The meta-healing view of Gabor Maté

[Lou Gold]

I feel very aligned with this point of view.

[Lou Gold]

I feel very aligned with this point of view.

What fascinates me in metaphysical terms is the way he sees childhood awareness and choices affecting actual physical brain development and thus manifesting long term biases in the way humans perceive their own self. What's different here is the way he mixes the physical and the ideal. He sees the ideal as the originator of the physical adult brain structure and patterns that were caused by choices made in childhood, choices of consciousness. He does not present things with a metaphysical framework but repeatedly offers a very interesting an reversal in thinking of how the ideal causes physical development in humans.

[AshvinP]

I feel very aligned with this point of view.

What fascinates me in metaphysical terms is the way he sees childhood awareness and choices affecting actual physical brain development and thus manifesting long term biases in the way humans perceive their own self. What's different here is the way he mixes the physical and the ideal. He sees the ideal as the originator of the physical adult brain structure and patterns that were caused by choices made in childhood, choices of consciousness. He does not present things with a metaphysical framework but repeatedly offers a very interesting an reversal in thinking of how the ideal causes physical development in humans.

Lou,

Thanks for sharing.

Through spiritual scientific investigation, we can add much depth here. I think it is often conceived that spiritual science presents only another theory or model of spiritual reality and the body-soul-spirit evolution, which can be compared and contrasted with other theories and models. The reality is, though, that it goes into the rich depth of our existing philosophical-scientific-spiritual models and gives us precise relations which make holistic sense of them. More and more secular science is coming to realize that soul-spirit processes are the driving factor of physical evolution, not the other way around. These relations have been explored in advance, as it were, by spiritual scientific investigators and will gradually precipitate into the general consciousness.

It is critical for modern man to start grasping these relations. We could even say that all feeling of dissatisfaction in our incarnate life comes from the soul-spirit part of us not finding a physical-etheric instrument which can properly unfold all the capacities we have developed during previous incarnations. That mismatch always happens to some extent at our current stage and can happen for a number of different reasons, including available heredity streams into which we can incarnate and our own lack of willpower to shape the instruments in early years of life. Until we become livingly aware of these relations, in the same way we are livingly aware of smells, tastes, colors, etc., we will simply lack the motivation to begin taking hold of our destiny and preparing for closer spiritual-physical alignment in our future incarnations. We can know these relations in the same way we know that if we stop taking out the trash for a week, the house will stink to high heaven the next week. There are no quick fixes here in a single lifetime - instead we need to discern our evolutionary arc over many epochs and gradually begin working into the stream of the future through higher cognitive capacity.

Here is an ex. of such a deeper relation which is already grasped:

The fiftieth anniversary of that important dissertation on the speech-centre which the great doctor and philosopher Broca delivered before the Paris Anthropological Society in April 1861 might well have been celebrated this year; for the work of Broca is a complete proof that the predisposition to that configuration, that formation of a specific part of the brain which brings about both the aesthetic consciousness of speech and the understanding of its sounds does not lie in the inner laws of the physical brain. When in April 1861 Broca found that the organ of speech lies in the third convolution of the brain, and that this organ must be in order if a man is to understand the sounds of speech, and that another part must be in order for him to speak, the discovery constituted an important advance which can be turned to good account by Spiritual Science and is a verification of the facts known to it. Why is this? Because the way this speech centre is developed shows that a man's outer movements, the movements of his hands (i.e. what he does half unconsciously) plays a part in the configuration of this speech centre. Why is this speech-centre especially developed on the left side? It is because under the cultural conditions which have prevailed hitherto, men have made particular use of the right hand. Thus it is the etheric and astral bodies which, out of the unconscious, bring about the movements of the hands which work into the brain and mould it. Today anthropology makes it plain that the brain is formed from without by macrocosmic forces. When this part of the brain is injured, there is no capacity for speech. If we take into consideration that the side of the brain which through our right-handedness has been strongly developed can be relieved from without by the use of the left hand — a thing which is still possible in childhood though no longer so in later life — then it is seen that, by means of systematic activity from without, the brain can be so moulded that a speech-centre develops in the corresponding third convolution of the brain on the right side. Are we not driven to say that it is the greatest possible error to think that the faculty of speech is formed through the predisposition of the brain? It is not the natural tendency of the brain which brings into existence the faculty of speech but the activity which the man himself develops. The faculty of speech is developed in the brain from out of the macrocosm. The organ of speech comes from speaking, not speaking from the speech-organ.

[Lou Gold]

I feel very aligned with this point of view.

What fascinates me in metaphysical terms is the way he sees childhood awareness and choices affecting actual physical brain development and thus manifesting long term biases in the way humans perceive their own self. What's different here is the way he mixes the physical and the ideal. He sees the ideal as the originator of the physical adult brain structure and patterns that were caused by choices made in childhood, choices of consciousness. He does not present things with a metaphysical framework but repeatedly offers a very interesting an reversal in thinking of how the ideal causes physical development in humans.

Lou,

Thanks for sharing.

Through spiritual scientific investigation, we can add much depth here. I think it is often conceived that spiritual science presents only another theory or model of spiritual reality and the body-soul-spirit evolution, which can be compared and contrasted with other theories and models. The reality is, though, that it goes into the rich depth of our existing philosophical-scientific-spiritual models and gives us precise relations which make holistic sense of them. More and more secular science is coming to realize that soul-spirit processes are the driving factor of physical evolution, not the other way around. These relations have been explored in advance, as it were, by spiritual scientific investigators and will gradually precipitate into the general consciousness.

It is critical for modern man to start grasping these relations. We could even say that all feeling of dissatisfaction in our incarnate life comes from the soul-spirit part of us not finding a physical-etheric instrument which can properly unfold all the capacities we have developed during previous incarnations. That mismatch always happens to some extent at our current stage and can happen for a number of different reasons, including available heredity streams into which we can incarnate and our own lack of willpower to shape the instruments in early years of life. Until we become livingly aware of these relations, in the same way we are livingly aware of smells, tastes, colors, etc., we will simply lack the motivation to begin taking hold of our destiny and preparing for closer spiritual-physical alignment in our future incarnations. We can know these relations in the same way we know that if we stop taking out the trash for a week, the house will stink to high heaven the next week. There are no quick fixes here in a single lifetime - instead we need to discern our evolutionary arc over many epochs and gradually begin working into the stream of the future through higher cognitive capacity.

Here is an ex. of such a deeper relation which is already grasped:

The fiftieth anniversary of that important dissertation on the speech-centre which the great doctor and philosopher Broca delivered before the Paris Anthropological Society in April 1861 might well have been celebrated this year; for the work of Broca is a complete proof that the predisposition to that configuration, that formation of a specific part of the brain which brings about both the aesthetic consciousness of speech and the understanding of its sounds does not lie in the inner laws of the physical brain. When in April 1861 Broca found that the organ of speech lies in the third convolution of the brain, and that this organ must be in order if a man is to understand the sounds of speech, and that another part must be in order for him to speak, the discovery constituted an important advance which can be turned to good account by Spiritual Science and is a verification of the facts known to it. Why is this? Because the way this speech centre is developed shows that a man's outer movements, the movements of his hands (i.e. what he does half unconsciously) plays a part in the configuration of this speech centre. Why is this speech-centre especially developed on the left side? It is because under the cultural conditions which have prevailed hitherto, men have made particular use of the right hand. Thus it is the etheric and astral bodies which, out of the unconscious, bring about the movements of the hands which work into the brain and mould it. Today anthropology makes it plain that the brain is formed from without by macrocosmic forces. When this part of the brain is injured, there is no capacity for speech. If we take into consideration that the side of the brain which through our right-handedness has been strongly developed can be relieved from without by the use of the left hand — a thing which is still possible in childhood though no longer so in later life — then it is seen that, by means of systematic activity from without, the brain can be so moulded that a speech-centre develops in the corresponding third convolution of the brain on the right side. Are we not driven to say that it is the greatest possible error to think that the faculty of speech is formed through the predisposition of the brain? It is not the natural tendency of the brain which brings into existence the faculty of speech but the activity which the man himself develops. The faculty of speech is developed in the brain from out of the macrocosm. The organ of speech comes from speaking, not speaking from the speech-organ.

Hi Ashvin,

That's an interesting piece of history. Looks like stages of brain development have been known for a long time. The view of Maté, however, focuses on the way childhood trauma and/or cultural and intergenerational stress factors distort healthy development. I could not tell if you generally agree with the points he makes in this podcast.

[AshvinP]

Lou,

Thanks for sharing.

Through spiritual scientific investigation, we can add much depth here. I think it is often conceived that spiritual science presents only another theory or model of spiritual reality and the body-soul-spirit evolution, which can be compared and contrasted with other theories and models. The reality is, though, that it goes into the rich depth of our existing philosophical-scientific-spiritual models and gives us precise relations which make holistic sense of them. More and more secular science is coming to realize that soul-spirit processes are the driving factor of physical evolution, not the other way around. These relations have been explored in advance, as it were, by spiritual scientific investigators and will gradually precipitate into the general consciousness.

It is critical for modern man to start grasping these relations. We could even say that all feeling of dissatisfaction in our incarnate life comes from the soul-spirit part of us not finding a physical-etheric instrument which can properly unfold all the capacities we have developed during previous incarnations. That mismatch always happens to some extent at our current stage and can happen for a number of different reasons, including available heredity streams into which we can incarnate and our own lack of willpower to shape the instruments in early years of life. Until we become livingly aware of these relations, in the same way we are livingly aware of smells, tastes, colors, etc., we will simply lack the motivation to begin taking hold of our destiny and preparing for closer spiritual-physical alignment in our future incarnations. We can know these relations in the same way we know that if we stop taking out the trash for a week, the house will stink to high heaven the next week. There are no quick fixes here in a single lifetime - instead we need to discern our evolutionary arc over many epochs and gradually begin working into the stream of the future through higher cognitive capacity.

Here is an ex. of such a deeper relation which is already grasped:

The fiftieth anniversary of that important dissertation on the speech-centre which the great doctor and philosopher Broca delivered before the Paris Anthropological Society in April 1861 might well have been celebrated this year; for the work of Broca is a complete proof that the predisposition to that configuration, that formation of a specific part of the brain which brings about both the aesthetic consciousness of speech and the understanding of its sounds does not lie in the inner laws of the physical brain. When in April 1861 Broca found that the organ of speech lies in the third convolution of the brain, and that this organ must be in order if a man is to understand the sounds of speech, and that another part must be in order for him to speak, the discovery constituted an important advance which can be turned to good account by Spiritual Science and is a verification of the facts known to it. Why is this? Because the way this speech centre is developed shows that a man's outer movements, the movements of his hands (i.e. what he does half unconsciously) plays a part in the configuration of this speech centre. Why is this speech-centre especially developed on the left side? It is because under the cultural conditions which have prevailed hitherto, men have made particular use of the right hand. Thus it is the etheric and astral bodies which, out of the unconscious, bring about the movements of the hands which work into the brain and mould it. Today anthropology makes it plain that the brain is formed from without by macrocosmic forces. When this part of the brain is injured, there is no capacity for speech. If we take into consideration that the side of the brain which through our right-handedness has been strongly developed can be relieved from without by the use of the left hand — a thing which is still possible in childhood though no longer so in later life — then it is seen that, by means of systematic activity from without, the brain can be so moulded that a speech-centre develops in the corresponding third convolution of the brain on the right side. Are we not driven to say that it is the greatest possible error to think that the faculty of speech is formed through the predisposition of the brain? It is not the natural tendency of the brain which brings into existence the faculty of speech but the activity which the man himself develops. The faculty of speech is developed in the brain from out of the macrocosm. The organ of speech comes from speaking, not speaking from the speech-organ.

Hi Ashvin,

That's an interesting piece of history. Looks like stages of brain development have been known for a long time. The view of Maté, however, focuses on the way childhood trauma and/or cultural and intergenerational stress factors distort healthy development. I could not tell if you generally agree with the points he makes in this podcast.

Lou, I do agree. We could liken it to someone at the ocean. He is asked, 'do you agree that the oil tanker spill has polluted these waters and endangered its sea life?' Yes I agree, he says, but I also want to call attention to the whole constellation of evolutionary factors which led society to be dependent on oil tankers for energy needs and for humans to be so careless in their interactions with the living waters of the Earth. That is just an analogy - the pursuit of spiritual scientific investigation isn't only to build a larger timeline of causes-effects, but to also penetrate into the depths of our soul-spirit processes in relation to World evolution. In the process of expanding into these depths, our conclusions about and proposed remedies for the oil spill may end up looking quite different. We are no longer looking at it from only one or two angles, but from all around and in its living constellation with the World evolution as a whole.

I'm sure you agree, the pursuit of this information should not only be to contemplate history and accumulate knowledge, but to orient us towards the means of healing - or the Karmic compensation, in esoteric terms. One person concludes the oil spill (the 'trauma') could be prevented only by putting in more safety precautions (more childhood awareness and choices), and once the spill happens, there is no putting the oil back in the tanker. We can only mitigate the after-effects on our future becoming. Again, there is a certain surface validity to that. What we do or don't do in childhood does rigidly condition how we react to events later in life. But if we dive further into the depths of these processes, into our experiences before birth and in previous incarnations, we also learn the overarching context of the oil spill, what other purposes it served, and how it subtly yet wisely informs us of how to make compensation for other events either in this lifetime or the next one. We learn it is not only the past which influences our current be-ing but also our future, which beckons to us.

[Lou Gold]

Lou,

Thanks for sharing.

Through spiritual scientific investigation, we can add much depth here. I think it is often conceived that spiritual science presents only another theory or model of spiritual reality and the body-soul-spirit evolution, which can be compared and contrasted with other theories and models. The reality is, though, that it goes into the rich depth of our existing philosophical-scientific-spiritual models and gives us precise relations which make holistic sense of them. More and more secular science is coming to realize that soul-spirit processes are the driving factor of physical evolution, not the other way around. These relations have been explored in advance, as it were, by spiritual scientific investigators and will gradually precipitate into the general consciousness.

It is critical for modern man to start grasping these relations. We could even say that all feeling of dissatisfaction in our incarnate life comes from the soul-spirit part of us not finding a physical-etheric instrument which can properly unfold all the capacities we have developed during previous incarnations. That mismatch always happens to some extent at our current stage and can happen for a number of different reasons, including available heredity streams into which we can incarnate and our own lack of willpower to shape the instruments in early years of life. Until we become livingly aware of these relations, in the same way we are livingly aware of smells, tastes, colors, etc., we will simply lack the motivation to begin taking hold of our destiny and preparing for closer spiritual-physical alignment in our future incarnations. We can know these relations in the same way we know that if we stop taking out the trash for a week, the house will stink to high heaven the next week. There are no quick fixes here in a single lifetime - instead we need to discern our evolutionary arc over many epochs and gradually begin working into the stream of the future through higher cognitive capacity.

Here is an ex. of such a deeper relation which is already grasped:

Hi Ashvin,

That's an interesting piece of history. Looks like stages of brain development have been known for a long time. The view of Maté, however, focuses on the way childhood trauma and/or cultural and intergenerational stress factors distort healthy development. I could not tell if you generally agree with the points he makes in this podcast.

Lou, I do agree. We could liken it to someone at the ocean. He is asked, 'do you agree that the oil tanker spill has polluted these waters and endangered its sea life?' Yes I agree, he says, but I also want to call attention to the whole constellation of evolutionary factors which led society to be dependent on oil tankers for energy needs and for humans to be so careless in their interactions with the living waters of the Earth. That is just an analogy - the pursuit of spiritual scientific investigation isn't only to build a larger timeline of causes-effects, but to also penetrate into the depths of our soul-spirit processes in relation to World evolution. In the process of expanding into these depths, our conclusions about and proposed remedies for the oil spill may end up looking quite different. We are no longer looking at it from only one or two angles, but from all around and in its living constellation with the World evolution as a whole.

I'm sure you agree, the pursuit of this information should not only be to contemplate history and accumulate knowledge, but to orient us towards the means of healing - or the Karmic compensation, in esoteric terms. One person concludes the oil spill (the 'trauma') could be prevented only by putting in more safety precautions (more childhood awareness and choices), and once the spill happens, there is no putting the oil back in the tanker. We can only mitigate the after-effects on our future becoming. Again, there is a certain surface validity to that. What we do or don't do in childhood does rigidly condition how we react to events later in life. But if we dive further into the depths of these processes, into our experiences before birth and in previous incarnations, we also learn the overarching context of the oil spill, what other purposes it served, and how it subtly yet wisely informs us of how to make compensation for other events either in this lifetime or the next one. We learn it is not only the past which influences our current be-ing but also our future, which beckons to us.

Wonderful, Ashvin. I must confess that I worried that Maté's very positive views of shamanism and psychedelic therapy or his "compassionate inquiry" posture rather than the "shut up kid and clean your room" approach of Jordan Peterson might have blocked a deeper understanding. I'm so glad that it didn't.

In contemplating our interactions across our time at the forum, I believe we would agree that there's been an ascent/descent tension between us. There's a hymn in Santo Daime that says, "I am not God but I have an ambition." If this is what you and Cleric have been saying, I have no quarrel with it. To grow spiritually and have an expanded view is surely a virtuous mission. I do not in any way want to diss it or downplay its value.

However, for myself, I would want to change to hymn to say, "I am not a Bodhisattva but I have an ambition." I am very aware of the suffering both on this side of the veil as well as in the lower astral. There may be a war going on even in higher realms. Perhaps, mine is more like a 'healer's quest' than a 'hero's journey? Perhaps I want to be like a medic in the process. Just words, of course, but hopefully helpful ones. Hopefully, you can appreciate and see value in what I'm trying to communicate.

[AshvinP]

Hi Ashvin,

That's an interesting piece of history. Looks like stages of brain development have been known for a long time. The view of Maté, however, focuses on the way childhood trauma and/or cultural and intergenerational stress factors distort healthy development. I could not tell if you generally agree with the points he makes in this podcast.

Lou, I do agree. We could liken it to someone at the ocean. He is asked, 'do you agree that the oil tanker spill has polluted these waters and endangered its sea life?' Yes I agree, he says, but I also want to call attention to the whole constellation of evolutionary factors which led society to be dependent on oil tankers for energy needs and for humans to be so careless in their interactions with the living waters of the Earth. That is just an analogy - the pursuit of spiritual scientific investigation isn't only to build a larger timeline of causes-effects, but to also penetrate into the depths of our soul-spirit processes in relation to World evolution. In the process of expanding into these depths, our conclusions about and proposed remedies for the oil spill may end up looking quite different. We are no longer looking at it from only one or two angles, but from all around and in its living constellation with the World evolution as a whole.

I'm sure you agree, the pursuit of this information should not only be to contemplate history and accumulate knowledge, but to orient us towards the means of healing - or the Karmic compensation, in esoteric terms. One person concludes the oil spill (the 'trauma') could be prevented only by putting in more safety precautions (more childhood awareness and choices), and once the spill happens, there is no putting the oil back in the tanker. We can only mitigate the after-effects on our future becoming. Again, there is a certain surface validity to that. What we do or don't do in childhood does rigidly condition how we react to events later in life. But if we dive further into the depths of these processes, into our experiences before birth and in previous incarnations, we also learn the overarching context of the oil spill, what other purposes it served, and how it subtly yet wisely informs us of how to make compensation for other events either in this lifetime or the next one. We learn it is not only the past which influences our current be-ing but also our future, which beckons to us.

Wonderful, Ashvin. I must confess that I worried that Maté's very positive views of shamanism and psychedelic therapy or his "compassionate inquiry" posture rather than the "shut up kid and clean your room" approach of Jordan Peterson might have blocked a deeper understanding. I'm so glad that it didn't.

In contemplating our interactions across our time at the forum, I believe we would agree that there's been an ascent/descent tension between us. There's a hymn in Santo Daime that says, "I am not God but I have an ambition." If this is what you and Cleric have been saying, I have no quarrel with it. To grow spiritually and have an expanded view is surely a virtuous mission. I do not in any way want to diss it or downplay its value.

However, for myself, I would want to change to hymn to say, "I am not a Bodhisattva but I have an ambition." I am very aware of the suffering both on this side of the veil as well as in the lower astral. There may be a war going on even in higher realms. Perhaps, mine is more like a 'healer's quest' than a 'hero's journey? Perhaps I want to be like a medic in the process. Just words, of course, but hopefully helpful ones. Hopefully, you can appreciate and see value in what I'm trying to communicate.

Lou,

I suppose that was an astute worry, because part of my point here is that, when we fill out the depth picture of our trauma with living knowledge, we do come to discern how even childhood events can be traced back to our own previous intents and deeds. Again, it is not an analytical model of karma we are seeking, but living experiential knowledge with the same reality and depth of feeling as a beautiful sunrise or sunset. I know JP does not base his psycho-spiritual approach on such knowledge, but rather a more dim phenomenology of the human psyche-spirit and his Christian spirituality, which guides us to livingly search for the roots of 'evil' within ourselves. “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”(Solzhenitsyn)

Spiritual science understands 'evil' in an evolutionary way. It is not to be confused with our intellectual concepts of 'good' and 'evil', which are flattened out and laden with egotistical judgments. Rather we could say evil manifests when certain adaptive capacities to fulfill spiritual intents are fixed in place and utilized well past their 'shelf life', which then becomes as an obstacle to the truly new forms of spiritual activity taking root and evolving. It is a noble pursuit for modern man to investigate the mysterious depths of soul-life with heartfelt intellectual activity, and permeate those depths with concepts which can elucidate our current self in relation to our past. Yet we are now entering a stage when this spiritual activity needs to be strengthened, enlivened, and ennobled further, by all those who have the means and willingness to do so.

In a certain sense, if someone is giving lectures, interviews, writing books, etc. on these mysteries of the soul-spirit, we already know they are idolizing the conceptual activity. Once it is livingly discerned just how unfamiliar we are with those depths, we will hesistate to pronounce any firm conclusions about the nature of 'trauma' and share them with others. I am here writing posts about basic steps towards phenomenology of cognition and vague pointers towards the spiritual realities I am seeking, but if someone asked me to write a book about reincarnation, for ex., I would certainly refuse. I can already discern that I will need the rest of this life and perhaps another to flesh out my understanding of such relations to the point where I can take on the responsibility of teaching it to others in any systematic way. I think this points to the great source of tension, not necessarily between you and I, but between esoteric science and modern culture in general. Most people want to contribute to the discussion, to express themselves, to hopefully help others, but we rarely stop to consider what is required of us to make this a fruitful effort.

Again I am including myself here - many of my essays written previously were prematurely constructed in this respect, and probably a good deal of my posts. I see the esoteric spiritual scientific path as one which progressively reveals these tendencies to us and inspires us to transform our ways, while other paths, secular and spiritual, seem to reinforce a lack of self-awareness in this respect. The latter keep the capacity to strengthen our spiritual activity which investigates the depths in the blindspot, so naturally people end up working with what they have and feeling satisfied they could not be better prepared to contribute than they already are. There is little attempt to discern where the lawful domain of intellectual activity begins and ends. And when that activity is allowed free reign to reductively grasp the depths of soul-spirit, the tendency is to arrive at radically incomplete and often counter-productive conclusions about our evolving soul-life. We naturally default to modes of past thinking-being and lose sight of unsuspected paths which manifest our future becoming.

[Lou Gold]

Lou, I do agree. We could liken it to someone at the ocean. He is asked, 'do you agree that the oil tanker spill has polluted these waters and endangered its sea life?' Yes I agree, he says, but I also want to call attention to the whole constellation of evolutionary factors which led society to be dependent on oil tankers for energy needs and for humans to be so careless in their interactions with the living waters of the Earth. That is just an analogy - the pursuit of spiritual scientific investigation isn't only to build a larger timeline of causes-effects, but to also penetrate into the depths of our soul-spirit processes in relation to World evolution. In the process of expanding into these depths, our conclusions about and proposed remedies for the oil spill may end up looking quite different. We are no longer looking at it from only one or two angles, but from all around and in its living constellation with the World evolution as a whole.

I'm sure you agree, the pursuit of this information should not only be to contemplate history and accumulate knowledge, but to orient us towards the means of healing - or the Karmic compensation, in esoteric terms. One person concludes the oil spill (the 'trauma') could be prevented only by putting in more safety precautions (more childhood awareness and choices), and once the spill happens, there is no putting the oil back in the tanker. We can only mitigate the after-effects on our future becoming. Again, there is a certain surface validity to that. What we do or don't do in childhood does rigidly condition how we react to events later in life. But if we dive further into the depths of these processes, into our experiences before birth and in previous incarnations, we also learn the overarching context of the oil spill, what other purposes it served, and how it subtly yet wisely informs us of how to make compensation for other events either in this lifetime or the next one. We learn it is not only the past which influences our current be-ing but also our future, which beckons to us.

Wonderful, Ashvin. I must confess that I worried that Maté's very positive views of shamanism and psychedelic therapy or his "compassionate inquiry" posture rather than the "shut up kid and clean your room" approach of Jordan Peterson might have blocked a deeper understanding. I'm so glad that it didn't.

In contemplating our interactions across our time at the forum, I believe we would agree that there's been an ascent/descent tension between us. There's a hymn in Santo Daime that says, "I am not God but I have an ambition." If this is what you and Cleric have been saying, I have no quarrel with it. To grow spiritually and have an expanded view is surely a virtuous mission. I do not in any way want to diss it or downplay its value.

However, for myself, I would want to change to hymn to say, "I am not a Bodhisattva but I have an ambition." I am very aware of the suffering both on this side of the veil as well as in the lower astral. There may be a war going on even in higher realms. Perhaps, mine is more like a 'healer's quest' than a 'hero's journey? Perhaps I want to be like a medic in the process. Just words, of course, but hopefully helpful ones. Hopefully, you can appreciate and see value in what I'm trying to communicate.

Lou,

I suppose that was an astute worry, because part of my point here is that, when we fill out the depth picture of our trauma with living knowledge, we do come to discern how even childhood events can be traced back to our own previous intents and deeds. Again, it is not an analytical model of karma we are seeking, but living experiential knowledge with the same reality and depth of feeling as a beautiful sunrise or sunset. I know JP does not base his psycho-spiritual approach on such knowledge, but rather a more dim phenomenology of the human psyche-spirit and his Christian spirituality, which guides us to livingly search for the roots of 'evil' within ourselves. “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”(Solzhenitsyn)

Spiritual science understands 'evil' in an evolutionary way. It is not to be confused with our intellectual concepts of 'good' and 'evil', which are flattened out and laden with egotistical judgments. Rather we could say evil manifests when certain adaptive capacities to fulfill spiritual intents are fixed in place and utilized well past their 'shelf life', which then becomes as an obstacle to the truly new forms of spiritual activity taking root and evolving. It is a noble pursuit for modern man to investigate the mysterious depths of soul-life with heartfelt intellectual activity, and permeate those depths with concepts which can elucidate our current self in relation to our past. Yet we are now entering a stage when this spiritual activity needs to be strengthened, enlivened, and ennobled further, by all those who have the means and willingness to do so.

In a certain sense, if someone is giving lectures, interviews, writing books, etc. on these mysteries of the soul-spirit, we already know they are idolizing the conceptual activity. Once it is livingly discerned just how unfamiliar we are with those depths, we will hesistate to pronounce any firm conclusions about the nature of 'trauma' and share them with others. I am here writing posts about basic steps towards phenomenology of cognition and vague pointers towards the spiritual realities I am seeking, but if someone asked me to write a book about reincarnation, for ex., I would certainly refuse. I can already discern that I will need the rest of this life and perhaps another to flesh out my understanding of such relations to the point where I can take on the responsibility of teaching it to others in any systematic way. I think this points to the great source of tension, not necessarily between you and I, but between esoteric science and modern culture in general. Most people want to contribute to the discussion, to express themselves, to hopefully help others, but we rarely stop to consider what is required of us to make this a fruitful effort.

Again I am including myself here - many of my essays written previously were prematurely constructed in this respect, and probably a good deal of my posts. I see the esoteric spiritual scientific path as one which progressively reveals these tendencies to us and inspires us to transform our ways, while other paths, secular and spiritual, seem to reinforce a lack of self-awareness in this respect. The latter keep the capacity to strengthen our spiritual activity which investigates the depths in the blindspot, so naturally people end up working with what they have and feeling satisfied they could not be better prepared to contribute than they already are. There is little attempt to discern where the lawful domain of intellectual activity begins and ends. And when that activity is allowed free reign to reductively grasp the depths of soul-spirit, the tendency is to arrive at radically incomplete and often counter-productive conclusions about our evolving soul-life. We naturally default to modes of past thinking-being and lose sight of unsuspected paths which manifest our future becoming.

Aloha, Ashvin,

Certainly it's a process and sometimes a so-called "evil" behavior or experience brings an individual to profound spiritual evolution as has been reported as evidenced among some life-long prison inmates. Or, in the case of Maté, it is precisely the trauma he experience as a child that drove him to the wisdom of trauma that he discovered and is now sharing as an adult. I find it a joy to actually discover now, under the influence of dying, how often I was wrong in the past. Expanding awareness is truly a lovely blessing. One might even hope to continue to be "wrong" in one's interpretations. It's made me a happy camper.

And, I agree with what you say about reincarnation, which is why I say nothing about it. I'm not there yet.

[AshvinP]

Aloha, Ashvin,

Certainly it's a process and sometimes a so-called "evil" behavior or experience brings an individual to profound spiritual evolution as has been reported as evidenced among some life-long prison inmates. Or, in the case of Maté, it is precisely the trauma he experience as a child that drove him to the wisdom of trauma that he discovered and is now sharing as an adult. I find it a joy to actually discover now, under the influence of dying, how often I was wrong in the past. Expanding awareness is truly a lovely blessing. One might even hope to continue to be "wrong" in one's interpretations. It's made me a happy camper.

And, I agree with what you say about reincarnation, which is why I say nothing about it. I'm not there yet.

And that's the real issue we are always pointing to here, Lou - the topic of reincarnation or Karmic laws isn't only a separate domain of knowledge we can acquire about reality, but an integral aspect of understanding everything which manifests in our current body-soul-spirit nature, including our understanding of who we are. So a view which speaks to the nature and sources of psychic trauma, along with proposed methods of dealing with it, without also accounting for the ongoing rhythms of incarnation, is mostly blind. It can stumble upon insights like a person bumping into objects in a dark house, but one object can easily get mixed up for another and most rooms and levels of the house can be left unexplored.

It's understandable why this holistic approach is so heavily resisted. If we can't reach definitive conclusions in one domain of experience without grasping the living currents which animate practically all other domains, then we don't know what to do with ourselves anymore. The mostly fragmented approach to knowledge is the only thing we have been doing as civilizations for hundreds of years now. That's what the modern intellect was adapted to do and what it does best. It's more convenient, easier, 'cleaner', and more immediately satisfying and gratifying. But with the holistic approach via strengthened spiritual activity, entirely new avenues of exploration are revealed to us and we find a higher satisfaction in resisting the definitive conclusions and simply experiencing the animating inflow of new cognitive currents.

[Lou Gold]

Aloha, Ashvin,

Certainly it's a process and sometimes a so-called "evil" behavior or experience brings an individual to profound spiritual evolution as has been reported as evidenced among some life-long prison inmates. Or, in the case of Maté, it is precisely the trauma he experience as a child that drove him to the wisdom of trauma that he discovered and is now sharing as an adult. I find it a joy to actually discover now, under the influence of dying, how often I was wrong in the past. Expanding awareness is truly a lovely blessing. One might even hope to continue to be "wrong" in one's interpretations. It's made me a happy camper.

And, I agree with what you say about reincarnation, which is why I say nothing about it. I'm not there yet.

And that's the real issue we are always pointing to here, Lou - the topic of reincarnation or Karmic laws isn't only a separate domain of knowledge we can acquire about reality, but an integral aspect of understanding everything which manifests in our current body-soul-spirit nature, including our understanding of who we are. So a view which speaks to the nature and sources of psychic trauma, along with proposed methods of dealing with it, without also accounting for the ongoing rhythms of incarnation, is mostly blind. It can stumble upon insights like a person bumping into objects in a dark house, but one object can easily get mixed up for another and most rooms and levels of the house can be left unexplored.

It's understandable why this holistic approach is so heavily resisted. If we can't reach definitive conclusions in one domain of experience without grasping the living currents which animate practically all other domains, then we don't know what to do with ourselves anymore. The mostly fragmented approach to knowledge is the only thing we have been doing as civilizations for hundreds of years now. That's what the modern intellect was adapted to do and what it does best. It's more convenient, easier, 'cleaner', and more immediately satisfying and gratifying. But with the holistic approach via strengthened spiritual activity, entirely new avenues of exploration are revealed to us and we find a higher satisfaction in resisting the definitive conclusions and simply experiencing the animating inflow of new cognitive currents.

Let me be certain that you understand that I do not resist the truth of reincarnation. I was only noting that I have memory gaps concerning my personal past lifetimes and for this reason I don't speak of them. I just like to hold my speculations to areas where I'm confident of the details of my personal direct experience.