Question
“…Understanding our life in a broader, transpersonal way, where meaning is finally revealed to intuition.” This sounds nice Oscar. If I could tap into an intuitive sense of meaning this would be a great buoy to my life. I find that in most traditional therapies there is a great deal of “habit-making” whereby the individual is meant to transform their life by modifying their actions and responses to correct ones written for them. I understand, personally, the feeling of being trapped in my own automatic responses, so I appreciate the goal to grant ourself a more conscious existence through new habits. However, I sometimes feel this approach does fail to address our deeper will; beyond that to reduce suffering. As if to be more conscious of our actions is the end goal of all problems? Would you say that transpersonal philosophy approaches the “problem with being” not from an action or solution position but from a broader curiosity and understanding position? And seems to me it shifts the goal from reducing suffering to increasing our intuitive sense of meaning? Lastly, to borrow Jungian terms, could it be seen that this transpersonal philosophical approach does not reject the shadow self but expands our identification of self to something much more limitless? I am full of more questions than answers but I appreciate that this post brings up for me to think on.
Emily Bunnel
Answer:
Thank you very much Emily for your magnificent and spontaneous comment! Thank you for sharing these intimate psychic movements.
The gateway to transpersonal understanding of existence is intuitive. In what sense is your digestion different from that of another Human Being? In what sense is your blood circulation different from that of other Human Beings? In what sense does the functioning of your brain follow different principles from those of another Human Being? When you feel fear, in what sense is your fear a different sensation from the feeling of fear of another Human Being? And when do you feel anger, or a sexual impulse, or the need to relate to other Human Beings? All these movements and many others are basically the same action acted by life in you, and producing in you the identity of the action. There are slight differences from one body to another, from one psyche to another... Yes of course! We can basically group them in variations, in types. But then within any particular type of those differences it is more a question of detail than of kernel. Your particular physical and psychic configurations are the result of both a long list of ancestors and of particular narratives of identity developed through the ages. We are lived by the Universal Soul, sometimes called the Great Mother. It is not you who is living, it is Life what is living through you as you. Our personality is a set of transpersonal psychological formations, Masks if you wish, poorly harmonized by a force of centroversion and integration that we call "ego".
The feeling we have of being unique and unrepeatable does not come from the Soul, which is transpersonal, but is the Presence of the "I Am" that is in all of us Humans. There is only one "I Am", the Self or Brahman. In relation to us, the Self or Spirit is the Human Atman. The Sufis call It Insan al-Kamil, the Perfect Human. But the Tripartite Soul, which is basically everything we call the Universe, the Great Womb in which Life and Matter is, is a form of Transpersonal Consciousness.
You do not have to believe what I say. Just pay attention to the sense of uniqueness in any particular action that you perform, and consider whether it is coming from your innermost feelings, independent of the actions themselves, or from the inherited ideas and thinking institutions that drive your choices. Stop trying to transform your life. Any decision you think you make is the decision of one of the masks, and you have inherited those masks. Spiritual masks are especially dangerous because we have been taught to think that they are more real and more authentic. Be spontaneous. There is a unique perfection in our emotional imperfection in our weaknesses, let it emerge. The Self has no Shadow, the masks do. The Volitive Soul, which is non-dual, is a pure force of Desire, of Will, the problems with this unstoppable force arise from the delusions of control over it that the Intellectual Soul, which is dual, has.
We'll talk, if you want, about suffering and meaning. But the first step is this simple transpersonal intuition, which the egoic formations of the masks completely refuse.
Oscar Enrique Muñoz
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