Looking at the observer in our field of awareness and its relation to the wider Self as it integrates into the world.

Diana explained

• her experience of being the transpersonal with a tough group of kids and see how it works without the terminology.
  • Desire to love,
  • have meaning purpose in their lives
  • Moving Agency from outside victim, to inside. Can’t control the events, can control our response

Meditation on being here

• Deep breaths, settle down into yourself
• Moved mountains to be here
• Thank about your values - community trust and love
• What would you like to take away - grounded meaning, direction
• Image of how you would like to be - open, empty room waiting to be filled

Summary

• You need to find your truth despite the models/maps/techniques
• What does it mean to you
• I and ID is quite specific, try an be a cynic, make a fuss so we can engage in a digestive way

Self identification

• Basics
• Even if we don’t feel it, the self is there, sleeping, forget, betray, doesn’t go away, essential being is always there
• There is a place in us that never changes, child, young, now - same me, even though everything about us has changed
• Point of pure being, contentless

Loyal soldier

• Subpersonalities that are not serving us any more
• Need to appreciate our loyal soldier, war had ended, but the soldier was still on duty, rewarded for his loyalty
• Maybe the war is over, maybe we can appreciate that subpersonality for doing that

Identity and personal freedom

• We do not have a normative chat, what a healthy human should be like
• Instead, who are you , how do you want to be, how do you want you life to be
• Do you have the choice to be Open and honest when you choose to? Example: expression of anger. Don’t need to cover topics that are not beneficial.

General

• Hear you experience had how it fits with the theory

Laboratory of I and Identity

• Forget about the theory
• Take experience, find truth, definition of I and Identity
• Meditation
  • Experience of identity - bgg
  • I am myself
    • Performing at the big green gathering
    • Late night, load of energy
    • Service of entertainment and connection with a tribe of hope
    • Asking in participation of putting my finger up at the criminal justice bill
    • Feedback of real visceral energy
    • Sense of belonging, connection, truth and hope
• Group discussion - 20mins - Extrapolate for experience, not theories.
  • How would you define the I,
    • The observer, conscious awareness, beyond your thoughts
    • Agency without the content such as emotional reaction
      • Guiding, Presence
  • How would you define self identification
    • Content of self and the sameness/difference creates identification
    • Identification as a performer, conveying a story
  • Disidentification
    • 3rd party, observing the awareness of the I with the content
    • Accessible, connected with the world
    • Noticing patterns
• Transpersonal is not just transcending, it is eminent, everywhere

Intuition of need to be here right now

Content is not who you really are

• Any time you are not feeling love you won’t feel who you are
• Any ideology is a rabbit hole
• You can be who you are irrespective of any worldviews, thoughts, emotions
• Similar to the gnostics
• If you are not being these things, you could be beating yourself up
• The content is constantly changing

Two way to disidentify

• Neti-neti - I have…, but I am not my… (personality)
• I have this richness of personality, and who I am is much more than that

Purpose

• Rest and regeneration
• Go to the center
• Just be
• If we build the muscle of practise disidentification,
  • next is disidentification in action - Not reactive
  • How do we deal with that
  • In the heat of the moment, you can take that step back, become aware/observer, notice subpersonalities and respond more carefully
  • Have both awareness and choice
• More you can hear the more you might discover
  • Notice sub personality to subpersonality
  • Being curious

Meditation

• Think about how your body serves you and your life, appreciate it
• Awareness to our emotions, depth and energy emotions brings to our lives, acknowledge and appreciate
• Mind, how it is thinking, how your mind serves you, learn concepts, action, acknowledge and appreciate how it serves you
• Personality as a whole
• Move to more than, I, essential being, greater than the personality, place of being, who you really are essentially
• Capacity, budget,

Distortions and risks

The goal is not to be disidentified all the time, we need the personality to be an expression

Disassociation

• If afraid of something you may disassociate yourself from it
• Just identify with another part, not stepping into the centre / reality
• Using the ‘I’ as a represent, avoid some content that is presenting for healing

Negative attachment

• Negative avoidance, disidentification quite threatening
• Use the mind to go beyond the mind
• Respond rather than react

Depersonalization

• Dotted line of field of awareness is very loose,
• a lot of content coming in
• No stable reference
• Sense of estrangement, floating in the void
• Ego death
• Might feel that way without being there

Advantages

• one of being cause
• Responsible
• Direction, masterful
• Create meaning
• Experience brings joy

Competence

Key: if truly observing it has to be non-judgemental

Exercise

• 3mins look in mirror
• Describe what you see physically (non-judgemental awareness)
• Point out

I - Void of expression Self - find your potential with the universe

• Physical body - born into, provide ability
• Feelings - provide data and meaning
• Mind - constructs concepts and triggers actions

Promise to be honest, judgements in the background, difficult and requires practise, take away suffering, pick out negative, Judgement is the source of many of our issues Witness awareness, trying to look at the back of your head

Use of will

• Functions of ‘I’ are awareness and will

Conditional aliveness

• As long as we are not conscious of what we are identified with, we experience pulls
• Identify with most pull
• Hence we can identify with organisations, roles, psychological formations (critic, victim, subpersonalities)
• Any identification that goes on for too long becomes a distortion, gifts becomes limitation
  • Restrict potentiality, openness, change
• Mastery is good, but important to be sensitive and responsible to change to further potentiality
• Identified with something like the frightened child = unsafe
• Identified sees it fully, make it ours, but not pathological,
• Identification = limitation on behaviour, freedom of potential. Letting go can often be scary. This is why growth feels like death and rebirth process

Survival strategy

Loyal soldier exercise

• To survive we develop ways of being, a life stance, good boy, questioning challenging etc
• Often becomes an end in itself. At one point it was necessary for survival, but could be redundant and an persistent attachment identity
  • Experience pain
  • Something new wants to come
  • May resist, loyally continuing
• Be so perfect they have to love you - didn’t work, but helped get through challenging childhood, identity became a huge limitation
• Acknowledge, recognise and honor how that part served us, they still will when they don’t have a hold on you
• Each have a major one, mostly the big personalities

Meditation exercise

• What is the defence? Disconnected with social norms, thinking
• How does it do this? - Tries to prove
• What does it want? - Try to fit in, offer opportunity, connect, be acceptable
• Thank them
• How does it limit me? - prevents me from geeking too far
• What is the deeper need? - collective love/trust
• Are you willing to provide? - trying
• Do it symbolically - promise note

Reflecting on the loyal soldier

• Eg: the helper, where’s the gratitude, celebrate liberation little by little
• How to move forward with it
  • Nero-science is validating all that psychosynthesis says
    • Rebuilding itself, to rebuild it you need to travel that path again and again and again
    • Same with potential
• Gradually learn to assert yourself in different ways
• Disidentification can’t happen until you have experienced and identified with something
  • Need to go into the emotions and feeling
• Problems are never solved they are only forgotten, change you relationship to your qualities

Creating stuff in our life, (never satisfaction), reaching for being/soul. We can create more and more content, success achievement, looking for the experience of being.

• Need the having needs in order to remember the being needs,
• Issue in returning to the having needs, relating to trust in the process
  • Surrender, not that you need to find yourself, there is a place that never changed, it’s here. What remains is being.

Exercise 2

• About being, soul, journey of incarnation,
• Born, develop, differentiate, integrated personality
• Go fully into matter - stuff/matter of the world
• We choose to be in the form of matter
• We looking into having freedom from matter that seems so important to us.
• It doesn’t lose its importance, who I essentially am is more than that,
• Widen your perspective, include more (without losing what you have),
• Make the choice of disidentification
• Goal is not to life from centre. From that place we chose to go back into matter, into the richness of reality into the expression of soul
• We create our live through soul and personality together
• You cant actualise until you express the deeper self - leads to fulfilment / happiness
• When the inner and outer match up you become happy
• Step back to the inner world and out into the outer world matter

Stage 1

• Identification - Incarnation - Becoming
• Differentiation - Unity to Multiplicity

Stage 2

• See through the illusion of form – Disidentification (content is not really us, develop a centre, a stable reference)

Stage 3

• Freedom in Matter Self-identification: from Being you decide to come back to matter - using matter, form for the purpose of Self Expression

Move from conditional aliveness to unconditional aliveness (be the self without dependency)

Psychosynthesis is pulled from everywhere - makes it trustworthy No normative chart - like telling Beethoven to do body work??? Who are you?, what are your values?, where do you want to go in life?

Choose/reflect of problems/issue/block that you want to accept more, reflect more

• Ability to connect and build bonds with people, care/time/focus

Bring us, O Lord God, at our last awakening into the house and gate of heav’n: to enter into that gate and dwell in that house, where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light; no noise nor silence, but one equal music; no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession; no ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity; in the habitation of thy glory and dominion, world without end. Amen. Words by John Donne, 1571 – 1631 (Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral) Set to music by William Harris (1883-1973)

Go into the issue, Energies isse, experience in a global ways ( Body Emothions mind - world view Triggers How it effect you Engage with partner

Exercise

In Pairs - you will each take a turn, 15 min each.

Speaker - Choose a problem, issue, block or obstacle to work with, that you feel you would like to let go of.

• Let this ‘going into the issue’ happen as is most natural for you.
• Your purpose right now is to experience the problem in a global way.
• Explore how it affects your Body, Feelings, Emotions and Mind.
• Talk about some past times you have experienced this issue…
• Situations that bring it on…
• How it affects you…
• Don’t just talk about it – go into it!
• Maybe close your eyes for a moment and sink into it.
• Talking ABOUT the problem is not enough.
• Your partner is there to facilitate you!

Partner - to mainly listen, be with and facilitate a bit.

Meaning, soul feel alive, Values - value of

How do I afford myself the trust of connection How does it affect your body physically? - tense f/e - resistance, defence, M - wanting to help, how to be non-judgemental - do i have what is needed? Can I develop it, does it favour an archetype? Recognise who you are is so much greater than this issue Open space inside Who I am is greater than this issue Expand into being, just be in this space, free, open, contentless Move close to the personality and prob, but don’t be it Look at it from this perspective Watch when you send healing energy to the issue, see what happens

• Like a donkey on a rope, it wrestled then eventually rested, submitting to its limitations
• In this calm place, there was still an uncomfortable air of responsibility that sit beneath the immediate issue
• Without the issue or the air of responsibility, there was space to be less reactive
• Allowing change to happen, context to change
• How might this energy become beneficial in a different context?

Positive mindset vs negative mindset (control outside) I can’t (add “yet”), opens up potentiality Book: Mindset - Dr Carol S Dweck

Identity exercise

Who are you?

Analysis, Pattern seeker, Thinker, Inwards and outwards observer Explorer, An individual expression of reality Achiever Entrepreneur, Helpful Doer, A capable person Dad, Partner Programer, Musician Philosopher, Psychologist Environmentalist Activist Sad, Loner Argumentative Coffee drinker, An ex-smoker

Choose 5

• A individual expression of reality
• Pattern seeker
• Dad
• Environmentalist Activist
• Loner

In Pairs… Worker/speaker:

Ask yourself a self a series of questions related to each answer:

1. How do you feel about the answer to this question, about having this identity?
2. What do I get from having this identity? What does it give me? How does it serve me?
3. How does this identity limit me? Hold me back?
4. Explore: what it might be like to let go of this identity. What would letting go of it be like – to no longer have it at all – to completely lose it? How would you feel without it?
5. Am I willing to let go of it? You have 3 responses: YES, NO, NOT FOR NOW. Make your choice explicit. If you are willing to let go of it, do so symbolically; “I have this identity and who I really am is not this…”… “I have this identity, but I am not it and make a symbolic gesture of putting it aside…” … Partner: Listen and be present. Help facilitate a bit.

We will tell you when to move to the next identity, about 6 minutes each identity and when to swap.

Grounding and Completion

• What impact has this weekend had on you?
  • Enlightening, stimulated
  • Joining the dots from other practices
• What would you like to honour in your work on Self?
  • Happiness in what we are doing
  • Write it down
• How will you move forward with what you have learned?
  • More training!
  • More experiential learning
  • Acceptance
• What’s living and moving in you, around this topic and what will you do about it?
  • Enjoy the moment and be with what I have learnt

Personal Feedback

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

The exercise in trying to be non-judgemental was very revealing. I quickly ran out of things to say and learnt that the non-judgemental content was not sustainable. When focusing on the feelings and the mind, I saw myself walking a fine line of the judgement boundary. I felt a short example run through before the breakout would have been very useful.
I felt our general discussion between the exercises to be essential and helped bridge together the alternate understanding together with the models in psychosynthesis. This is an area I feel I blossom and feel I am being of most benefit to others in the course, providing my alternate reference to help deepen and validate the concepts with trust. However, I found that many of the other students had a strong issue with my eager energy, finding my slightly tangential but still in my mind highly relevant revelations difficult to understand and challenging. This, in my eyes, was unfortunate as it left me feeling muted, and indeed had to endure many points of silence and time wasting. I will be sitting with this experience so as not to overreact and find some place with mutual benefit.

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

When looking at the loyal soldier, I realised my lack of trust in human differentiation with regards to self bias and self-deception. I felt the process we went through was successful as it took a while to arrive that this realisation, beneath some more obvious or dominating layers. A higher point was spending a large period of time with a partner exploring our current salient identities, systematically questioning them, and looking at the opposites and indeed my potential freedom from them. It radically deepened both my understanding and awareness of some dependencies and therefore limitations I had been giving myself. However, it also profoundly deepened some recognition of why I do do things and a glance at some potential directions in life of which I currently suffer a lack of. In some sense I felt more real. I also loved the affirmation I received that this learning takes time. Even if I have found a successful enough endpoint of a struggle, it still takes time to create new pathways, trust them, and make them the default position.

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

I was very happy that we didn’t follow a strict order layout in the supporting slides, but instead followed the path of interest bringing the meaning to the maps and models. We could have expanded out on the dangers and traps with more examples, as I felt we were left with more questions than answers. Do these relate to me? I notice them in my life, but where is the benchmark? In general, Diana spoke very clearly, confidently, with exceptional listening and compassion for the group at large.

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 think a reminder that the course needs personal experience to be a fundamental leverage to learning with meaning, but at the same time, should not be used as a personal therapy session. I felt too much time was given to some that needed affirmation of their personal issues.

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

Diana is by far the most skillful trainer I have experienced in a long time. Sophie Harrison, kept quiet most of the time, I believe she did so because the lesson was already being effective. When she did cut in, it was short, direct and purposeful.