Field Notes
by Dr. Avraham Cohen, PhD, RCC-ACS, CCC

In this Field Note I believe you will find ideas and practices that will take you into the realm of expanded consciousness, and that you will discover some ways to research and experiment with your life and consciousness, beyond the realms of suffering and pain. “Suffering and pain” is a big territory that includes frustration, annoyance, anxiety, boredom, meaninglessness, fear and so on. I will not go over the ground that I have covered previously about inner work with your egoic structures that limit your ability to be fluid and flexible, uncovering and working with your edges, transcending those edges, and moving increasingly into realms of expanded awareness and experiencing of life. For sure that was the core and underlying work that builds the foundation for what I will offer you in this field note as practice. Read Field Note

The famous TV science fiction series, Star Trek: The Final Frontier, has a well-known line as part of the introduction to each episode, which is part of the mission statement of the Starship Enterprise, “. . . to go where no man has gone before . . ..”  (Of course, today, we need to say, “. . . to go where no humans have gone before . . ..”)  As a psychotherapist, whenever I hear that phrasing, I think of such intrepid journey of exploration and discovery taking place in the inner and relational worlds. Read Field Note

Just above is the recording for this Field Note for April 1, 2021, Disappointment (continued). If you want an opportunity to hear the Note that precedes this current one, you can listen to the audio file just below… Having lived long enough and seen enough in my personal and professional life, I would readily give myself to the view that most humans experience disappointment in and with life. Of course, some more acutely (as misery and suffering) than others (as dissatisfaction, discontent, and unhappiness). I am not alone in this view. Read Field Note

Disappointment is so pervasive that we might as well equate life, as experienced by humans, with disappointment. At least, that’s a tempting impulse, and I confess that I feel it intensely every now and then. We all hope that the degree of disappointment is not so devastating as to hollow out and crush us with a catastrophic implosion or explosion. Read Field Note

As you may be aware, Heesoon reviews the Field Notes before they are published and contributes editing and ideas. Upon reading some of her comments for my initial draft of this Field Note, I felt inspired, thought that this would be a good opportunity for a dialogue between her and me, which is what follows here. And you, too, are invited to participate in this dialogue. So, feel free to pick up at any point and share with us your comments, thoughts, ideas, experiences, and questions. Read Field Note

This Field Note is really about getting to know in a much more detailed and intimate way your sub-identities, and their great potentials. I recommend two approaches to this ‘getting to know’ project: 1) by observing with your consciousness; namely using your awareness in ways that are increasingly skilful; 2) by identifying with the identity: that is, knowing it by getting inside of it. In common language, owning it. Read Field Note

Many of you have requested something more specific on the practice of inner work. So, my intention with the last Note, this one, and the next one is to provide a more specific introduction to the process. In the last Field Note, I addressed what I would consider the core of Inner Work practice and personal growth: awareness. In this field note, I am going to outline a method for addressing the next step; what happens when you run into various events that are reflected in your consciousness and what you creatively might do with these, which may require more explanation than I can reasonably include in this Note. Read Field Note

This field note will highlight the centrality of our ability to be self-aware and to reflect on our own experience. Cultivation and development of reflective self-awareness would, I believe, foster the best chance for the future of human beings and all other living things on the earth. I will address the cultivation and development of moment to moment awareness, our capacity and ability to be fully present in life. In this field note, I will address some ideas about consciousness and its development through inner work, based in the development of awareness. Read Field Note

Although what some would term the spiritual life has been in focus for me for many decades, I can share with you that this is increasingly so at this time in my life. I can relate this to aging to some extent, but perhaps most centrally to my lifelong quest for knowledge of reality: a reality that is beyond the ordinary experience of life. I do, as I imagine many of you do, distinguish ‘spiritual,’ from ‘religious.’ Read Field Note

Learning from nature, the ancient Taoists perceived two complementary impulses in the psyche, called yin and yang. The polar tension and interplay between these two impulses drives the cyclic process of creating, destroying and re-creating. 1 I have added this small paragraph after the initial posting as the events in the US took place after I had already uploaded the July Field Note (I won’t be adding this to the audio file as it would require me to re-do the whole file): I want to say something about the extreme experience of othering, namely, racism, that is very understandably provoking immense unrest in the US, and elsewhere. The death of George Floyd, a black man, by suffocation that was inflicted by a police person in Minneapolis is certainly an immense event of othering. Read Field Note