Beyond Programming 101
International Center for Training and Research in Neuro-linguistics and Gestalt Psychology
Newsletter
“Like sands through the hour glass, so are the days of our lives.”
We all have this hour glass but we do not know how many grains we have above us, but we know how many grains we have lived that rest below us. Each day that goes by is another grain that drops below through the narrow channel.
The top of the hourglass represents unlimited potential. While full with life’s sand anything and everything seems possible. The top of the hourglass is about foundation building. It’s about being a voracious generalist. It’s about keeping all opportunities open. The goal at the top of the hourglass is to explore the widest possible frontier of ideas and tools and to establish confidence in a sandbox full of capabilities that can be combined and recombined in unpredictable ways as the future unfolds.
The middle part of the hourglass represents focus and leverage. As the hourglass narrows so does our focus to accelerate and maximize progress and impact. It’s a wonderful time in our lives to mine our generalist foundation for personal growth. It is important to take the time because the grains of sand pass by. Before you know it, the top chamber begins to become empty and we suddenly realize that much of our sand has passed us by and we did not even realize it.
According to some research that I was reading, it stated that a bumblebee's body is too heavy and its wings are too small; which means aerodynamically, a bumblebee just cannot fly, but it keeps trying, and eventually it succeeds, the bumblebee succeeds because it doesn’t know about this research, and therefore it programmed itself differently!
When we don't know our limitations, we go out and express ourselves.
The only limitation we have are the ones that are self imposed.
“My grandfather rode a camel, my father rode a camel,
l ride a Mercedes, my son rides a Land Rover, and my grandson is going to ride a Land Rover...
but my great-grandson is going to have to ride a camel again”
said Sheik Rashid, the founder of Dubai
Why is that, asked Lorane, the one who was having this conversation with the Sheik.
And here is what the Sheik replied: “Hard times create strong men, strong men create easy times. Easy times create weak men, weak men create difficult times”.
The Sheik continued and said, Many will not understand this today, but you have to ‘raise warriors, not parasites.' The deepest historical reality that all great empires, like the Persians, the Trojans, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, and in later years, even the British ... all rose and perished.
‘They were not conquered by external enemies; they rotted from within’. We are past the Mercedes and Land Rover years... the camels are on the horizon, he said again !!The greatest generation consisted of 18-year-old kids leaving their home, with some 14 rupees, to start a new life in another city, to search pastures and build a whole new genesis, I have heard this from my father and even in interviews of many people.. And these days, two generations later, some 18-year-old kid, somewhere, wants to hide in safe rooms when they hear words on social media and it hurts their feelings. The camels are on the horizon for sure. Something to ponder? History has a way of repeating itself.
What a beautiful Egyptian saying, hai na ! As both are part of the plan, isn't it ! both thorns and the rose, together they make the rose.
Good is therefore no more good enough, if not for the context of the bad.
How else do we know what is light, if darkness never existed.
It’s always in these contrast, that we learn,
It’s beauty and the beast, Ram and Ravan, Jesus and Judas,
How else would we understand the archetype of death, time and change,
how else would we adore Durga maa, in the absence of the asuras.
So don't attempt to rub off the rough edges, it’s part of the great tapestry.
The bumps, sharp turns and fallen trees are all part of the eternal trajectory too.
The ones who promised to show up, but didn't and the angel investors too.Know that the scorching heat, birds, cold winter, flooding rains, rocky parts, rodents, etc etc … are all part of the field ..! And here is what the wise sower would do, when the birds pecks away the seeds he just sowed on the farm, “he would continue to sow, and he’d sow more than what the birds can peck away”
Now that is the secret of life,
One of the greatest lessons that I have learnt from Dick, my teacher, “is to work more on the self than on the job or the field”.
“TO BE BIGGER THAN THE CONTEXT”.
The idea that it is possible to rapidly and unconsciously assimilate (without any understanding) complex patterns of behaviour, language, etc from the genius available in our environment, and then displaying it in our own behaviours, is called as modeling.
5 Steps of model of modeling !
1. Find the genius (genius is not confined to famous people alone, there is genius in every single one of us)
2. Model in the context you want more behavioural choices and not the whole. beware of eating the entire watermelon, or else you would spend the rest of yoru life spitting its seeds!
This is the phase of unconscious assimilation of pattern, so you don't want to assimilate patterns in all the contexts in which you have access to.
3. Watch our for the obvious, the explicit parameters of movements, sequence and hierarchy. as much as you believe in the wind that moves thje leaves, look at the movement of the leaves ! in gestalt we call it as Sculpting !
4. as you incorporate these patterns in your somatic mind and inner imagery of senses, figure out for congruence and alignment. - make it more and more explicit and check for inner messages and tweak accordingly.
5. now feed forward, check for ecology. step on the timeline, meet your future self and see how that goes !
What is life without some risk and faith.
In the end it all comes together as a whole, when we are willing to risk the shore of familiar in service of the higher grounds.
Success is not linear but the quantum is circumambulation, just like the labyrinth or the process of individuation. It's a journey more towards the core, the wholeness and to understand self in light of the perception and perspective.
Success is a commitment,
and goal setting has to be a 'truth value'.
What we set apart to do, or at-least tell ourself 'we would do'; when we don't 'do these very things that we commit to ourself, it's a lie we tell ourself,
and we don't deserve to be lied to,
not at-least by ourself.
Success, is therefore a life long process, of integrating the opposites of 'I want to eat' and 'I want to diet',those very opposites of 'I want to sleeeeep' and 'joining the 5am club', bringing the split-off parts into a more integrated personaloty of our human existence.
The struggling mind will often build places to seek shelter (coping mechanisms) for different aspects of self from our most traumatic experiences, memories and impacts.
That is the way we all organise our life, inner imagery and persona. You would be surprised to know how many intersectional planes of untethered consciousness exist.
When we are ignorant of ‘its’ presence, the unconscious, ‘it’ attempts to communicate, but in vain, therefore the first part of any sort of healing is to turn inward.
When you see ‘it’ as your shadow, know that it is not your enemy, ‘it’ is not something that you have to get rid of or heal. ‘It’ is the gatekeeper of your resources, potential and portal to the multiverse.
We do not live in this material world. We live in a psychic world. Right?
And we are only able to make indirect inferences about the nature of reality, ‘merely perception’.
No tree can ascend to the light of heaven if it does not descend to the depths of hell. So as long as you trap the soul with the material, it will be kept from flying off into the bardo realm of ‘only-psychic’ reality.
The material holds the soul in the vase of this world, which is limited just to this material realm of three dimension, it will rot and eventually die in the poetry of the concrete.
The legend in Richard (Dick) McHugh lies in being the founding father of NeuroLinguistics and gestalt in Indian, and yet his legacy reaches far beyond ‘just’ that.
Being a Jesuit priest, who lived in Maryland, came to India learnt Hindi, worked with the lowest strata of population in a place called Chaibasa back in the 70s in Jharkhand, assisted Fr. Tony while Sadhana was being built (vipasana center), learnt psychology, went deep into NeuroLinguistics and Gestalt, got his doctorate, taught in India for nearly 4 decades.
Life of a Giant, isn't it !!
Despite coming from the field of theology, his deep interest towards quantum science and psychology added the right proportion of curiosity to the study of the unconscious, which he represented at the cognitive representation with so much elegance.
Dick was brutally honest with his participants, very courageous and he openly explored mysticism, esoteric beliefs and metaphors, he would bring it all during his sessions to intervention through clean language and in honour of the client.
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I have seen him move with empathy and grace. He had the gift of sponsorship and always reminded us of the forest, the redwoods and our resources!!
He spend an entire life to understand himself, the human behavior and our universe.
This fearless curiosity changed the field of Neurolinguistics here in India. He brought in newer approaches to therapeutic intervention by challenging through congruence and closing a case in under 30 mins, without really getting into notes taking or psychoanalysis.
Today I woke up with a thought of my teacher, who is my giant, the magus and my miracle!
———-
Let me leave you with something he shared with us in class, 2012, Bangalore:
“That which we disown, suppress and not talk about - has no inherent agenda by itself. Its functions is to help support us to reflect on the opposite side of our known world - which is the ego and all that which it embodies what we refuse to acknowledge.
This means the dark side, our shadow shapes as needed and It should not be viewed as an adversary or a bad thing, but an unconscious allay or a force that guides us and challenges our known world so that we could go beyond and explore”
There is a universal truth we all have to face,
Whether we want to or not,
Everything eventually ends.
Hope is not foolishness.
Just as Faith is not gullibility.
As much as I have looked forward to the blooming of flower, rising sun and the birth of life through wilderness and adversities,
I also know that things end and someone has to leave first,
this is a very old story of this universe, and there is no other version to this story.
You are strange my love, I guess that is why I find you so irresistible.
I have always disliked endings, The last day of summer, The final chapter of a great book Parting ways with a close friend
But endings are inevitable, Leaves fall, You close the book You say goodbye ...In the dark sacred groove, as I look now, at the rotting leaves of life that once existed, a heap of shadow, the tombstone fortress, there are lights even today that flashes through the windows. The fairy fire is awake tonight. Algae and the dead plant staying up past the red-wood’s lifetime, to tell us the love stories of the deep that once hosted you and me.Now that we are dead, things are perfect.
Empty..
A silence beyond challenge..
It's an end point, a blank page, it's a messy thing.
An impossible thing that was made of us and light, of meat and desire..
you, my love, I love you beyond time and perfection, an infection and the insatiable hunger, after exhausting all possible poetry and coffee, he devours himself, who loves you again.
At the end of the day, we still crave for the presence of ‘that’ one person with whom when we share our thoughts, we know, they would hold the space for us, and when we share ourselves, they would hold us, like we should be held between spaces and thoughts with scale and certainty, in a way the wave holds the surfing board and how the wings of the butterfly are supported by the wind.
We all crave for 'that' sponsorship, for being seen and held like we should have been, always, as an offering link to the sacred, to become infinite with a kiss and its communion.
As much as he was drawn to the one he really wanted to offer himself, the very ironic existence of distance and borders, that she is not with him today, not because she didn't want to, but simply because the horizon will continue to be out of reach, and as life happens here in this breath, He will have to sleep this night as an absolution that would never pass.
I continue to reminisce the humble moments, we spent together, Gerald tells me this, as a tear is born in his eyes, clouding the moment.
For the first time I have seen him soft and vulnerable for Grace, the girl he loves, and in that moment, I could sense my own missing of whom I call ‘grace’, for without our Grace, their memory is a ghost, and the house continues to haunt us, for as long as we live without …..
So as I sleep tonight, I travel time in my fantasy to reminisce the parched night, the long walk, the old city, and the way she touched me, held me, it was all like a prayer
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Aren't we all consumed by these non-conventional narratives, and these very stories of ours consume us.
What I feel the most in this moment is ‘Do Pal Ke Jeevan Se Ek Umr Churaani Hai’, Zindagi Aur Kuchh Bhi Nahi Teri Meri Kahaani Hai’.
Page 67, from the book of 'Gerald and Grace'; not yet published or written.
If you must ever doubt something,
doubt your limits!
Life isn’t linear,
so stay woke,
Take a pinch of you with a whole lot of sass,
now sprinkle it with your playfulness and add just enough class to it so that it adds to your strength and light and don’t forget about the ‘fuck-you’ look, that is emergence of the other polarity.
It brings balance and elegance to the field!
Discover your badassness, because life has neither meaning nor pity, so don’t mistake perfection for wholeness, and dont let your soul, imagination and orgasm wither away!
The impact of trauma is saved and configured based on these experiences; it is necessary to address topics beyond (PTS) and explore the realms of the human struggle, the complicated coping mechanisms, addictions, losses, grief and death. The confusion of Identity or the Purpose, the Split and Disparity in roles we play. Integrate Healing and Transformation into the timeline at the place of trauma stored in our body and at the point where we experience intimacy. To heal the trauma that keeps us at that age where we experienced it.
According to some research that I was reading, it stated that a bumblebee's body is too heavy and its wings are too small; which means aerodynamically, a bumblebee just cannot fly, but it keeps trying, and eventually it succeeds, the bumblebee succeeds because it doesn’t know about this research, and therefore it programmed itself differently!
When we don't know our limitations, we go out and express ourselves.
The only limitation we have are the ones that are self imposed.
Something that came up in a therapy session,
“Just because you understand the reason why someone is doing the thing that they are doing, doesn’t mean its an acceptable way for you to be treated that way.
And ‘it’ is in NO way an excuse for you to be treated unfairly.
Just because you are compassionate and empathetic towards a few, it does not give them access to you!
A relationship is when you are ready,
not when you are lonely.
To quote pablo here “Someday, somewhere - anywhere, unfailingly, you will find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or the most horrible moment of your life” !
In the end they are anyhow going to judge you, so whatever !
Nobody is immune to truth and beauty,
and as much as everyone wants to avoid pain, they still want the rainbow,
without the rain.
Some day someone,
will come and save you,
and that would be you,
from the future !
Know that Superman on wonder-woman is not coming.
So wear your fuckin cape,
stretch fourth your wings and, take that leap,
feel the wind beneath your wings,
and fly !
I know all this because,
you once told me this.
and if ever I know love,
It is because of you.
You taught me to be in service of the soul,
To work for something greater than goals.
You made me realise,
my own heart beats.
and I remember that morning when you told me “to make it count”
————-
This post is dedicated to my teachers, “my mentors” - the unicorns, and the “Giants, on whose shoulders I stand”
Transcending duality is knowing that God and Satan are the same entity : you !
The form is the formless, and it takes one to create the other, the virus and the antivirus.
Paradox is the pre-requisite to any expanding consciousness. When I am able to see my side of any issue, and the other, as equally true and just, that is when we begin to understand the construct of reality, after all it is energy that makes up both.
It does take ‘two to know one’
and both are transmuted within me, to anew perspective and then to know that I am beyond both.
I am thinking of that night, when all that I knew about light, when the last of it too 'went off', that is when I learned to see, that which I was told 'not to', the dark !
In that breakdown and desolation, a new birth took place for me, said Grace. As though many alchemical symbol of a union of unlike substances; a marrying of the opposites in an intercourse which has as its fruition and the birth of a new element, this conjunction first takes place in the underworld, where there is no light, when we are in the deepest depression & most alienated from ourselves, others, and life.
In all of this I have roamed for most of my life, searching for light, through tunnels, doors, mirrors and windows, She kept saying to me, on my chair as I sat next to her, for the session. (this time Gerald didn't come, she had taken time just for herself)
she continued : I longed for a person I could call home, but I kept moving in circles that never belonged to me, and getting lost in paths that was lit up with just 'maybes'. I was regressing.
​
IUntil one day I took the high wave and I knew I was homesick for him, for who could never be mine, and he kept starring back at me, I wasn't feeling lost anymore, I felt found, yet it was just in my head and he wouldn't just be. I had to make visible that, for me, which perhaps never might happen for.
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This is an excerpt from the book that starts with love of Grace and ends with Gerald. This book is yet to be written.
Grace has to now perceive her world differently, and she must be willing to change all that she knows, and let her past slip slowly away, including all that 'what she called love', she had to take her next step, or else she would die - expand her sense of 'Now' and dissolve the fear of her narrative. and her greatest weapon in this journey would be her ability to choose a new beginning, a new home, a new life. and how should I, she asked me. <long pause>
and then I said 'hmmmm' <long pause - again>
She seemed to have exaggerated her pain as though she was going through the most debilitating life altering shit you have ever heard.
Now she was getting ready to leave for the day, from my office, and she said 'there must be something so rotten at the very core of my behaviors which brings me so close to home just for me to see its locked - and locked away!
​
History is written in fragments,
and what holds these fragments is our beliefs.
It was not written as it happened, nor with one prospective, therefore all we have is just fragments.
We are constitutionally built to delete, distort and generalize information and experiences, be it personal History or semantics.
My conversation with Judy during these tough times when nations across our globe continues to rapidly regress into a violent majoritarian state, was a relief and learning, she my sacred space on the blatant, jarring, tyranny of life.
esterday we discussed about the upcoming session in India, later this year.
For those of you who don’t know, Judith Delozier is the contributor Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), she leads with presence, no matter where she is. Accommodating all maps, there is no place for judgement, projections and condemnation in her presence.
Beyond the cognitive mind, the history of consciousness, and in depth study of NeuroLinguistic, with the emissary herself!!
My life
Life is happening at the interface between 'me' and 'myself' in a context in which I exist.
Now there are times when everything pulls inside of me, that is when I shrink, and that is how I make myself smaller than the context.
I go inside and start with the negative talk of how I am worthless and how I do not matter.
In all of this, I lose my ability to 'hold' what is happening and find it difficult to stay in the present, that is because I am so driven and overwhelmed by the context,
so I contract,
I get reactive,
I disconnect and,
I am not here any more.
I just lost being present at the 'interface' where life is happening.
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Well, this was the gist of my exchange in a SWISH interaction intervention in may class with a few friends. and that is when John responded to my above sharing.
and here I quote as he said :
"Coming to yourself needs practice, especially after an explosive event in a particular context"
Now that was some anchor for me. what a joy to be with the Giant !
And then before we get into the actual activity for that day, the process that was outlined was to first set intent, build state and then step into the practice of the practices !
The root of anger may provide us with the fuel and motivation to do "crazy" things.
But hey, nothing and nobody to blame, it's time we take responsibility for our actions, intentions and deliberations.
It is time we heal those parts within us, and hold them, especially those which were rejected, abused, tormented and shut for us as children.
These triggers enrage us but they're emotional hollows that crave to be held.
They got to be loved, understood and brought back home to our own selves.
Until then, these parts will continue to hurt and be triggered.
They will perpetuate through toxicity and regrettable actions that not only hurt us but also our loved ones.
It is time we hold them, bring them to light, touch them and see them for what it is,
It is time we love those parts unconditionally till we experience the unconditional love that we should have experienced as children.
It is important that we collect all of our broken and forgotten parts to feel whole.
We have to be able to find unconditional acceptance for every aspect, even the ones we hate, to truly love our entire self.
In Neurolinguistics, Dick taught us, that ‘anger is a beautiful energy’, it is a communication from the body….
The expression of anger, however, has got nothing to do with the energy itself,
Expression of anger is an individual decision and choice, and of course, the unhealthy ‘expression of anger’ is learned and ugly behavior.
It gets dark, when one realizes the state of ‘helplessness’ and ‘hopelessness’
It is reignited whenever something from our past is triggered.
Even the most righteous of people could have unspeakable outbursts of this unhealthy expression of anger (which could be as explicit as we saw, or it could be even passive, very subtle) when they are triggered and feel rejected.
Anger sometimes is stereotyped as "male emotion".
The enforcement of these gender roles by adults in young boys can lead to a lifetime of attempts to not feel emasculated. Men try to uphold gender stereotypes and act the way men are expected to act. Men may not always feel the anger themselves but their inner child feels the pressure to act in "masculine" ways to feel validated and accepted.
Beware of these traps, installed by society.
Certain actions and behaviors unexpectedly provoke us in ways that we don't understand. Replication of emotional circumstances may set us off and make us behave unnaturally and irrationally.
It could bring out all the pent up and unfulfilled emotional needs that become triggers established when we're young.
If people truly despise something they've done, then they try to look for excuses in romanticized sentimentality. It is vital that we understand our behavior and take responsibility in a constructive manner. Our inner child has strategies to fulfil the unmet needs. The desire to belong, be respected and feel loved can become agitated.
Toxic behavior in adults can often be attributed to the child inside us desperately trying to find validation. Often people find sadistic pleasure in putting others down through words or violence in order to sustain their fragile sense of self.
They're afraid and this fear is easily twisted into ugly caricatures.
“Your inner child also needs to learn the difference between expressing a feeling and acting on a feeling.”
― John Bradshaw, Homecoming: Reclaiming and Healing Your Inner Child
Language creates our realities, how else would we who we are, our values, and beliefs.
Every language is a new cognitive universe, our truths, limitations and possibilities are coded in language.
It is a portal through which we travel to the past, step in the future and build fantasy.
Language is the crowning achievement of our species yet, it is the poorest form of communication.
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I am so grateful to Atos for this opportunity to share a session with an engaging audience, titled 'Linguist is my middle name'. I borrow this title from my teacher, Fr. Dick McHugh, I remember him saying this in class, when I asked him 'How did you know that about the client, to which He replied, and I quote, "Linguist is my Middle name".
It was a class of Neurolinguistics Programming, and his statement was Figure of speech.
I am still in awe of my teacher !
Make your prison, your platform!!
There comes a time sometimes,
in each of our lives when we take the decisions which we have never taken before,
this one ‘in service of something much larger’ than us and that is when we decide to break the shackles,
to break the chains from the past, from those prisons of self imposed limitations.
to get up and to stand on the platform..
There comes a time in each of our lives, sometimes….
“Free the horse”
A lot of we do and become comes from the position of the ‘ego’. My teacher, Judy in Neurolinguistics says : “the ego must be in service of the soul”, conflicts arise, when otherwise.
You cannot hate me if you do not know who I am!
On the contrary, you could love me.
Love comes from ‘not having the knowledge of who they are and where they belong to, whom they worship, what they eat, etc. etc.’
Somewhere a man is falling in love with that married women not knowing anything about who she is, While at the same time she feels lonely and unloved at home.
Hate lives in the knowledge of
Gender, nationality, religion. Social status, financial status, beauty, and possession of things.
If you do not any of the above of the people you interact with, you can never hate them.
And well if not for the ‘knowledge’ then by projection and introjection
We all lose our sense of proportion, once in a while, and 'that' is okay - I guess, For as long as we come back to the center to breathe - the sweat and struggle will be worth it. One of the greatest secrets of life is in the 'sensation' to feel that we exist, even in pain.
​
I have been there too and learnt the hard way, that some things aren't the way they seem, and yet some things seem so different.
some stay,
some leave.
and some days I gotta take the long way, the highway, just in the hope of running into myself. and you see, if not, there will be a graveyard in my heart filled with the love that I couldn't share and that died in my eyes.
Yet, we cannot skip these chapters, that is not how life works.
Got to read and participate in every chapter, meet all the characters;
some chapters will devastate us,
some will fool us and yet some will make us laugh and make us believe in love again,
it all comes in waves, in some eternal sequence that we get ready for. I have learnt that 'no matter what’ - we must 'Keep Going; and some days, more often than we think ;all of that has to be felt deeply -and missed terribly' -may be it is today!
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It's these stories that keep the world going, it's the exchange, the horizon and the paradigm, and i hope we all are given the dexterity to love dearly and participate in ours ..
now and forever .. if no one has told you this today, let me tell you
'I love you'
A case in therapy.
Effect of the missing archetype in the growing up process.
__________
"I always end up loving the wrong guy"
Rachel said.
Now as said this,
she wore a playful smile and then she looked down and stayed there for some time.
I stayed with her and waited for her to come back from that exploration.
From here on the matrix transformed and she jumped right into the problem state.
She was in search of the missing masculine, and the effect of 'that' missing archetype kept interfering in her day-to-day life.
She then shared how she was easily 'intimidated' or 'in love' with men (older to her) and how easy it was for her to swing from one of these polarity to another, most of the time.
In a trance state,
during therapy on the chair,
when she was asked to model a behaviour she'd like to have instead of the current one;
she described her model to be having 'assertiveness,
ease around men,
no need to impress and
live up to their expectation'.
As she shared that, there was a settled breath, and calm in visualising that state.
And sure, it was,
she had more abdomen breathing and a flushed face.
Her problem state was something that was bordering over self esteem and diminished concept of self.
And it was, in her case, the absence of her father and she being the only child growing up with her mother.
This was a classic study of the 'father archetype in feminine psychology'; as much as it was painful and a pattern repetition for the client, it was a rich case study for all the interns who was in room with me.
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“ Because our culture is a patriarchy the very air she breathes, the boundaries of her consciousness, the contents of her personal unconscious psyche, and the complete cast of the collective psyche, are full of The Man: his image, his history, his definitions, his requirements, his expectations, his needs, his desires, his threats, his power, his laws, his religions, his gods, his money, and his ambivalent, unrealistic image of her”
[Cowan, 2004, p. 12]
——-
The line of work that evening with my client:
{Theory} :
Archetypes form the basis of all unlearned, instinctive patterns of behaviour, it is a reservoir of human experience, the collective unconscious looms over the individual psyche, like a shadow, slowly influencing our thoughts and behaviours (both implicit and explicit). when we tap into the defining archetype (either the one that is dominant or the missing one), you connect with the essential truth of 'who am I'. "Rather it is in the intensity of affective response to any given image or situation that we find what is archetypal. This can be something very small scale, not coming in a pre-packaged archetypal or mythic form. What stirs you at an archetypal level depends on you and where you sit and how you look at things and on your personal history. The archetypal therefore can be relative, contextual and personal. This reframing of archetypal theory as a theory of affects is something that has not yet reached conservative academic Jungians.”
[Andrew Samuels]
{actual Line of Work}
1. Awareness of the current pattern and how it was not helpful.
2. Awakening the masculinity within, and then integration with the child and the femininity.
3. Fathering the child
4. Saying goodbye to the physical father, with gratitude for the gift of life.
We are all in someway witnessing the demon and the light in alternating patterns, with people and in contexts.
It is a collective recalibration that we got to step into, of the know paradigm of normality and safety.
These moments, relations and experiences are constantly shifting and at times clients tell me they are experiencing overpowering contexts, dehumanizing thoughts and also conflicting relationships, constant disagreements and shifting perspectives, newer presuppositions, unknown expectations, etc. etc. etc. …
​the quest of therapy is about holding these opposites in the same vessel while the client finds space and ease to tap into the resources that they already have within them, to honour their humanness and at the same time taking a stand for the otherwise!
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It is 'singularity' that gives birth to all possibilities.
Duality is binary,
diagonal is not the only option when, quantum is a potent reality.
A little bit of silence sometimes, to recover from the brutality of words, we are all a little broken, yet we all belong and, our dreams are valid, 'that' is what makes life worth living.
In reality every individual is a psychological hybrid, on the spectrum, and so unless all of these parts are integrated, it becomes erroneously projected upon us, even though we carry just some qualities.
The suppressed, repressed and the abused, that which doesn't get spoken about, the lost, abandoned and dead, as long as these remain in the shadow of what 'show to the world', the light just lost its meaning, it lost its light.
Until the shadow is integrated into the whole, reality would face adversities, collude with inner tyrants, and fill with opponents. Once that is done, the moment becomes the cosmic description and the universe bursts into eons of stories of myth and psyche, from time and distance, but... this discernment wont be easily accessible to rational investigation.
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Life, laughter and light.
Nothing from the first day i began this journey of neurolinguistics and gestalt and absolutely nothing has happened to me since, has ever been frightening and confusing for nothing ever i have known, has ever done more to make me feel sure, more insecure and more importantly, less significant.
“I don’t want to be important or successful,
I just wanted to be myself”
said the client on my chair, during the therapy session, a week after he destroyed his whole career.
this was a case of classic self sabotage.
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I felt it strong, when the client said the opening lines,
Must be suffocating for him, difficult to even breathe, deep waters, and sadly negotiated too bad, many times.
<His mother was there with me in the session>
Mother to me : how can we help him, if he doesn’t want to be helped.
My client : (very loudly - just before he broke-down fully) : I DO NOT WANT YOUR HELP, I NEVER WANTED TO BE A DOCTOR BUT EVERY TIME I TRIED TO TELL MY TEACHERS, FRIENDS, DAD, YOU ---- YOU GUYS, ALL YOU GUYS JUST PUSHED ME AND ENCOURAGED ME, UNTIL I BACKED DOWN.
<sobs - silence - crying sounds - more sobbing and longer pause>
Client continues : I knew if i got myself fired off my job, there was no way that you guys could pep-talk me back into a career that I do not want.
“I don’t want to be important or successful, I just wanted to be myself”
And today, I don’t even know ‘who that is’
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Diary of that amazing, resilient young man, very bold to speak up, atleast today !
May more and more be able to speak up, hope they find that courage to speak up, against this dominant ideology and pressure that young kids and adults go through, be it choosing a career, marriage or even having kids !!
This must stop !
Everybody falls down, all the way down.
Just a few are really lucky to have these conversations while they still live, sadly some just write it on a piece of paper before they pull curtains on themselves and some just keep sipping from the chalice that was handed to them, all the while they live that bitter life of the circle of other’s expectation, thematic relations and conventional archetypes of this sort of patriarchy of control and dominance.
In our own unique journeys of trials, tribulations and trepidation; we must also remember that 'this' universe (or the world of possibility, that lies beyond our imagination), is a multi-dimensional matrix projection of our inner narratives and imagery, everything we experience is a different version of 'ourselves' awakening from the illusion of separation.
Having said that, there is merit is knowing that, "we cannot meet someone where we haven't yet, met ourselves". We may want to, but that wanting doesn't make it so. and therefore pushing the ones we love, so that they catch up with us, is a failing model and a downward spiral.
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Sometimes it takes the dark night and the softness of aloneness to learn that everything that doesn't make you 'alive', is just too small for you.
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Letting go is a gift, to make space to manifest someone who loves every ounce of you. The lover, the warrior, the nurturer, the giving, the needy, the poet, the vulnerable, the sensitive, the strong, the weak, and much much much more - the absolute whole, gorgeous being you are !!
We all have this unique energy, the archetypal movement through time and space, and if we do not put ourselves out there, the world will have less of us. We must not, therefore betray this archetypal experiences, which is the main-chief component of our existence and experience to the wholeness.
"What more choices do you actually have today that you are refusing to 'honour, uphold and invoke', as a result of which 'no choice' is the only choice you think you have".
The above was one of Dick's classic reframe, and I think it was one of the most amazing challenge in language that I had ever heard on brutal trance induction and that too so instant.
I was in class when he presented this pattern to a client who came up to him in our class and shared how she was stuck with 'no choices' to choose from, in job and her current relations.
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Neurolinguistics is the study to understand how we as humans can bring about more 'choices' in a context, in which we initially thought there was none.
If you fight against your current reality, then you cannot fight 'for' a different reality.
We are infinite being, held in a this human experience, which is linear and exists only in a three dimensional space. So, if you do exist in a fight, be it in fantasy, reality or otherwise, then remember that is have now downgraded to a linear experience, now you end up missing the curiosity and possibility of the experience in the visualization, dream and manifestation in investing in a new reality of the quantum.
Don’t fight 'this' reality, instead bring curiosity to the field, enough eagerness to ask, 'how do I use 'this reality' OR what is good about this that I am not able to see', and then to use it, to your advantage.
Everything that is, is just sorcery and a growth story, provided you eliminate interpretation, competition, confluence, projection, introjection, and egotism.
"There isn’t any problem so bad that you cannot make it worse"
Yesterday’s class was in a quick understanding of “Psychophysical Parallel Quantum”, a unique application based concept of Gestalt.
How we human beings constantly give meaning to everything through language, and how everything has a meaning for us. Also of how we have the obsessive compulsive behavior to close the loop of with our limited cognition.
Now the crazy part is that "as we cannot make sense of the fathomable universe and its scale, we scale it down to our limited scale”
The question which is often asked, whether the world is real or whether we merely dream it, is devoid of all scientific meaning...If our dreams were more regular, more connected, more stable,they would also have more practical importance for us.
In our waking hours the relations of the elements to one another are immensely amplified in comparison with what they were in our dreams.
We therefore recognize the dream for what it is.
All concepts are insights, which are neither true nor false but, rather, clear in certain contexts, and unclear when extended beyond these contexts.
Something that came up with a client today in therapy, she was working very hard for the past many years to let go a relation. It was a relation she loved so much to stay but, it didn't for reasons known to the universe, and she still longed for it.
She longed so bad,
that she would spend time in her head living the pain of its absence and the glory of the past.
My observation :
What came up was 'resistance' and 'conflicting parts'. She was so smooth on the chair, yet restless.
Line of action, {this is for the therapist, counsellors and practitioners}1. Allowance, acceptance2. Time Line regression using presupposition in language3. Closing loss with gratitude and grief with growth4. Rebirth and hero's journey
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Message from the therapy :
If you are resisting something, you are feeding it. Any energy you fight, it is growing through you; remember the story of Kali Ma.
Pushing something away,
you are inviting it to stay.
Dick (My teacher) would say, and I quote :
"What you resist, persists and
what you accept, transforms"
"There isn’t any problem so bad that you cannot make it worse"
Yesterday’s class was in a quick understanding of “Psychophysical Parallel Quantum”, a unique application based concept of Gestalt.
How we human beings constantly give meaning to everything through language, and how everything has a meaning for us. Also of how we have the obsessive compulsive behavior to close the loop of with our limited cognition.
Now the crazy part is that "as we cannot make sense of the fathomable universe and its scale, we scale it down to our limited scale”
The question which is often asked, whether the world is real or whether we merely dream it, is devoid of all scientific meaning...If our dreams were more regular, more connected, more stable,they would also have more practical importance for us.
In our waking hours the relations of the elements to one another are immensely amplified in comparison with what they were in our dreams.
We therefore recognize the dream for what it is.
All concepts are insights, which are neither true nor false but, rather, clear in certain contexts, and unclear when extended beyond these contexts.
There are more things similar to each of us than the differences.
Our neurology is same, what differs is the software.
Now the software depends heavily our Environment, Education and Experiences.
Right from our birth we have been told about our religion, nationality, families, culture etc etc. I so wish that we were told more about our body, nervous system and how we could tap into 'this' genius.
"Our body is the greatest instrument we will ever have"
The very movements of our eyes, hands, the way we breathe, they are all associated with various pathways of the complex patterns we bring to the filed.
Here in the Practitioner's NLP Class, I was sharing with the batch an installation of a new behaviour. It is changing the neuro-pathway to open up newer possibilities and options. it is going beyond the linear, the known and the ninary so see "what else is possible".
Have you noticed where your eyes and head move when you have a dialogue with yourself, when you hear your own voice, notice these movements, these are the fine pathways that connects us.
This is how, we model, learn and improve our lives.
we are all capable to change any patterns, behaviors or even outcomes!
Grief and hope can co-exit,
Anxiety and hope can can co-exit,
Exhaustion and hope can co-exit.
Well so is the case with breakup, losses and even death,
it is called as the ‘movement of life’,
Two truths can exist in the same field at the same time,
and to know life better,
it takes two realities.
One without the other is ‘just so’ incomplete!
I’d say “feel it all, to be fully alive”.
and then, Be kind to yourself.
Believe in the other polarity,
Hold tightly to hope....
“knowing enough about a subject to think you are right, but not enough about the subject to know you are wrong”
We all are susceptible to bias.
Search engines and social media do not make it any easy, in-fact they are fertile zones to create this divide, feed our differences and fake data.
It is where religion, politics and capitalism shines !! and they do this by constantly feeding the demon of divide.
It is therefore brave enough to practice, Korzybski’s concept of “Map is not the Territory”, which is also one of the founding presuppositions of #NLP, even though most top NLPers conflict as to ‘who is right’ and ‘what is the right approach’, well this conflict has been there from the beginning of time, and then the magicians went to war (1)
Well there has been sufficient study to prove that ‘happiness is not good for the economy’ and therefore media is sponsored, to spread fake news, excite weak minds and to engage intellectuals to lead this fight. Don't make search engines on the internet as the epitome of confirmation. Don't even use that as evidence. They are designed to feed on areas when integrity is lost, and then to manifest its agendas of vulnerability.
Associations and Identifications with people, events and experiences are key parameters in creating beliefs and Identities, self-esteem and self worth.
It edges over the many definition of self as in 'what is possible' and 'what is not', it defines capabilities as well.
The husband in the session today tells "she is so needy"
{he was talking about his wife, and in doing so he associates his wife's needs with her identity}
The reframe for the husband was : 'She has 'needs' and that DOESN'T MAKE HER NEEDY'
and the reframe for the wife was : "I have needs that are not met, I AM NOT NEEDY"
Line of work with with a couple today :
1. Affirm the need.
2. Dissociate the person from the need.
3. Preserve the identity of the person.
4. Empower the couple to see each other without the previous association and judgement.
Explanation :
Affirmations are linguistic patterns of hypnotic trance movements. What you don't understand heals you. (the wonderment of magic).
The essential part of therapy or any change-work is ‘magic of the mortal’ and tapping into the moral space of the ‘forever’.
Something like a passionate,
implicit mortality, not didactic.
It is a trance-formation which changes the blood, rather than just the mind.
Do not be mistaken, growth can feel a lot like dying, be prepared to grieve the past versions of yourself that you had to leave behind.
Above all, never let journey through age ever extinguish the innocence and curiosity of your inner child.
We are all given birth to and yet,
only a few are born.
This post is not 'particularly' for you
but hey if the shoe fits you, wear it Cinderella!
People will invariably dismiss you when they realise they can no longer control you.
So go ahead and confront the shadow,
it is the only way to seek light.
We all have that shadow and we cast it in many ways.
I laugh pretty hard at the idea when people tell me that 'I am done with shadow work'
and if that is true, there wouldn't be any more light.
Shadow is the proof of light. Sit with your shadow instead of drinking it away, smoking it away,sleeping it away, eating it away,fucking it away, or running from it, sit with it healing happens in the feelingsit with it and then seek the other,if you are man, seek the feminine, not in the women.but seek and recognize it in yourself. And you woman, should not seek the masculine in men, but acknowledge the masculine in yourself,since you possess it from the beginning. A client once told me: 'my masculinity amuses me",I said: "fuck yes", it does!and so sometimes it is easy to play at femininity, and consequently man will despise you, because he despises his own femininity.in the end "we are both masculine and feminine, an understanding that goes beyond gender male and gender female.
No it is not a discussion on compatibility, I said - and added : "It is got to do with the awareness of "Allowance and Acceptance" of self and the other person to evolve differently." To remember that "the person we love has no obligation towards us to live up to our expectation."
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Last week a couple who felt things were over between them came for a session, after a long time I had this opportunity to take an in-person therapy.
Background:
The girl wanted something from life and the guy wanted something else form life; things changed pretty much from where they began their life, they are still together in this relation as there is something they like about 'themselves' when they are with each other.
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Premise of Work:
1. Individuals in a relationship can be at two different places and still be together, if the experiences of celebrating commonalities through the difference is worth it. If not,
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The couple could choose to exit the relation respectfully and gracefully, if the differences are negotiating their non-negotiables.
Line of work:
- Hypnotic trance through story telling.
- Inducting change, eliciting response through Sub-Modality distinctions.
- Checking for congruence and exit after ecology.
- Cementing through future pacing.
The quality of our life is directly proportional to the relation we have with our self and our sacred space.
What we create and what we continue to experience is just an extension of the interaction we have with our sacred space.As long as we are on the default program and as long as one does not step into the trio of creation : "Intention - Sacred Space - Gratitude",
they will be victims of their situation, and not victors.
If you don't run your day,
the day will run it for you,
now that will be damn screwy .. isn't it ..
To avoid 'that' catastrophe - step into the 'source of your resource' - the sacred space, blessing chamber and the shoulders of giants,
Now that would be the separating factor, the difference that creates the difference in the lives of some people who live life through exhilaration and satisfaction, while a lot go through the same life frustrated, complaining and tired.
When you decide to be in service of the answer that you get to the question 'Who am I, What I really want and What do I want to create and contribute here on earth before I go", be willing to guide every thought to mesh with the 'wholeness' that you 'really are'.
the real secret is to become a deliberate thinker, and affirm with me "I am not on default program" - just so that you know, those who did not challenge the default, dint discover chrome.
So the sooner you realise the power of your sacred space and once your alignment is in concert with that, you will be able to create millennium multiplied by eons and enjoy the gratification of your creation compounded by time without end.
May you continuously create tremendously with ease and may life keep your curiosity alive along with eagerness.
You are worthy of this life, this day !
That 'just' is 'enough'.
You cannot show someone the depths of your existence and the under currents, without them also being ready to see the depths of your darkness.
We all need a miracle to escape, these great catastrophes that we create in our mind of lack and insecurities, and therefore those dreams are to be considered, perhaps it's the most ubiquitous, fertile, and alluring place.
There are times we get so alone, that - it makes perfect sense.
The years we have gone through have killed something in us, I agree, and we all needed to be reminded of the mysterious and sacred things : like the ocean, labyrinth, dead and the risen.
We cannot do without beauty, have we been anaesthetized to beauty and passion with self doubt and disregard, that life has begun to stifle and die.
Get on, get going, don't dismiss your the deep needs of being seen, heard and held; listen to those dreams, its a way to stop re-traumatizing the inner child.
Let us work with these delusions,
let us awaken the philosopher,
let us bring back the lunatic and,
let us realize the evils we defended and the heroes we ridiculed. in our quest to find meaning with our linguistic poverty and lack of feeling for human relationships, let us finally bring back the creative feminine energy, with its warm vitality and vigor.
With the onset and invasion of AI and open source codes,
we have no clue where life is going, or going to go,
the future has never been more hard to predict that in this moment, because there are multiple trajectory and highest disruption than ever.
We have no clue what are governing these things now,
and at the same time what intent is under the collective.
is it forex or is it crypto
is it stocks or commodity
is it rental or ownership
is it here ‘earth’ or ‘is it space’
well well !
things that we never faced before, and that too at a rate that were not prepared for.
and, every generation had it piece of share, and this one is here ‘for us to contribute’
so that the future will be grateful for our heartbeats
mediocre is doomed
mediocrity is already being replaced by AI, apps and stalked resources.
If you are mediocre copywriter, photographer, leader, therapist.. "what I want to share is ‘if you are mediocre creative’ - then you should 'hit out' or 'get out',
because 'it is coming for you'"
On the other hand creativity and high skilled performance is going to have a lot of resilience because 'extraordinary, off the charts, unpredictable, remarkable work', thats going to be really hard for an AI to do; it always has been..
the race is on for you to stop trying to please a mediocre ‘finish line’.
Now is the time to go higher organisation and clients who will challenge you ‘to go to a place where a computer can never get’
Stop filling little tiny gaps,
leave that to the AI.
We got to make big leaps that matters for people who care.
because business and life is not about selling more crap.
Creativity is our culture, we are wholesome with it, and that is how we evolve, grow and survive.
'That' is how we pass on our genes (and information) to the next generation, this is our story of survival (and destruction) all through time and space.
Creativity is our culture
and our culture determines who we are
so if you reading this, I am counting on you
to take a deep breath,
to lean in and to make this moment count,
your life count !
Isn't Normal is an illusion ?
"What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly"
I was shocked to hear from a teacher on a zoom call, she was telling an entire class "behave normal".
Well, I find that insane !
On one hand schools tell children to express themselves and I have seen students being suspended for the same
Phobia is the panic behavior that is presented in our body.
Phobic behavior is not “phobia”, it is the representation of thya event that once happened. It is coming from the wisdom of the body, to keep the body safe so that the previous event of the impact may not be repeated.
However our bodies can learn and evolve and upgrade. We must look into these behaviors, just to evaluate if that behavior still serves as a purpose, if not then it is time we install the new behavior.
And if for some reason the environment in the context of the trauma still exist, we must take appropriate measures, consultation and intervention in order to support our self in context where we choose to grow and evolve
A few years before his leaving India, Dick on his drive to the airport had a conversation with me, and in some part of that conversation he said “when you take the whole of who ‘you are’, you are more than the current context, catastrophe or tragedy”, the context of our conversation was about standing ground, assertively and appropriately in areas where one has to say NO, and for it to mean NO, and for it to stick clear, one would have to embrace their true authenticity and appropriateness.
At that point it occurred to me ‘that it is equivalent to taking one’s place ‘fully & totally’ in the world’
Today after all these years, what Dick said connects and reminds me of this : “if you cannot say your ‘NOs’ well, then your ‘YESes’ lose its value”
Guess where I got this one from, obviously Judith DeLozier!! anyways, my point of remembering Dick today was in the ‘choice’ philosophy he gave me, amongst the many MANY mAnY MaNy other learnings & philosophy, this one still stands tall… I will always remember him for letting us ‘all’ know “we have got choices ‘all day’, ‘every day’, and ‘every moment of every day’’
Dedication Richard (Dick) McHugh SJ PhD
The story of human existence is actually the one that constantly redefines and re-presents itself in ways that is so different on the surface and yet has so much in common at the atomic level.
The ‘once upon-a-time- myths’ becomes an empirical approach with the passage of time, which in turn after the passing of a few decades again becomes the myth of the next time.
This is the continuum we all exist - ‘the present’.
It is only when we understand this concept, we re-define self or else it’s a paradigm of conflict because ‘every thing’ all-the-time ‘all at once’ happens when the mind is open and the body is grounded - where there is movement, flow & symmetry, it’s mindfulness & psychotherapy at the centre of curiosity, creativity & connectedness
I am going to heal from this heartbreak, from the need to be with you, to be held and kissed, to wakeup each morning next to you, to ask you to hold me, kiss me and to love me.
I am going to heal from this begging and pleading and crying in front of you, just to be seen, loved and be with.
Why couldn’t love be real for me, that ‘once was’ when I met you, I couldn’t have been so wrong and unlovable, love should not be this hard.
I dabble with the fact how replaceable and distant I am to you today, from being unknown at some point to being everything, and how today the lover I knew turned into stranger again, so much so that nothing reaches you from my cries to words and poems.
I am going to heal from this thinking and suffering, of knowing how once our happiness was central to you and all that you do, that I do that today, just to be seen by you, to be loved by you.
This state of missing you destroys me from inside, I am going to heal from this and I must let you go, not because I don’t love you anymore, but because I have stopped becoming the person I love when I am with you, and I shouldn’t deserve a love that I have to force, plead or ask or think before I speak, worry and constantly wait. I am going to heal from the negotiations and convincing you to stay, to be enough for you, as I realise I cannot begin alone what cannot be whole again for you.
What stays, stays; what crashes, crashes. Time gives us contexts, we have experiences within these contexts, nothing and nobody has no obligation to please us or to live up to our requests and expectations.
Therefore setting right expectations or demands from self would be a resource, a responsibility and a requisite too; because it might need a lot of practice coming home to yourself, especially after an explosive event or context.
Now that we are already in it, so why not get started immediately. I mean, setting the right expectations of self.
There is so much to love, admire and belong… also so much to weep for and grieve too. We also have absolute ambiguity, right !!
Where ambition interferes, poetry transcends.
The only way we understand anything about this moment is by realising that it's not about waiting or finding the meaning, it's about perception!!
so much to sing,
so much to feel,
so much to dance; this is the meaning of life, this is it’s purpose and it’s wisdom too.
In our daily lives, we often interact with people without truly getting to know them. We miss out on connecting with each other and often overlook someone’s unique story and potential.
Can we change something about this then?
Well, being empathetic just might help.
Empathy serves as a key, a pathway to building deeper connections and bridging the gap of disconnection. It enables us to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, view their experiences, and see their truth through a lens of real understanding.
Learning this art of active and reflective listening helps us be genuine and curious, and create spaces to hold the client and build rapport and a therapeutic alliance with the client in their life’s journey.