The dynamic function of ‘I’

Intro

Agenda

• Meditation
• Check in
• Open space to check in
• Break

Tutors

• Allan Frater
  • Tutor
  • Buddhist in 20s
  • 2001 trained in psychosynthesis
    • Supervision in retraining
  • Close to finishing book - waking dreams, imagination, everything is imagined, stopping us is a lack of imagination
• Gail
  • Graduated in group 59
  • Have online practise
  • Get a dog - Strong and skilful will
• Kate Medhurst
  • Graduated in group 59
  • Investment banker
  • Have online practise

‘I’ has 2 functions

• Perceptual - awareness
• Dynamic - action (will)
• Together you have ‘I’ - Observer and the actor
• Will = fuel - life energy
• If you have awareness but don’t change you don’t have the ‘I’

Will Stages

• No will
  • Agency or energy
• Will exists
• Having Will
• Being (I am ) Will

Will Aspects

• Strong
  • Push against
• Skilful
  • Masterful, Director
• Good
  • Understand and connect

Outcomes

• Describe your relationship with the will
  • Have lots of doing energy
  • Not wanting to impress my vision onto nature and others without good reason
• How will gets caught in identification
  • Directed by the self-deception of the details in the moment
• Relationship with the aspects
  • Strong- Nietzsche’s will to power
  • Skilful - My master to appear as an enabler, finesse
  • Good - existence having benefit to its surroundings
• Stages of the awakening
  • Discover what agency there is to have
• Impact of aligning your personal will with transpersonal will

Note

• Not becoming more wilful
• More playful

Exercise 1 - will diagnostics

• In your life at present:

  • To what degree is your will directed by other people, situations (work etc.) and cultural expectations?
  • To what degree is your will self-directed?

• In respect to the topic of this seminar:

  • What is perhaps good this weekend?
  • What is perhaps bad about it, what fears might you have around cultivating your will?

Notes in discussion

• Understand my need for masterfulness comes from
  • my parents relationship
  • See therapy notes
• Self directed, against the grain
• Strong connection of Will and values

General metaphor

• City as field of awareness
• Surrounding - different ways of being
• Don’t need to live in the mold, the Christopher columbus - you can become a wild person
• Travel is dis-identification process, introduce you to a new you, not want to introduce our culture to them
• Broaden scope for how you can be in the world

Exercise 2 - Guided visualisation - the helmsman

• Image - James mason - explorer
• Find at the helm of a ship
  • Start similar way
  • Your imagination unfold
• Start of voyage, moving into the open sea
• Notice human activity on shore

In groups - discuss

• How does the imagery reflect your current will?
• Where in your everyday life do you see this same expression of will, ie how is the imagery a parallel to your actual life situation?
• Note:
  • Places visited or avoided
  • Types of people or alone

My imaginary narrative

• Against the waves
• Exciting yet hard work
• Consensus
• Diversity of individuals
• Not knowing what we are moving for, no inertia to explore without purpose
• Summary
  • Not wanting to impress my vision onto nature and others without good reason

Noemie

• Why did you picture such a large ship?
• Existed by being more aware, making discovery
• Love surrounding with others
• Connected to nature though the image of a garden
• Focused on the ship
• Purpose - to explore

Looking at the stages

No Will

• Unable to change
• Experience powerlessness
  • Identify starting point towards acceptance / love / healing
• Suffering - no agency
• Metaphor
  • Partner leaves you, loose sense of identity
  • Lose job
  • Covid - stuckness
• Not wrong
  • Inevitable
  • Sign of changing
• Caterpillar hides away and takes time
• Often therapy, stuck need help moving on
• Sometimes you need a break, break frame
  • Role of the shaman
• Lean to disidentify?
• Pick example in life
• What is it like to be stuck? Have no agency. Victim of drives/desires. Hove no power to respond/react.
  • Suffering
  • Being left behind
  • Dead to being of service, Limbo
  • End of a chapter
  • Not fun to be around, less integration
  • Efforts not contributing
  • Let down / mistrust
• What are the consequences of this stuckness. What is bad about it, good about it. How might it serve you Not to change.
  • Time to reflect / receipt
  • Remind of Being
  • Identify the boundaries of the sensation
  • Embodied preparation for experiencing the difference of the change to come

Will exists

• Imagine possibilities

• Still stuck, precursor to action

• Much therapy is spent in stage 2

  • Help to be in their stuckness
  • Imagine another life, disidentify, unstuckness

• Could be anxious - spiritual death, “what would happen if I….”

  • No participatory knowledge
  • Not tried it out

• The reason why we are on the course

• Imagine the possibility of the future action

• Imagine how it would change, the process

  • Shift of potentialities
  • Small bets to test the waters
  • Change of habit - Leave behind the time for what I used to do
  • Discovery of obstacles, boundaries

• Imagine the outcome of the change, result of the process good/bad, fears, resistance:

  • Direction for my energy
  • Freeing / letting go of what no longer serves
  • Be vulnerable to being pushed over
  • More work, both in the:
    • Doing
    • Validating

• Decapacitation of known abilities/services

Battle of the wills

• battle/conflict/tension - between no will and will exists
• Personify them as subpersonalities
• Why Change? Other ways of being. Make vulnerable, upset the status que,
• No will wins a lot, drowns out the possibilities, world is shit, nothing we can do, might as well sit back
• Need to work hard for change, might happen quickly
• Not cheesy, genuine embodies freedom of suffering
• Sometime it’s so bad you are forced to change, sometimes it comes to you
  • Have relationships that support change
  • Heroes / idols, inspiration, biographies
  • Inner and outer fabric supporting you

Exercise 3

• Client + counsellor + Observer
• Counsellor instructor:
• Invite to describe stuckness
• Invite to move into another chair and describe the possibility of change (will exists)
• Invite to look back at first chair - feelings, thoughts about stuck you
• Return to first chair - feelings, thoughts about possibility of change

Observer - turn off camera, don’t intervene, report back to the group

• Stuckness - not like job, need of income

  • End up letting circumstances dictate
  • What resources can I use?
  • Feel like chasing tail, going around in circles
  • Imagining possible roles
    • Is there passion?
    • Only practicable
    • In survival mode
  • Should feel passionate so it doesn’t feel like work

• Counsellor thanked professionally

• Looking at the possible

  • Wanting certainty
  • Self-sufficient,
  • Meaning / purpose
    • medium / long term
    • Source of advice / comfort
  • using brain
  • Survival needs

• Looking at stuck you

  • Lack of confidence / self-belief
  • Should let go of eternal influences blocking
  • “Need to move”
  • Try not to force
  • Resistance of life is tough, wanting the person to try another way

• Councillor sometimes planted thoughts into the clients narrative

• Looking at the change

  • Rude asking me to move
  • Reminder of big world
  • Realising the need to prepare
  • Could find guidance to support and draw out inspiration

• Pace / ambition

  • Smaller steps providing guidance

• Idea of chapters

  • Oscillation instead of one way

• Impact of opinion:

  • Negative opinions introduce further obstacles
  • visioning possibility to allow change with love

• Really good to journal, definitions of where you are stuck

• Gives you freedom to identify and change

Stage 3 - I have Will

• Take responsibility of our actions
• We are the centre of our actions
• We have freedom to choose
• A personal will

Stage 4 - I am will

• Act spontaneously and freely
• Centre of actions comes from a source or Self beyond the personal
• A sense of being guided, a flow state, an alignment with others and the world
• A participation in a wider life
• A transpersonal will

Chat in pairs of 3 and 4

Difference of personal and transpersonal What is the overlap?

Recap

• ‘I’ - two functions
• ‘I’ emerges, so too does will when we disidentify
• Will is shaped by identity
• Helmsman exercise - reflect your current will
• Stages of the will. -
  • no will is natural, but can be due to self-destructive behaviour
  • Will exists - imagine possibilities
  • Have will - act
  • Be will - flow, and one with something greater than ourselves
• Battle of the wills
  • No will <–> possibility
  • Threat / impatient, battle
  • Disidentifying from the two stages and the battle is where the healthy ‘I’ is
• Where is your will?
  • Do you go first?
  • Do you hold back and wait?
  • Do you have lots to say and are worried?
  • Test it.
• Small steps, pick something that works against your current personality
  • Worst thing is to over assert your current habits

4 aspects of will

• Get to look at will from different perspectives
• Vocab to name different aspects

Strong will

• Energy behind the will
  • Concentration
  • determination
• Distortions
  • Authoritarians
  • Tyrant
  • Coercive: of self or others
  • Victorian will
  • Robotic
  • Misuse of power
  • Inner Christopher columbus
• Absence:
  • Frustration
  • Lack of assertion
  • Uncertainty
  • Anxiety
  • Depression
• Important to have strong will

Skilful will

• Best use of the will
  • Harmonising
  • Co-operative
  • Diplomatic
  • Creative
  • Cohesive
  • Imaginative
• Distortions
  • Trickster
  • Manipulator
  • Exploitative
  • Calculating
  • Sarcastic
  • Seductive
• Absence:
  • Inefficient
  • Polarisation
  • arguments

Good will

• Right human relations
  • Harmlessness to self and others
• Distortions
  • Martyr
  • Pleaser
  • Letting others walk over you
  • Take responsibility for others / fear of saying no - need to be liked / fear of hurting others
• Absence:
  • No concern for others
  • Closed
  • Hostile
  • Suspicious

Transpersonal will

• Strong + skilful + good will in synthesis
  • Flow
  • Spontaneity
  • Unplanned
  • Mundane inertia
  • Intuition? Could be
  • Example could be a parent - motivation + personal finesse + good intentions
  • A sense that the centre of will is beyond the personal
  • Meaningful connection to and participation with ‘more than’ immediate personal concerns
• Distortions
  • Spiritual bypassing - identify as a spiritual person, seeing ourselves as calm, kind , beyond anger, jealousy.
  • Monkish,

  • 

    is spiritual bypassing

  • 

• Absence:
  • Lack of meaning
  • Nihilism
  • Isolation
  • depression

Exercise - visualisation

one-to-one

• Grounded, not nodding off
• Tailored questions
• Give client sense information
• Mood and quality of environment

Therapist

• Write down what they say

• General considerations

• Help them see what happens in the attempt to get out of the forest

• Can you say more?

• Can you …..

• Give space

• Purpose is not to get though the forest - see what happens

• What will was present / lacking

• Parallels in life

My visualisation

The distance seems to have expanded since I first visualised it and I have worries about actually arriving, in the sense of a worry of completion and uncertainty and so I’m walking quite slowly and enjoying the journey because it feels like this is the better, the more enjoyable aspect as opposed to arriving.

Large logs to climb over and valleys, quite boggy and muddy and I’m actually enjoying the woodland, in spite of ghouls and ghosts. My fear of them hasn’t yet arisen – I’m not allowing myself to acknowledge them. It feels a long endless way to go but it feels like I must press on because there isn’t anything of worth behind me. I’ve left whatever it was that I was – it’s not serving me any more.

It feels very wet and hostile but it also seems quite beautiful as well. I’m enjoying the sensation of the fighting or survival sensation. Feels a little bit robotic, like fighting fires, like a lack of choice, like an acceptance. There’s a hardiness to my nerves. Feel like very little has changed and there’s a long way to go. I can smell the wet wood and I can hear the tallness of the trees and some distant sounds – maybe some acknowledgement of my place in the word or maybe it’s the opposite – I feel unnoticed so far, hearing the normal activity in this challenging wood. I don’t know. I’m still oblivious to the ghosts and what form they may take.

My anxiety about what might become has increased. Maybe I’ve slowed down a little bit and it feels like it’s darker. I feel maybe my not wanting to arrive is showing itself. The trees seem larger. I’m quite surprised that I haven’t come across any significant dangers yet. I’m forcing myself to press on but it feels very, very slow, like I’m very naïve to the path ahead.

Group dynamics

• Do you get all bossy and take over
  • Can you soften that - skilful/good will
• Do you collapse
  • Stuck in no-will, can’t imagine new ideas
  • How do you relate to that, fucked, or hang out and wait / listen

Come up with a story about the will

• Location / setting
• Key characters and extras
• Beginning / middle / end
• Narrator?
• Loose framework… that has room for transpersonal will, spontaneity in the performance
• Notice where your will goes

Grounding the will

• Take the insights, and ask what that might relate to the coming week
• What stands out for you as the key learning
• Where is your will trapped
• What concrete steps could you take either against or with the grain
  • Against the grain
    • Mini-step against your survival personality - disidentification
    • Not too challenging - small step
    • Notice the feeling response
  • With the grain
    • Still doing, but taking charge. Notice the choice
• Imagine the possibilities - be specific
• Small steps - be realistic

Reading list

• ‘The act of will’ by Assagioli
• ‘Assagioli’s Seven core Concepts For Psychosynthesis Training’ (Core concepts 3: Will) by Firman and Gila
• ‘Existential Psychotherapy’ by Irvin Yalom - Chapter 7 ‘Willing’
• ‘Love and Will’ by Rolio May
• ‘The Middle Passage: From Misery to meaning in midlife’ by James Holis
• ‘Change: Principles of Problem Formulation and Problem Resolution’ by Paul Watzlawick
• Start with 7 core concepts, free online

Personal Feedback

Which ideas have you found the most helpful, meaningful or challenging? Which exercises?

Spending time on the differentiation of the will in terms of its aspects and stages was very salient to me. In my current pursuit of passion, I was able to contact, in a less binary way, aspects of the will I possess strongly and others less so. This gave me the map and insight in how I can direct my attention in a more focused and beneficial form. I also made two connections between the will described here and other models I am studying elsewhere. 1 - that the stages of the will are analogous to how I see the stages of creation, including death. 2 - The stages include the having mode and the being mode, whereby being is connected to the aspects of the flow state along with the timeless, effortless, mode and one that can be remembered.

What has been the high point or major learning of this course for you?

The imagery exercise in the wood heading towards a goal, was great. I loved being led by a student and leading myself. It gave me an insight into what it might be like to practise with a client as a new, inexperienced practitioner. Although I feel like both myself and the participant did an excellent job with the aid of the script, I was able to come in contact with the flow of the practise, which I found challenging, and satisfying.

What has been the quality of the conceptual content? Its organisation? Continuity? Presentation? Clarity?

I was not so impressed with the delivery of the content. The tutor spoke in a dreary, unexcitable fashion, much of the time reading from the notes and pausing to understand the content himself before delivery. However, others seem to be happy with the delivery, so I may have been interpreting the situation through some distortion. I did feel like I got to grips with most of the content quite successfully, and I believe this was due to the superb exercises. I felt we didn’t cover the following: How the will gets caught in identification, impact of aligning your personal will with transpersonal will. I also haven’t received the slides as promised.

Has there been anything missing from the course or anything you would have liked more of given the time limits? Was there anything which did not work for you or which could have worked more effectively if changed?

I don’t know as I would need to do more study of the will to find out if there was anything significant we missed. However, given the time frame, I feel that what we learnt needed the time it was given

What comments do you have about the course trainer(s) and assistants? How was your relationship with the trainer(s)?

I am not sure if I connected with the trainer, which was a shame as I see we have him for our counselling training. When I asked questions, I felt that he didn’t engage with what I had said and instead received simple yes/no answers. However, all was pleasant, we got through it and he also made me laugh a few times.