tutor online and instructional designer, Counselling education
About
I consider myself an 'active' Contemplative, endeavouring to live out the mystical teachings of Thomas Keating, Thomas Merton, Richard Rohr and Cynthia Bourgeault. But I’m also a solid ‘5’ on the Enneagram and a true ASpie (Dr. Geoffrey Nutting says it's unlikely to be one without the other). So, I also believe that wisdom CAN [and does] come out of 'deeper way of knowing'. The potential for transformation seems to me to increase with the ‘seismic’ proportions of our precipitating events — shaking the foundations of the individual’s assumptions about life and perhaps about their 'self'. In my experience people can often enter into ‘Liminality’ — a space which seems to “crack open the Ego” thus opening wide the doors of perception beyond ordinary perception into a higher (deeper) consciousness.
As a “God fearer” I’ve come to suspect the most important element in the process of transformation is for people to improve their abilities to ‘see’ or understand how their beliefs (worldview) are ultimately shaped. Sri Aurobindo's spiritual teachings speak of an integral divine transformation of the entire being. As a firm proponent and practitioner of what Preston (2007) coins ‘contemplative psychology’ and a recent initiate from the Men’s Rights of Passage (MROP ─ the first ever conducted in Australia), I’ve often wondered how Ken Wilber's integral theory, which brings Asian and Western psychology together more systematically, also comes to bear on Aurobindo's notion and mystical Christianity.
Another field of interest is in 'transformational therapy' is how we 'communicate' (relate) one-to-another. We're taught in clinical training that as sentient beings, we relate on several 'levels' at once, and in the therapeutic setting, and we come to understand that much of what we 'transmit' between us is unconscious as well as conscious 'communications'. While in Aussie, I learned from our "dreamtime" peoples the notion of Dadirri, or "deep listening". The therapeutic "relationship" has always been the crux of a therapeutic alliance, and has held my attention the most, as the part that seems to elicit the most 'change' according to more recent studies. So I'm very curious about how our unconscious relations affect the therapeutic alliance and in which ways.
