A Book of Healing: Practicing a Psychotherapy of Liberation with African-Americans
About the book and the process of writing
Archive for the category “Spirituality”
African Music and Traditional Healing
Uganda harp. (Photo credit: New York Public Library)
Backcloth to Music and Healing in Traditional African Society
The African Knowledge of Sickness
The old African world thrived on a balance of the physical and the intangible. In other words there was mutual dependency between the physical world and the active immaterial or supernatural forces, and African peoples survived because of the ability to harmonize the religious and the secular, the spiritual and the mundane, the intangible and the material realities.
The human person possesses, and is animated by, both profane and spiritual egos in symbiotic existence. The disease or malfunctioning of the one impairs the stability or efficacy of the other, and thereby the health of the whole. The cure of the sick must then be holistic for the African – healing the ego that manifests tangible ailment entailed co-jointly healing the co-acting ego that has become latently infected. The process of properly curing a physically ill person in the African medical practice then compels healing the person’s psyche or spiritual well being as well as the physiological. When herbs fail, heal the spirit.
Traditional Africa recognizes that when the environment is sick, diseases become prevalent; and when such diseased material or spiritual environment is rehabilitated, human health becomes secure. When the group spirit is polluted, the minds of individuals become infected, the human sphere becomes sick. When a human body is sick, the animating spirit becomes poisoned, and the human sphere becomes unhealthy.
The traditional African concept of illness recognizes natural and supernatural causes, ordinarily co-acting together. Ill health can manifest as malfunctioning physiology, mental-spiritual disorder or unusual external misfortune. Illness may be self-generated (psychosomatic), other-engineered, congenital or caused by foreign agents. Sickness is not always diagnosed as the malfunctioning of body parts or organs in isolation, even though the seat of the sick-feeling may be located in a body part – external or internal. Sickness could be a sign for something else, positive or injurious, which is impending. When such a sign gets mistaken as ordinary sickness, or when it is ignored and unattended to, the person harboring the sign may suffer permanent injury, usually mental.
In the community-structured African socio-political system the sickness of an individual generates levels of conflicts: Conflict within the sufferer, conflict within the family and compound unit, conflict within the entire geo-political community. The conflict could have social, economic or religious dimensions. As such, the suffering of an individual affects the well-being of many others, and would compel group empathy in seeking remedy. The community is concerned to avoid the incidence of illness of any category, and to manage or contain incidents of illness as a group even though there are specialist healers. It is for the reason that an individual’s sickness can impinge on the normal functioning of an entire community that African health practice places a premium on preventive health programs. Preventive health includes scheduled and mandatory environmental cleaning, avoidance rites to ward off evil forces (human and of spirit mien), as well as constant musical arts theatre that coerces mass participation, annual group spirit purgation music-drama (new-year rites), compound hygiene etc.
The process of healing the sick, which involves the restoration of the psychic health of the sufferer as well as the community, is structured and systematic, often contextualizing the community in ritual-theatrical dimension, in order to heal the entire community psyche. The active, supportive involvement of the community boosts the life energy of the sick. A stable psychological condition is thus generated for the specialist healer to undertake the specialized process of physical or metaphysical medication.
On Becoming an African Healer
In some African cultures a person who will eventually become a healer is supernaturally selected through signs such as sickness. The signs, which often result in strange behavior or physiological ill health, manifest irrespective of age and gender. When diagnosed, preparing or capacitating the person to become a healer could entail the medical-musical theatre of “opening of the inner eyes” (to perceive beyond the commonly visible) or the “reception of extraordinary communications” (from the supernatural forces). When a sign selects a person that must be “purified” or empowered to become a healer, she thereafter becomes capable of perceiving knowledge of sicknesses and curative elements through super-ordinary sensitization. Hence there are induction ceremonies, often locally discussed as “capturing the spirit” or “welcoming the ancestral spirit-guide”.
Music in Healing
Guitar being played by Tom Walton: White Springs, Florida (Photo credit: State Library and Archives of Florida)
The term music here suggests the musical arts theatre of the structured musical sound, dance, dramatic arts and performance plastic arts.
Music in traditional Africa is the science of being; the art of living with health. Music is the intangible resonance of which the human body and soul are composed: The human body is the quintessential sound instrument; the human soul is the ethereal melody. A matching of human souls is the foundation of African harmonic thought and sound. Musical harmony is the consonance of complementary inter-dependent melodies and timbres – vocal or instrumental. Dissonance occurs when independent melodies or souls or tone/pitch levels fail to harmonize in accord with a culture’s normative idioms of interaction in life and music. Complementation of souls or the consonance of matching melodies generates healthy resonance – a healing energy. What constitutes dissonance is culturally, not universally determined. Dissonance of component parts or elements of a music event could be prescribed by a non-musical intention, which could be healing. Dissonance, whether of souls or co-sounding melodies/pitch levels/tone levels/timbres, arouses disquietude, a disruption of composure, which then compels a need to resolve irregularity. Otherwise, a state of disrupted harmony or accord would prevail, and could become injurious.
Related articles
- Healing With Sound – Tuning the Human Instrument, Part I (hofholistichealingcenters.com)
- Sound can be a Healing Energy (dallorbill1947.wordpress.com)
The Seven Types of Souls
The Spectrum of Essence
When we cast light through a prism, it comes out in the form of a spectrum which we perceive as the seven colours of the rainbow. Similarly, when the Source of all being (God, the Tao, the Absolute, whatever you like to call it) casts its consciousness into the relative world, it comes out in the form of individual souls of seven types:
What are the roles?
The word “role” refers to the fact that we each serve a particular type of function in the great scheme of things. We are all parts of a greater whole—the evolving consciousness of all-that-is.
Think of how every cell in your body is designed to play a specific role or function. And, although there are trillions of cells in the human body, there are only a few different types of cell.
Or think about all the stars in the cosmos. Although their number is so high as to be virtually infinite, scientists classify them all into just seven types, from hottest (type O) to coolest (type M).
Similarly, there are only seven types of soul. Which is to say, there are seven primary ‘roles in essence’ — seven ways in which the One becomes the many.
The names given to the seven soul types in the Michael Teachings are deliberately archetypal — hence somewhat old-fashioned sounding and not necessarily politically correct. The names are:
SERVER | ARTISAN | WARRIOR | SCHOLAR | SAGE | PRIEST | KING
The names reflect the natural purpose and proclivities of each soul type:
•Servers are naturally accommodating, caring, nurturing, hospitable, altruistic.
•Artisans are naturally creative, inventive, imaginative, sensitive, dexterous.
•Warriors are naturally forceful, loyal, protective, determined, steadfast.
•Scholars are naturally curious, studious, academic, analytical, neutral.
•Sages are naturally engaging, articulate, charming, entertaining, expressive.
•Priests are naturally inspirational, uplifting, motivating, energising, visionary.
•Kings are naturally commanding, assured, powerful, authoritative, decisive.
You are one of these. I am one of these [a Scholar, to be exact]. Everybody is one or another of these. All the 6 billion souls who are currently on the planet, plus all those who are currently are off-planet between lives, can be identified as one of these seven types.
Incidentally, you can often (but not always) tell someone’s soul type from their facial features. I have a separate article on this: The seven soul types: what do they look like?
(Feel free to look at that now, but do come back here to learn a lot more about the nature of the seven types!)
The Proportions of Soul Types
The seven roles make up different proportions of the overall population. In percentage terms:
•Servers = 25%
•Artisans = 21%
•Warriors = 18%
•Scholars = 14%
•Sages = 11%
•Priests = 7%
•Kings = 4%
So, one quarter of the entire poluation is made up of Servers, while there are fewer Kings than any other type.
To illustrate this, think of a school class with 28 students. According to these figures, those students would probably be made up of the following: — one King, two Priests, three Sages, four Scholars, five Warriors, six Artisans and seven Servers.
Now here are some further explanations about the roles in essence.
The Nature of the Roles
•Roles are not assigned to us or imposed on us. They are who we are.
•There is no hierarchy. All roles are equal in value, and all souls are equally free. A King is in no way “higher up” or “better off” than a Server. The roles are simply seven different ways of being, seven ways of playing the game of life.
•A person’s soul type has no bearing whatsoever on that person’s station in life. A King soul will live just as many ordinary, hard-working lives as a Server. A Server has just as much opportunity to become a leader as any King. In fact, the present monarch in the UK is a Server, as is the heir to the throne.
•The roles are certainly not be confused with the Hindu caste system. There are similarities in the names used, but this is simply because the caste system is a tragic misrepresentation of the nature of the roles. Soul types having nothing to do with birth, ancestry or class heritage.
•Despite the labels used, no gender is implied. Souls have no gender. They simply choose between one or the other for each life to come. There are preferences, however. Priests, Sages, Artisans and especially Servers generally enjoy being female and often prefer it. Kings, along with Scholars and Warriors, tend to favour being male. (That said, the challenge of being female and the fight for equal rights can be very attractive to a Warrior.)
•Our soul type is often evident in the first years of life but then becomes masked to some extent by false self or false personality. This consists of cultural programming, ego, persona and so on — the superficial identity we all develop which has nothing to do with who we really are. Usually, it is not until mid-life (when much of this false identity is broken through) that our true essence comes to express itself more clearly. For example, a female Warrior in her late 30s who has so far been a stay-at-home housewife might suddenly find her true home working as a political activist. A male Artisan who has followed in his father’s footsteps in the armed forces might have a mid-life crisis and decide to become a poet.
•Whereas our soul type is permanent, everything else can change from one life to the next: race, nationality, religion, gender, social standing, profession. But the essence and consciousness will be consistent. For example, a certain Artisan soul might incarnate as a woodworker in one life, a choirboy in the next, then a housewife, then a wealthy wine merchant, then a child prostitute, then a female shopkeeper … and so on. Throughout all these human lives, however, the Artisan will tend to be creative and inventive, seeking to bring fresh and original perceptions into being.
Our role in essence is our true nature, the part we each play in the cosmos. And, as the Michael teachings remind us:
NO MATTER WHAT THE ROLE OF ESSENCE, THE ESSENCE ITSELF IS COMPOSED WHOLLY OF LOVE.
Complementary opposites
Six of the seven soul types actually belong in pairs. Those in a pair share a similar function or specialism in life:
•Priests and Servers are both inspiration specialists, bringing good intentions to life, serving a good cause, seeking to improve the quality of life for all.
•Sages and Artisans are both expression specialists, bringing good ideas to life, giving form or voice to thoughts and feelings, changing perceptions.
•Kings and Warriors are both action specialists, bringing concrete objectives to life, making things happen, setting goals and moving towards them.
Scholars stand alone as the neutral role, and they are the assimilation specialists, absorbing knowledge from life. In each of the pairs (action, expression and inspiration), one is “cardinal” and the other is “ordinal“. Another way to put this is in terms of yin and yang.
The cardinal of the pair is yang: proactive, expansive, foreground, driven, and with a big-picture focus. The ordinal of the pair is yin, the equal-but-opposite complementary energy to yang: reactive, responsive, background, introspective, and with a detail-level focus.
•In the action-type roles, the King role is cardinal and the Warrior role is ordinal. To use a simplistic analogy, Kings embark on wars while Warriors fight battles.
•In the expression-type roles, the Sage role is cardinal and the Artisan role is ordinal. If all the world’s a stage, Sages are the presenters of the show, while the show itself is created and crafted by Artisans.
•In the inspiration-type roles, the Priest is the cardinal role and the Server is the ordinal role. If inspiration is likened to shepherding, Priests move the whole flock on to better pastures while Servers tend to those in need.
The Scholar role is neither cardinal nor ordinal, but at the intersection of all the pairs. The Scholar is the only neutral type, the role being assimilation — absorbing information from life to create knowledge. At the risk of mixing too many metaphors at once, Scholars would be the ones who chronicle wars, record stage shows, and study sheep!
Positive and Negative
It is important to understand that we can manifest our potential in different ways. In the extremes, each role has a positive pole (+) and a negative pole (–).
•The positive pole represents the highest, most authentic and positive expession of the soul, the true self, which is a source of love, truth and freedom.
•The negative pole represents the lowest, most distorted and negative expession of the ego, the false self, which is a source of fear, illusion and malice.
For example, my being a Scholar means that I am the sort of soul whose role in life is to take information from the raw data of reality. Scholar has as its positive pole “knowledge” and as its negative pole “theory”. When acting in my positive pole, I do indeed serve a positive purpose by collecting and offering valid, useful knowledge. But when acting in my negative pole, I tend to get side-tracked in invalid or useless theories of no interest to anyone but me, and then only because my ego gets off on knowing more and more things rather than interacting with real life. You could say that the positive manifestation of a Scholar is being a knowledgeable expert and the negative manifestation is what some would call a nerd or dweeb — (sigh) — so true.
So, the positive pole of any role leads towards true fulfilment of self and true intimacy with others. The negative pole leads to emptiness, frustration and alienation. Here they are in full:
ROLE POSITIVE POLE NEGATIVE POLE
Server service (serving the common good) servitude (loss of own power)
Artisan creation (bringing good ideas to life) artifice (ideas used to deceive)
Warrior persuasion (influencing others’ will) coercion (imposing own will)
Scholar knowledge (learning from life) theory (lost in abstractions)
Sage communication (delivering messages) verbosity (stuck on transmission)
Priest motivation (inspiring others to change up) zealotry (overly fanatical)
King mastery (absolute responsibility) tyranny (absolute power)
Relationships and Roles
Interestingly, the different roles do relationhips in subtly different ways.
•For Warriors and Kings (action type), relationships are a matter of fealty or loyalty.
•For Sages and Artisans (expression type), relationships are a matter of commitment.
•For Priests and Servers (inspiration type), relationships are a matter of dedication.
•For Scholars (assimilation type), relationships are a matter of involvement.
Channels of Input
We process our experiences through one or more channels of perceptual input. The number of channels we possess varies, depending upon our role in essence.
•Scholars, Kings and Warriors receive information through just one channel. This allows them to focus on what’s what, concentrate on the matter at hand, and think clearly amid chaos.
•Priests and Servers receive information through two channels. One is tuned to the immediate situation, and the other is tuned to, in the case of Priests, their sense of the “higher good”, and in the case of Servers, a sense of the “common good”. Hence, there is often a moral or ethical overtone to their conversations.
•Sages process information through three channels, while Artisans have five channels. With Sages, one channel is tuned to the immediate situation, one is managing their “act” or “performance”, and one is monitoring their audience. With Artisans, it is more a case of having multiple “back burners” making creative connections around the immediate situation.
While they are shifting their attention between their multiple channels, Sages and especially Artisans can appear to “tune out” the person they are communicating with. This makes Artisans in particular seem somewhat scattered, at least to non-Artisans. By the same token, those with multiple channels can find it difficult to accept the single-mindedness of Scholars, Kings and Warriors.
Read On
OK, you have the background. Now perhaps you want to know more specifically about each of the seven roles in essence. If you want a quick sense of what they all look like, based on photos of some famous examples in each case, see:
•The seven soul types: what do they look like?
If you want to read a fuller, more-in-depth description of each one (with more photos), click below. Enjoy!
SERVER | ARTISAN | WARRIOR | SCHOLAR | SAGE | PRIEST | KING
Discover Your Soul Type
Some people find it easy to intuit their own soul type or essence. For others, it’s far from obvious. To help you identify yours, I have put together a questionnaire (personality quiz) at Quibblo. Here’s the link: http://www.quibblo.com/quiz/atufj3C/Discover-Your-Soul-Type.
Over 1,000 people have taken it already and the results look like this:
The ‘natural’ proportions, you may remember, range from 4% Kings to 25% Servers. So this chart is showing a lot more Priests and Artisans than would be expected, and not many Warriors. This suggests either that the test is skewed to identify Priests and Artisans but not Warriors (which I totally accept is a possibility), or perhaps it is simply that Priests and Artisans are more likely to be doing this kind of thing on the Internet and Warriors aren’t. Feedback welcome!
Doing and Being
Doing and Being: Mindfulness, Health, and Quiet Ego Characteristics Among Buddhist Practitioners
September 16, 2010 — barry
H. A. Wayment, B. Wiist, B. M. Sullivan, M. A. Warren (2010) Doing and Being: Mindfulness, Health, and Quiet Ego Characteristics Among Buddhist Practitioners. Journal of Happiness Studies , Online first , 11 Sept 2010.
ABSTRACT: We examined the relationship between meditation experience, psychological mindfulness, quiet ego characteristics, and self-reported physical health in a diverse sample of adults with a range of Buddhist experience (N = 117) gathered from a web-based survey administered to Buddhist practitioners around the world between August 1, 2007 and January 31, 2008.
Practicing meditation on a regular basis and greater experience with Buddhism was related to higher psychological mindfulness scores. Psychological mindfulness was correlated with a latent variable called “quiet ego characteristics” that reflected measures based on Bauer and Wayment’s (Transcending self-interest: psychological explorations of the quiet ego. American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, pp 7–19, 2008) conceptual and multidimensional definition of a “quiet ego”: wisdom, altruism, sense of interdependence with all living things, need for structure (reversed), anger/verbal aggression (reversed), and negative affectivity (reversed). In turn, quiet ego characteristics were positively related to self-reported health.
Our findings provide continuing support for the key role psychological mindfulness may play in psychological and physical well-being.
Near-Death Experiences
Implications of Near-Death Experiences for a Postmaterialist Psychology
February 25, 2010 — barry
Implications of Near-Death Experiences for a Postmaterialist Psychology by Bruce Greyson
from Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, Volume 2, Issue 1, February 2010, Pages 37-45
Classical physics, anchored in materialist reductionism, offered adequate descriptions of everyday mechanics but ultimately proved insufficient for describing the mechanics of extremely high speeds or small sizes, and was supplemented nearly a century ago by quantum physics, which includes consciousness in its formulation. Materialist psychology, modeled on the reductionism of classical physics, likewise offered adequate descriptions of everyday mental functioning but ultimately proved insufficient for describing mentation under extreme conditions, such as the continuation of mental function when the brain is inactive or impaired, such as occurs near death. “Near-death experiences” include phenomena that challenge materialist reductionism, such as enhanced mentation and memory during cerebral impairment, accurate perceptions from a perspective outside the body, and reported visions of deceased persons, including those not previously known to be deceased. Complex consciousness, including cognition, perception, and memory, under conditions such as cardiac arrest and general anesthesia, when it cannot be associated with normal brain function, require a revised psychology anchored not in 19th-century classical physics but rather in 21st-century quantum physics that includes consciousness in its conceptual formulation.
Intimate Relationship as Spiritual Crucible
John Welwood
While most people would like healthy, satisfying relationships in their lives, the truth is that everyone has a hard time with intimate partnerships. The poet Rilke understood just how challenging they could be when he penned his classic statement, “For one person to love another, this is the most difficult of all our tasks.” Rilke isn’t suggesting it’s hard to love or to have lovingkindness. Rather, he is speaking about how hard it is to keep loving someone we live with, day by day, year after year. After numerous hardships and failures, many people have given up on intimate relationship, regarding the relational terrain as so fraught with romantic illusion and emotional hazards as to be no longer worth the energy.
Although modern relationships are particularly challenging, their very difficulty also presents a special arena for personal and spiritual growth. To develop more conscious relationships requires becoming conversant with how three different dimensions of human existence play out within them: ego, person, and being. Every close relationship involves these three levels of interaction that two partners cycle through— ego to ego, person to person, and being to being. While one moment two people may be connecting being-to-being in pure openness, the next moment their two egos may fall into deadly combat. When our partners treat us nicely, we open—“Ah, you’re so great.” But when they say or do something threatening, it’s “How did I wind up with you?” Since it can be terribly confusing or devastating when the love of our life suddenly turns into our deadliest enemy, it’s important to hold a larger vision that allows us to understand what is happening here.
RELATIONSHIP AS ALCHEMY
When we fall in love, this usually ushers in a special period with its own distinctive glow and magic. Glimpsing another person’s beauty and feeling our heart opening in response provides a taste of absolute love, a pure blend of openness and warmth. This being-to-being connection reveals pure gold at the heart of our nature — qualities like beauty, delight, awe, deep passion and kindness, generosity, tenderness, and joy. (Read the rest of this article at:)
http://www.johnwelwood.com/
Creativity
Spirituality: The Third Tier
June 10, 2009, 8:52 AM
Filed under: Spititual | Tags: Inspiration, Kabbalah, Philosophy, Religion, Spirituality, Theology, Thoughts
The three tiers, water, air, and space. This is my attempt to try and make the spiritual world seem physically plausible. Not an easy task since this world is beyond our five senses. Regardless, I’ll give it a try. In the “A Creation Story”, which is included in the page section of this blog, I talk about the universe existing in ten dimensional form. What kind of whooya is that? What does that mean, ten dimensional form? It’s just a way of saying ten different densities. To illustrate this, I’m going to put life in three different Tiers. Tier number one is water, or life that exists in a high density living condition, below the oceans. Tier number two is air, or life that exists in a medium density living condition, above the oceans. Tier number three is space, or spiritual life that exists in a much lower density.
To understand the difference between tier number three (spiritual space) and tier number two (air), let’s look at the difference between the two tiers we’re most familiar with, air and water. I think we can all agree that life exists both in the air and below the ocean. If we take a closer look at the difference between life in water and air, then maybe, we can understand the difference between our existence and spiritual existence.
What does life below the ocean (fish, water animals) know about life above the ocean? Absolutely nothing. Sure, they see the life above the ocean for a short time when they get caught in our fishing nets and traps. Overall, they do not know or understand what exists or, what is happening above the ocean. That’s because their living conditions are in a much higher density (water) and they cannot exist in our world (air). Only because of our superior intelligence, can we exist in theirs.
Co-Intelligence
From the Co-Intelligence Institute:
http://www.co-intelligence.org/I-6_CI_manifestations.html
Six basic manifestations of co-intelligence
If we are going to take wholeness, interconnectedness and co-creativity seriously, we are going to have to face some very challenging implications regarding intelligence:
First: Intelligence must involve more than logical reason, since rationality constitutes only a tiny piece of our full capacity to learn from and relate to life.
Second: Intelligence must involve more than learning how to control and predict things, since that does not engage the powerful co-creativity of life.
Third: Intelligence must be far more than personal, since even ants can together generate an intelligence that’s greater than they have individually.
Fourth: Intelligence needs to reach far beyond the obvious, since whatever is obvious is connected to things that aren’t so obvious, and intelligence should engage with the wholeness and relatedness of things, as much as possible.
Fifth: Intelligence should be able to arise among us and through us, as a result of our kinship in the interconnected family of life.
Sixth: It would seem likely that some form of intelligence would exist beyond us–in and beyond the living world–built into the very wholeness of life.
There is more to intelligence than brains and logic. There is multi-modal intelligence.
There is more to intelligence than successfully predicting and controlling things. There is collaborative intelligence.
There is more to intelligence than individual intelligence. There is collective intelligence.
There is more to intelligence than solving the problems in front of our faces. There is wisdom.
There is more to intelligence than a solitary capacity exercised within the life of a single entity. There is resonant intelligence.
There is more to intelligence than human intelligence. There is universal intelligence.
These are the six basic manifestations of co-intelligence identified so far.
Scientists discover the brain’s ‘God spot’… and show that faith helps human survival | Mail Online
A very interesting article on neuroscience and the religious experience……
Scientists discover the brain’s ‘God spot’… and show that faith helps human survival | Mail Online
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