Spirituality

Enchantment, Spirituality

The Enigma of the Soul’s Blueprint

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I’m in awe of the poetic intelligence of the psyche’s deepest aspects. That’s quite a phrase, isn’t it, poetic intelligence? What does it mean? Isabel Clarke introduced me to the transliminal dimension (“beyond threshold”), which operates more like poetry than logic. Transliminality is a psychological term for content moving past the unconscious/conscious threshold. The higher this tendency, the more creative someone is likely to be.

People with high transliminality access to dimensions the majority don’t find so easily. The deeper you go, the more poetic the dimension becomes, leaving behind the familiar ground of logic and reason, entering the symbolic and the mythical. Poets and mystics return from this dimension, people we view as mad get lost. Poetic intelligence, then, is the ability to discern, interpret and engage with this dimension.

Psychology, Spirituality

Shadow and Light Integration: From Unconscious to Superconscious

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lotus flower shadow and light

Over 120 years since “The Father of American Psychology,” William James, wrote Varieties of Religious Experience, mysticism remains on the periphery, as psychology recovers from an imbalance toward pathology. Mainstream theory and therapies have done incredibly well at mapping the shadow. Much less attention is paid to the light, the potent force known as the superconscious.

There’s an understandable tentativeness when psychology enters so-called spiritual territory. The stumbling block with integrating the superconscious is its metaphysical associations. Mysticism, the idea that union with the divine is an experiential possibility, contradicts the dominant ideology of materialism.

Mental Health, Spirituality

The Yoga of Mental Illness and Self-Realisation

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yoga and mental illness

I’m fascinated by how self-realisation relates to mental illness. Common ailments, such as depression, can’t be exempt from liberation traditions because they’re psychological constructs. Pathways that contextualise these ailments in structures ripe with potential for enlightenment, or nirvana, are of particular interest. Yoga is the choice for this exploration, because it’s grounded in self-realisation, mystical union, and the cessation of suffering, not… happiness.

That’s a direct challenge to dominating ideologies such as materialism and scientism. It challenges the notion of ailments as permanent or fixed. It turns our ambition of what’s possible upside down, suggesting that suffering is a pathway to awakening. Mental illness absorbed by this understanding is something to take incredibly seriously, because it suggests common recovery goals significantly downplay human potential.

Philosophy, Spirituality

Liberty, Liberation, and the Paradox of Freedom

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freedom

Freedom is a spiritual quality. Like love, or peace, or stillness, it is essential, and only truly cultivated within. Equally, freedom, like love, or peace, or stillness, is experienced in the world, or more accurately, through the world. While worldly freedom can be attained, spiritual freedom is unconditional. This freedom is not the absence of difficulty, but freedom despite difficulty.

Ego, Spirituality

The First Horseman of Spiritual Ego: Spiritual Bypassing

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Spiritual bypassing occurs when spiritual practices are used to escape from responsibilities.
The post is part of the series: The Four Horsemen of Spiritual Ego.

Spiritual bypassing was identified by John Welwood in the early 1980s. Welwood’s experience as a transpersonal therapist and Buddhist teacher gave him a unique insight into how spirituality can become an escape mechanism. Despite good intentions, Welwood noticed “a widespread tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks.” He adds:

“When we are spiritually bypassing, we often use the goal of awakening or liberation to rationalize what I call premature transcendence: trying to rise above the raw and messy side of our humanness before we have fully faced and made peace with it. And then we tend to use absolute truth to disparage or dismiss relative human needs, feelings, psychological problems, relational difficulties, and developmental deficits. I see this as an ‘occupational hazard’ of the spiritual path, in that spirituality does involve a vision of going beyond our current karmic situation.”