Category: Field Notes

The focus in this Field Note is dreams of possibility, what Arnold Mindell the founder of Process Oriented Psychotherapy calls “high dreams” — dreams that express your most strongly held values and beliefs, and the essence of who you are. High dreams are not night dreams, although they are not unrelated. All dreams of any kinds are an outcome of many sources, such as personal history that includes, family of origin, culture, schooling, peers, religion, institutions, and so on. As such, they could be said to arise from both the individual and collective unconscious. Read Field Note

I imagine that at times it  has occurred to you how “machine-like” others, and yourself are? However you address and describe such experiences, these undesirable and predictably repetitive reactive patterns of behavior, thinking, feeling (or lack thereof), really your/our reactivity keep popping up, despite best resolve to change them and not to repeat them. It’s seems there is part of you and me that is like a machine with set programs that are not under our control to turn off or to change. I think the central question is what is it that you are really dealing with in yourself when you struggle to change your patterns of behaviour, thoughts, and feelings? Read Field Note

The word Holotropic is borrowed from the Czechoslovakian psychiatrist and one of the founders of transpersonal psychology, Stanislav Grof (stanislavgrof. com), who created it from ‘holos’(meaning, ‘whole’) and trapein (meaning, ‘turning or moving towards’).  Holo+tropic together means moving or turning towards wholeness. This term is related to his view of the value of non-ordinary, and what Heesoon and I have been calling, the ‘post-egoic’ states of consciousness. Read Field Note

As many of you know, ‘inner work’ is something I believe is central to personal growth and becoming an increasingly whole human being. It is the most important practice in life that I engage with persistently and consistently, and recommend to everyone with whom I work. Life hands us anything and everything, and inner work offers transformational potential; it provides the alchemical way to turn the inner lead into inner gold. For this Field Note I will share a recent personal experience and my related reflections along with some broader implications. Read Field Note

In this Field Note I will offer you an idea and a practice to cultivate the vital energy in connection; listening and speaking simultaneously—‘conscious multidimensional communication construction in the moment. ’ Interestingly enough, medical science notes the vital inter-connection between the health of our physical heart and the wellness of our emotional life. Most all of us would like to be joyful, content, loved, and loving. Yet the challenge of attaining such seems to be inordinately difficult. Read Field Note

What Matters… Meaningful experience, meaningful life: humans’ need for meaning can be as strong as the most basic needs. This is demonstrated time and time again by those who survived against all odds during nearly humanly impossible life conditions they had to endure. Viktor Frankl was a sterling example. Frankl, the founder of Logotherapy (existential therapy), survivor of concentration camp experience, and author of many books, including his best-known and widely read book, Man’s Search for Meaning, reveals: the meaning of life always changes, but it never ceases to be. Read Field Note

In life there are some ideas that most people seem to have about natural order. Here is one: in the realm of life and death, the youngest should survive to the point of becoming the oldest, and sufficiently beyond to provide mentorship to the upcoming generations. As we know, life doesn’t always work that way. Here is another: in terms of wisdom, there is a general view that elders should be respected and provide mentorship for the younger generation. Read Field Note

As I have written about previously, you and I have been formed into various sub-identities that are geared for our survival and to allow us to get support, approval, and love. In the process of, or as part of this identity formation, many sub-identities are formed to cope with “strange” responses from our external environment, including, and most importantly, our primary attachment figures and symbols, such as Mother and Father, and also all those people, institutions, cultural norms, and so on that we encounter as we grow up. Read Field Note

This statement comes from No Exit, a play by the French existential philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre. The meaning of this line is in reference to the loss of subjectivity based from the loss of freedom that occurs in relationship with others that involves being subjected to their approval/disapproval. Of course, this is not merely a philosophical proposition. Everyone has had such experience in their relationships, from the earliest moment of child-parent bonding to adult pair bonding, as well as in school, at work, and multiple other environments. Read Field Note

Albert Camus, was one of the well-known early French 20th century existential philosophers. Following the Second World War, existentialism became a prominent philosophical tradition, and Camus, along with Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and others in France, were the most active proponents of existentialist philosophy. European existentialism has its legacy in the works of Soren Kierkegaard, a Dane, and Friedrich Nietzsche, a German. Read Field Note