Transpersonal Experiences

Text written in 1.999 for the master’s degree in Transpersonal Studies

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What are the fundamentals of transpersonal experiences? First of all we need to be connected with our heart even if it means to feel deep wounds and pain. As we are human being, we can’t go on without our feelings. The path is to become aware and work with them. For doing that, it may help us to feel our connection with the earth so that we can grow in steadiness, inner power and strength to be able to face pain and suffering without being shaken or overwhelmed by them.

As a person born under the influence of cancer sign, my chief words are “I feel”, that is, I need to be in my work, in my relationships, in all I do with the heart. If it’s not there, I can’t go on. There is not a sense neither a motif to stay there. By heart I love dancing, writting poesy, singing and playing piano, and contemplating nature. It’s from where I bring my energy.

On the other hand, it’s a place of pain and wounds. I became aware that I wanted to feel life but not pain. I thought I could avoid new wounds, e.g., I wanted to stay with just one face of the coin. I was afraid of not supporting a new deep pain in my heart. This way I didn’t heal my old wounds and couldn’t untangle myself from them. In fact, what I needed was to improve my sense of inner power and steadiness besides confidence in life.

According to the interconnectedness between heart, mind and body, what we’ve felt and thought is impressed in our body as a pattern of tension. Thus a heartfelt pain become a physical pain. We’ve reacted to the world, as we’ve experienced it, with our whole being. So we can use our body and mind by meditation to attain and take care or our heart. We may begin paying attention to our body: what does it tell us about our feelings, our needs and limits by its sensations, pains and diseases? This may be the beginning of a healing process as a transpersonal experience including body, mind and heart.

The psychologist Eugene Gendlin, noticing the separation between mind and body in his clients, developed an exercise called by him “focusing” which goal was to reconnect them with their physical experiences and feelings in order to being able to use again their “bodyfelt sensations” as a guide in their relationships with the world. According to Gendlin, there are two basic conditions that have to be presente so that a personality changing process can occur – an emotional process, involving feelings and “felt sensations”, and a meaningful relationship where they are present. So we can’t put away our feelings to evolve as human beings.

Only functioning as a unit, we can go ahead on the spiritual path. This is a lesson we need to learn during all life, a lesson of listening and balance with ourselves, remembering the the direction is always toward the centre of the hurricaine where we can dissolve it and find peace. Other important issue to have in mind is that if we put our attention and balance only upon one point of our life, it becomes so hard that we can’t move on.

For developing ourselves in transpersonal experiences we still need do deal with some personal difficulties that emerge mainly in meditation process. A way to work with is to identify kindly each difficulty, naming and accepting it as a part of our nonperfect self without fighting against it. In Western culture that shows and demands us some models of perfection, we are taught to flee, deny or hide our difficulties, weaknesses and vulnerabilities When in fact we must approach and use them as tools in our spiritual development. Each of them is a lesson we have to learn with ourselves and with others as challenges put upon our path that must be faced and overtaken. So the first step is to recognize them so that we can strengthen our self. Thus we’ll be able to deepen in our spiritual practice and let go our limited identity.

It may seen a contracdition but it’s actually that: we should construct our identity so that we can dissolve it in a great reality. Without a strong self it’s more difficult to deal with fears, doubts and pains besides some unknown phenomena that emerge on the spiritual path. On the other hand if we grasp at some personal qualities or capacities as if they were our inner self becoming proud of them, we can’t advance to our true nature.

When I read about self and no self, I thought: - “This is a joke, a life’s joke!” I’ll explain you my reasons. In my personal journey as an unique daughter, I had a hard work to construct my own identity separated from my parents. An independente life was my goal. When I thought that I needed to let go this identity, I became aware of how much I was grasping at it, identifying myself, for example, with my thinkings and fighting for them.

Otherwise if I’m afraid of losing this identity, it seems that it’s not steady enough or it’s somehow limitated. So this is a point I need to work in myself. Besides that, although altered states of consciousness and psychic powers are not the goal of the spiritual development, if I don’t confidence in myself to experience them when they begin to emerge in my practice, it becomes an obstacle on my path, difficulting my advance in meditation process.

Another point is to accept myself as I am without demanding me a perfection neither being ashamed of my weaknesses and faults. In this sense to write these essays to the university about my inner experiences showing actually myself have been a true exercise. A doubt that used to come was: - “They won’t accept me. They won’t consider me able to follow this course.” I became aware that it was one of my demons and now I can identify it more easily.

We can divide the human life basically in two parts. The first three or for decades are dedicated to construt and ratify our self as a social identity in the world – a person with some qualities and a singular character, a professional with some capacities and competency, a mother or father, a married person or a single one. And the following decades cam be used to review this identity perhaps making new choices in order to widening and deepenig the perception of ourselves in the universe.

We can also use a tree as a metaphor: for growing and expanding its crown toward the sky the tree needs its roots are well grasped at the soil. I frequently use this example for my clientes in their psychotherapeutic process.

If we think about the chakras and the evolution of the energy through them, we can see the same: the first tree chakras are connected with the earth having characteristics of confidence, steadiness, power and determination. The fourth one which is of the heart, make the connection between those of the earth and the tree following chakras that belong to the sky, that is, to the spiritual life. The direction of the energy is from the earth’s chakras to the spiritual ones, and on this path the energy needs to pass by the heart before evolving to more spiritual qualities.

In short, we may see in our body what happens in our life. That’s why we need to pay attention and take care of it as a temple instead of denying it. The Christian church introduced a rupture between body and spirit as if they were two separated realms, saying only that of the spirit was of value. In accordance with it we shouldn’t listen to the body’s needs When in reality we only can evolve as spiritual beings with our body and spirit coming together .

This division from Christian church became stronger from the beginning of Modern Age with another rupture – that one between religion and science, under the influence of Descartes’ dichotomy, creating the compartmentalization in our Western culture between sacred and profane. Thus the sacred became limitated into some specific spaces and activities, separated from our daily life. This way of seeing the reality bring us some difficulties to experience and recognize transpersonal events in our life as if our eyes were opened to them only in certain frames.

When I was reading about the cycles of life, I began asking me if it was a good time to attend this course as I was so involved with my baby. Perhaps it was almost impossible to deepen in spiritual dimensions in these so ordinary circunstances.

As I went on to the next chapter about compartmentalization, I could understand that my thought was distorted by a wrong perception and I began to be aware of the spiritual tasks the motherhood brought to me like to be present in a spontaneous, affective and distressed way to contact her closely as I am and she is without demanding us anything, any model of perfection, accepting me and her with our faults, weaknesses and difficulties, noticing we can love each other in our humanity with compassion and respect.

Besides that I could perceive that if I am in a turning point, the need of changing will be present in all diferent aspects of my life in order to recognizing myself as a totality. That’s why I need also to change my work, leaving the hospital where I’ve been working for eight years to another place where I can have better conditions to develop an wider and deeper psychological approach. By one side I’m afraid of all these changes coming together but by the other side I feel in my inner self I must do that. The transpersonal studies, the motherhood and the changes in work belong to the same movement.

Other lesson is about listening to my needs and hers with patience knowing to set limits and to say no for not overcharging myself neither her. It’s common in Christian culture a misconception about generosity as if we shouldn’t say no neither listen to our own needs, e.g., not to be contacted with own selves. This way how can we be able to teach other to listen to himself? We can’t facilitate other to learn what we don’t experience.

Otherwise this is a worth point to have in mind when we try to find a person who may guide us on the spiritual path. This person must show us an integration between his/her knowledge and teachings, and his/her own personal life. That’s what I try to live. The psychologist Carl Rogers underlined this integration in the psychotherapist as a condition to facilitate the process in the client. He called it “genuineness”. And in the Humanistic Psychology Center where I work as teacher and supervisor in a course for new psychologists we emphasize this point and encourage the students to find a way to practice this connection with themselves.

Sometimes when I look at my baby sleeping quietly I think: - “Where does she come? What is the journey of this soul? What does she need to learn and overtake? How can I help her? How will she help me in my own inner journey?” Two weeks ago when I telephoned to the institution where I picked her up, I casually knew that there were couples waiting for a baby for more time than me when my baby is born. Therefore she came to me. Why? Who has decided that? I agree with Deepak Chopra in his Hindu philosophy telling us there is an intelligence through the whole universe as a composer arranging the harmony even if we don’t know its reasons or goals.

I can notice that I also make me these questions above when some people come to me demanding psychotherapeutic support. How can this meeting be meaningful and helpful to him/her? What can I bring to him/her? And how will I be affected in turn by this singular person?

There is a certain quality of relationship, a way of being present by which we are able to touch other in his inner self generating an important changing movement within. Carl Rogers explored it as magic moments in the client’s therapeutic process. It’s a way of meeting other with an opened heart, with our whole being so that we can accept him in his wholeness and in the immediacy of the present without putting between us any condition, any expectation, any evaluation. And how it’s meaningful to experience to be loved in this unconditional and whole way. This is called by Rogers “unconditional positive regard”, another important therapeutic attitude.

When I read about listening to others from their point of view, I immediately made a correspondance with other Rogers’ concept - “empathic comprehension”, based on the phenomenological approach. Without any theory or judgement, we try to understand what the client is experiencing here and now by his own singular way of seeing himself and the reality. Using this approach Rogers was called to facilitate the understanding between human groups in conflict because of diferent religions, cultures or social classes as, for example, Catholics and Protestants in North Ireland.

The empathic comprehension is the opposite of our ordinary critical approach to others mainly when their atitudes and values come against ours. It’s an exercise to accept the differences, listening to others with respect and an open heart, and at the same time being able to listen to our heart and to set limits. It’s not easy, but when we really do that, the results are so meaningful that we go ahead trying to experience it again and again.

In short, by these basic attitudes in human relationships we can transform them in transpersonal experiences, seeing both us and the others as parts of the great dance of universe, as particles of energy that influence each other and the whole cosmos, recognizing that each particle has its own evolution although integrated with the totality, and that our function is to help others to evolve, trying at the same time to evolve ourselves.

Having in mind this relational dimension, we can also conclude that transpersonal experience requires us an individual development with an openness to our inner experiences what in turn demands us a certain emotional maturity and inner assurance.

If we reflect about the word “transpersonal”, we’ll notice that it’s composed by three basic parts – trans + person + al, that is, a quality besides the person, besides our individual identity and toward our true nature.