Essence Work and the Psychology of Awakening
What we call Psychology of Awakening is a unique symbiosis between western humanistic psychology and methods to support spiritual awakening originating in middle eastern and eastern traditions.
The term Psychology of Awakening was coined by my teachers, Rafia Morgan, and Turiya Hanover. The work is based on the understanding that we need to "bring psychological and spiritual work together, only then is true transformation possible. This synthesis truly enhances deep and lasting growth."​
This approach is not about improving and polishing our character, our personality structure. This work is about going beyond the ego-mind and waking up to who we truly are. Our personality is not what we really are. As a child, it served us to develop a strategy that helped us to navigate life around the do's and dont's stipulated by our caregivers. We had to find a way to receive love and avoid disapproval. It was paramount to our survival. But in most cases, the personality structure that we developed as children has not only become redundant but detrimental to our lives, now that we are adults. And yet, this is how most of us live all our lives without even being aware of it.
Osho, an Indian contemporary mystic, explains why this approach is so important in this day and age:
“In these twenty-five centuries man has become so burdened with rubbish, so many wild weeds have grown in his being that I am using therapy just to clean the ground, take away the wild weeds, the roots, so the difference between the ancient man and the modern man is destroyed. The modern man has to be made as innocent as the ancient man, as simple, as natural. He has lost all these great qualities. The therapist has to help him but his work is only a preparation. It is not the end. The end part is going to be meditation.” ~ Osho
The Lataif
As part of what is commonly called Essence work, or as mentioned above, Psychology of Awakening, we work with The Lataif system. The Lataif is a subtle-energy system created by the Sufis. It functions as a pathway to understand our essential nature and to retrieve lost essential states, such as Will, Relaxed Confidence, Trust, Presence, Strength, Courage, Love, Inner Value, Compassion, Peace, Silence, Stillness as well as Curiosity, Spontaneity, and Joy. It constitutes a basic understanding that separation from our Being and its substantial manifestation, known as Essence, is the main cause of our suffering.
Every issue, problem, defense, projection, blockage, an experience of emptiness, anxiety, tension, an emotional upset can be a doorway to Essence and Being. This work is based on the understanding that these feelings come up generally relate to a loss of Essence, and that on one level the ego is trying to recover the Essence and resolve the loss by doing, efforting, feeling justified, defending, projecting, withdrawing, transference, having strong emotions, analysing and over-thinking things. While working on the 'ego-level' may relieve some suffering and help the client to some extent, the deeper resolution happens through recovering Essence that we have lost contact with through adverse childhood experiences.
The understanding of the Lataif system is that there is no true resolution on an ego level. People can change their outer circumstances and raise the level of comfort, safety, enjoyment, and/or love in their lives, but the inner shift and reconnection with Being involves a different mode of resolution. This resolution happens in being present with what is and the capacity to stay with anxiety, uncomfortable feelings, and inner emptiness.
I see my role as a counselor in supporting and guiding you through this process of being and staying present with uncomfortable, sometimes painful, feelings so that you can re-connect with your Essence. I consider being with you in this passage of transformation a great honor. It is your birthright. For me, this work is a form of inner awakening, and it is needed for humanity to move forward. A collective awakening starts with the individual.
Get in touch to book a session and feel the difference in your own Being.
The Superego
The Superego, also called the ‘Inner Judge’ or ‘Inner Critic’, is the part of our psyche, which reflects the internalization of cultural rules, mainly taught by parents during our early childhood. It is that part of our mind, which has learned the ‘rules’ from authorities and people we were dependent on in our early life.
Our personality fixated in a particular way as an intelligent strategy to survive in the environment we grew up in. Intrinsic to this strategy is a knowing of the rules that work in that environment. Therefore, whenever we feel the impulse to expand or grow into a way of being, which is outside that structure, our Superego will object, judge, threaten, intimidate, and criticize in such a way as to cause us to hesitate, shrink, and reconsider our impulse for change.
Relationships with others will often harbor similar dynamics as those we experienced as children with our parents. In this way, the other will often reflect our own superego. This is unpleasant but with awareness can help us recognize, understand, and deal with the Superego. This is primarily because we frequently project our Superego onto certain individuals, usually those ones we are close to. This projection is a defense mechanism and helps to keep the Superego unconscious, just as any defense mechanism does. In paying attention to our relationships and trying to assimilate our experiences with others in this context we will become aware of how the other often reflects our own Superego’s voice.
Superego stands against the expansion of awareness and inner development. It maintains the status quo of the personality structure and fights any changes to it that we might want to achieve through therapy or other forms of inner growth work. So it is essential that we include Superego into our inner work, no matter what technique we use. It’s paramount that the counselor or therapist is aware of his or her own Superego and has the ability to spot and work with the client’s Superego. Only by bringing this mechanism into awareness can we transcend and truly break free.
My role as a counselor here is to help you to become aware of and recognize the Superego within yourself. Only if you can discern the Superego from your truth you will feel truly empowered to steer your life in the right direction.
Learning how to deal with the Superego is paramount if you want any therapy to work long term. For lasting results of any kind of inner work, it is essential to be able to recognize and deal with the Superego effectively. Get in touch today and let me help you master this critical step.
One-on-One Sessions
I call these Sessions the Inner Diamond. I created those sessions to provide exactly what I wrote about in the above articles. It's meant to help you reconnect to the core of your Being. This form of counseling is based on being present with the other, a form of empathic therapy, and is extremely effective while at the same time very simple. My way of working in group therapy, as well as individual sessions, facilitates recovery from dysfunctional behavior commonly manifesting through relationship-, work-, money- and/or health issues as well as various forms of addiction. My work goes beyond mind, it allows you to reconnect with your Inner Being, beyond all conditioning.
I combine several techniques acquired through formal study and personal experience, and I have tested them over many years of working with people. Various aspects of trauma healing, as well as Essence work (aka the Lataif system), are major parts of the counseling process. The focus of my work is to help my clients to recover their true Essence, which we have lost contact with through painful experiences during childhood. In this session, we work to reconnect with Essence. A natural outcome of this work is the ability to be with what is in the here and now, with relaxation and ease, and the ability to rest in true Stillness and Peace.