The Spiritual Core of

Counseling

Bea Verzaal PTSTA counseling

Mercedes Soza “Deja la Vida Volar, Let Your Life Fly”

Mercedes Soza “Deja la Vida Volar, Let Your Life Fly”

feelings of coming out,

why?

* keynote, me?

* giving words to experiences beyond the ‘usual reality’ feels inspiring and vulnerable at the

same time

* kind of urgency in the air

We are on the threshold of a new phase of evolution of consciousness, a new spiritual era. This calls for a

spiritual maturing of us counselors and of TA. This new phase asks for development of transpersonal

consciousness offering access tot a broader reality, beyond the level of personal consciousness, the egostates, leading to the ability of experiencing

wholeness and unity, integrity and love.

why this subject?

Important question for me is: What is causing people to develop, heal and create and in what way we counselors can be helpful and meaningful in this process?

Berne’s note “I help the client, but God cures him”, intrigued me since the start of my TA training

Exercise to create the experience of the essence of this keynote

• grounding, centering, connecting with universal energies, back to back, heart to heart

Personal view on the essence of counseling

• for me counseling is focused on:

• change or growth that comes from the ‘spirit within’ the person (=original meaning of Physis, Heraclites)

• empowering clients self-healing ability, own potency to solve problems, evolve their development, consciousness, autonomy and integrity

• accessing problems, life questions, ‘mistakes’ in- and outside the counseling relationship, as challenges for growth, as unique life experiences that stimulate to reconnect with their true nature and resources (our daily life is our inauguration to higher consciousness!)

• to come to a balanced development of (transpersonal) consciousness it’s important to stimulate growth in 4 (interconnected) pillars of life: I, I and You, I and society, I and Divinity. Moving, again and again, through the stages of the bondingcycle (G. Kohlrieser) in all these aspects, makes it possible to become who we are in potency.

• To show you this we developed the next model:

I

I -others

I -world/society

I -Divinity

Four Balancing Pillars of Lifeas the four vertices of the base of the pyramid

Bondingcircle, George Kohlrieser

attachment

bonding

separation

grief

attachment bonding

separationgrief

‘Transformation Pyramid of consciousness’ life as an ascending bondingspiral through the four pillars of life:

I, I-others, I -world/society, I -Divinity

the InfiniteBea Verzaal, Lieuwe Koopmans

2012

This personal view is enbedded in the next

cosmo vision

• I see us people as spiritual travellers, empowered to develop our own capabilities to nurture a direct relationship with our Core Self and the Divine Presence that permeates everything

• I belief ‘God’ is in ourselves. In ourself we carry our ‘Seed’, ‘Soul’, ‘Atman’, ‘Core Self’....with our unique potency and qualities

• We have an infinite amount of free universal energy at our disposal. As ‘open energy tunnels’ we can channel this energy (using our intentionality), exchange and enhance it in relationship with others, having a powerful source for healing and developing ourselves.

cosmo vision

picture ‘Yanantin’ mountain symbolizing covenant of opposites

• we balance ourselves and relationships when we live in AYNI= quechua term for a reciprocal relationship of giving and receiving with the kosmos, earth and all it’s creatures

• Our bodies (fysical and subtle) are important vehicles toward transpersonal consciousness. Our bodies are much better able to open up for the’whole’ than our thoughts.

Exploration of the spirit within....how to

understand this concept with it’s many

names?

Soul

Atman

Seed

Core Self

Silent Witness

Kundalini Shakti

14

TA authors and the spirit within, what names they give it?

• Muriel James: ‘Spiritual Self’ ‘Inner Core’

• Petrūska Clarkson: ‘Aspirational core Self’

• Ken Mellor: ‘I Am’

• Sashi Chandran: ‘Inner Guru’

14

Muriel James already more then 30 years ago managed to present concepts that builded bridges to go

beyond the ego focused level of TA. It seams the (TA) world was not ready yet then........

Muriel James:

the ‘Inner Core’ or ‘Spiritual Self’ is a power within the self, a permanent

personal reality underlying the egostates. It is part of the total personal self and

also universal, located at the centre of a person’s being.

Indepent of the egostates the Inner Core supplies and channels the energy and

‘like the driver of a car programmes the expressions of the egostates’

The egostates provide expressive outlettes for IC energies.

Biological (body)Psychological

(ego states)

Inner Core(universal energy)

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Inner Core in relation to egostates can be

• OPEn: energy flow is open

• CLOSED: energy flow is blocked when it is not used enough

• OUT OF TOUCH: simply unused, forgotten, because we are overly involved in our ego (states)

18

O

K

V

Open Inner Core

O

K

V

Closed Inner Core

To develop beyond the level of personal consciousness to transpersonal levels of consciousness we need to go further than our usual aims of increasing autonomy by strenghtening Adult and contacting Child and Parent

through the Adult. Motivating force to realise this comes from the Inner Core. Although the Adult may design

and oversee chosen

changes in Parent and Child, all egostates can be transformed with an open Inner Core using the power present within

it!

What is this power channeled through the

Inner Core to theEgostates?

Different names for the same power:

Physis: the force of nature, a general creative force which

eternally strives to make things grow and to make growing things more perfect (Berne,

1961)Power Within: a power for good and growth, a ‘God’ continually

pouring life energy into our Inner Core(James, 1978)

Infinite, Zero Point, Spirit, God, Brahman, Allah, Universal

Energy, Universal Consciousness....(religious/spiritual traditions, quantumphysics)

O

K

V

Petrūska Clarkson’s model of ‘The self as organizing principle of Physis’

showing how Physis energy programs the egostates through the Inner Core

to reach a growth to transpersonal consciousness we need to help our clients to remember, reconnect and open their Inner Core, and use it as a supplier of free

nourishing, enlivening energy which carries integrity in itself

What can we counselors do to stimulate this process?

First some starting points:

• When you expect and trust that people have the potency to change, grow and heal themselves you positively influence that outcome. Love, trust, positive thinking, permissions and strooks are very empowering

• You help your clients by being present, grounded, centered, open and peaceful yourself

• to enable this we need to offer our clients an ‘open space’; a permissive, emotional safe, co-constructive, relational space where the clients can explore, find meaning, skills, and heal themselves, recovering and using own inner and outer resources.

• and we need to expand our view of reality, being based on energy and expand our skills with learning how to work with that energy

During my own experiences as practicing counselor and also in therapy, bodywork, yoga, meditation and mystical trainings, I discovered the power and importance of grounding, centering and connecting with universal energies in combination with the opening up of Inner Cores by using a relational approach. I started to understand how we always influence each other on an emotional, psychological as well as bodily, energetic level and how I can use this consciously as techniques. I found a lot of conformity in Ken Mellors (2008) work.

keys for how• key 1 awareness: start with grounding, to be in the here and now, around and

inside of you; then focus on centering, being aligned with (preferably) the Inner Core (the Silent Witness) to be available to observe, reflect, experience, influence on an accepting, loving way; to be with what is, without becoming it

• key 2 spontaneity: cultivate expressiveness, to bring out feelings, thoughts, needs...verbal, non-verbal...including creative expressiveness. Expression opens, releases blocks, lets the energy flow again

• key 3 intimacy: learn to relate by reaching in (‘one-sided intimacy’=being available to our own processes) and identifying/merging (‘two-sided intimacy’). Then you stimulate even more the opening up of Inner Cores so exchange and increase of energies can emerge and also transformation of Self by experiencing, digesting and integrating all kinds of (un)comfortable qualities/energies.

• key 4 integrity: Key 1, 2 and 3 result in a more and more opening up of Inner Core, channeling more and more universal energy, being integer in itself, leading to more and more wholeness, experiences of being ‘one’, becoming an ‘integrated person’ using integrity as the foundation of autonomy (Ken Mellor, 2008)

• key 5 intention: using intention and imagination to direct, work directly with, the living energy (‘Salka’) of the cosmos and monitor our energy interactions

What happens when we open up ourselves, our inner cores?

This will lead to the emerge of a ‘Third Self’ (M. James,1981). We merge and rise above ourselves while at the same time keeping our own identity. In this inspirational relational space people build bigger amounts of life energy by fusing there energy fields. This synergy is very empowering, healing and stimulating our potential resources. It creates‘Munay’ (=will + love: Quero tradition, Peru), neutral empathy and love,which helps dealing with fear (original meaning of intimacy=without fear), create and perform powerful things together.

Third SelfMuriel James

Now let’s shortly reflect on the exercise!

Conclusion, statement...?

To deal with the issues of our current time in evolution, we need to help our clients re-dis-cover or re-member and strengthen their “spirit within” by helping them to open up their Inner Core and reconnect with the qualities of the universal energies. Creating a ‘relational open space’, using grounding, centering, expressiveness, intimacy and integrity, are our main ‘instruments’. When we are able to open our Inner Core and connect/‘plug in’ with the universal energies we have a positive influence on the emergence of Physis in our clients.

LITERATURE

Eric Berne, Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy, 1961Eric Berne, What do you say after you say hello, 1972Eric Berne, Principles of Grouptreatmant, 1966Sashi Chandra, Connecting with the Gur: supervision in the indian context, TAJ, Vol 37, No 3, July 2007Petrusca Clarkson, Transactional Analysis Psychothearpy, 1992EATA Handbook, Core competencies CounsellingMuriel James, The power at the bottom of the well, 1978Muriel James, Born to love, 1973Muriel James, TA in the 80’s: The Inner Core and the Human Spiit, TAJ, Vol. 11, No. 1, Jan. 1981Adrienne Lee,The Power Is in Our Process, TAJ, Vol. 38, No. 1, Jan. 2008John and Julia Mc Leod, Counselling Skills, 2011 Ken Mellor, Autonomy with Integrity, TAJ, Vol. 38, No. 3, July 2008) Kenneth Smith, Awakening the Energy Body, 2008Tilney, Dictionary of Transactional Analysis, 2004Ken Wilber, The Spectrum of Consciousness, 1977Joan Wilcox, Masters of the Living Energy, 1999