A Bird's Eye View of THE ENCHANTED SELF and what it means to YOU! Written by Dr. Barbara Becker Holstein
The Rebbe Nachman of Breslow often said, “Always remember-Joy is not merely incidental to your spiritual quest. It is vital.” As years have gone by and I’ve been in practice of psychology over 20 years, I have become more and more convinced that he was so right, that joy is not an option. When we take away joy and we take away a sense of well-being, a sense that we are thriving, we allow ourselves or seem to find ourselves in circumstances that seem to drain, tire and weaken us. We are no longer whole human being that is our birthright! THE ENCHANTED SELF is a positive psychology approach to mental health that works both in treatment room and out. I teach people techniques they need to start to think in positive ways about themselves and their world. Thus I teach them how to see what is right about themselves, rather than what is wrong. I also teach them to appreciate their own life story, its ups and downs; roller coaster ride that we all go on. I teach how to value our potential even if in childhood we were put down or criticized, as so many of us are. I have belief and I teach belief that inside of each of us we know when we are on track and we know when we are living a wholesome life that fits with integrity of our particular spirit. I call this sense of well-being ”The Enchanted Self” and I teach people how to find their "Enchanted Selves" again and again-how to recognize and celebrate states of well-being that signify they are in touch with best of themselves. I stress positive benefit of recalling memories about one's life in a fashion that permits us to discover and rediscover our own talents and resources. I also emphasize how to find in our past kernals of pleasure, and reservoirs of strength, that we can come home to again and again, even if we need to reshape these facets of ourselves to suite new circumstances Basically, this learning involves listening to yourself, and reviewing your own past to see what worked for you, what really gave you pleasure. What aspects of yourself and your life can you identify as necessary to experience a state of well-being? What do you need to feel whole? For example, if you loved to play piano as a child, then you may not really enjoy watching football games as an adult. You may much more enjoy listening to classical music. However, in order to live a full life, you may also enjoy football games because your son loves them or your husband loves them. Thus there is also an accommodation to someone you care about and a resulting interest develops. I think you can begin to see that what is going to work for each person is so unique to that individual! It involves a review of our history, and it involves analyzing circumstances currently in our lives. If we have a handicap we may not be able to become a ballerina. Even if we have severe arthritis, we may not be able to become a ballerina at forty. However, love of dance since childhood may easily be converted into wonderful yoga stretches that help arthritis and feel 'dancy'. So often, there is a creative turn in road, thinking out of box, that Enchanted Self person develops. You find you have become an ENCHANTED SELF when you havethe courage to put together using your mind, heart, body and spirit new inventive ways of bringing pleasure and meaning into your life. The steps I teach people are rigorous but they are no harder then all habits we learn that keep us in bad moods and keep us depressed. For example, if I teach someone how to review at end of day everything that has gone right in their day, that it is no harder than listing what went wrong. In fact it soon becomes easier than listing everything that went wrong. The reason it becomes easier is that you don’t build up some of rage and some of anger that one can build up when we review problems in our lives. Now we are encouraged rather than discouraged and even may end up sleeping better and feeling better leading to much less energy drain. I have found most effective way to teach people how to access their Enchanted Self, i.e. to find and hold onto feelings of joy, and a sense of well-being is to share Seven Gateways To Enchantment. It is a quick way to catch your Enchanted Self. So let’s explore Gateways and then try an enchanted assignment! The first Gateway is The Gateway of Knowing Yourself In Positive Ways. That means getting to know your own talents and rediscovering your lost potential. This is a fun gateway and it really builds your self-esteem. You can pursue this Gateway, even while driving you car! For example, you can go over your life history, reviewing your strengths and talents. Start back in childhood-look for your strengths and talents, even if they were disregarded by your family, and maybe even yourself. Now, you have maturity and wisdom to recognize these positive parts of yourself. Even play with looking for your lost dreams-what you thought you could do before someone or circumstances may have dashed those dreams! After you take some time with First Gateway, you are ready for Second Gateway. This is one where you begin to fall in love with yourself! At heart level you begin to feel your specialness. This may take time, not to worry. After all our society does not bring us up to recognize what is special and wonderful about ourselves! Some of us get closer to this sense of positive self-love by mentally hugging ourselves as child that we once were. Others practice by intentionally giving oneself a for real quick hug, even if no one else does, or looking in mirror and saying to oneself, "I am special and my strengths are unique and perfectly suited for what I want and need to do in life! Another step in successfully passing through Second Gateway is acknowledging that story of your life is a fascinating fabric of adventures, episodes, happenings, and even mis-haps that have come together to make a most unique person and that is YOU! Once you can begin to see that your triumphs are to be honored and celebrated and that your defeats have within them wisdom and learning that takes you later in life to new heights you are well along on road to Enchantment.
| | ArchetypesWritten by Robert Bruce Baird
DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY (ARCHETYPES): - "All material bodies are condensations of frozen bodies." (2) Jung is becoming 'in vogue' again, I hear. Perhaps this time around it won't just involve so little real appreciation for all that he meant and understood. Dream interpretation and projected Western values can be a Freudian gambit - Jung grew to see things few will ever admit to in present ideologies of West. He was able to contact future before First World War and it almost convinced him he was mad, until he saw his visions were right - then he knew it wasn't himself who was mad - it was world he lived in! His archetypes may be a contact with genetic 'history book' that Director of Human Genome Project talked about recently when he announced that only 2.8 centimetres of 1.8 metres of a gene are required to make human being. It might be a collective 'tap-in' or even 'medulla oblongata' has ability to record knowledge of previous evolutionary experience of man's development. Personally I feel it is a matter of some of each of these things and factors relating to chaos and interference of conflicting vibrations or wavelengths in confusing array of bandwidths and personalities. The 'archetypes' and our dreams are definitely important to our discovery of what soul and oversoul is trying to achieve. Our conscious waking experiences are far too influenced by convention and peer pressures or five senses, to differentiate ego's interest from purpose we are here to explore and refine. Is there a connection between archetypes and helical structure of all naturally occurring paradigms like time, harmonic building blocks of one dimensional force, nanotubes, DNA and telomeres, etc.? Is that structure part of a form which is unique to earth experience or does it have close corollaries in other parts of universe? We are on verge of breaking down insights of intuitive attuned masters of philosophies that are aware of ego and its NEEDS. Soon Eastern mystics and shamans of world will be universally appreciated, I hope. Their ethic is a clear requirement to explore if we are to begin 'New Age' in a position to make most of all that can be! It might be required by other life forms we call alien before we are allowed to participate in cosmos and its order. That would be great! "When I go past dark alleys and passages of my mind, I come to core of my Being. - At core of my Being I am in touch with light and love and knowingness that are inherent properties of my natural state." (3) One of outcomes and plans involved in rape and pillage of aboriginals and nature-worshipping cultures around world was a history that injected war into lives of Mayans. Personally I have a hard time accepting that 'missionaries' of Keltic/Toltec or Druidic tradition that are reported in stories about Kukulcan and Quetzacoatl were responsible. However, they were probably accompanied by those members of their society (or followed by) who brought mindset of European power-mongers and aristocrats. I can see where Ostrogoths disappeared to and it wouldn't surprise me if Sybarite/Milesian faction had ousted other 'Bruttii' before 6th century BC., who found their way to Upper Mississippi area of Great Lakes before moving south to more extensive mounds they built. There is mounting evidence that Basque played an important part in Mayan scheme of things. Their language is connected as is Rh factor in blood. It is rare and traceable to Iberia, (the one between Black and Caspian Sea) and Mayan. They also seem to have lived in harmony until Norman or other conquests were occurring in Europe. Needless to say conventional wisdom is trying to paint them as sacrificers of barbaric proportions, but that too can be traced to Moshe (as in Moshe Rabbenue) and European influence and practice. There is no doubt in my mind that nature and archetypes of Mayan culture make it clear there was a long tradition of harmony and awareness of ego and its conflict that adds so much negative inputs to our shared experience with nature. I like words of following author who has lived in lifestyle or with these people even more than I have. "Even though Mayan temples became overgrown with jungle lushness, Mayan beliefs have survived. Because of their togetherness all these years and their deliberate lack of contact with Spanish, Mayans have managed to practice their beliefs and practice them today almost as they did thousands of years ago.” (4) The Mayans say we should be careful and observe our involvement with nature and progressions of different forces. They say: "Do not put yourself, in front of your SELF!" Most people are unable to quiet their mind and keep order in their memory and recall, due to a lack of proper tools (like Ars Memoria, in 'Symbols and Concepts section') and spiral of educational inputs that have no flow and fit. If we have a through-line of purpose and ethic these problems of busy-mind disappear and a greater sense of mental and other well-being permeates our lives. The Mayan are naturally this way and if Western Man succeeds in abusing them with greed and need then it will be a greater loss in my heart than I wish to bear. "The inner quest The tradition of vision, and inner quest by shaman, Druid, saint or holy man, seem to be connected at specific places where energy forces of planet are located {In microcosm of our mind or macrocosm of universe, too.}. The Celtic and pre-Celtic shaman, living embodiment of collective psyche, was link with ancestral spirit world. He performed ceremonies connected with dead, and annual rites of renewal on behalf of living. The age-old communal tomb which was source of his power {Like relics of Catholic Church. The lattices of DNA archetypes and stone enclosures were designed to house forces of personal and tribal attunements.} was place where forces of heaven and earth could meet. The vulva-shaped megalithic dolmens from Cornwall and India show how widespread was ancient belief in burial receptacle as a womb-place of Earth Mother and Other-world. These tombs were usually constructed with giant stone slabs forming a chamber and a trenched passageway, gaps filled with dry-stone walling and covered by a great mound of earth. Dolmens, quoits and cromlechs are remains of original chambers. Natural caves and artificial chambers cut into rock were also used.
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