Essential Wholeness

Body, Mind, Soul and Spirit

Eric Lyleson — Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:36:35 +0000

Essential Wholeness is the sum total of what it is to be a human being. We are human and we are being. Our Essential Wholeness includes body, mind, soul and spirit. What is changing and what is unchanging. What is changing is like an ecosystem. As human animals we are imbedded in and dependent on the rest of nature. Our wellbeing as humans is dependent on living in harmony with our own nature, which is at one with all of nature. We are also Being. Our deepest nature is spirit or pure awareness. There is only one spirit, which is the unified field of energy and information out of which all of creation arises and disappears back into.

The bridge between spirit and body is soul. Soul allows us to experience the connection spirit and the rest of creation is soul. It is soul that awakens to its true spiritual nature while manifesting full creative potential through the human mind and body.

Mahayana Buddhism refers to these three aspects as dharmakaya as the Absolute; the unified and unmanifested essence of the universe. Sambhogakaya (soul) is what is in the process of realising enlightenment through spiritual practice. In Eastern traditions, it is what reincarnates for lifetime to lifetime. Nirmanakaya is the body that appears in the world. Dharmakaya (spirit) is like the atmosphere, sambhogakaya (soul) is like clouds, and nirmanakaya (body) is like rain. Clouds are a manifestation of atmosphere that enables rain. These dimensions are sometimes referred to as causal, subtle and gross. They are present in deep, dreamless sleep and silent meditation (dharmakaya), dreaming, imagination and trance (sambhokaya) and ordinary waking consciousness (nirmanakaya). The unified field of these dimensions is referred to as svabhavikakaya. I like to refer to that as Essential Wholeness.

The self-concept or ego is identified with the body and its primary focus is on our survival by satisfying our instinctual drives. The Enneagram system traditionally recognizes three basic human instincts: self-preservation, social and sexual. In other words, focussing on survival of the body with food, shelter, etc., survival of and within society (we cannot survive without the clan), and survival of the species through procreation. The ego is a collection of habitual beliefs and behaviours that dictate how one survives by acquiring things, our place in the group and sex. Healthy egos, thanks to prompting from the soul, evolve over time and coincide with changes in how we relate to our survival. A healthy ego is going to have different concerns at eighty years old than it did at fifteen. The development of healthy egos has historically been the focus of most psychotherapy. Symptoms usually arise in our lives when our egoic self-concept is more concerned about its survival than even the survival, let alone thriving of the body. For example, if I identify with being the kind of person that thinks my career and money are the most important things for my survival, and consequently use most of my social relationships merely to further my career; I may find myself in the therapist’s office wondering why I’m depressed. In the process of therapy, I will understand that I’ve been ignoring my developmental needs for friendship and sexual fulfilment.

The soul is the realm of the unconscious and what Jung referred to as the collective unconscious. It is the realm of archetypes and myths that inform and organize our human existence. At the most basic level we can think of soul as the universal laws that govern a self-organising universe.

Biochemist Rupert Sheldrake coined the term “morphic field” as that which organizes the characteristic structure and pattern of activity of systems and their members. Soul manifests at different levels. There is the individual soul, the soul of a family, a soul of an organization, a soul of a nation and the soul of the planet. There are in essence individual souls nested in collective souls. This mirrors the ways life is organised with cells within bodies, bodies within communities within ecosystems, etcetera.

Tibetan Buddhism urges us to take refuge in the Buddhas of the three times and ten directions. I believe this most aptly refers to accessing resources in the nirmanakaya or the dimension of soul. Buddha in this case refers to mind’s full potential. The three times are past, present and future. The ten directions refer to all of space. In other words, it is the ability to realize our full potential in infinite time and space. In the dimension of soul, which we experience through imagination, memory and our sensing of now, the past, present and future all exist simultaneously. This is why we can be feeling emotions in this present time and location in reference to a past event in a particular place; while planning for a future when we’ll be in another place experiencing something completely different. Effective psychotherapy helps people travel to other times and places whilst utilizing different archetypal intelligences in order to live a healthier or more soulful life now and in the future.

Body, Mind, Soul and Spirit

Eric Lyleson — Fri, 13 Nov 2020 06:18:38 +0000

Essential Qualities

The Enneagram, and the nine essential qualities, can be used a map to guide us into and through the meditative process. Although meditation is an organic process, we can assist ourselves by walking in the footsteps of the masters who have mapped out the path. Two methods using the Enneagram as a map of essential wholeness are:

Invoking each of the essential qualities and allowing them to be experienced in turn.

Simply being mindful of which quality we are experiencing, and appreciate the qualities of being as they present themselves.

Finding our way, or knowing where we are is the purpose of any map. By invoking the various qualities, our minds are able to open easily to the full spectrum of essential wholeness. By appreciating what quality is emerging (although it is not always as lineal sequential as the diagram shows us) we consciously surrender more fully into our essential wholeness. If our awareness becomes captivated by limited thinking, we are able to recognize fairly quickly which essential quality is most likely to be the antidote for that particular preoccupation of the ego mind.

Inner Support

The wisdom of the Enneagram supports our ability to allow the emergence of consciousness in meditation similar to the way a psychotherapist attends to a client or a wise parent supports a child in discovering his nature and his place in the world. If your internal experience is like a child you can simply:

Be Mindful of his activities and give him your undivided attention.
Open your heart to him with loving Compassion.
Have the Strength to redirect him in the directions that help him realize his true nature.
Forgive his past mistakes so he can discover the uniqueness of each emerging moment.
Allow him Space to just be and sense his belonging in the oneness.
Have unconditional Acceptance for how he is in each moment.
Enjoy being with him and be curious about what brings him to Joy.
Recognize him as a buddha (child of God); knowing each moment of his life is the unfolding of divine Will (dharma).
Rest as the Peaceful equanimity in which he can feel safe and free from judgment and abandonment.

Meditation

Invoking each of the essential qualities and allowing them to be experienced in turn.

Simply being mindful of which quality we are experiencing, and appreciate the qualities of being as they present themselves.

As with a child, when the ego-mind experiences these conditions, he begins to relax, stops having to prove, defend, justify, blame, resist, attack, cling, control, withdraw, manipulate, distract, avoid, or act out in any particular way.

Being held and observed with this wise and loving presence helps the ego mind like a child, to relax back into his true nature. As we relax back into our true nature, the ego mind is simply a small aspect of the wholeness. Not only is it small, ego mind is just habitual patterns of thinking, feeling and focusing of attention which are essentially empty. The less we invest in those patterns the more flimsy and transparent they become until they dissolve completely. The ego is only an attempt to create a separate sense of self, when we feel it is not okay to fully be ourselves. Meditation is the process of the mind turning back on itself resting in its own true nature.

We cannot manufacture essential qualities of being, rather we allow ourselves to open to or relax into them. Attempts to construct them will end up creating a new layer of ego striving, which takes our awareness further away from our essential wholeness.

Nine Stages of Meditation

The Dalai Lama in ‘The Opening of the Wisdom Eye’[i], describes meditation in terms of nine stages that closely correspond with the nine stages of the Enneagram. The author’s comments are added in italics.

Cittasthapana is the state in which the mind first becomes unaffected by outer objects and fixed in the meditation-object. The conscious focusing of the mind with Mindfulness. ONE
Cittapravahasamsthapa is the establishment of the stream of mind, meaning that the mind is fixed upon the object for some time by compelling the mind to consider again and again the object of concentration. This compelling of the mind again and again establishes a deeper, more compassionate relationship with the object of meditation. TWO
Cittapratiharana is the state when, the mind being disturbed, one “brings back’ the mind to the concentration object. Bringing the mind back is an act of Strength and commitment to the goal of meditation. THREE
Cittopasthapana in which the mind is expanded while exactly limited to the object. Expanding our capability to maintain concentration opens us to unconscious patterns of thinking and perceiving. THREE – FOUR
Cittadamana – “mind-taming” which is done by seeing the ill results of distracting thoughts and defilements, also perceiving the advantages of collectedness, so that one makes efforts to put away the former while establishing the mind in the latter. We aware of what gets in our way, in this case, the establishing of a collected meditative mind and honor what is most valuable. Forgiveness is the process of releasing ourselves from the self-defeating habits of the past and opening to the blessings of our true nature. We release the nonessential and embracing the wisdom of Spaciousness. FOUR – FIVE.
Cittasamana – “mind-calming” in which feelings antagonistic to the practice of collectedness are quelled. If boredom arises regarding collectedness since the mind is still hungry for sense objects, then it is thoroughly pacified at this stage. Antagonistic feelings to the practice of collectedness are quelled not through acts of suppression or denial, but rather through Acceptance. SIX
Cittavyupasamana or the subtle pacification of mind. Even the subtle stains are set aside here. Pleasant thoughts or ecstatic states may distract the mind. We remember to rest in the Joy of wholeness, rather than be seduced by anything less. SEVEN
Cittaikotikarana The mind here becomes like one undisturbed stream and continues to flow along one-pointedly. There is no separation. Our will is at one with divine Will (Dharma) We have surrendered to each emerging moment of the eternal now. EIGHT
Samadhana When this state is reached, there is no need for effort since the mind is naturally one-pointed. Inertia dictates what is at rest will remain at rest. In effortless leffortlessness we rest Peacefully in the unconscious competence of the essential wholeness of being. NINE

Invoking the Essential Qualities of Meditation

Simply inquire and receive what emerges:

How is awareness becoming more Mindful of what is emerging now?
How is this expanding Mindfulness helping the heart open to Compassion?
How is the deepening of Compassion enabling awareness of the Strength of Being.
How is Strength empowering Forgiveness to release the past and embrace the eternal now?
How is the heart of Forgiveness opening awareness to the Spaciousness of Being?
How is Spaciousness allowing awareness to unconditionally Accept everything as it is?
How is unconditional Acceptance opening awareness to Joy?
How is Joy enabling awareness to surrender more fully to the way things are (Divine Will)?
How does Divine Will surrender to Peace?

ONE – How is awareness becoming more Mindful of what is emerging now?

Clearly stating one’s intention orients the mind in the desired direction. The essence of mindfulness is to remember ones true nature and rest as that. To be mindful of breathing, mental activity, emotions, body sensations or other sensory phenomena, is to be aware of that which comes and goes. In meditation it is our intention to rest as the unchanging awareness that allows the ever-changing objects of awareness to come and go.

The process of self-remembering can become a habit, but first we must recognize the need. Establishing a routine of meditating regularly will create fertile ground for self-remembering and mindfulness to flourish. The greater our intention the greater our experience will be. Therefore we meditate for the benefit of all sentient beings.

TWO – How can this expanding Mindfulness help my heart open to Compassion?

Compassion is whole-hearted attention and willingness to identify with whomever or whatever we are attending to. It is the suspension of the perception of separation. An expanding and deepening Mindfulness begins to highlight how alienated we have become from our bodies, emotions, and other internal experiences, as well as the world around us. For example, tensions in the body are experienced as happening to us, causing us discomfort. Rather than something we are actively doing to ourselves. The holding in the muscles is being held by some intention that is unconscious; by a part of us we are alienated from. In the deepest sense of the meaning of the word, compassion is the experience of you being no different than me. Your experience becomes my experience. If you suffer, I suffer, and because of this I want to do whatever I can to relieve our suffering. Compassion is the opening to the love that connects everything. When we are more compassionately identified with tensions (or whatever discomforts), we are able to sense what the part of us that is holding on needs to let go. When we stop making distinctions about what is me and what isn’t, and embrace the wholeness of our experience, we begin to approach the depth and breadth of compassion that extends to everyone and all aspects of ourselves.

THREE – How is the deepening of Compassion enabling awareness of the Strength of Being.

When we identify with a separate unloved or unloving self we feel weak, isolated and vulnerable. Compassion holds everything in love. Within the vastness of undivided compassion we feel unified in the unshakeable Strength of Being. Having compassion for our human experience leads us to the recognition that we have a body, mind and emotions, rather than being our body, mind or emotions. There is vast strength in that which neither comes nor goes. It is timeless and unaffected by even old age, sickness and death. We realize our bodies and minds are tools for helping others.

FOUR – How is Strength empowering Forgiveness to release the past and embrace the eternal now?

Pema Chodron has said that you really haven’t meditated until you have wept on your cushion. Coming home to being highlights how we have lived so much of our lives disconnected from the source. We hold grievances about those events that we perceive robbed us of our well-being. We either blame others or ourselves for the pain of separation from love and happiness. However it was only ever our perception of ourselves as other than love and happiness that caused us to suffer. The strength of being allows us to see our mistaken perception and grieve that mistake and the years of suffering we have endured.

Forgiveness helps us become more aware of our dream-like stream of consciousness. Generally in our waking hours, because usually we keep our conscious minds focused on our usual day-to-day preoccupations, we don’t notice this subtle processing. It continually goes through its peaks and troughs of activity, just as it does through the night, in the form of dreaming. We may notice it, at times of reflection or when in captures us in a daydream. This stream of consciousness is what the psychoanalyst asks his patient to tap into when utilizing the technique of free association.

These streams of consciousness are like the film in a movie projector. The light of consciousness when projected through these mental constructs creates our perceptions of reality. The painful memories we unconsciously hold on to are internal representations of the myths and the unconscious proof to ourselves that the myths are true. Because these experiences are usually unpleasant or has been labeled as socially unacceptable, we generally try to “stay on top of it”, rather than experience rather than immerse ourselves in our deeper experience. In meditation it is important to neither stay on top of it (which would be to remain at THREE), nor to act it out (which is to get lost in the myths of suffering), but rather to forgive. Forgiveness is the willingness to turn our awareness inward towards the light of the projector. Enlightenment is resting in the light of our true nature. A Forgiving mind experiences all of creation as within the light of Being and recognizes any other perception is an illusionary projection. Every story of pain and struggle becomes an opportunity to cultivate our essential wholeness. Just as an irritating grain of sand stuck in the soft vulnerable flesh of the oyster, is only a problem until the oyster transforms it into a pearl.

FIVE – How is the heart of Forgiveness opening awareness to the Spaciousness of being?

If you want to control a wild stallion it is much easier to do so within a large pasture, rather than a small corral. In the small space we must work hard to contain the stallion who will try to break free. The same is true with our minds. We allow our minds the space to be free to wander, but within the boundaries of our mindfulness.

Opening to Spaciousness we come to experience ourselves more as the Space within which various perceptions (or stories) arise. Rather than being identified as the character within the play or even as the play itself, we begin to experience ourselves more as the theatre within which the play is being acted out. When we embrace our spaciousness even more fully we come to notice that we are more like the community, the world or the universe within which there may be many different theatres, each with different dramatic productions that come and go. We recognize there are classic plays that are reproduced over and over, as well as archetypal plots that are continually reconstituted. The names and locations may change but the story remains the same. As we open into Space we transcend the roles we have been identified with, we also come to realize that these stories are something that play out within our Space. The roles of victim and the perpetrator, the hero and the coward, the abandoned and the abandoner are all within the stories that we carry within us. As we open wide and deep enough we come to realize that in this life, or maybe over many lifetimes we have acted out the many different archetypal roles.

In meditation we can deepen our experience of our true nature by observing the images, sounds and sensations that emerge from our unconscious, by noting these representational system modalities and their submodality distinctions rather than engaging with the content of the story or drama. If the experience is primarily images we can note this by simply thinking “seeing”, if it is words or sounds of some sort we can note “hearing” if, it is primarily sensations in the body, we can note “feeling”. To further deconstruct the story we can begin making finer distinctions about the thinking, hearing and feeling functions. We can note submodality distinctions such as where the picture located in the field of vision, is it close or far away, more to the left, the right or middle, or do you experience yourself as being in the movie? Are the images like movies, photographs or slides? Is it a single image, or a series of images? Is it in color or monochrome? Sharply focussed or blurred? Similar distinctions can be made for the sounds or internal dialogues. We can note location, direction, volume, tone, pitch, rhythm, tempo, etc. With sensation we can make such distinctions as location, size, intensity, pressure, shape, temperature, movement (turning, twisting, expanding, contracting, in what direction), hard, soft, rough, smooth, empty, full.

This way of attending to our internal experience interrupts the habitual process of getting involved in the content of the stories. It’s like when watching a movie if you are thinking about camera angles, lighting, editing, acting techniques or other components that go into the making of the film you won’t be involved with the story. Movies that take us on an emotional roller coaster are the ones that we most forget we are watching a movie and feel like we are really having the experience, or at least watching a real-life experience. Deconstructing the objects of mind into their submodalities puts us more in the role of a filmmaker of our perceptions rather than trapped in our nightmares and fantasies. Just as a parent will help her child regain her sense of well being by awakening her to the fact that her nightmare was just a dream; we can allow our consciousness to expand to the Spacious wholeness of Being when we disengage from the constructed illusions of our minds.

SIX – How is Spaciousness allowing awareness to unconditionally Accept everything as it is?

To feel Acceptance of the impermanent nature of experience is in a sense being willing to die and be reborn in each moment. We have a tendency to hold on to what feels safe, comfortable or good, or to resist what feels frightening, painful or bad. Acceptance is surrendering to the wholeness of experience, to the Yin and the Yang continually flowing into one another. To open to pain and pleasure, life and death, growth and decay, gain and loss, happiness and sadness, past and future, success and failure, expansion and contraction. Acceptance brings us in to the eternal now. We are the wholeness within which the polarities of life appear to occur.

At SIX we notice how much basic trust we have in the essential wholeness of the universe. The more we lack in a basic trust of he universe, the more we feel the need to stay in control of maintaining our sense of safety within the isolation of our ego mind. We will tend to resist dissolving into the wholeness of creation, for fear of being hurt, abandoned, unloved, uncared for, or whatever attitude we hold about the nature of the universe (or God). People tend to project their experience of how their parents cared for them on God (universal wholeness). Generally the more we experienced our parents being there for us in a loving way in our early years the more we will tend to experience the universe to be a friendly place which we can trust to care for us. The more we felt let down, or our basic trust was somehow abused the harder it is to trust. When we deeply accept ourselves and we surrender to the moment, the identification as a daughter or a son in a sense dies, in fact the sense of ourselves as only a body dies, as we open to our essential wholeness in creation.

Deep Acceptance happens when we are able to hold two seemingly contradictory experiences simultaneously. I simultaneously experience myself as the child and the parent simultaneously, the needy and the needed, the abused and the abuser, life and death, etc. When we are able to maintain awareness of polarities simultaneously then the separation between the two disappears. We become more identified with the infinite experience in which all beginnings and endings, (and all other polarities) are contained.

As a technique of meditation to help open to Acceptance:

You can be aware of the left side of your body and you can be aware of your right side, and you can experience both at the same time.
You can be aware of your undersides and can be aware of the topsides of your body and you can be aware of both at the same time.
You can be aware of the front of your body and you can be aware of the back of your body and you can be aware of both at the same time.

You can be aware of comfort and discomfort, and you can be aware of both at the same time. You can be aware of internal experiences and you can be aware of external experiences and you can be aware of both at the same time.

If you find that your awareness has become lost in the limitations of one dimension of experience, you can seek out it’s opposite and then open your field of awareness up to hold both.

If your awareness is captured by pain, you can notice the pain, and you can notice where in your body you feel comfortable, then you can hold the awareness of both at the same time. If certain visual imagery catches your attention, you can be aware of the images, and you can then notice the empty spaces between and around the images. Like the classic idea of the mind being like the sky and thought are like the clouds. You can be aware of the clouds, and you can then bring your awareness to the sky, and you can be aware of the clouds and the sky at the same time.

When you become aware of tension in the body, you can become aware of a contracting quality within your muscle and when you pay close enough attention you can become aware of an expanding quality, and then you can notice both at the same time.

Acceptance is letting the universe (ourselves included) to be as it is. When we do this we begin to experience the joyful wholeness of our true nature.

SEVEN – How is unconditional Acceptance opening awareness to Joy?

Beyond pleasure and pain is bliss. Tears of Joy flow forth from esential Acceptance. When happiness and sadness are married with Acceptance we have tears of Joy. When we change the things we can, and we accept the things we can’t, we experience serenity. Unconditional Joy shows its face when we stop grasping at pleasure and resisting pain. Joy is our birthright and it lights up our experience when we stop trying to find it. It is our pursuit of happiness and our avoidance of pain that keeps us from opening to the ‘Joy of Being’ alive at this moment.

In the meditation of the Sixteenth Karmapa visualizing his smiling face radiating unconditional acceptance brings a smile to my face. When we are empty of expectations and agendas our hearts begin to take vicarious Joy in the joy of others. Those others can include birds, dogs, trees, the sun, stars, dolphins and people. Joy is universal and through Acceptance we breakdown the boundaries that isolate us from universal Joy. A sense of ‘joie de vie,’ thrives where there is Acceptance.

Some meditative practices suggest you sit with a slight smile on your face. Smiling activates joy. Joy is the basis of friendliness. Joyfulness is an experience of being friendly with life, with ourselves and the world we live in. To be Joyful is to not only accept, but to greet life, to greet sorrow, to greet love, to greet the miraculous, and to greet the mundane of each moment with Joy. Joy sends shivers up your spine and connects you with the light of your Being. As we remember to extend a joyful welcome to whomever or whatever arises in our consciousness, we naturally experience the Joy of Being.

A deep commitment to anything means following our bliss. To follow our bliss is to surrender to the Will of God. Enjoying our exploration of the meditative process is what propels us down the often-arduous path of coming to know our true nature.

EIGHT – How is Joy enabling awareness to surrender more fully to the way things are (Divine Will)?

Buddhism doesn’t ask you to take anything on faith. It is not necessary to take on any particular beliefs. The path of meditation may be made easier by following the teachings that have been accumulated over centuries, but at the heart of the teachings it says that if you really pay attention to experience, what the teachings describe are what you will observe. There is know need to believe in anything. Open to experience everything fully we realize our place in Divine Will. It just a matter of how fully we can be aware of and accept the nature of reality and the reality of our true nature, or remain committed to the limitation of our constructed perceptions. The more conscious and accepting we are of the true nature of ourselves, the more free we are of the illusions that create a sense of separation and the more our experience feels like the Will of the Universe.

An act of Will involves a conscious choice to something that doesn’t come automatically or easily. At SEVEN it is easy to become infatuated with various interesting mental phenomena, images, bodily sensations, or engaging experiences in the intermediary realms of consciousness. It is easy to be carried off by these experiences which can be very appealing to our ego mind. This is when our commitment to Being (experience) rather than having (experience) is crucial. By exerting our Will in this way we align ourselves with the Will of God. The sense of your individual will and the Universal Will merge and the dualistic sense of the experiencer and the experienced dissolves into essential wholeness. It is in wholeness that we experience Wholly Peace.

NINE – How does Divine Will surrender to Peace?

To be at Peace is to experience the universal perfection. There is nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing to experience. To simply be with what is. ‘A Course in Miracles’ says there is only one ‘Son of God’ and we are all him. We, meaning not just people but everything I normally perceive to be a separate entity, whether it be a tree, a house, a door, cardboard box, video tape, bird, mountain, nuclear warhead or whatever. I am at one with all creation and with the creator. When we open profoundly to this level we experience what is referred to as ‘no-meditation’. There is no need to control the mind, only to rest in mindfulness. In fact any purposeful effort is a return to the perception of separateness in which we perceive there is someone who is doing something to something else. There is no need to control the focus our attention. The mind at peace is no longer focused; rather it is merged with infinite wholeness.

Sogyal Rinpoche speaks of cultivating “the view”. In meditation we sit with the eyes half open and half closed. Allowing the eyes to be relaxed and softly focused, looking through things rather than at them, seeing the entire visual field, rather than having the eyes holding on to any one thing.

The pitfalls of meditation

Mindfulness – Trying too hard to be mindful, rather than resting in mindfulness can lead to holding too rigidly onto an object of concentration and/or trying to block out anything we consider to be undesirable. In the process we end up resisting the heart of compassion taking us deeper into communion with essential wholeness. Let mindfulness be effortless.

Compassion – Trying too hard to be compassionate, rather than resting in compassion can lead to ruminating about how to help others or ourselves with improving something outward. By denying our innate strength can lead to an indulgence in our emotions and getting lost in self-pity. Let compassion be effortless.

Strength – Trying too hard to be strong can lead to a rigid numbness and a false sense of realization. To do this it requires denying our unwanted, unhealed or unforgiven parts. These aspects then remain in our shadows of our subconscious mind and projected on others. A sort of enlightened ego develops that leads us to see us to feeling superior to others. Let strength be effortless.

Forgiveness – Trying too hard to be forgiving can lead us searching for forgiveness rather than resting as forgiveness. We can end up trying to convince ourselves why we should be more forgiving. Instead of giving up all hope of a better past we may seek justifications for our actions or rationalize others’ behaviour by still blame ourselves. Meditation can then become a sort of penance that one is performing to earn forgiveness. Let forgiveness be effortless.

Space – Trying too hard to get space from thoughts and feelings can lead to a detachment or dissociation from our experience and makes everything seem like nothing. We can get stuck in witnessing reality rather than surrendering to the nothingness that accepts everything as it is. Let spaciousness be effortless.

Acceptance – Trying too hard to be accepting can lead us into confusion as we equate acceptance with agreement. The illusions of mind seem equally valid as reality and we lose our ability to be discerning. We end up being loyal to illusion rather than opening to the joy that comes with the new eyes of a beginners mind. Let acceptance be effortless.

Joy – Trying too hard to be joyful can leave us seeking spiritual highs that come and go rather than experiencing the unconditioned bliss of reality at its most basic level. This can lead to a sort of spiritual bypass of what is perceived as negative or unpleasant. From this dualistic perspective we miss out on experiencing unity and oneness. Let joy be effortless.

Will – Being too determined to reach enlightenment happens when we forget that it is surrender to divine will that awakens us to the truth. Rather than imposing ideas we have of what enlightenment is on ourselves. It by surrendering that we open to the peace of essential wholeness. Let will be effortless.

Peace – Trying too hard to be peaceful can lead us into a dull complacency in which we ignore anything which might take us out of our comfort zone. Instead of being mindful we keep ourselves mindlessly ignorant. Instead of awakening to the universal peace of unity we stay asleep in the limited perspectives of our conditioned mind. Let peace be effortless.

Most Simply

We can use these nine steps by simply naming the essential quality that is our intention to invoke. We can then repeat the name of the essential quality of where we were if our minds have wandered off.

Secondly while being mindful the breath, simply take note and acknowledging whatever state we find ourselves in each emerging moment. This enables us to trust we are on track by recognizing the signposts along the path to bringing the mind home to resting in our essential wholeness.

Mindfulness
Compassion
Strength
Forgiveness
Spaciousness
Acceptance
Joy
Will
Peace

Mindfulness to Compassion
Compassion to Strength
Strength to Forgiveness
Forgiveness to Spaciousness
Spaciousness to Acceptance
Acceptance to Joy
Joy to Will
Will to Peace
Peace with Mindfulness

[i] Dalai Lama, The Opening of the Wisdom Eye,

Enneagram Meditation

Eric Lyleson — Fri, 07 Feb 2020 04:51:57 +0000

Essential Qualities

Invoking each of the essential qualities and allowing them to be experienced in turn.

Simply being mindful of which quality we are experiencing, and appreciate the qualities of being as they present themselves.

Inner Support

Be Mindful of his activities and give him your undivided attention.
Open your heart to him with loving Compassion.
Have the Strength to redirect him in the directions that help him realize his true nature.
Forgive his past mistakes so he can discover the uniqueness of each emerging moment.
Allow him Space to just be and sense his belonging in the oneness.
Have unconditional Acceptance for how he is in each moment.
Enjoy being with him and be curious about what brings him to Joy.
Recognize him as a buddha (child of God); knowing each moment of his life is the unfolding of divine Will (dharma).
Rest as the Peaceful equanimity in which he can feel safe and free from judgment and abandonment.

Meditation

Invoking each of the essential qualities and allowing them to be experienced in turn.

Simply being mindful of which quality we are experiencing, and appreciate the qualities of being as they present themselves.

Nine Stages of Meditation

Cittasthapana is the state in which the mind first becomes unaffected by outer objects and fixed in the meditation-object. The conscious focusing of the mind with Mindfulness. ONE
Cittapravahasamsthapa is the establishment of the stream of mind, meaning that the mind is fixed upon the object for some time by compelling the mind to consider again and again the object of concentration. This compelling of the mind again and again establishes a deeper, more compassionate relationship with the object of meditation. TWO
Cittapratiharana is the state when, the mind being disturbed, one “brings back’ the mind to the concentration object. Bringing the mind back is an act of Strength and commitment to the goal of meditation. THREE
Cittopasthapana in which the mind is expanded while exactly limited to the object. Expanding our capability to maintain concentration opens us to unconscious patterns of thinking and perceiving. THREE – FOUR
Cittadamana – “mind-taming” which is done by seeing the ill results of distracting thoughts and defilements, also perceiving the advantages of collectedness, so that one makes efforts to put away the former while establishing the mind in the latter. We aware of what gets in our way, in this case, the establishing of a collected meditative mind and honor what is most valuable. Forgiveness is the process of releasing ourselves from the self-defeating habits of the past and opening to the blessings of our true nature. We release the nonessential and embracing the wisdom of Spaciousness. FOUR – FIVE.
Cittasamana – “mind-calming” in which feelings antagonistic to the practice of collectedness are quelled. If boredom arises regarding collectedness since the mind is still hungry for sense objects, then it is thoroughly pacified at this stage. Antagonistic feelings to the practice of collectedness are quelled not through acts of suppression or denial, but rather through Acceptance. SIX
Cittavyupasamana or the subtle pacification of mind. Even the subtle stains are set aside here. Pleasant thoughts or ecstatic states may distract the mind. We remember to rest in the Joy of wholeness, rather than be seduced by anything less. SEVEN
Cittaikotikarana The mind here becomes like one undisturbed stream and continues to flow along one-pointedly. There is no separation. Our will is at one with divine Will (Dharma) We have surrendered to each emerging moment of the eternal now. EIGHT
Samadhana When this state is reached, there is no need for effort since the mind is naturally one-pointed. Inertia dictates what is at rest will remain at rest. In effortless leffortlessness we rest Peacefully in the unconscious competence of the essential wholeness of being. NINE

Invoking the Essential Qualities of Meditation

Simply inquire and receive what emerges:

How is awareness becoming more Mindful of what is emerging now?
How is this expanding Mindfulness helping the heart open to Compassion?
How is the deepening of Compassion enabling awareness of the Strength of Being.
How is Strength empowering Forgiveness to release the past and embrace the eternal now?
How is the heart of Forgiveness opening awareness to the Spaciousness of Being?
How is Spaciousness allowing awareness to unconditionally Accept everything as it is?
How is unconditional Acceptance opening awareness to Joy?
How is Joy enabling awareness to surrender more fully to the way things are (Divine Will)?
How does Divine Will surrender to Peace?

ONE – How is awareness becoming more Mindful of what is emerging now?

TWO – How can this expanding Mindfulness help my heart open to Compassion?

THREE – How is the deepening of Compassion enabling awareness of the Strength of Being.

FOUR – How is Strength empowering Forgiveness to release the past and embrace the eternal now?

FIVE – How is the heart of Forgiveness opening awareness to the Spaciousness of being?

SIX – How is Spaciousness allowing awareness to unconditionally Accept everything as it is?

As a technique of meditation to help open to Acceptance:

You can be aware of the left side of your body and you can be aware of your right side, and you can experience both at the same time.
You can be aware of your undersides and can be aware of the topsides of your body and you can be aware of both at the same time.
You can be aware of the front of your body and you can be aware of the back of your body and you can be aware of both at the same time.

If you find that your awareness has become lost in the limitations of one dimension of experience, you can seek out it’s opposite and then open your field of awareness up to hold both.

Acceptance is letting the universe (ourselves included) to be as it is. When we do this we begin to experience the joyful wholeness of our true nature.

SEVEN – How is unconditional Acceptance opening awareness to Joy?

EIGHT – How is Joy enabling awareness to surrender more fully to the way things are (Divine Will)?

NINE – How does Divine Will surrender to Peace?

The pitfalls of meditation

Most Simply

Mindfulness
Compassion
Strength
Forgiveness
Spaciousness
Acceptance
Joy
Will
Peace

Mindfulness to Compassion
Compassion to Strength
Strength to Forgiveness
Forgiveness to Spaciousness
Spaciousness to Acceptance
Acceptance to Joy
Joy to Will
Will to Peace
Peace with Mindfulness

[i] Dalai Lama, The Opening of the Wisdom Eye,

The Power of Being Part of a Constellation Community – Representing

Eric Lyleson — Sat, 24 Aug 2019 02:31:19 +0000

Serving as a Representative

“Representing in a family constellation is a great honour that truly defies logic. Having the opportunity to step into the shoes of another person and feel their pain, their joy and the many emotions between these and display their messages of truth so another person can witness the bigger picture of their family life is humbling and inspiring. Each role I represent in is also a mirror many elements that resonate personally for me. It is an honour and privilege to represent and I love the connection that I embrace in each role.” Tim Lassig

I have felt liberated and healed through the family constellations I have done for myself, but I have served as a representative many more times and I believe that in doing so I have matured and awakened in so many subtle empowering and liberating ways. As a representative you can experience a depth of compassion for others you may have never known existed. You can open to a depth and breadth of equanimity which can allow you to experience the most difficult situations and emotions with an open heart and open mind; while avoiding fight, flight or freeze reactions.

Serving as a representative helps you have an embodied experience of how deeply we are all woven together into the fabric of humanity, and how we are all truly in this thing called ‘Life’ together.

Layers of the Soul
Bert Hellinger in addressing the healing power of family constellations writes, “Through the surprising experience that the representatives have for the individual family members actually feel like the people they are representing without knowing anything about them, the family constellation has opened an access to the layers of the soul, many of which were previously hidden in our culture. In addition, when the representatives really remain collected, they are driven by an irresistible force into a movement, though which, hidden or forgotten experiences are brought to light. Through this movement, when the representatives submit themselves to I, solutions are found for the individuals and their family and kin. These solutions allow separated parties to reunite, family members in conflict to forgive one another, and old wrongs to be righted.” (Kampenhout 2001)

The surprising thing is that these effects do not just come from the living, but also from the dead, who may be long forgotten. They make contact during the family constellation in the sense that they show what has to be put right, so that the living can be released from the consequences of past wrongs and the side-effects of past external fates; the living, by respecting the dead, enable them to retreat and finally find peace.”

Becoming Greater than our Limited Selves

Daan van Kamperenhout (2001) explaining to power of serving as a representative in constellations explains, “In a small and modest way, participating in family constellations can also be a path of purification and spiritual maturation. The representative who opens his soul for others purifies and restructures his four bodies (physical, emotional, mental and spiritual), and this lets both the soul and personality expand. Regularly participating as a representative in constellations opens us up for ‘the human experience’ in all its many aspects. A childless man can represent a father of seven children. A healthy woman who has never been ill will look at herself differently after representing several handicapped people who lived with continuous physical pain and discomfort… When representing others is done with awareness, we gradually become greater than just our limited selves.”

“After representing someone may notice that his view on certain things change, that certain issues and events seem less, or more important than before. Painful memories that always brought up a lot of emotions become just memories, and no specific feelings will be attached to them.” (Kampenhout 2001)

When checking in at the end of a constellation day the words people have used to summarise their experience as representatives and observers are most often: grateful, peaceful, loving, connected, belonging, insightful and open.

Connecting with Ancestors
“Wow! I didn’t even have my family constellation done and I keep having breakthroughs every day a new piece of information connects. I am working with a soul medicine practitioner and doing an exercise today connecting to the soul field, I just realized how much love I could receive from both my grandfathers who were amazing caring men and my great grandpa who was an angel on earth…it was overwhelming to feel it and realise they all left this time, space and reality young and abruptly and I never processed their passing and the fact that they have basically disappeared from my life without too many comments as I was 3 and 4 years old. My great grandfather passed at 97 from a medical mistake after walking into the hospital. Very touching and important to connect with such a loving legacy in my family of origin and to feel the grief even so many years later.” Marcia Teperman

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Or to register for next Family Constellation Day

Trans-generational Trauma at the Heart of Many Issues

Eric Lyleson — Mon, 22 Jul 2019 12:31:59 +0000

Transgenerational trauma is the genetic passing on of emotional, physical, or social pain down through the generations.

It’s not new. In fact, the concept of transgenerational trauma originated in the after WWII. It was then that various studies proved that children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors demonstrated certain symptoms of trauma. Nightmares and emotional and behavioral problems showed that the original trauma of the grandparent or parent had far-reaching effects.

Family Constellations conceived by Bert Hellinger in response to all the intergenerational trauma of two world wars he saw all around him in Germany.

Often traumatized generations just have to get on with life. They just toughen up and soldier on. Their trauma goes under-ground in the family subconscious. Only to surface in their children or grandchildren.

Unmanaged and repressed trauma can result in post-traumatic stress symptoms, chronic depression, anxiety, sleep disorders or difficulty with intimacy.

Family Constellations are one of the best ways of healing intergenerational trauma. Although it is not a substitute for other therapies it is so helpful that even one session can make lasting change. and can shorten the duration of other therapy.

What people say about Family Constellations:

“It helped me to forgive myself and the person that hurt me. And to know that my Dad is always with me.”

“Every time I do a Constellation it changes my life for the better.”

“The Constellation Day helped me to be more comfortable with being open and vulnerable with people.”

Huge ramifications

The ramifications of transgenerational trauma effect not only individuals, but families, communities and even whole nations. Brazil has recognised the power of Family Constellations in healing these issues in the legal system.

Click for more information regrading our next

Family Constellation Day

Guy Pearce on his Family Constellation Experience

Eric Lyleson — Wed, 10 Jul 2019 11:10:30 +0000

If nothing else Family Constellations help people find forgiveness in their hearts. Forgiveness is the act of giving up all hope of a better past and allows the pain we have endured to heal. When caught by the pain of the past our lives can get stuck in repeating patterns of recreating similar pain or in a withdrawal from living life to the fullest. Forgiveness allows us to live more wholeheartedly.

Next Family Constellation November 29

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The Deep Science Behind the Enneagram

Eric Lyleson — Fri, 03 May 2019 00:40:34 +0000

Enneagram as a Fractal

Essential Wholeness offers here a unique perspective on the Enneagram. The Enneagram symbol is seen as a model of the underlying patterns that

Essential Wholeness Psychology

connect our knowledge of psychology, biology, physics, mythology and spirituality. Unlike other theories that show the Enneagram in a static two-dimensional way, this Essential Wholeness will broaden your perspective into an expanding multidimensional model, much like a three-dimensional spiral. With the right mathematics it might be represented as a fractal.

With each progression around the Enneagram of Change living systems move to a higher level of functioning

This new perspective starts with an explanation of my understanding of what it is to be a healthy, whole, human being; a being with a full spectrum of resources to draw upon. It shows how our personal experiences are inextricably woven into the evolving web of life. And I illuminate how, from this perspective, the compulsions of personality; those areas where we get stuck in maladaptive patterns occur simply when we aren’t embracing our essentially whole true nature.

Chaos Theory

Chaos Theory can flesh out our understanding of the Self-Organization Cycle. In Chaos Theory strange attractors define processes that are stable, confined and yet never do the same thing twice, in other words, living or life-like systems. Computer generated fractal patterns are simulations of strange attractors generated from three non-linear equation solutions. Each solution curve generated by the equations tends to occur in a particular area (the attractor area), cycling around randomly, no set number of times, never crossing itself, staying in the same phase space, and displaying similarity at any scale.

Given these qualities, fractals are of the one the best models available to us as simulations of living systems. Fractals demonstrate clearly how attractors act on the system by collecting the responses systems make to internal and external events (trajectories of perturbation) within a pattern with boundaries. Attractors act as the determinants of patterns of self-organization. A gene is an example of an attractor that determines patterns of how an organism self-organizes. The social sciences recognize that certain ideas or beliefs serve as attractors around which society organizes, which are referred to as memes.

Attractors are themes the universe self-organizes itself around and within, in other words they are another name for Platonic forms or morphic fields. These themes operate the same the way jazz musicians begin with a particular chord progression combined with melody and rhythm. Once the groove is set, the musicians are then free, within inter-woven and overlapping musical patterns, to improvise upon those themes. Nations are organized within and around attractors defined by their unique environmental context, sets of ideals, principles, values, beliefs and capabilities to relate to one another and other things in the environment in a way that reflects a national and/or cultural identity. Individual human beings, as subsystems within the larger cultural or familial systems, are self-organized in the same way. Systems, regardless of their size, can organize themselves around attractors that naturally promote growth and evolution, or around attractors that simply lock a system into vicious cycles and entropy.

Attractors describe the long-term behavior of dynamically changing systems in biology and the depths of the human psyche as well as social and cultural institutions.[i] Ernest Rossi

To promote healthy systems it is helpful to understand the different types of attractors. Periodic regimes are characterized by fixed-point attractors, which at least for a while regulate a steady state or limited cycle of interaction within a larger system. Chaotic regimes (evolving systems) are characterized by strange attractors, which typically demonstrate a high dimension of complexity. Strange attractors are self-generative and are calculated by using the output of the initial step as the input for the following step. They also have a self-reflective quality in which patterns form on infinitely large and small scales.

Living and Nonliving Systems

The macrocosm reflects the microcosm; organizational patterns of family systems are similar to the organizational patterns of one-celled organisms, which have similarities to the organizational patterns of ecosystems. To maintain homeostasis, a system will organize itself for a period of time around a fixed-point attractor. The longer a system remains organized around a fixed-point attractor, the more it will resemble a nonliving system such as our solar system or a whirlpool. Whereas non-living systems will remain in stable patterns for relatively long periods of time with relatively little change, living systems are characterized by ongoing cycles of change punctuated by periods of relative stability. To be most alive and healthy, then, we need regular periods of stability punctuated with breakdowns in the stability that lead to breakthroughs into more evolved patterns of organization.

Evolution is the process by which a system develops within the basin of one attractor until it has more or less exhausted the creative range of possibilities of that region of perception and capability. The system having reached the peak of fitness at the boundary of that attractor spills over into a higher dimensional phase space — the basin of a higher-dimensional attractor. Ernest Rossi says, “a process that gives evolutionary significance

Attractor Basins

to the phrase out of the frying pan and into the fire!” When our level of frustration reaches breaking point and we must make a change, we must leap out of our realm of known possibilities into the chaotic fire of infinite possibilities, before finding a frying pan of higher dimension to accustom ourselves to.

Our lives are most likely to resemble a nonliving system when operating from ideas that tend to concretize our perceptions of life. When our lives are organized too long around a fixed-point attractor, symptoms will arise that make it increasingly difficult to continue to act in predictable ways. Rigid beliefs (fixed-point attractor) tend to nominalize the evolving processes of life into static objects. Our patterns of language reflect this when we speak of a relationship (concrete and static) instead of ways of relating. Rigid beliefs keep us locked into a world we think we know and blind us to the creative potential of the unknown.

We could say that an unhealthy self-concept (ego) is where a fixed-point attractor has enough gravity to overcome the influence of strange attractors (our soul’s agenda) then our lives become more similar to nonliving systems, repetitive and predictable. Thereby increasing the likelihood of psychological and physical disease, premature aging and even death.

Nine Phases of the Developmental Cycle

Drawing on these theories enables us to expand our understanding of the four phases of the self-organization cycle of approaching order, destabilization, approaching chaos, and re-organization, to nine:

In homeostasis the system is operates in relative stability and approximates a non-living system.
Perturbation of the homeostasis raises awareness of the limitations of the current level of organization (attractor basin).
The system attempts to make the necessary adaptations by doing more or different combinations, of what it already is doing.
The system climbs to the rim (fitness peak) of the basin of that particular attractor –– pushing the current mode of functioning to the limit.
At this point it moves into the transitional phase –– between levels of organization –– in which the inadequacies of the system’s ability to relate become more apparent and boundaries begin breaking down, opening the system to creative potentials.
Boundaries become increasingly diffuse, allowing a greater flow of information into the system and it sorts for what is vital for survival.
The system maintains its integrity around essential structures or patterns, while others disintegrate and are eliminated.
Balance shifts away from the previous level of organization towards chaos.
On the boundary of order and chaos the system seeks out possible new attractors to organize itself around.
New attractors are selected, organized and integrated with existing essential structures.
The changes become consolidated into a new level of homeostatic functioning.

We can map these nine phases onto the Enneagram to help us understand how to help people mbrace the natural process of change. Problems set in (as we know from Enneagram of Personality) when people become overly identified with the qualities of their Personality Type to the exclusion of

the rest of the qualities that make us a whole person. Those qualities are useful at the associated phase of change, but if clung to inhibit our ability to move around the circle through all the phases of the developmental cycle.

[i] Rossi, Ernest edited by Rossi Kathryn Lane (1996) The Symptom Path to Enlightenment, The New Dynamics of Self-Organization in Hypnotherapy: An Advanced Manual for Beginners. Pacific Palisades, California: Palisades Gateway (p. 43)

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Essential Wholeness, Integral Psychotherapy, Spiritual Awakening and the Enneagram

Systemic Family Constellations

Eric Lyleson — Sun, 28 Apr 2019 09:01:06 +0000

Family Constellations can help youresolve longstanding reactive emotional issues, chronic health concerns and dysfunctional relationship patterns. Please join our healing communinty on May 26 for our next Constellation Day.

Wikipedia states:

Family Constellations, also known as Systemic Constellations and Systemic Family Constellations, is an alternative therapeutic method which draws on elements of family systems therapy, existential phenomenology and Zulu attitudes to family.^[1] In a single session, a Family Constellation attempts to reveal a supposedly unrecognized dynamic that spans multiple generations in a given family and to resolve the deleterious effects of that dynamic by encouraging the subject, through representatives, to encounter and accept the factual reality of the past

Family Constellations diverges significantly from conventional forms of cognitive, behaviour and psychodynamic psychotherapy. The method has been described by physicists as quantum quackery, and its founder Bert Hellinger incorporates the pseudoscientific idea of morphic resonance into his explanation of it. Positive outcomes from the therapy have been attributed to conventional explanations such as suggestion and empathy.^[2]^[3]^[4]

Practitioners claim that present-day problems and difficulties may be influenced by traumas suffered in previous generations of the family, even if those affected now are unaware of the original event. Hellinger referred to the relation between present and past problems that are not caused by direct personal experience as systemic entanglements, said to occur when unresolved trauma has afflicted a family through an event such as murder, suicide, death of a mother in childbirth, early death of a parent or sibling, war, natural disaster, emigration, or abuse.^[5] The psychiatrist Iván Böszörményi-Nagy referred to this phenomenon as “invisible loyalties”.^[6]

What is it?

The philosophical orientation of Family Constellations were derived through an integration of existential phenomenology family systems therapy and elements of indigenous mysticism.

The phenomenological lineage can be traced through philosophers Franz Brentano, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. This perspective stands in contrast to the positivist reductionist orientation of the scientific psychology. Rather than understanding mind, emotion and consciousness in terms of its constituent parts, existential phenomenology opens perception to the full panorama of human experience and seeks to grasp a sense of meaning.^[7]

Family Constellations take their form from family systems psychology. Influential figures in this movement include Jacob Moreno, the founder of psychodrama; Iván Böszörményi-Nagy, the pioneer of transgenerational systemic thinking; Milton Erickson, a pioneer of brief therapy and hypnotherapy; Eric Berne who conceived the concept of life scripts; and Virginia Satir, who developed family sculpture, the precursor of Systemic Constellations.^[7] In the past decade, further advancements in the use of the process have been innovated by practitioners throughout the world.

The process draws from indigenous spiritual mysticism to contribute towards releasing tensions, lightening emotional burdens, and resolving real-world problems. Hellinger lived as a Roman Catholic priest in South Africa for 16 years in the 1950s and 1960s. During these years, he became fluent in the Zulu language, participated in Zulu rituals, and gained an appreciation for the Zulu worldview.^[7]

Of particular importance is the difference between traditional Zulu attitudes toward parents and ancestors and those typically held by Europeans. Heidegger postulated that to be human is to find oneself thrown into a world with no clear logical, ontological, or moral structure.^[8] In Zulu culture, Hellinger found a certitude and equanimity that were the hallmarks of Heidegger’s elusive authentic Self. The traditional Zulu people lived and acted in a religious world in which the central focal point was the ancestors. They are regarded as positive, constructive, and creative presences.^[9] The connection with ancestors is a central feature of the Constellation process.

The term “Family Constellations” was first used by Alfred Adler in a somewhat different context to refer to the phenomenon that each individual belongs to and is bonded in relationship to other members of his or her family system.

Method

Family Constellations

This description is the prototype group Family Constellation as developed by Bert Hellinger in the 1990s.^[7] Many practitioners have blended Constellation work with psychological aspects of healing. Others have kept the classic form as taught by Hellinger, such as the Constellation Approach.^[10] The Constellation Approach merges concepts of Family Constellations, energy medicine, and consciousness studies to complement the understanding of classic Constellation methodology.

A group (workshop) is led by a facilitator. In turn, members of the group can explore an urgent personal issue. Generally, several members will be given an opportunity to set up a Constellation in each session.
After a brief interview, the facilitator suggests who will be represented in the Constellation. These are usually a representative for the seeker, one or more family members, and sometimes abstract concepts such as “depression” or a country.
The person presenting the issue (seeker or client) asks people from the group to stand in the Constellation as representatives. He or she arranges the representatives according to what feels right in the moment. The seeker then sits down and observes.
Several minutes elapse with the representatives standing still and silent. Initially, unlike psychodrama, the representatives do not act, pose, dialogue or role-play.
Emphasis is placed on perceptive intuition in placing the representatives and in subsequent steps of the procedure. The aim is supposedly to tune into what the psychiatrist Albrecht Mahr describes as the Knowing Field^[11] and former biologist Rupert Sheldrake has suggested as morphic resonance.^[12] Representative perception is not a concept with any scientific basis. The representatives have little or no factual knowledge about those they represent. Nevertheless, the Knowing Field is claimed to guide participants to perceive and articulate feelings and sensation that mirror those of the real family members they represent.
The facilitator may ask each representative to briefly report how they feel being placed in relation to the others. The facilitator, seeker, and group members may believe they perceive an underlying dynamic in the spatial arrangement and feelings held by the representatives that influence the pertinent personal issue. Often, configuring multiple generations in a family is thought to reveal that traumas continue to unconsciously affect the living long after the original victims or perpetrators have died.
A healing resolution for the issue generally is supposedly achieved after repositioning the representatives and adding key members of the system who have been forgotten or written out of the family history. When every representative feels right in his or her place and the other representatives agree, the facilitator may suggest one or two sentences to be spoken aloud. If the representatives do not feel at peace with their new position or sentences, they can move again or try a different sentence. This is claimed, in an abstract way, to represent a possible resolution of the issues faced by the seeker. Sometimes the process concludes without a full resolution being achieved.
When the facilitator feels that the healing resolution has taken hold among the representatives, the seeker is invited to “replace his/her representative in the Constellation”. This supposedly allows the seeker to perceive how it feels to be part of a reconfigured system. When everyone feels comfortable in their place, the Constellation concludes.

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ReferencesEdit

^ Cohen, D. B. (2006). ““Family Constellations”: An Innovative Systemic Phenomenological Group Process from Germany”. The Family Journal. 14 (3): 226. doi:10.1177/1066480706287279.
^ Carroll, Robert T. “Bert Hellinger and family constellations”. skepdic.com.
^ Lebow, Alisa (2008). First Person Jewish. U of Minnesota Press. p. 81. ISBN 978-0-8166-4354-7.
^ Witkowski, Tomasz (2015). Psychology Gone Wrong: The Dark Sides of Science and Therapy (illustrated ed.). Universal-Publishers. p. 261. ISBN 978-1-62734-528-6. Extract of page 261
^ Hellinger, B., Weber, G., & Beaumont, H. (1998). Love’s hidden symmetry: What makes love work in relationships. Phoenix, AZ: Zeig, Tucker and Theisen.
^ Boszormenyi-Nagy, I., & Spark, G. M. (1973). Invisible loyalties: Reciprocity in intergenerational family therapy. Hagerstown, MD: Harper & Row.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Cohen, D. B. (2006). “Family Constellations”: An innovative systemic phenomenological group process from Germany. The Family Journal: Counseling and Therapy for Couples and Families, 14, 226-233.
^ Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time (J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson, translators). New York: Harper & Row (original work published 1927).
^ Lawson, E. T. (1985). Religions of Africa. New York: Harper and Row.
^ “The Constellation Approach”
^ Mahr, A. (1999). “Das wissende feld: Familienaufstellung als geistig energetisches heilen” [“The knowing field: Family constellations as mental and energetic healing”]. In Geistiges heilen für eine neue zeit [Intellectual cures for a new time]. Heidelberg, Germany: Kösel Verlag.
^ Sheldrake, R. (1988). The presence of the past: Morphic resonance and the habits of nature. Rochester, VT: Park Street.

Meditation Teachers – How Important are They?

Eric Lyleson — Fri, 01 Feb 2019 04:49:05 +0000

Meditation Teachers

I didn’t realise the true power of meditation until I sat with truly enlightened teachers. I had read books, listened to guided meditations and had some guided meditation experiences with different people. Certainly I gained enough benefit to keep meditating and keep listening to recordings and reading books, but something hadn’t yet clicked for me. For me, like a lot of people I think meditation and mindfulness were helping me to have a better functioning ego, rather than really helping me awaken from ego.

My interest in spiritual matters however eventually led me to some very powerful teachers who because of their own awakening and were able to point out to me and others what they have realised. When they spoke about meditation and awakening, they spoke from their own direct experience. Their descriptions together with their presence that embodied what they were talking about touched that same essence in me.

Since our true nature is what is what is essentially true, it therefore cannot be manufactured. It can only be realised. And it is realised when all of our attempts to make ourselves enlightened, good, spiritual, perfect or whatever relax for long enough, that we can appreciate what is always there at the ground of our being.

How Important is a teacher?

A true spiritual teacher embodies absolute truth so fully that our egoic illusions and delusions become more agonizingly and/or ridiculously apparent, while showing us how true lasting freedom, peace and unconditional love are possible. A good teacher also helps guide you out of mental dead ends and distractions.

Meditation and mindfulness are how we practice trusting in the peaceful loving freedom of our essential Being, while observing how ridiculous it is to give our power away to the agonizing habits of our ego defences. Although I have had many amazing teachers that have helped me along my way I want to

Gangaji and Eli

especially express my gratitude to Adyashanti, Lama Ole Nydahl and Eli Jaxon-Bear.

Eli teaches the Enneagram and along with his wife Gangaji pass on the blessings he received from his teacher Papaji (student of Ramana Maharshi). I’m so grateful for him helping me see so clearly the futility of clinging to my spiritual ego, while helping me surrender to the diamond in my pocket of silent emptiness.

Lama Ole Nydahl

Lama Ole has been my guide on the Tibetan Buddhist Vajrayana path. The key message he passes on from his teacher the 16^th Karmapa is that we are all Buddhas whether we know it or not. His embodiment and transmission of Mahamudra teachings and meditation helped strip away the mental constructs that obscured my perception of the deepest truth. His casual remark that I had the potential to be enlightened in this life helped me to deeply trust in my innate Buddha-nature.

Adyashanti

Adyashanti , who was a Zen Buddhist who claims he woke up from Zen, helped me realise how simple what Eli and Lama Ole had awakened in me could be more fully realised and embodied more whole-heartedly in daily life. He also helped me realise the importance of all of us being our own authorities unto ourselves as we listen to our own wisdom, rather than taking the word of experts and teachers.

I would also like to acknowledge my friends, teachers and fellow psychologists Rick Hanson, PhD, Dan Brown, PhD, Stephen Gilligan, PhD and Richard Chambers, PhD for helping me realise how these timeless spiritual teaching could be integrated with modern psychology and psychotherapy.

Click for more information about upcoming Meditation, Mindfulness and the Psychology of Awakening Courses

Book Review from Australia and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy

Eric Lyleson — Mon, 14 Jan 2019 09:45:14 +0000

Book Review from Australia and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy

Essential Wholeness: Integral Psychotherapy, Spiritual Awakening and the Enneagram, Eric Lyleson, Balboa Press, Bloomington, Indiana, 2015 ISBN 978‐1‐4525‐2820‐5, PB, 408 pages

Yvonne McDonell

Essential Wholeness by Eric Lyleson uses an extensive range of philosophy, psychology and spirituality to describe us as people and to broaden our role as therapists. We discover how our favourite theories inform our practice with clients and impact how we live in the world. One thing that excited me was the way in which the book whets my appetite to learn more about each of these areas. For instance, the bibliography is so informative and interesting, that it is as if Lyleson is opening doors through which to explore the familiar and unfamiliar.

The book is not without its challenges, and it took me some time to comprehend the concept that Lyleson calls essential wholeness. He defines it as what Buddhism refers to as emptiness. However, he says that the emptiness of being is not nothing, but also not a thing – and earlier: ‘We are taught as children that we should know who we are, however when we look within to find ourselves, there is nothing permanent there’ (p. 11).

It seems that he sees essential wholeness as a need to accept the complex and the circular nature of things. To explain this, he calls on philosophy, systems theory, Bateson’s cybernetic theory, chaos theory and homeostasis. Rather than being frightened off by the breadth of knowledge contained in this book, I found a thrill in becoming reacquainted with old friends like Maturana, Bateson, Erickson and Kauffman, as well as being introduced to new ideas.

I wondered whether the understanding that I am actually taking away from the book is exactly as Lyleson intended. Perhaps that does not even matter, since it certainly has had me thinking deeply about my life and about the lives of my clients. I am attracted to the definition Lyleson presents of a therapist as someone ‘who will help their clients trust in their innate ability to transition from one stage of life to the next’ (p. 79). He proposes that effective psychotherapy helps people to be honest with themselves and to tune into their unconscious wisdom (p. 9). He sees his role as a psychotherapist as an agent of change, since he proposes that much of human suffering comes from the inability to cope with change.

In addressing What it Means to Be, he looks at humanity in a way that includes body, mind, soul and spirit, while at the same time being embedded in, and dependent on, the rest of creation (p. 7). He looks at the writings of Bateson and juxatposes them with Buddhism and Christianity, with the idea that inner space and outer space are the same ‘beingness’.

Lyleson sees the process of evolution as our coming to view ourselves as separate from the rest of creation, and spirit from matter (p. 37). He explains this by showing us a picture of human experience from the earliest development of humans, exploring theories of how life developed on earth (p. 54). The book looks at the way in which people change to freedom from suffering; how control vs. cooperation has been achieved, and even how our society uses meditation to enable people to mechanically function better (p. 33). He explains separation and anxiety: ‘Anxieties, frustrations, insecurities, resentments, or even the simple discontent that drives most people’s lives, are caused by the separation from our essential nature that occurs by the holding onto a solid, permanent sense of self’ (p. 10).

Then, in order to achieve a sense of self – ‘the living in harmony with our own true natures in order to live in harmony with nature’ (p. 1) – he uses the Enneagram. The nine personality types are explained in great detail. Each type is explored in terms of its essence in a way that makes sense and is correlated with qualities of being that Lyleson calls ‘faces of love’. The Enneagram is used to assist us to recognise the types in clients and to understand how people make sense of their world as a way of being and living. He offers us suggestions for ways of working with each personality type (p. 113) and actually presents questions to assist people to facilitate change and move towards wholeness in their favourite type (p. 137).

The stunning thing about the book is the positive way in which each type is presented. Lyleson claims that everyone is right, has some important pieces of truth, and that all of these pieces need to be honoured. In supporting this idea, he references Ken Wilber (2000, Collected Works of Ken Wilber, Vol VIII, Shambhala Publications, Boston, p. 3). He also deals with the personality types as a whole ‘like white light composed of colours’ (p. 142). A client, David, is seen in terms of eight of the nine personality types, which demonstrates this point.

One of the more unusual chapters looks at the development of each person from the womb to 12 months old. We are presented with an extraordinary and detailed description of birth from a baby’s point of view, positioning each stage with the Enneagram, and again the Enneagram is used to reach essential wholeness.

Lyleson explains that having to hold on to and validating a self‐concept is only necessary if we have a negative self‐concept. Whereas an unconditional acceptance of the way things are can be achieved if we do not define ourselves in a static way. This would enable us to be free to respond to life in whatever ways are most useful (p. 10).

In conclusion, I call on Eric to define the concept of essential wholeness in this most extraordinary book: ‘We are not our compulsions of personality; we are spiritual beings experiencing the ever‐changing nature of creation. The more we open to our true nature, the more we utilize and demonstrate the full spectrum of qualities represented by the Enneagram’ (p. 388).

Personality Types

First published: 13 November 2018

https://doi.org/10.1002/anzf.1337

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