Diving into the fire of trauma: a nondual approach to healing and awakening

Permission to deposit granted by editorThe author explores his own attempts at healing from trauma, which led to an embracement of a nondual psychotherapy approach. He explains how catharsis therapy, psychodrama, and somatic experiencing, while initially helpful, did not facilitate a full healing. By moving to incorporate a choiceless awareness perspective, the author found he was able to drop his judgments about the trauma experience, facilitating dissolution of the trauma experience. This discussion is then extended to letting go of the grasping at survival and the separate self, accepting death, and then even psychic hell. Three case studies are shared to show how a nondual therapy approach can be used to work with some dark traumasYe

Finding the lion's roar through nondual psychotherapy: leaving the spiritual teacher behind to directly embrace nondual being

Premission granted by Dr. Gary Nixon, editor of Paradoxica: Journal of Nondual PsychologyThis article is a summary of a nondual psychotherapy session with a long time spiritual seeker of 40 years who had worked hard on a meditative path with a guru, but had not experienced an awakening. In the session, he is introduced to some nondual pointers to help him realize that it is all available right here, right now, he has to only see it. After an intense hour with many new understandings, the long term seeker is invited to take the ultimate medicine and discover the lion’s roar within.Ye

The Transformational Opportunity of Embracing the Silence Beyond Hopelessness

Permission to include article in repository granted by Jon Farber, Editor, Voices.This paper looks at the problem of world collapse and absolute hopelessness. Typically, as demonstrated by an opening case example, Western psychological approaches encourage a retreat from the abyss of nothingness. Even existential philosophy and psychology which has been preoccupied with the encounter of nothingness and death retreats from the abyss experience into self-created meaning and personal resoluteness. A transpersonal approach is offered as an alternative exemplified by Wilber’s spectrum of development approach. A counselling case study is presented which points out typical problems on the spiritual journey such as spiritual materialism and the dark night of the soul as well as the pivotal opportunity of absolute hopelessness itself. Rather than resurrecting hope in a typical conventional psychology fashion, the acceptance of absolute hopelessness is seen as a paradoxical opportunity of transformation.Ye

Bungee jumping in the abyss: Working through issues of the mind, heart and guts after awakening

Permission to include in U. of Lethbridge Institutional Repository granted by Editor Gary Nixon. May, 2011.In this article, challenges after awakening are considered. While being in the awakened flow can be very captivating, we see issues of the mind, the heart, and the guts may still emerge that need to be worked through. The mind can fixate on the witness state or attach itself to nothingness or to the concept of awakening. These fixated positions, beneath which lay the dark emotions of the heart, must be recognized, openly embraced and collapsed. By burning through the stories around these emotions, we can reclaim our openness of the heart and our ability to come from a place of love rather than from the illusion of the separate self. Connecting with all at a gut level, we can be in a place of let go, no longer grasping at self survival as we embrace existence in each moment.Ye

From authenticity to thick description and externalizing the problem: A turn to narrative therapy in working with people dealing with schizophrenia

Permission granted by Val Lawton, Managing Editor, IJDCR to include article in the University of Lethbridge Institutional Repository.The author noticed that his existential-humanistic counselling approach with its focus on authenticity and self-actualization seemed to be counter-productive in working with people dealing with schizophrenia issues. This noticing precipitated a turn to narrative therapy with its focus on people telling preferred stories of their own lives, moving towards thick rather than thin descriptions, and recognizing that people are not their problems. A case example of working with a person with schizophrenia issues is given to show how externalizing the problem can free extensive personal resources and strengths in defeating the problem. The author concludes with some personal reflections on his turn to narrative therapy.Ye

Bungee jumping in the abyss: working through issues of the mind, heart and guts after awakening

Permission to include this article granted by Dr. Gary Nixon, editor of ParadoxicaIn this article, challenges after awakening are considered. While being in the awakened flow can be very captivating, we see issues of the mind, the heart, and the guts may still emerge that need to be worked through. The mind can fixate on the witness state or attach itself to nothingness or to the concept of awakening. These fixated positions, beneath which lay the dark emotions of the heart, must be recognized, openly embraced and collapsed. By burning through the stories around these emotions, we can reclaim our openness of the heart and our ability to come from a place of love rather than from the illusion of the separate self. Connecting with all at a gut level, we can be in a place of let go, no longer grasping at self survival as we embrace existence in each moment.Ye

Surrendering at the end of the line: embracing absolute hopelessness and total failurehood in nondual psychotherapy

Permisson to include this article granted by Dr. Gary Nixon, editor of ParadoxicaThis article reviews how the nondual seeker comes to the point in the journey in which he or she realizes that the end of seeking is called for but instead begins to seek the end of seeking. As the experience of desperately coming to the end of the line intensifies with no resolution, the experiences of the rot, absolute hopelessness, and embracing total failurehoood, can set the stage for a spontaneous giving up and letting go. In this surrender, the death of the separate self occurs, and the person can come to a place of seeing that “this is it,” it is all available right here, right now, and has been all along. A nondual psychotherapy case study illustrates the point that an invitation can be made by the nondual therapist to the client to simply rest in this state of nothing to do and nowhere to go. The temptation to run from this state, which we have been avoiding our whole lives, can be monumental. Resting in this desperate state of nothing to do can be a vital opportunity to see through the illusion of the separate self, and to know that reality has always been available, right here, right now.Ye

Deconstruction, disability, and sex addiction: Embracing the narrative perspective.

Permission granted by Val Lawton, Managing Editor, IJDCR to include article in the University of Lethbridge Institutional Repository.The disease model of addictions has expanded from its original alcoholism base to include many substances and processes. Twelve step groups have flourished in North America. One area that has rapidly grown in the last twenty years is sexual addiction. The use of the disease model privileges the pathology discourse while focusing on deficits of clients, and ignoring context. A hidden discrimination can take place in which the sexuality of a disabled person is pathologized as "sexual addiction." Deconstructing the label of sex addiction and moving to an experience near approach such as narrative therapy can honor the notion that people are veterans of their own lives and respect the personal resources people have. A case study was presented to highlight the recruitment into the identity of a sex addict of a disabled person and the importance of deconstructing this label. The narrative therapy technique of externalizing the problem was used to show how the "sex addict's" story could be re-authored in an experience near way leading to new possibilities and opportunities.Ye