In conclusion we must say that it today is evident, that mankind is at a largely self-made crossroad, where we either learn to deal with our more tough subconscious issues, such as greed and violence, a malady that has come about largely from karmic and birth-trauma sources, and thus way too powerful for any ordinary therapy, only transpersonal work and meditation can match. If we do not integrate these and therefore continue projecting them, we put our own and the planets survival at risk.
Living, being alive, real joy, does not require therapy or mental concepts, it requires the courage to plunge in, to defy any other authority than ones own integrity.
To realise that this courage has always been there within, regardless of the hard knocks of life, and to learn both to “plunge in” and to take responsibility, not either or, but both and, may take some serious transpersonal therapy and Spiritual practice.
We are in a period where the worlds scientific community is eriely unison about the earth being in troubles.
The Earth is in troubles on at least 3 fronts:
The ecosystem collapsing is undoubtely mostly man-made, for example because of land clearing, pollution of waterways, overfishing etc.etc.etc. Some is also happening because of global warming.
The warming climate is caused by a number of factors, where the main culprits seems to be earth orbital variations around the sun, variations in the suns output of energy, for example affecting cloud cover, and the enormous amounts of greenhouse gasses our present way of living spews out.
Maybe the serverity of impact from the individual factors can be discussed, but not the fact that they impact. We need to realise that the globe is rounds, the problems on the other side of the globe is our problems, our globe is a closed system.
We are in a period where the worlds scientific community is eriely unison about the earth being in troubles, we are heading for big problems!
What can be done?
I believe a lot can be done:
Starting at the ballot box, James Freeman Clarke pointed out the difference that is much more important than right/left or centre: “A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.”
We need to elect a lot of statesmen!
For a long time the population and its ressource-use has been small enough for the globe to sustain a seemingly unstoppable consumerism. With the current population levels a lifestyle like we have in the west is calculated to require 3 earth's worth of ressources – or in other words in order for 1/3 of the worlds population to live as we do in the West, it is needed that 2/3 don't
This is the real reason for terrorism – The 1/3 is the real “terrorists” – by their conscious or unconscious lack of support for the 2/3 to have a decent way of living, thus in their inaction violating Christ's bid in Mathew 25: “I was hungry and you fed me”…
This is not “just” a violation of a comment in an old obsolete scripture – it is a violation of a very central command for the survival of mankind – the consequences of the already established fact of everythings interconnectedness, that no man is an island, that we all are parts of chains and circulations (For example the food chain , the circulation of water, nitrogen cycles, carbon cycles etc).
In order to be able to continue to live and let live, we must live in a way that there will not be a depletion of ressources, neither now for less fortunate people, nor in the future for what is already now obvious, our less fortunate children and grand children.
I have just finished running this years 2' Ascension course, and a couple of interesting trends start emerging:
The awareness of “Something brewing” seems to be common.
A feeling of exhaustion, of sadnes, of “It's too much” seems common.
One way of understanding this is the more and more obvious, and seemingly unstoppable direction mankind is taking – towards the haves and the have-nots, leading to anarchy and “terrorism”, towards the breakdown of echosystems, economies, societies, partly because of aforenamed, partly because of the warming of the climate, leading to everything from spread of diseases to bigger probabilities for servere weather (hot or cold), to rising of the global sea level.
But we are not powerless!
Since we are all interconected, we can in fact affect the totality by working with ourselves! No I don't believe one man can change the world (unless this person is on Christ's, Buddhas's, Muhamed's - etc.level), but I do believe that each and every person that takes it upon him or her to work with the chalenges we are faced with in such a way, that they react to their everyday challenges from integrity, rather than simple automated reactions - for example that one buys something because one needs it, not because an advertisement is cunningly provoking the idea of such a need. A lot of consumerism is an attempt to fill a inner void, that can only really be filled with inner nourishment, love, friendship, fullness, not new cars or toothpaste etc.
According to Esoteric teachings from all over the globe, and in the West brilliantly formulated by Carl Gustav Jung, our psyche can be divided up in building blocks, Jung called them Archetypes. For example the mother-archetype, father-archetype etc.
By working with these building blocks of our psyche and their connection to the deeper laws of existence, both expressed in the order and beauty of Cosmos, stars and planets, life, the web of life, intelligence and Man, in such a way, that the individual archetypical “building block” is honoured and its interconnectedness with all the other buiulding blocks is more harmonious, is a way of helping oneself coping with the increasing madness surrounding us, and a way of contributing to alliviating and in the end overcomming this same madness.