This post is a comment I wrote to Daniel Stephens, in his discussion group, 'Philosophy, Psychology, and Spiritual Topics', in response to his question, 'Do you focus on Transpersonal Psychology?...' Daniel Stephens (Group description written by Daniel and edited by Gary) We enter this world knowing nothing. As we journey through life, what we know grows, according to the way we relate to and interpret our experiences. When we can fully explore every nook and cranny of reality without prejudging it, we prevent accidentally cutting ourselves off from great discoveries and surprising insights and truths. Perhaps as part of unconscious, instinctual survival mechanisms, the mind often tends to close towards new experiences and to challenging new ideas. With growing self-awareness, this tendency can be over-ridden ~ opening up whole new vistas of possibilities. This page will help to take a new view, a counterintuitive move, and open yourself up so radically that it would shock most people that we are this open. This means you being open to any idea, perspective, and teaching, no matter how ridiculous or crazy and untrue it might sound at first. It might seem dangerous but actually, it’s the opposite, open-mindedness doesn’t mean that you are going to believe a bunch of ridiculous things, it just says that you’re open to exploring different ideas and perspectives. The reason that we accept and follow this principle is that we recognise that if we’re not radically open-minded, then our mind is going to judge prematurely and cut us off from all the other avenues that we can explore. We also recognise that a lot of the most profound truths in life are counterintuitive and seem ridiculous and silly on the surface until they are deeply examined. It can take time to deeply explore these various truths and topics before we realise just how pure and powerful they are, which means that we need to remain open-minded during that time. We’re interested in exploration, good exploration; exploration means you don’t know what you’re gonna find. Sometimes you’ll find great stuff ~ treasures and resources which enrich your life. Sometimes you’ll see ugly bad stuff ~ which may trigger reactions such as aversion, repulsion, agitation or denial. They can be turned into great stuff, just by remaining open to what is, accepting that it is what it is, exploring it neutrally, and learning from the exploration. Daniel (to Gary) Do you focus on Transpersonal Psychology? My background is psychology/counselling, but doing a postgrad... so I’m always looking for perspectives 😀 Gary Daniel Stephens ~ my background is varied. After much exploring, too much to detail here, I left all traditional and conventional psych-spiritual approaches ~ and rely most deeply on my internal compass and inner voice. In the world population of 7.7 billion*, based on my observation and experience, I'd say a very high percentage share a very limited number of basically common perspectives and approaches, characteristics and behaviors - the neuro-typical. Even abnormal is within that range, as abnormalities can be categorized. What I'm saying is that, why follow what is already being done? Maybe there is nothing new under the sun, but certainly there can be new in my experience, which comes to me not from teachers, trainings or any 'outside' source - just from within. From an early age, it has been natural for me to see things from an out of the box perspective, and to find new ways and approaches. For years, I was an abstract and conceptual thinker, but that has changed in recent months as I move from my head to my heart and place high value on practical application in daily life. If we really choose to explore with an open mind, it will take us into some uncomfortable territory, and maybe down some rabbit holes. But if we love to explore and learn, nothing is lost. For example, I explored the idea that it is possible for a human to communicate and cooperate with the consciousness of the atoms of a stone. I published 20 posts of my conversations with Heartstone, including my discussions with a group of physicists. Now I am exploring some fine lines between imagination, 'reality' and manifestation, in the Qigong set I created. PMM started from the 1000 year old Qigong set, Eight Pieces of Brocade. I did not set out to create something new, but to practice the traditional well. What happened was by synchronicity, and by my characteristic on the autism spectrum of focusing to the point of obsession. Over eight months, I re-wrote the set in more than 150 major revisions, going more deeply into the unknown and unchartered with each revision. I highly recommend the experience of that set, the Present Moment Movements, which is under 60 minutes. As you wrote, experience matters. * ...the world population is the total number of humans currently living, and was estimated to have reached 7.7 billion people as of April 2019. It took over 200,000 years of human history for the world's population to reach 1 billion, and only 200 years more to reach 7 billion. Note: the slideshow below is composed of random images from the internet, saved this week (except the heart-harp labyrinth which is my art).
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