Therapy and Beyond
You can never awaken using the same system that put you to sleep in the first place~G.I. Gurdjieff
1. Most people are unaware they have a separate centre which is their real self. As Gurdjieff said they are in a type of sleep. (Immersion)
2. They identify with ideas they have of themselves as if they can think themselves into existence! Who does the thinking?
3. We contend that the the competitive world of modernity hijacks our locus of self determination. Everyone else does it so the herd must be right!
4. This site adopts the tone of a fellow traveller. Our forum is available to discuss the nature of the levels of emergence.
5. No Churcheology, Scientism or preformed rhetoric please. Value your own experience, think MET (minimum essential terminology) & see where we go!
One can ascend to higher consciousness via 5 progressive steps
What then are the 5 steps!
The Self Emergence Pyramid
1st Step ~ Who are You?
Increasing awareness of the immersion process
Most people live unaware that there is another centre in them that is their true self. We are identified with a role externally or our body & feelings internally.
Its murky. Under pressure we revert to defending the idea of who we are & especially our feelings. We might feel angry but deeper it feels as if we ARE anger. This is classic Immersion. Lost in the swamp!
Zen, Buddhism & more recently Eckhart Tolle have stated we are not our body or our mind & feelings.
If you think back on yourself as a young person observing others then isn’t it the same you inside that now reads this with older eyes? Where have you been?!
During immersion we are contained in this body self. This incorporates the ego level with conditioning & contaminations from childhood & life experiences. These anxieties and doubts about self can operate subliminally in what I termed the Fourth Wave in The Livingness
This body self is like an original block (matrix, mater, material). Our real self needs to be extricated from this ‘massa confusa’! But we dont want to ‘feel’ separate.
Self Awareness is emergent in this stage.
2nd Step~ Everyday Consciousness
Leaving the herd (from Chomsky, 2011) &
becoming aware of the
fishbowl!
Sociology terms the phrase Modernity, a time covering the industrial revolution.
Modernity spurned the notion to work like a clock/machine because it meant good work ethics; to get ahead, be modern and compete for material gains.
Personal worth became dependent on what you could do. Identity was defined & valued by what you would be when you grow up, not by inner being.
So real being is hidden behind an achievement mask. William James coined the term ME-Self, this material based externalized front & used I-Self to cover the true self hidden behind.
The fishbowl forms from growing up seeing everyone else hiding their true I-Self and valueing the outer Me-Self as if this must be right. The school yard child conforms to fit in.
This is called prescriptive living: To find out the right rules, values & beliefs and click apply!
This separation from the herd is an externalized analogy. We do of course need to separate internally from the herd. The movie we watch out there is really produced & directed internally!
Identity is emergent in this stage.
The person who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The person who walks alone is likely to discover places no one has ever been before. Creativity in living is not without its attendant difficulties. For peculiarity breeds contempt. And the unfortunate thing about being ahead of your time is that when people finally realize you were right, they’ll say it was obvious all along. You have two choices in life: You can dissolve into the mainstream, or you can be distinct. To be distinct, you must be different. To be different, you must be what no one else but you can be. …
—Alan Ashley-Pitt
3rd Step~ Self Determined Exploration
Believing you can be different-The achieving Self
The next step up of Emergence comes from the awakening that you are not just part of the herd and you can do things your way, make a difference in life.
So the hero’s effort to separate from the herd is externalized into outer attainments.
Robert Kennedy former US Senator said: There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were and ask why not?
You can feel there is a real awakening to inspiration here and a higher sense of calling. He invokes the use of imagination, vision and the voice to do things differently.
This is the upside of wanting to do something unique with your existence. The downside is achieving in order to prove you are of worth. Nothing achieved outwardly will increase real inner self worth. (It’s already there we just dont realize it.)
The achiever wonders what’s next, what is after the gold medal? One has had the right marriage even the right divorce, owned land and vehicle, parented the 1.5 children and filled the prescription. Maybe they have had the midlife crisis, done the evidence based therapy courses and read the endless self help books. Friends and relatives come and go……
Its as if we knew there was a treasure in the house but we have come to an empty room!
Existential determination is emergent in this stage
4th Step~True North
Deep Purpose
Krishnamurti, said that intelligence comes with the quietness of the brain. When we find our inner centre it operates independently of the brain/mind. The unconscious is the threshold of the other dimension & the source of true knowing.
Whilst we relate IQ to the brain, this is an intelligence of consciousness. We can call this CQ (SeekU). When you meet a person of high CQ they seem to have a bearing and a source that vibrates to the beat of a different drum. Its nice to be around them, when they speak its worth listening to.
Over the years I noticed many clients had an experience that I termed a Bearing Point. These were solitary experiences where the person had an inner knowing that they were whole and complete. These are a brief moments yet profound as they come from the inner CQ.
This is a sense of your True North, not only your true self but your reminder that real direction and purpose come from inside. Now to express your achievements you have the sense of what Joseph Campbell called helping hands!
Meaning & purpose are now a lived experience coming of itself. Beauty, truth, love & worth all come from within, from the source of one’s true being. This was originally discussed in my book The Livingness, 2018. So one has found that the inner is the source yet still feels somewhat separate at this stage.
Inner personal meaning and worth are emergent in this stage.
Where or When
It seems we stood and talked like this, before
We looked at each other in the same way then
But I can’t remember where or when
The clothes you’re wearing are the clothes you wore
The smile you are smiling you were smiling then
But I can’t remember where or when
Some things that happened for the first time
Seem to be happening again
And so it seems that we have met before
And laughed before, and loved before
But who knows where or when
Rodgers & Hart, 1937
The 5th Step~ The transcendent dimension
Part of something bigger?
One of my favourite songs opposite haunted me because it defies classification. You could say Deja Vu but it seems to go beyond that. Anamnesis?? (Plato’s soul remembering) And that is precisely the need here, to go beyond the world of appearances with boldness!
Music is a dimension of its own. Images beyond the words touch us. What was Hart feeling as he wrote those timeless words. How do composers ‘download’ music complete with little need to compose them at all. Where does it come from?
The mystery beyond the tapestry of life, the images and feelings beyond the song.
In this 5th step we reach for that which is beyond the usual rhetoric of religion, wise people, the East, mindfulness, new age & any formulated statements. What if they are all wrong? I don’t mean completely but what if mostly: And we just handed it down over the centuries?
Otherwise we are guilty of re-merging with yet another ‘body’. Another herd which is largely ‘out there’. Theology, Jung, Zen & etc etc are other bodies of prescripted thought patterns for us to hide securely in whilst not evolving. We are adhered to a new ‘block’.
I have had numerous fascinating experiences, miraculous even. Experiences bring a type of knowing. Nearly half of the world has had paranormal experiences. People close them down yet these and near death experiences point to another world.
Emergence at this level means living normally on one hand, yet as if the other world walks with us, as we live it. It means being open to the subtle and resisting the immersive.
We live with a spiritual body, which is us, whole & complete within this physical body-vehicle. We can experience the transcendent if we give it creedance. Find your words, boldly go further than the crowd.
The openness to explore life’s mystery is emergent in this step, yet participating in something far more grand!