Integrative Counseling

2023 Magical Journey to Mt Shasta [PT3]

While PT1 and PT2 recounted my spiritual tour-guided shenanigans on day one and two, PT 3 here is about my first day out on the mountain alone. And because I have no capacity for brevity, and therefore must be witless, PT4, the final installment, will follow soon.

Keep your tin foil hat handy…



day 3: solo DESTINATION: Bunny Flats

Still reeling from the wonderous happenings of day one and two, AND joyous news that the post-mudslide closed main road up to the main areas I booked this trip to visit magically re-opened the afternoon prior, I head out bright and early.

This day I have my sites set on either Sand Flats or Bunny Flats. Bunny Flats, to my knowledge, has more woo woo-ey hot spots than Sands, but I drive up close to both and ask my Higher Guidance (Heretofore: ‘HG’) to choose and point me the way once there.

The vote from the subtle source(s) is clearly Bunny Flats. So off I go.

Missing 411: Last seen :>

off to nowhere known

I begin heading up the only trail from this main trailhead, and have keep in mind two things—I’m alone. And I have no idea where I’m going. Actually, one more: This is a HUGE fucking mountain! And I’ve seen all of two people around the parking area so far.

I mean, the road up the mountain—gorgeous, lush, and picturesque as anywhere in the Pacific Northwest, goes really high up there. I could barely look right into the expansive mountainous valley for much of it. A bit of a fear of heights has set in in my older years apparently.

Having prayed and called in every one of the Illumined Ones by name, I asked them again (and again) to be with, guide me, show me where they would have me go, and for the love of God, do not let me get lost or hurt. Safe and protected above all. My wife listens to way too much true crime, and we’ve both watched our share of Missing: 411. Shits real. But I told her if I have an opportunity to be whisked away into an Arcturian Plasma Ship, or taken down into inner earth with the Telosians, I might just take it whether eventual return is promised or not. She totally believes me if that tells you anything.

Anyway as I hike my way up, and up, and up, I’m following what I think is a main trail that I quickly realize has no real markers anywhere in sight. The trail also becomes increasingly more faint, and narrow. At many points it blends into rocky, bushy terrain that makes you constantly question if you’re still on the trail, or which way the trail is actually going, vs other kinda-sorta-what-looks-like-it-could-also-be the trail, but maybe not. But maybe. You get the idea.

Several points along the way fearful parts of me pop up. Each time I pause or full on stop, and literally have my HG direct me—left? ‘‘No.’ Straight up this way? ‘No.’ Bear right, follow up that way? ‘Yes.’ I do this countless times, all the while surrendering fear, asking my fearful parts to trust me, and most importantly, trust the higher guides.


no frills Shangri-La

I finally reach an elevation and a point at which I start to intuit that wherever I’m being led to feels close. Then I notice something I hadn’t fully noticed yet.

The silence. Dead silence.

The kind, out in the woods, let alone on a gigantic mountain with no one around, that you could easily totally creep you out to the point of panic. For brief seconds here and there, it nearly did.

Rinse and repeat earlier surrender- ask, believe, receive- formula.

No sooner than I began adjusting to the deafening silence did I come upon a small natural clearing that I just knew was it. This is where I was was supposed to park it. Checked HG: Correct.

3 flights, thousands of miles, and hour drive…to be led here? (Hint: Looks are deceiving!)

I check HG twice to make sure this is where I’m supposed to be. No question. Again and even more pronounced, as I begin to settle in is the deafening, pin drop silence. Not a bird did I see or hear near or far for probably the first twenty minutes. Maybe a bug or two crawled by. That’s it. Otherwise, nothing. Is that normal?

I remember thinking: I’ve never (not?) heard anything this still and silent my life.

Turns out, this was intentional. Or at least, it was being utilized. You’ll know what I mean shortly.


meditation 1

I set up my mat ground cover, unfold my tiny outdoor bleacher seat (strictly for the little back support it provides) and take a few breaths. Again, at this point I notice I’m almost frustratingly distracted by the absolutely deafening silence. Unreal.

Then my head starts its infinity symbol wobbling and were off and running. My host for this sit, I could sense, but checked and was confirmed: My Gateway Guide, Saint Germain. Just like I do at home, when I sit for my personal work (meditation/opening to channel spirit communions), I ask what the lesson/nature/purpose of the sit/the work is each time. I’ve gotten pretty good at bringing that through. Here I was striking out…until I surrendered to…whatever it is it is.

Then came to me that this sit was to be an exercise in…you may have guessed it, embracing and bathing in the silence. In the “Be Still and Know That I AM,’ to be specific.

Spirit, your guides, can and will either create or utilize anything and everything available. (Just like the Adversary/False Light will).

This sit went on an unusually long time it felt like, and was far deeper, more expansive, more quietly powerful than any in recent memory. My mind was nearly completely still, open and receptive throughout, which is definitely not always the case.

If this was it for today I would been satisfied. To commune with Saint Germain like this, up on Shasta, the origin point of his presence and initial offerings back in the 1930s, and especially after the Closer to Home transmission received from him yesterday @ McCloud Falls. But there was more to come. After this sit concluded, I wandered around a bit, marveled at the views up there, and took a few pics, then felt called to return to the chair.


meditation 2

For this sit my host was a ‘light being.’ Interdimensional in nature. That’s all I could gather. The nature/purpose was about coming online with clairaudience, or a clear hearing faculty.

This has been on the docket for a while as several different guides in my sits over the weeks leading up to the trip came in with the same task. What all they’re doing—installing spiritual hardware, tweaking my neurology, psychological prep, downloading an instruction manual, no idea. When it will fire up, when and how it will be available- just for channeling, other times, all the time, no clue. To date I remain, technically, a clairsentient/claircognizant. But since the voice channeling kicked in (officially, and unexpectedly on Mothers Days this past year), in a kind of conscious, intuitive, mental mediumship type way, I’d be lying if I said I haven’t requested, if it be the will, to be able to audibly hear the voice/vibrations/frequency of the guides transmit through me. Time will tell.

Otherwise this light being-guided sit was pleasant, but unremarkable. I take none of it for granted. Just no big bells and whistles in this one.


meditation 3

For this last sit on the mountain today, my guide was Lady Master Nada. Like the others, she’s come through many times for me over the last years of my unfolding initiation process. LMN is considered to be a beautiful Ascended Master, written about in the first two Saint Germain-related books (Unveiled Mysteries, The Magic Presence). Nada—meaning nothing—refers to her great humility. She’s said to be the twin flame (Divine Feminine counterpart) of Jesus/Yeshua, which also makes her essentially synonymous, soul wise, with Mary of Magdala.

The nature and purpose of this sit I get is, again, the clairaudience. This one started off in the normal way. Steady, relaxed infinity symbol shaped head movement. Before long I noticed when my head would angle left, it would stop, ear over shoulder for longer than normal. It seemed like my guide was working out the tight spots in my neck, which often occurs, presumably to help me stay loose and pain free due to all the head movement that for whatever reason is how this all psycho-energetically works through me.

Then, once there was an extra physical release in my neck, my head would began rotating around backwards in full rotation, clockwise, gently, seemingly until it was clear that this could occur without discomfort. This hasn’t happened in years, since the very beginning when this energy came upon me, and the head movement were sometimes wild, fast, and severe. Next thing I know, my head is rotating around in circles clockwise with increasingly intensity and intensity and velocity…then slowing down…then counterclockwise. Repeat. And the visceral energy begins ramping up until my entire body is buzzing—somewhat comparable to the first activation via the Lyran energy on day one @ Lake Siskiyou, which you may have read about in PT1. And like that, I believe this was am activation of some kind.

As this goes on, I suddenly feel compelled to raise my right hand. The hand holding my palm-sized, Violet Flame-charged amethyst crystal above me up to the sun. I just knew I must without knowing why. No sooner than I do this does my entire right arm begin rotating with increasing intensity—clockwise (in opposition to my head)—then counterclockwise, after my head starts rotating clockwise! What the…?! All I can tell you is I know I wasn’t voluntarily, consciously doing this. I’m that guy that can’t easily rub my belly while tapping my head, so no way!

And like in the Siskiyou Lake heart-blasting open energy infusion, I then became filled with an exuberant joy and start audibly laughing out loud at the zaniness. And I swear, once I started laughing I had the distinct sense that LMN was laughing right along with me. What crazy bliss! No Molly required :>

If someone had happened upon me (which two guys did after it calmed down), they might of thought I was having a seizure in the midst of a psychiatric crackup. Then again, this is Mt Shasta. Not the first non-ordinary event to take place out here, and won’t be the last.

As this wound down, as my propeller head and spinning right arm head came to a stop, I just sat taking it all in. I then thought about what the location had to do with the difference, the quality of these sits, as compared to at home. I asked LMN whose energy was clearly still present, about this location. Why this spot? Significance? A portal or vortex? The response was unequivocally: Yes.

I ask, wait, then perceive the word Venusian in my minds eye. I check for accuracy. It’s confirmed, this spot is some kind of Venusian Portal. I then inquire about about the light being that came in for the prior sit. Unsurprisingly, a Venusian Light Being that was.

Marveling at all this for a while during a bit of shavasana on my back, it became clear that this was it for today’s supernatural shenanigans on the mountain. I went back to *town to browse and regroup.

A Venusian Portal? That’s what I got.

And now I know why, despite my original vision for this trip, I was meant to go out alone to the Flats. That’s probably part of why it didn’t work out with my original guide. And perhaps why the mountain road didn’t re-open until my guided stuff on day one and two was complete.

Mysterious ways, always. (Something my last day out there only served to underscore).

Later, on the way back to my hotel, had the distinct feeling I was being nudged to sit again. So I did. My host was Saint Germain again. Believe it or not, these sits tend to energize, rather than deplete. So I was game. In this sit I was psychically immersed in brilliant violet colors in my mind right out of the gate. And the nature/purpose of this one was, apparently, to energetically upload me with Violet Transmuting Flame energy.

I’ll take it. What a day.

In an effort to keep these as bite size as possible, I’ll save the events of the next day, my last, for a PT4.

In the meantime,

Peace, Venusian Light, Deafening Silence and Stillness, and Supernatural Seizures…

I AM,

Chris Hancock, LCSW, ACMHP

Franklin, TN

www.therapyoutsidethebox.com / @therapyoutsidethebox

chris@therapyoutsidethebox.com

615.430.2778

*P.S….found this is in the local gift shop…

Taking bets on whether you think I bought these or not :)

School Shootings: The Boogeyman Hides in Plain Sight

Image above, and extra inspiration for this post courtesy of A Midwestern Doctor.

*DO NOT DISCONTINUE PSYCH MEDS WITHOUT MEDICAL SUPERVISION*

“Its no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society” -Krishnamurti

You have very little chance of getting at the truth if you know in advance what the truth ought to be” -Robert B Parker

You can no doubt tell from the title and image above what this post is about. If you’re not up for it, you know what to do. It’s not exactly a free country anymore, if it ever truly was, but you’re under no obligation to consume anything here you might not feel prepared to confront. Own your sovereignty, here, there, and everywhere!

(That’s my version of a ‘trigger warning’).

If you’re still with me…

In the wake of the recent quite close to home Nashville Covenant School shooting— the 377th since Columbine in 1999—I felt compelled to highlight one of the apparent ever-present common denominators in nearly all school shootings, as well as many mass non school-based shootings in this country. The one that’s virtually no where to be found in the mainstream discussion. (There’s a good reason for that).

I’m aware that gun violence in America is not only a complex, complicated, multifactorial social ill (most of which is beyond the scope of this post), but a long standing one in which school shootings are just one form. And taken as a whole, school shootings are exceedingly rare in comparison to the entirely of gun violence—the #1 cause of death of children in the U.S. if this is accurate. Is it? I have no idea. Who knows what sources are trustworthy anymore. Uncorrupted truth, outside of that which we can glean through our own soul/a pure connection to Divine wisdom, is on life support post 2020.

But my purpose in this post—a forum for my own personal voice and opinion, nothing less or more—is to highlight, raise the one question, and perhaps get more of us willing to ask:

Why the deafening silence about the apparently ubiquitous presence of psychiatric medication in the lives of schools shooters from Columbine to the present?

Let me be clear that as of the time of this writing, to my knowledge, it has not been confirmed whether and/or what psychiatric drugs and/or other medical or chemical interventions the Covenant shooter was exposed to, either prior to or at the time of the shooting. But if the answer is none, this would be exception, apparently.

Take that in for a moment.

NOT ANTI ANYTHING

(Except the over-drugging, indoctrinating and brainwashing of America, especially youth, and a continuation of this collateral damage/madness).

Let me start with what I’m not. What I’m not saying/blaming/supporting, etc. This will give a sense of where there’s nuance to my view, where there isn’t, frame my main point, and illustrate why I believe the powers that be who benefit from the continuation of this phenomenon (make no mistake, there are beneficiaries) are more than happy to have us, the public, indefinitely point fingers over root cause, knowing it only further divides and distracts attention from the elephant in the room, assuring that nothing will change.

Not Anti Medication.

I’ve said here on my home page and in social media posts, there’s a time and place for medication. There’s a role for it. Although I strongly feel it should ne that’s far less utilized than it obviously is. And there are definitely better, safer, and more effective alternatives. The problem is many of them are overlooked, discounted, demonized/labeled quackery (too many to list), or still illegal. Like psychedelics (except ketamine). Though that’s changing. And I suspect changing mainly because Big Pharma has figured out how to appropriate, dilute, mass produce, patent, and make a killing on them: (See: ‘Pharmacuasca’). The other problem is that many alternatives to medication are not economically within reach for everyone. That’s no doubt part of the story that works in favor of the continuation of the mass drugging of humanity.

As most reasonably aware people can see and would probably agree, psychiatric drugs are grossly oversold, grossly overprescribed, and grossly over and unethically marketed (ask any former pharmaceutical drug rep beyond the time limit of their NDA. You’ll get some hard truth). And the fact that every other commercial on mainstream tv/media is a drug ad? C’mon. What do think is happening there? What’s the message? The agenda?

Bottom line: The Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex aka Big Pharma basically owns and controls the world at his point. Doctors, politicians, public health officials, media, hollywood. It’s out of control. Actually, completely in control. That’s the problem.

But still, I’m not patently anti-medication. I’m not a Christian Scientist or a Scientologist. I support the right to enlist psych meds—provided it’s truly needed (always subjective), and follows a complete psycho-social history, full consent, thorough and ongoing discussion of contraindications, risks/side effects, close monitoring, regular follow up, follow up labs, gene sight testing, metabolic, or neuropsych or other relevant testing where and when root cause/significant contributor questions remain, such as for nutritional deficiencies and underlying infections (underlying infections can wreak havoc on the brain and body, and science is now starting to corroborate the detrimental impact they have on mental health), and of course, concurrent counseling/therapy.

One problem is, especially since Big Pharma captured the primary care sector, resulting in family and generalist practitioners prescribing psych meds (something few if any of them are trained in), most of this rarely happens. Or rarely happens adequately and consistently.

How could it in the larger context of a broken, illness profit-based managed care-driven 15 minute pill mill model, such as is modern American medicine, especially psychiatry?

Not Anti Gun.

Responsible gun ownership, in America, makes some sense. Because it’s always been and always will be. I don’t care for it personally. I’ve never owned one and probably never will. But I grew up around it, learn how to respect and use a firearm, became something of a marksman in Boy Scouts, and accompanied my Father on hunting trips as a kid.

Am I in favor of tightening controls? Closing loopholes? Background checks and digitally universalizing purchase attempts the way we’ve done with controlled substances? Securing tighter restrictions at gun shows, and making rapid fire semi-automatic weapons of human destruction harder for the average citizen to come by? Yes. Virtually anything to at least make it more difficult, to buy more time between the moment someone shifts from homicidal murderous ideation and intent to practical action plan ad acquisition. Count me in.

But how? Is any of this even possible? Yes. Probable? Probably not. Because it probably would have happened by now. And in the the current post 2020 political and cultural climate, with a thoroughly corrupt *Uniparty (two broken wings of one broken bird) system run by largely invisible misguided Globalists who are batting a thousand in the well-planned, well-executed extreme polarization of America on almost every front/every major issue, it’s as unlikely now as ever.

* “Paradigms of Republican vs Democrat, and Conservative vs Progressive have been designed for obfuscation and entertainment.”

-Catherine Austin Fitts

Even with my boundless faith in God, in the Divine order, it’s hard to have much hope with respect to this phenomenon. (It’s not God’s problem, but ours). And my view is that we’re been stealthily indoctrinated—mind controlled—to ignore the boogeyman while innocents continue to be slaughtered. The fact that no perceivable change has been enacted and this goes on and on is one thing that in my book qualifies us as ‘a profoundly sick society.’

As far as the weapons element, historically, one or two countries have apparently implemented swift and sweeping action after mass shooting events and have seen no repeats. So something can surely be done be done. Just maybe nothing that robust in ‘Mericka, given how 2A is built into the fabric of our nation and the hearts and minds of the majority of the to the degree that any sensible controls have been so successfully but erroneously equated with all out unconstitutional violation/removal of the 2A. Nice job NRA, the gun lobby, and all politicians beholden to them.

But do I think guns or access to firearms are the root cause? I don’t.

For one thing, to my knowledge, firearms and relatively easy access to them have always existed in the great U.S. of A. Semi-automatic weapons included, though less so. Granted I’m sure the internet added much black market anonymous acquisition ease. But mass shootings, specifically school shootings—the trend that it’s become since Columbine—now as American as hot dogs and apple pie, has not.

Why all the sudden starting in 1999? What happened? What changed?

That’s the point I’m getting to.

Not Anti Trans (*)

As a child of the 70s and 80s though, still, whenever I hear it the term I think of Tim Curry in Rocky Horror. “I’m just a sweet Transvestite, from Transexual Transylvaniaaaaaaaaaaaaah…”. The whole point of that brilliant piece of arthouse art was ultimately acceptance. Celebration of differences. And non-judgment. Point taken.

Of course androgyny, gender bending and all forms of sexual variation has existed forever in virtually every culture. The famous 1970s Kinsey Report made it clear that sexual identity and preference exists on a spectrum, and most people are at least somewhat flexible and fluid when it comes to sexual identity, behavior, desire/preference. People are who they are. We’re complex. And I’m affirming of everyone’s sovereign right to discover this for themselves and express it in any way they see fit provided it’s safe, sane and consensual (The three tenants of sex positivity).

I have always had LQBTQ, and now some who identify as Non Binary clients. I don’t totally get NB, but if it harms none, fine. I actually cut my teeth in a field placement and subsequent first job in the mental health field in the heart of Greenwich Village in the 90s. The vast majority of my clients were lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, open/poly, leather, fetish, bdsm, sex workers, you get the idea. What an education! Yet as I recall, the least represented among this subset of the population was Transgender. I can remember all of two clients that actually identified as Trans over the course of two years in NYC. Neither to my recollection were post-op. I stood by them as I do now with anyone that genuinely feels, knows, themselves to be Transgender, or whatever else.

But the *movement (Trans activism) around it is a different animal. And I’m well aware there are massive culture wars going on with regard to this and many other things, including a ‘war on gender.’ To the degree that the most vehement allies often go right to ‘trans-phobic’ accusation at the mere raising of question or concern. I don’t get much involved in these battles beyond continuing to question who benefits from the stoking of polarization, what is it distracts from, and what goes on—what gets passed and implemented—while we’re all preoccupied with fighting, judging, condemning and hating each other. And while I get and support the underlying premise of being ‘woke,’ (inclusion), how the gender identity/war on gender theme has morphed into all out gender non-existence/denial of gender, I don’t. I mean, is it reasonable and rational by any measure to assert that it’s suddenly impossible biologically define what a woman (or a man) is?

To quote Jessica Rose, in the conclusion of an excellent substack article:

‘A woman is an adult female human being carrying two X chromosomes.’

I’d say that’s pretty accurate and unambiguous.

Most of all, do I think it’s safe, sane and consensual (and by consensual i.e. the consent part here, I’m meaning specifically age, developmental stage, and the psychological capacity to fully comprehend and agree) to encourage and lead children/teens with unformed brains, porous self-concepts, and little life experience down a path of hormonal blocking/ alteration, supplementation and medical-surgical reassignment as a result of increasingly socio-culturally supported gender dysphoria? I think it’s lunacy, actually. I know Jordan Peterson and at some long-ago transitioned, mature Transgendered adults agree. On this point, I’m with them.

I say cross dress, live as the opposite sex, no-sex at all, a tree self, etc, all day long. But seeing as most of us have no idea who we are until our 30s (Jung said 40 —‘…everything up till then is research’), I do not support the trend of irreversible medical physical-biological/surgical altering of youth. Nope.

And what should be the age of consent? Consent demonstrably free of agenda-laden influence? Can’t drink till 21 in most places. Can’t rent a car till you’re 25. But you can die on the battlefield at 18. So, what age?

I have no idea.

What I do have an idea about is this: I believe the mainstream medical establishment and Big Pharma (same thing really) backs this movement for no other reason than it’s good business. A cash cow. More lifelong customers = lifelong profits.

From the mental health perspective—and this the reason for including my thoughts about the Trans theme in regards to school shootings—the last handful of school shooters apparently all identified as either Trans or Non Binary. Hear me out when I say I don’t pretend to understand all the implications of this. I may not understand any of them, honestly. That’s not the focus of my work, nor this post, apart from how it may connect to the principle point I’m making. Although I think there’s something not exactly right, possibly deeply dark and corrupt even beyond the misguided motives of major medical/Big Pharma. Not about being genuinely Trans, but the exponential rise and trend of co-signing gender dysphoria to the point of gender denial/erasure and the medical-hormonal transitioning of children and teens, consequences seemingly be damned.

And I’m leaning into the theory that there are powerful forces and factions with nefarious motives behind both fetishizing (Hollywood) and exploiting (Medical-Pharma/WHO/UNESCO/WEF/Globalists/Elite…?) this population for reasons we might not ever want to have to confront.

And consider Dr. Robert Malone’s thoughts on what he calls ‘Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria,’ regarding the social contagion factor that are at least partially explanatory as to the recent exponential rise. (Malone is a problematic figure for multiple reasons, but this point is sound).

I’ll leave that there because it’s beyond the scope and central point. Time will tell.

For now I can only wonder, since I don’t have the facts on this, how many of the last crop of Trans or ND identified shooters, if any of them, were actively medically transitioning, i.e. receiving hormonal injections? Why is this potentially important? Because for one thing, as we know, artificially messing with hormones greatly effects mood and can spike aggression, especially testosterone. Imagine the implication of hormone disruptors on our youth in tandem with psych meds that induce an altered state of consciousness (all of them), that potentially disinhibit, numb, dull and/or outright exile the capacity for empathy (many of them—SSRIs and SNRIS included, depending on dose, length of time taken and other factors), and are known to either create or exacerbate suicidal or potential homicidal thoughts, feelings and impulses.

Is this one major factor in the smoke in this community of youth recently turning to fire?

it’s the drugs…that don’t work…or do they?

Cuttin’ to the chase…

Do psych meds ‘cure’ anything? No. Do they treat ‘chemical imbalances?’ That depends on whether you buy into this premise. One that’s all been disproven with the more recent advances of neuroscience, epigenetics, and the centrality of [the effects of] trauma that we understand now better than ever.

The chemical imbalance theory has also been all but debunked as a pharmaceutical industry invented fiction—sold as a rational for the massively profitable drugging and controlling of the population, to the tune of hundreds of billions a year and counting.

As mentioned above, what psych meds essentially do is create an altered state of consciousness that temporarily distracts from suffering. That’s it. Sometimes, yes, this can be beneficial—in the short term—such as to quell the severity of an escalating extreme state/psychosis, help bring the nervous system to the beginning of regulation in response to acute or boiling over complex PTSD symptoms, give a leg up out of a debilitating major depressive episode, or debilitating postpartum depression. So one can get out of bed, and have the energy to engage with methods of healing our pain.

Long term though, the gains are diminishing and the risk-reward ratio skews heavily to the former. This is fact. Psychotropics also wreak havoc on the gut and entire GI system—the so-called ‘second brain.’ In fact, approximately 15% of our gut lining is composed of enteric endocrine cells, which produce over 90% of the serotonin and over 50% of the dopamine our bodies use. Gut health is intricately linked to both immune system functioning and our mental health. This is why the number one most common side effect of psych meds is gastrointestinal upset. They tend to throw the whole delicate balance out of whack.

From my own clinical experience I’ve noticed that the more psych meds one is on, especially at higher does and longer duration, the more the capacity for interoceptionthe ability to subjectively sense and know our inner experience—becomes hijacked. Put to sleep. Or more specifically, in accordance with my multiplicity-informed understanding of the psyche, it obscures access to our intuition—our Larger Self, i.e. our essence; the infinite undamaged core—the seat of the soul, or consciousness. You get the idea.

This is why I recently decided that my most potent therapeutic offerings are simply not conducive to those who are taking two or more psych meds and/or those taking purposefully stimulating methamphetamine-based (Adderall) or tranquilizing effects (benzos, opiates).

Regardless of class/type, most meds have a poop out effect, leading chronic consumers on a treadmill of hoping on and off different meds, often to the point of neurological dependency with disastrously consequences where many are led to feel and believe that they can never come off. That is, resigned to a life of a perpetually dulled, chemically-altered state of consciousness. I saw this for years working in community mental health.

And for the last time, SSRIs and SNRIs in particular—the drugs the majority of school shooters were apparently prescribed, currently taking, or recently withdrawing from at the time of the shootings—have been shown time and again to either create or exacerbate (disinhibit and unleash) suicidal and/or homicidal thoughts, feelings and impulses. It’s in the medical fine print that no one reads and many doctors don’t have time or often much interest in openly discussing. And the longer (a child or teen with an largely still unformed brain especially) takes them, especially in higher doses, then add in massive psychosocial stressors not adequality recognized or addressed, the longer they remain in a state of chemically-altered/compromised state potentially detaching from external reality, slipping into derealization and losing both the capacity for empathy and judgement—I say the higher the likelihood of the continuation of this phenomenon that began in the years post initial wholesale roll out of antidepressants in the late 80s.

Here’s a brief summary in list form from an article (that I cannot get to paste or link for some reason) published in 2013 that illustrates the point:

•Eric Harris age 17 (first on Zoloft then Luvox) and Dylan Klebold aged 18 (Columbine school shooting in Littleton, Colorado), killed 12 students and one teacher and wounded 23 others, before killing themselves. Klebold’s medical records have never been made available to the public.

•Jeff Weise, age 16, had been prescribed 60 mg/day of Prozac (three times the average starting dose for adults!) when he shot his grandfather, his grandfather’s girlfriend and many fellow students at Red Lake, Minnesota. He then shot himself. Ten dead, 12 wounded.

•Cory Baadsgaard, age 16, Wahluke (Washington state) High School, was on Paxil (which caused him to have hallucinations) when he took a rifle to his high school and held 23 classmates hostage. He has no memory of the event.

•Christopher Pittman, age 12, murdered both his grandparents while taking Zoloft.

•Kip Kinkel, age 15, (on Prozac and Ritalin) shot his parents while they slept then went to school and opened fire, killing two classmates and injuring 22 shortly after beginning Prozac treatment.

•Luke Woodham, age 16 (Prozac) killed his mother and then killed two students, wounding six others.

•A boy in Pocatello, ID (Zoloft) in 1998 had a Zoloft-induced seizure that caused an armed standoff at his school.

•Michael Carneal (Ritalin), age 14, opened fire on students at a high school prayer meeting in West Paducah, Kentucky. Three teenagers were killed, five others were wounded.

•Andrew Golden, age 11, (Ritalin) and Mitchell Johnson, aged 14, (Ritalin) shot 15 people, killing four students, one teacher, and wounding ten others.

•TJ Solomon, age 15, (Ritalin) high school student in Conyers, Georgia opened fire on and wounded six of his classmates.

•James Wilson, age 19, (various psychiatric drugs) from Breenwood, South Carolina, took a .22 caliber revolver into an elementary school killing two young girls and wounding seven other children and two teachers.

•Elizabeth Bush, age 13, (Paxil) was responsible for a school shooting in Pennsylvania

•Jason Hoffman (Effexor and Celexa) – school shooting in El Cajon, California

•Neal Furrow (Prozac) in LA Jewish school shooting reported having been court-ordered to be on Prozac along with several other medications.

•Hammad Memon, age 15, shot and killed a fellow middle school student. He had been diagnosed with ADHD and depression and was taking Zoloft and “other drugs for his conditions.”

•Matti Saari, a 22-year-old culinary student, shot and killed nine students and a teacher, and wounded another student, before killing himself. Saari was taking an SSRI and a benzodiazapine.

•Steven Kazmierczak, age 27, shot and killed five people and wounded 21 others before killing himself in a Northern Illinois University auditorium. According to his girlfriend, he had recently been taking Prozac, Xanax, and Ambien. Toxicology results showed that he still had trace amounts of Xanax in his system.

•Finnish gunman Pekka-Eric Auvinen, age 18, had been taking antidepressants before he killed eight people and wounded a dozen more at Jokela High School – then he committed suicide.

•Asa Coon from Cleveland, age 14, shot and wounded four before taking his own life. Court records show Coon was on Trazodone.

•Jon Romano, age 16, on medication for depression, fired a shotgun at a teacher in his New York high school.


pharmageddon

So if there’s any truth in any of this, WHY do we not hear about it? Why is no one talking about it as at least a compelling correlation worth questioning and examining further? Why is it not on the network news, except maybe on FOX here and there in the wake of another shooting, or You Tube (until it gets swiftly pulled down).

To cut to the chase again, the answer is obvious to anyone who paid close attention with a questioning eye since 2020. As I said up top, the Biopharmaceutical Industrial Complex basically owns and runs the world at this point. Big Pharma apparently funds 45% of the FDAs budget. And it seems the CDC, the mainstream media, much medical school continuing education, and major political, public health officials and institutions have been captured and corrupted by this monolithic industry. All in their back pockets.

“Over the last two decades, the pharmaceutical industry has moved very far from its original high purpose of discovering and producing useful new drugs. Now primary a marketing machine to sell drugs of dubious benefit, this industry uses its wealth and power to co-opt every institution that might stand in its way…including the United States Congress, the FDA, academic medical centers, and the medical profession itself.”

-Marcia Angell, Physician, Author, first female editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, current Senior Lecturer in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School (nourishourchildren.org).

Much of this ties back to the two largest private investment companies that dominate almost every aspect of our lives and own everything we spend money on: Vanguard and Black Rock. Not to mention an estimated two-thirds to 80% of the content broadcast and published by mainstream corporate media comes from one of four pubic relations firms (Publics Groups, WPP, Omnicom Group, Interpublic Groups). The result? The vast majority of mainstream corporate content is outright propaganda.

Could I have it all wrong? Yes. If it turns out to be the case, I’ll be the first to say so.

For now, ask yourself: Would any Pharma-controlled media outlet be allowed to question or encourage discourse about the potential role of their products in this phenomenon, potentially implicating them in crimes against humanity, and threatening the windfall profits this monstrosity generates?

This is why the only place you might see, read, or hear anything much about the psych drug connection are on non-mainstream, non-captured, for now still uncensored platforms. Or in the offices, conventions and retreats run by holistic, wellness-oriented, functional/integrative or naturopathic medicine practitioners.

To drive it home, to date, the largest fraud (yes, fraud) settlement among corporations/larger institutions in the history of the U.S., like just about everything else in mainstream society, is “brought to you by Pfizer.” A 2.3 billion dollar criminal and civil fine for for illegally marketing off label use of four different drugs. And it’s not just Pfizer. Each and every major Pharma company has been sued and settled massive law suits time and again. The opioid crisis was knowingly at least co-created by Big Pharma. (See also: Purdue Pharma, Sackler Family). To these souless institutions, it’s just ‘the cost of business.’ When you’re too big to fail, lack conscience, life-affirming humanitarian values, and a moral code. Profit, power, and control over people.

On the profit point, consider this: In 2022, the total global pharmaceutical market was estimated at 1.48 trillion U.S. dollars.

Welcome to the post 2020 Post-Truth New Brave New Orwellian World. One where silence, (‘follow the silence’), corrupted peer review/captured science, censorship, cancel culture, propaganda, shadow banning and de-platforming, discrediting, virtue signaling, medical tyranny and totalitarian biosurveilance and biosecurity are the new free speech, the new democracy, the new health care. What the awake and outspoken Dr. Aaron Keriaty, M.D. calls (in his book of the same name): The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State.

HOPE FLOATS

Despite this stark picture, truth always emerges. It already is. And in my worldview, light/absolute truth/good will always prevails over dark/maya/evil. As many masters have taught, the shadow/dark/evil/’wetiko’ aspects must come into full view before true renewal, emergence, and authentic collective awakening/ascension can commence. In the big picture that’s what I believe is happening. And while we must act on our own behalf and ultimately save ourselves, I’ll die on the hill that there is a spiritual solution to every problem, smallest to largest. But part of doing our part is opening our eyes wider, fearlessly speaking up, speaking out, speaking our truth. Naming the elephants, and taking our personal collective power back in wherever and however we can.

And while I have little hope in seeing the grand systemic changes necessary to end the multifactorial gun violence epidemic in our culture in my lifetime, my faith in the Divine order, the Divine play (‘Lila’ in Hinduism); my faith in the essentially goodness of humanity, and humanity as an expression of the Divine Spark has not and will not waiver.

Earth is a school. And we were never promised a rose garden in coming to this here school! In the words of Delores Cannon:

“The Earth School is the most difficult in the universe. Only the bravest souls sign up.”

From a Multiplicity of Minds-based, Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy-informed perspective, I also believe there are truly ‘no bad parts’ of people. Genetic and ancestral/generational loading that adds baggage, definitely. External entities and attachments that find openings in our porous system and can influence us toward malevolent ends, yes. Otherwise, just traumatized, wounded parts. Parts thrust into hyper protective, sometimes woefully misguided roles as a result of the various slings and arrows of life that can drive any one of us to horrific extremes given the right (or wrong) set of circumstances. That resonates as truth in my bones and soul, so I’ll die on that hill as well.

Hopefully I’ve shed some light on at least one major element of what I believe lights the fuse of these particular atrocities that’s become an American epidemic.

In the meantime, may God grant us the wisdom and strength to do better.

To end on a classically spiritual and uplifting note:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

St. Francis of Assisi

LINKS

For more on the link between anti depressants and unfavorable outcomes of all kinds, check out:

https://ssristories.org/all-posts/

On the specific link between antidepressants and mass shootings (that I could not put better):

https://amidwesterndoctor.substack.com/p/the-decades-of-evidence-that-antidepressants

And for more on how the pharmaceutical industrial complex sausages are made, I recommend starting with:

-Anatomy of an Epidemic, by Robert Whittaker

-Pharma: Greed, Lies and the Poisoning of America, by Gerald Posner

-Deadly Psychiatry and Organized Denial, by Peter Gotzsche

-MadinAmerica.com (Organization and website)

-Medicatingnormal.com (Documentary film and website).

Thank you for reading.

Peace, love, and better living without chemistry for us all.

Chris Hancock, LCSW, ACMHP

www.therapyoutsidethebox.com

@therapyoutsidethebox

Franklin, TN

A Unique Grief: Ode to a Dog

Sylvie and me, a few weeks before having to put her down.

Yesterday, March 4th, 2023, was D-Day.

We knew this was coming for a long time, but that never makes it easier. I’m in a daze this morning as I write this. Fucking gutted. My wife is wrecked. If you’ve ever lost a cherished pet, you know exactly how it feels.

We adopted Sylvie, our first baby, my veritable shadow, 16 years ago. She was an Australian cattle dog/heeler/lab mix, or so we’ve always believed. Who knows. All we know was she was the sweetest, most attentive, protective, loyal, and crazy smart dog anyone could have. How smart you ask? Trained as a puppy to ring a doorbell with her nose to go outside in about one hour. Insane.

From the first moment I was clearly the alpha. Sylvie followed me everywhere around the house every day, all the time. If I had a dollar for every time she pushed her way through my wife and me, or poked her snout between my legs from behind and looked up at me as if to say “I’m here, daddy,” I’d be rich.

Today, one day out, it feels like I have phantom limb syndrome.

Sylvie saw my family through some of the hardest times—(not necessarily in this order)— a massive house flood, two moves, adopting a second dog, my mid-life/chiron return/burnout/dark night/breakdown, marital challenges, and a grueling child adoption process necessitating several long trips out of country which Sylvie did not do well with. We knew this would be the case because early on we tried to board her for a weekend. The vet had to heavily sedate her around the clock just to get her to relax and sleep. Possibly the most codependent dog that ever lived, but in the sweetest way possible. We never boarded her again. House sitters from there on out.

I was reminded yesterday that in the early years, when I would go off to work Sylvie would sleep in my dirty clothes pile in my closet all day until I came home. And that I threatened more than once to get a tattoo of her face on my arm. I never did, not a tattoo guy, but right now I kinda wish I had. Yet I can barely stand to see of picture of her yet, so maybe best I didn’t.

In the puppy years, like most puppies, Sylvie had way more energy than we could keep up with. Thankfully at that time we lived a bit outside the city and there was plenty of room to roam through the woods. She would whip through those trails and the little creeks like a spitfire on speed. And every time I called her, without fail, she would come running right back. That made me realize I had a little ptsd from the two childhood dogs I had that ran away, one turning up dead after getting into poison. Sylvie put me at ease about a repeat of this.

Always anxious/on alert/high strung, over the last few years Sylvie had become increasingly so. Cognitive decline began to set in, and increasing difficulty holding her bladder resulted in more and more frequent accidents—to the point where shampooing the carpets was maddeningly becoming a weekly chore. And it really started to smell like a barn up in here, which isn’t ideal when you have clients out all the time like I do. My local clients know we have dogs, although few got to meet Sylvie because she would generally sleep upstairs all day, and if she came down and we’d let her in the therapy space, she wouldn’t settle down, so it could be disruptive. Unlike Foxy, our other beloved pooch, who welcomes you at the door, smells, wags and licks, then is out for the count for the entire session. But only if you’re female. She nips men’s ankles soon as they’re not looking.

Never would have guessed Foxy, not Sylvie, would be my therapy dog. But that’s how it’s played out.

Over the last years, Sylvie also became increasingly hard of hearing and unable to relax at night. Now we think it was like a dementia-related sun downing phenomenon. Her panting and pacing increased, and thus began a pattern of her keeping me awake and rousing me out of bed around 4 am virtually every morning to go out, if not sometimes multiple times a night. We reluctantly tried drugging her with gabapentin as per the vets suggestion, but that would have minimal effect, and her already weakening rear legs and hip dysplasia would become rubber on that med, putting her at risk for falling down stairs. CBD did nothing. So we lived with it and dealt with it for a long as possible. But the chronic sleep interruptions really started to take a toll on me. At my age, and with my workload, in combination with my higher guidance confirming her quality of life was seriously diminishing, and finally that it was time, we made the grueling decision.

So yesterday we had the amazing Lap of Love pet euthanasia service out to the house. Dr. Stacey was so compassionate and kind. Sylvie was, of course, having a good day, energetic (for her) and hungry as hell, which only made it more confusing and harder. The parts of all of us that felt unsure, guilty, and intent on bargaining/buying more time really struggled yesterday. Dr. Stacey assured us this is common, and that all the signs and traits we have seeing and describing were clear indications that it is time, and the most humane thing to do. We knew this in our heart of hearts, but it did help to hear it.

My wife had started truly grieving about a week early. My younger daughter, still reeling from our having to put her cat down weeks earlier did as well. My older daughter seemed a bit unphased (until the deed yesterday). My tendency with such things is to be more or less okay until the time comes. I did a workout and even saw a client yesterday, which kept my mind and heart off the inevitable. Until my wife got the call that Lap of Love was on the way. From that moment on the emotion and my tears rose up and did not stop gushing until I sort of fell asleep last night. A good illustration right here of how everyone grieves differently; in their own way and on their own timeline.

The euthanasia process, as gentle, loving and humane as it possibly could have been, was also one of the most painful things I can recall experiencing to date. If you could see me right now, my face looks like I got in a bar fight (and lost), as does my wife’s. Outside of a few crying gags 10 years ago while in India picking them up after the completion of our three year adoption ordeal, have never seen me sob like this. I’m both glad and solemn about it. Glad because it’s real life. Sadness and grief is part of it. Men cry and kids should know and see this. Solemn because it was painful for them. But we were all there for each other, and that’s what its all about. I’m so fucking fortunate and I know it.

But I have to tell you, witnessing Sylvie receive the injections, and my family helping her body to the final rest position was so brutal I could barely watch, let alone participate. My wife and girls all helped her on to the stretcher. It was all I could do to get the front door open for them to walk her out to Dr. Stacey’s car. Out there we all lost it big time. Our neighbors probably thought a human, not someone’s dog, had died.

What a strange grief the loss of a cherished dog. How utterly uniquely this bond to a creature that’s entirely reliant on you, that you never heard a word from, and don’t ever really know for sure what exactly they feel, how, and why. I’m well aware we all anthropomorphize / representationally imbue our pets with all sort of human feelings, traits and qualities to some degree or other. And that dogs especially, with their Divine unconditionality, are perfect salves for the human love-based wounds small or large we all carry. But as I vacillate today between shock/denial and acute mourning, I care not. Sylvie was the bomb, she’s gone, and it sucks like hell. That’s all right now.

I’m remembering those poignant lines from The Little Prince:

“You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”

“But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me you will be unique in all the world. To you I shall be unique in all the world.”

I realize only know, as I wait for Sylvie’s ashes to come home, just how unique. And that breaks my heart.

Sheepishly I’ll admit I’ve been quietly dismissive of the impact of the loss of pets with others at times over the years. Perhaps because all mine growing up either ran off (dogs) or died of natural causes (cats) and I never had to make the decision, witness and participate in putting one down. That, in combination with Sylvie being who she was, and literally like our first child shortly after marrying and purchasing our first home, and how she adopted our adopted girls and became their protectors as much as ours, to see that all disappear in the blink of an eye is next level.

I get it now.

As I write this I’m like a stoned zombie after a shit sleep and still got up at the usually 4-ish am due to Sylvie muscle memory. The quiet was deafening. There are more tears to come. They’re right there waiting, I can feel it. But I’m also enjoying putting some of this to written word form and sharing it here. Sublimation is part of the processing.

Otherwise, just adjusting to the first day without Sylvie’s presence while I think of her crossing the fabled Rainbow Bridge, and on to whatever and wherever doggie souls go on to, and go on to do. And reflecting more deeply about what our tamed besties are here for, what they bring to our lives, how they enrich it, and the opportunity they offer us to value, cherish and appreciate it to the fullest.

To complicate it, there were a few years, the hardest years of child adoption adjustment/middle school years that we look back and feel we neglected our fur babies. Less walks, less attention, less outward demonstration of love. And over the last 6 months or so I was frequently frustrated with Sylvie’s inability to settle down, the constant panting, pissing the floor, and getting me up throughout the night. Reconciling with that now is hard. It compounds the grief with guilt.

With human loss that often amounts to what we call a ‘complicated grief’ process. Here it just feels like human frailty and failure. And you’re left wondering how that impacted them. My wife had a good hard cry this morning about wishing to know if Sylvie forgives us for it.

Regarding grief, a long time client of mine who lost both a child, a partner, and recently his mother (who I don’t believe ever read The Little Prince) said to me recently:

“Grief is wild. It cannot be tamed.”

The conversation about the unwieldiness and unpredictability of grief in which that gem arose was largely about the sensitivity, open-heartedness, wisdom and appreciation that painful loss engenders. On the heels of this, and knowing at my age I have more impactful human and animal losses on the horizon, I’ll take whatever comes from the inevitable. I’ll do my best to give each loss its due, grieve as completely as possible, love who and what I have in my life, and allow the unavoidable, paradoxical, untamable beauty of grief to inform my outlook toward every moment on this pale blue dot of earth school.

What more can we do?

Goodbye, sweet Sylvie. Thank you for all the years of happiness and joy. Even your passing, gut wrenching as it is, is another heart-expanding gift you’ve given us, your human family.

You will be missed forever.

Ethical Principles of Public Health

As a citizen and a health professional (of sorts) concerned about the state of the new Brave New Orwellian world / the rising biomedical security state / the emerging digital dictatorship / the Great Reset, etc…I’m on the lookout for awakened voices, innovative ideals, developments, and proposals, especially where it concerns a return to sanity in this age of medical tyranny, mass censorship, propaganda, collusion, corruption, politicization, and pharma-cozation of science and health. The following I deem to be one such measure. This comes via Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, M.D., Senior Fellow, Zephyr Institute; Chief of Medical Ethics, The Unity Project; Fellow and Director, Bioethics and American Democracy Program, Ethics and Public Policy Center, and author of ‘The New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State.’

To combat the recent and widespread abuses of individual and academic freedom made in the name of science, Hillsdale College’s Academy for Science and Freedom educates the American people about the free exchange of scientific ideas and the proper relationship between freedom and science in the pursuit of truth. Led by national and international scholars, its work serves to educate policymakers and the general public about important discoveries and ideas that might otherwise be ignored by scientific journals and corporate media. Through strategic alliances among scientific scholars and organizations, the Academy for Science and Freedom is a platform for free, reasoned, civil discourse in scientific research and issues of public health and provides educational opportunities for citizens in general.

During the pandemic, fundamental principles of public health were ignored, and trust in public health has been damaged. As experts in public health, medical science, ethics, and health policy, we propose the following ten principles to guide public health officials and scientists, in order to ensure the credibility of public health recommendations and to help restore public trust. The list of principles below reflects orthodox concepts of post-World War Two public health and WHO’s original definition of health.

Consider sending this to physicians you know and asking if they would be willing to sign. If they are unwilling, consider asking them which of the principles they object to and why.

Ethical Principles of Public Health:

1.   All public health advice should consider the impact on overall health, rather than solely be concerned with a single disease. It should always consider both benefits and harms from public health measures and weigh short-term gains against long-term harms.

2.   Public health is about everyone. Any public health policy must first and foremost protect society's most vulnerable, including children, low-income families, persons with disabilities and the elderly. It should never shift the burden of disease from the affluent to the less affluent.

3.   Public health advice should be adapted to the needs of each population, within cultural, religious, geographic, and other contexts. 

4.   Public health is about comparative risk evaluations, risk reduction, and reducing uncertainties using the best available evidence, since risk usually cannot be entirely eliminated.

5.   Public health requires public trust. Public health recommendations should present facts as the basis for guidance, and never employ fear or shame to sway or manipulate the public.

6.   Medical interventions should not be forced or coerced upon a population, but rather should be voluntary and based on informed consent. Public health officials are advisors, not rule setters, and provide information and resources for individuals to make informed decisions. 

7.   Public health authorities must be honest and transparent, both with what is known and what is not known. Advice should be evidence-based and explained by data, and authorities must acknowledge errors or changes in evidence as soon as they are made aware of them.. 

8.   Public health scientists and practitioners should avoid conflicts-of-interest, and any unavoidable conflicts-of-interest must be clearly stated.

9.   In public health, open civilized debate is profoundly important. It is unacceptable for public health professionals to censor, silence or intimidate members of the public or other public health scientists or practitioners.

10. It is critical for public health scientists and practitioners always to listen to the public, who are living the public health consequences of public health decisions, and to adapt appropriately.

Co-Authors (in alphabetical order):

Ryan T. Anderson, Ph.D.

President, Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington, DC USA

Scott W. Atlas, M.D.

Robert Wesson Senior Fellow in Health Policy, Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Founding Fellow, Academy for Science and Freedom, Hillsdale College, USA; Co-Director, Global Liberty Institute, Switzerland

David Bell, MBBS, Ph.D.

Public health physician, Texas, USA

Jay Bhattacharya, M.D., Ph.D.

Professor, Health Policy, and Director, Center on the Demography and Economics of Health and Aging, Stanford University School of Medicine; Senior Fellow, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR); Founding Fellow, Academy for Science and Freedom, Hillsdale College, USA

David Doat, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Philosophy, ETHICS Laboratory, Catholic University of Lille, France; Associate Researcher at the ESPHIN Institute, University of Namur, Belgium

Carl Heneghan, B.M., B.C.H, M.A., M.R.C.G.P., D.Phil.

Director, Centre for Evidence-based Medicine and Professor, University of Oxford, UK

Aaron Kheriaty, M.D.

Senior Fellow, Zephyr Institute; Chief of Medical Ethics, The Unity Project; Fellow and Director, Bioethics and American Democracy Program, Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington, DC, USA

Martin Kulldorff, Ph.D.

Professor of Medicine, Harvard University, USA (on leave); Senior Scholar, Brownstone Institute; Founding Fellow, Academy for Science and Freedom, Hillsdale College, USA

Robert W. Malone, M.D., M.Sc.

Molecular immunologist, Founder, The Malone Foundation, Virginia, USA

Peter A. McCullough, M.D., M.P.H.

Internal Medicine and Cardiovascular Diseases; Chief Medical Advisor, Truth for Health Foundation, Tucson, Arizona, USA

Elisabeth Paul, Ph.D.

Independent consultant, Health Policies and Systems, Liège, Belgium

Roger Severino

Vice President, The Heritage Foundation; Senior Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center, Washington DC, USA

Ellen Townsend, PhD

Professor of Psychology; Self-Harm Research Group, School of Psychology, University of Nottingham, UK


Additionally, David Bell, Senior Scholar at Brownstone Institute, public health physician and biotech consultant in global health, former medical officer and scientist at the WHO, Program Head for malaria and febrile diseases at the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) in Geneva, Switzerland, and Director of Global Health Technologies at Intellectual Ventures Global Good Fund in Bellevue, WA has this to say:

Public health concerns the public, the general population, improving their health. Yet over the past two years this idea or movement has been widely attacked for promoting job loss, economic collapse, increased mortality and loss of freedoms. It is claimed responsible for rising malaria mortality among African children, millions of girls being forced into child marriage and nightly rape, and a quarter of a million South Asian children killed by lockdowns.

Blaming public health for these disasters is like blaming an aerosolized respiratory virus for the same outcomes. It completely misses the mark. Blaming greed, cowardice, callousness or indifference may be closer. This harm was done when certain people decided to impose harm on the lives of others, sometimes through stupidity but frequently for personal benefit. Atrocities are perpetrated by individuals and crowds, not by an art or science

Humans have caused mass harm to others throughout human history. We do this because we are driven to benefit ourselves and our group (which in turn benefits ourselves), and we frequently find that satisfying this drive requires restricting, enslaving or eliminating others. We have a history of demonizing ethnic or religious groups to take their money and jobs, and of stealing whole swathes of territory and subduing the inhabitants to extract wealth or take their land. We push commodities – talismans, medicines, unhealthy foods – onto others for our gain, knowing they would be better off investing their resources elsewhere. We mistake money or power for personal benefit, rather than valuing the relationships and aesthetic experiences that give life meaning. We easily fall into a very narrow, blinkered view of human existence.

Public health is intended to achieve the opposite. It is there to support human relationships and improve the aesthetic appeal of life.

The World Health Organization (WHO), for all its failings, was founded on this idea, declaring

“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

The WHO definition of health implies that human existence is far deeper than a lump of organic material self-assembled according to the coding of DNA. It is responding to the horrors of corporate authoritarianism, division and oppression promoted by fascist and colonialist regimes. It is also built on thousands of years of human understanding that life has intrinsic worth that extends beyond the physical, and basic principles arising from this that span time and culture. The wording implies that human health is defined as a state in which humans can enjoy life (mental well-being) and freely congregate with and belong to the wider population of humanity. It supports autonomy and self-determination, determinants of physical, mental, and social health, but is not compatible with restrictions or injuries that reduce ‘wellness’ in any of these areas. It therefore fits poorly with fear, force or exclusion – these denote unhealth.

For principles to be translated into actions we require people, institutions and rules. Some of these people are involved because it pays well, some seek power, some genuinely seek to benefit others (which in turn may benefit their mental and social health). Implementation of these principles can therefore be pure or corrupt. The principles themselves remain unchanged. The differences between principles and their implementation often get confused. A religious belief based on fundamentals of love and free choice can be claimed as justification for military crusades, inquisitions, or public beheadings. This does not mean truths on which the religion is based support these acts, but rather that humans are using its name for personal gain at the expense of others.

The same applies in taking a political doctrine espousing equality and dissemination of power if its name is employed to concentrate wealth and centralize authority. In both cases the movements are corrupted, not implemented. Implementation of public health can therefore attract criticism on two fronts. Firstly, it can restrict some from gaining by harming others, whether through intent or neglect (it is doing its job). Alternatively, it can be co-opted to inflict harm on others (it is being corrupted). 

The truth can be determined by weighing actions made in its name against the principles that underpin it. These are well-established and should not evoke controversy. What matters is the honesty with which they are implemented, as it is always humans through which these principles must be filtered.

Implications of Applying Ethical Principles

If someone advocated that people be prevented from working, socializing or meeting as a family to prevent spread of a virus, they would be advocating to reduce aspects of the health of these people, at a minimum mental and social, in order to protect one aspect of physical health. “Not merely the absence of disease” in the WHO definition requires that public health support people and society in achieving human potential, not just in preventing a specific harm. 

A vaccination program would have to show that the money spent could not achieve greater gains elsewhere, and that it reflected what the recipients wanted. In all cases the public would have to drive the agenda, not be driven. The decision would be theirs, rather than belonging to those who gain money or power from implementing such programs.

These ten principles demonstrate that public health is a difficult discipline. It requires those working within the field to put aside their egos, desire for self-promotion, and their preferences regarding how others should act. They would have to respect the public. Achieving health in the broad WHO definition is incompatible with people being scolded, coerced, or herded. 

This is difficult, as public health professionals have generally spent more than an average time in formal education and earn higher than average salaries. Being flawed humans, this makes them prone to considering themselves more knowledgeable, important, and ‘right.’ People may point to recent examples among leaders and sponsors of the COVID-19 response, but it is an inherent risk at all levels.

 

Something to Hope For

There is a way out of this. It does not require articulation of a new approach, formation of new institutions, or new declarations and treaties. It simply requires those working in the field, and the institutions they represent, to apply the basic principles to which they previously claimed to adhere.

Insisting on ethical public health may result in the abandonment of certain programs, redirection of certain policies, and corresponding changes in leadership. Those financially profiting would have to be sidelined, as conflict of interest impedes focus on public good. Programs would have to reflect community and population priorities, not those of central bodies. 

This is not radical, it is what virtually all public health professionals have been taught. When ‘solutions’ are forced or coerced irrespective of local priorities, or fear and psychological manipulation are used, these should be defined accurately for what they are; commercial, political, or even colonialist enterprises. Those implementing such programs are political operatives, salespeople, or lackeys, but not health workers. 

Much of society’s future will be determined by the motivations and integrity of the public health institutions and their workforce. A lot of humility will be required, but this has always been the case. The world will have to watch and see whether those in the field have the courage and integrity to do their job.

Download the statement on ethical principles of public health here.

Nashville Voyager Magazine Feature

Pretty cool to get a local spotlight. Very honored.

Life & Work with Chris Hancock, LCSW of Franklin

Today we’d like to introduce you to Chris Hancock of Therapy Outside the Box

Hi Chris, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.

“Thank you! I really appreciate this opportunity. Well, I grew up on suburban Long Island. But my father was raised in a small town in South Georgia, so my affinity for the South runs deep! I feel totally at home here. Growing up it was really all about music. So much so that after graduating college, I reunited with old mates and we gave it go up in Boston, MA. We achieved a modicum of success through the 90’s recording two records, one for a major label, and doing a good bit of touring. But the lifestyle and the malarkey of the industry left me cold. I made my exit in 1997 to answer a loudening soul call to something higher. I returned to New York, got into therapy (again), and began taking classes. The first 10 minutes of my very first class in human development confirmed I was exactly where I was supposed to be…

Click here to read the whole story!

'There is Nothing that is not Spirit'

Lead me from the unreal to the real; Lead me from darkness to light; Lead me from death to immortality.

—Brihadaranyaka-Upanishad

“There is Nothing that is not Spirit”

Does that title not captivate you? Transfix you? Instantly resonate as truth in your bones? If not, no need to read further. But if so…

Slight digression first. So I’ve been reflecting a lot lately on Selfhood. The concept of the personal and eternal Universal Self that’s been wrestled with by various schools of eastern and western philosophy and psychology, eastern and western religious and spiritual traditions for an aeon. Modern psychologically speaking, Self—as defined and utilized as the undamaged, infinite, eternal healing essence and agent of change via Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS)— is my biggest practical focal point as of late. Dr. Richard Schwartz (developer of IFS) turned 30 some years ago to the treasure trove of eastern spiritual wisdom to inform and amplify his own clinically-informed multiplicity of mind/polypsychicsm-based conception of Self, as distinct from the many separate but interconnected ‘parts’ (subpersonalities) within us all that hold the story of our pain (trauma) and protect us in a myriad of ways from real or imagined further pain (re-traumatization).

As a longtime seeker of eastern spiritual and esoteric knowledge, in tandem with the post-dark night of the soul spirit-led initiation process I’ve found myself in over the last years (ostensibly preparing me to become some type of intuitive and/or trance-voice channel), I’ve been on a mad spree of collecting up choice, vintage spiritual writings. This, in an effort to continue often complicating, but ultimately hopefully deepening and integrating my understanding of how spirituality, personal (gnostic) spiritual experience, Selfhood, psyche, and healing converge.

Currently I’m finding inspiration in a book titled Mysticism, a Study and an Anthology, by F.C. Happold, published first in 1963. The following are some select passages from the chapter entitled “There is Nothing that is not Spirit” (hence the blog title) which draws upon on The Upanishads, the concluding portion of The Vedas, the oldest sacred literature of Hinduism, composed from about 1500 to 100 B.C.

The way Self is articulated, i.e. the various poetic yet matter of fact descriptions of its transcendent potential, inseparability from (notably masculinized) Godhead, and its eternality, is purely resonant music to my soul (if my soul had ears, that is). As is the way the sheer ineffability of the All That There Is—the Lord of All—is portrayed. For many, I imagine, this would create anxiety. Terror even. For me it brings quiet comfort. Which can only mean intuitive resonance with a deep, eternal, yet non-conscious knowing.

Select passages below are taken from The Ten Principal Upanishads, and were beautifully and clearly put into English by Shree Purohit Swami ands the Irish poet, W.B. Yeats (The Macmillan Company (first published in 1937 by Faber and Faber Ltd).

Enjoy…

The Self is one. Unmoving, it moves faster than the mind. The senses lag, but Self runs ahead.

Unmoving, it outruns pursuit. Out of Self comes the breath that is the life of all things. Unmoving, it moves; is far away, yet near; within all; outside all.

The Self is everywhere, without a body, without a shape, whole, pure, wise, all knowing, far shining, self-depending, all transcending; in the eternal procession assigning to every period it’s proper duty.

-From the Isha-Upanishad

***

The Self knows all, is not born, does not die, is not the effect of any cause; is eternal, self-existent, imperishable, ancient. How can the killing of the body kill Him?

He who thinks that he kills, he who thinks that He is killed, is ignorant. He does not kill nor is He killed.

The Self is lesser than the least, greater than the greatest. He lives in all hearts.

The individual Self and the universal Self, living in the heart, like shade and light, though beyond enjoyment, enjoy the result of action. All say this, all who know Spirit…

…Eternal creation is a tree, with roots above, branches on the ground; pure eternal Spirit, living in all things and beyond whom none can go; that is Self.

-From the Katha-Upansishad

***

There is nothing that is not Sprit. The personal self is the impersonal Spirit.

The Self is the lord of all; inhabitant of the hearts of all. He is the source of all; creator and dissolver of all things. There is nothing He does not know. He is not knowable by perception, turned inward or outward, nor by both combined. He is neither that which is known, nor that which is not known, nor is He the sum of all that which might be known. He cannot be seen, grasped, bargained with. He is undefinable, unthinkable, indescribable.

-From the Mandookya-Upanishad

***

This Self is nearer than all else; dearer than son, dearer than wealth, dearer than anything. If a man call anything dearer than Self, say that he will lose what is dear; of a certainty he will lose it; for Self is God [!]. Therefore one should worship Self as Love. Who worships Self as Love, his love never shall perish…

-From the Brihadaranyaka-Upanishad

***

In this body, in this town of Spirit, there is a little house shaped like a lotus. And in that house there is a little space. One should know what is there.

What is there? Why is it so important?

There is as much in that little space within the heart as there is in the whole world outside. Heaven, earth, fire, wind, sun, moon, lightning, starts; whatever is and whatever is not, everything is there.

If everything is in man’s body, every being, every desire, what remains when old age comes, when decay begins, when the body fails?

What lies in that space does not decay when the body decays, nor fall when the body falls. That space is the home of Spirit. Every desire is there. Self is there, beyond decay and death; sin and sorrow; hunger and thirst; His aim truth; His will truth.

-From the Chhandogya-Upanishad

Pax, Godspeed!

Chris Hancock, LCSW, ACMHP

www.therapyoutsidethebox.com

chris@therapyoutsidethebox.com

@therapyoutsidethebox

Franklin, TN

615.430.2778

Love Letter to Oneself

The following is a piece of writing from a client of mine. I’ve posted it here anonymously, with permission, love, and a fervent hope on both our parts that it inspires others to dig deep and access the core— the energy, compassion and limitless capacity for love and forgiveness (for self and others) that exists untouched and undamaged within each soul, regardless of what slings and arrows one has experienced. The author has been in weekly Integrative Counseling with me for almost a year, and supplemented her healing with a ketamine infusion course targeting mindbody pain and other debilitating symptoms of complex trauma, depression and anxiety. According to the client, the idea of writing a love (amends) letter to herself, or what she initially titled “My Remission and Love Letter to Myself,” came about spontaneously, inspired by her meditation efforts, meeting her Larger/True Self and many neglected ‘parts’ through intuitively-guided Internal Family Systems (IFS) work, as well as her awakening connection to The Divine, including her own divinity.

“I’m sorry that I’ve compromised my expression and bearing what I denied as a contentious weight and worth of myself in the thoughts and actions of what I had only seen in another, instead of recognizing it, was the I that I had made up.

I’m sorry that I’ve neglected my expression by not responding instantly to it, but instead reacting unconscious in it suppressed, while sitting in the septic of its disregard because of my own misunderstanding; the I that I had made up.

I’m sorry that I have avoided feelings. I’m sorry for not knowing the feeling and therefore was unable to acknowledge myself, left unseen. I’m sorry that I haven’t honored my ‘no,’ because I answered under a convoluted abstract, instead of giving purpose to its expression.

I continued to say yes when I meant no, mislead in fear I wouldn’t get the love from another when I AM the love— the yes and the no I need and that guides me all along my path.

I’m sorry for denying the lead, for dismissing the guide, for becoming angry before I spoke on behalf of its truth, for gaslighting its intention, for judging harshly its rightful anger, its rightful sadness, its rightful rage, and depriving it of the time it needed.

I’m sorry for micro managing my expression. I am sorry for becoming fixed on it and I viewed as wrong or as a problem to fix, compromising myself there. Swept up in it's anxiety.

I’m sorry for not following through, not being there when I needed myself too, and avoiding it by avoiding the parts of myself that I am.

I will hold the overwhelm now. I will see and comfort for the fist time, every time in the provisions consciousness holds in either work, whether in the light or the shadows, it is all good, it is all for me to see that I AM the space that surrounds me.

You are safe. You are seen. I love you. I am here. I am with you. I see you. I am the loving space that surrounds all parts. Whole self. Each part. I’m practicing. I’m seeing. Holding more while resisting less and it is all so beautiful.”

*If YOU are ready to begin YOUR healing journey and would benefit from an integrative / outside the box approach, visit me at Therapy Outside the Box or learn more about my services. Or email me at chris@therapyoutsidethebox.com, or call me directly at 615.430.2778.

*At the time of this posting I’m on a bit of a lengthy waitlist, but if we’re aligned to work together and you trust Divine timing, feel free to request to be added to the list!

PAX,

Chris Hancock, LCSW, ACMHP

Therapy Outside the Box

Franklin, TN

Kindness

Do you weep a little while reading this like I did?

Kindness

A poem by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

The Great Reset = Global Digital Dictatorship?

“They are going to turn your home, car, and your community into a digital concentration camp with absolute control along with the technology to enforce it”

—Catherine Austin Fitts

Does the above quote sound extreme? Like science fiction? Horror? Paranoid Fantasy?

I’d have been at least partially inclined to think so pre-2020. But with all that’s gone on in the world since then, arguably going all the way back to 9/11, and reflecting on things like Huxley’s Brave New World, the prescient work of Rudolph Steiner, or even what George Carlin always warned about through his subversive dark comedy, well, maybe not so extreme. Or fantastical.

I don’t spend much time ‘inside’ the box these days. I watch no current television or corporate mainstream news. The coverage of the politically weaponized pandemic has proven to me beyond any doubt that all corporate media, if it wasn’t already, has been captured and thoroughly corrupted by the agendas of the unholy alliance of three branches of government: Big Agriculture/Food, Big Pharma, and Big Tech. It’s now almost entirely propaganda curated to to manipulate, instill fear, divide, and manufacture compliance and consent. That’s the goal of all propaganda, of course. To add to it, internet mass tech-led censorship, shadow banning and kabuki theatre quotient is off the rails.

For me, the insane goings on in our consensus reality clown world, especially the geopolitical Global Dark Night we’re experiencing—archetypal and spiritual implications aside— has had to mostly take a back seat to staying grounded and focused on what matters: family, health, work, and my spiritual development and initiation odyssey. Yet, I follow along and know enough to be dangerous, as they say. I know whose views and opinions I trust, why I trust them, and why not so much others.

As I write this, in real time, most of the country seems more than happy to be dramatically distracted by the soon to be totally irrelevant Oscars’ slap heard ‘round the world. Meanwhile, as you know, Russia is slaughtering Ukrainians while robbing their own citizens of what little rights and sovereignty they had to begin with. And as you may not know, because there’s been little to no mainstream coverage, mass killings have been going on in Ethiopia. The threat of global food shortages are looming. At minimum there seems to be a renewed cold war mindset taking hold.

More to the point, just last week our current sitting president recently literally declared the oft-labeled conspiracy theory of the Globalist-led New World Order to be not only real, but upon us and in full swing. And that we, the U.S. must lead it. Remember when the ‘New World Order’ was like the reigning crown jewel of discredited conspiracy theories? Me too! Remember when UFOs were branded swamp gas? Pure fantasies of tin foil hatters and/or delusions of the desperate for attention, or the ‘mentally ill?’ Me too! Even the mystically-minded Jung ultimately chalked the phenomenon up to non-physical archetypal projections of the collective unconscious. And there’s probably something, some element of that at play. But can non-physical projections, figments, holograms, fantasies or illusions be tracked on radar like the military has been releasing?

In any case, it’s a New World alright.

And insofar as this NWO is [allegedly] synonymous with the Klaus Schwab/World Economic Forum-led Great Reset Globalist Agenda in which we will all ultimately “own nothing and like it” and have our every thought, feeling, decision and action monitored, scrutinized, and controlled, effectively severing what little remains of our own personal sovereignty, freedom, liberty and privacy… well, I’m paying a bit more attention here and there now.

Few can describe what led us here better than Richard Dolan, who is in my view a cosmically-inclined but utterly grounded genius and visionary. Although I’d say Dr. Peter Breggin, M.D., author of Toxic Psychiatry, long considered the ‘conscience of psychiatry’ is doing a good job opening eyes from his side of the street as well. He also sees a dystopian digital ID nightmare on the horizon. Breggin’s recent book COVID-19 and The Global Predators: WE ARE THE PREY (2021) is one shocking account. It’s all I could do to get through it. Unless you’ve already read Peter Gozsche M.D.’s Deadly Medicine and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma Has corrupted Medicine (2013) and already know the bitter truth about the complete hijacking and corruption of much if not most of our medical system and scientific establishment—from education to testing and research to diagnostics to billing to patient care— by the pharmaceutical industrial complex, and you’re ready for the morbidly ugly backstory of the recent pandemic and all the implication thereof, then I’m actually not recommending it. Can’t un-know how the sausages are made.

But should we be surprised?

“Nothing in this world works the way you think it does. Banks do not loan money. Governments are not empowered to protect you. The police department is not there to serve you. Institutions of higher learning, colleges and educational institutes are not there to educate you. The entire superstructure of the Western world is a combination of brilliantly put together and well-planned schemes to direct the minds of the people in such a way as to serve their masters.”

-Jordan Maxwell, Matrix of Power

Holy red pill.

In any case, back to Richard Dolan. He’s best known as an academic historian turned preeminent UFO researcher and author. But his scope has always been far wider than just the UFO enigma. In this video, he summarily breaks down the stages of humanity’s evolution, up through the emerging Great Reset that he reclassifies as The Fourth Stage: The Global Digital Dictatorship. I post it for anyone who may wish to get up to speed and/or expose themselves to a new alternative, expansive view of where we’ve been and where we seem to be headed, like it or not. Please view with your discernment, intuition and critical thinking up front.

So, beyond staying informed as possible via what I intuit to be non-corrupted sources, while I’m by nature eternally hopeful and possibilistic [despite the red pill pragmatic realism expressed here] I’m not sure what any one of us can do to alter the potentially more sinister giveth-and-taketh-away elements of the apparent globalist agenda descending upon us. Not to mention the darker aspects of the technological AI and Transhumanism agendas. That is, beyond the only thing we ever have total control over— praying for peace, for the forces of light, truth, and the highest good to prevail. And remaining mindfully and intentionally focused on our own healing, awakening, consciousness elevation, spiritual growth, embodying of love and compassion, and kindness to one another.

That’s first and foremost the priority for myself and most of those who work with me here in Therapy Outside the Box.

I hope, wish and pray the same for you, whoever you are, wherever you are.

“Find your inner self and fight the good fight”

-Richard Dolan

Godspeed.

Chris Hancock, LCSW, ACMHP

Franklin, TN

www.therapyoutsidethebox.com

@therapyoutsidethebox

615.430.2778.

Love as Practical Christianity/Love as Action

In this world hate never yet dispelled hate. Only Love dispels hate. This is the law. Ancient and inexhaustible”

Buddha

from an alternative source…

As a “chela,” (i.e. student on the [esoteric] spiritual path) I aim to follow where spirit/higher guidance leads me. As far as knowledge acquisition, lately that’s been further down the rabbit hole of the Ascended Masters. Specifically, the teachings of the rather obscure “Bridge to Freedom” dictations from the 1950’s, collected and published by the Ascended Master Teaching Foundation (AMTF) out of Mount Shasta, CA.

I’m currently being inspired by a book called The Seven Mighty Elohim Speaks: The Seven Steps to Precipitation, by one ‘Thomas Printz,’ a pen name for one of the Masters. In super short, the Elohim, mentioned in the Old Testament, are considered to be primordial beings of all creation, at the behest of The Divine. Precipitation is the original term/conception of what today is referred to as manifestation and/or law of attraction.

The dictations brought though in this book describes the ancient spiritual science of precipitation— the seven conditions/states of mind, feeling and attitude necessary to bring something-anything from idea-thoughtform into matter-form, just as the Elohim enacted the Seven Fold Plan of Creation of the universe as we know it, according to these teachings.

Being that we’ve found ourselves playing war games (Russia upon Ukraine) once again, and the mightiest forces of Truth and LOVE are the only thing that can save us, for those of us that seek first and foremost The Kingdom of God, and a spiritual solution, here’s part of a chapter that lit my heart up a little bit. My hope is that it will light yours up in kind.

Love as practcial christianity

“This morning I come as a messenger of God to bring to you the activities of Orion (Elohim of LOVE), and to give you some comprehension of LOVE as practical Christianity.

Precious hearts, it is not the law that one should remain in a state of negative harmlessness. That is not LOVE! LOVE is a very positive quality. To fulfill the law, one is required to be positively good. Would it be LOVE for one to stand on a river bank and watch a man drown? No! LOVE would plunge into the stream and bring the man out, while there was yet life in the body.

It was LOVE which took Lord Buddha from the glorious peace, freedom and opulence of his kingdom and made him walk the paths of the earth, trying to find a way to relieve his fellowmen from those distressing appearances of poverty and suffering which shocked his sensibilities. It was LOVE that kept him rising in consciousness, through sphere after sphere of God perfection, until he reached the very heart of creation itself. Then he returned to the limited appearance world and his own physical body, in order to bring, to his fellowmen, the truths which he had learned in those great heights.

After one’s consciousness had been enmeshed in the discord and limiting appearances of physical embodiment for so many ages, it takes great LOVE not to succumb to the beautiful peace of the inner spheres, after one has arrived there. Quite naturally, the tendency then is to just lie down in the first green pasture, saying “This is it!!”

It takes a great deal of Divine LOVE to desire to keep rising in consciousness, from realm to realm, pushing ever onward, until one has found the source of all truth, and then rest, even if just for a moment, on the bosom of the eternal Father. What LOVE it takes to deliberately determine to come back into this world of form, with its forbidding shadows, after having successfully made that journey, and felt the beautiful presence of God, Himself! It was positive LOVE which brought Buddha’s spirit back to Earth, through sphere after sphere of beautiful God Consciousness, back into the hot burning sand of India, to walk again (apparently like any other man), just to carry truth to others.”

love as action

“It was LOVE, precious children of God, which spurred Moses on to draw the reluctant people of Israel away from their flesh-pots of Egypt, in an endeavor to find their “Promised Land.” It was LOVE which made him walk across those deserts and, in the extremity of their need (part the Red Sea), which stood between the people and their protection they desired from Pharaohs' army, which followed them.

It was LOVE which took Moses up the side of Mt. Sinai, when the clouds of discontent, fear and lethargy of the Israelites had all but put out the fire of his vision. Sometimes, he knew not whether he was still a messenger of God, or whether he had become a victim of Fantasy! It was LOVE which held him on the pinnacle of that mountain, while God, in his great mercy, gave Moses the positive affirmations of truth, the Ten Commandments. Here he received them and cut the words, thereof, out of the very rock itself. These same Commandments have remained, at least as a portion of the law from God to man, ever since that day. However, through the shadowed consciousness of mankind, those commandments, representing the Divine law, have been distorted into the negative form of “Thou Shalt Not.”

It was the LOVE of those who stood with Moses, which upheld his arms at the time when, because of the very pull of gravity, he could no longer hold them up, himself, in his endeavors to magnetize the power of the Lord, to give people victory.

In Galilee, it was LOVE that enabled a young man (with a body of such perfection as had not been known since on the earth-plane and filled with a LOVE of springtime) to willingly lay that body upon a cross, submitting to the crucifixion. It was LOVE which burst the tomb asunder on Resurrection Morning and LOVE again that which enabled out beloved Jesus to make the visible ascension, in the presence of some five hundred people. It was the LOVE FOR GOD which enabled a man, who had a greater capacity for affection and friendship for any being than any being that mankind had yet known, that enabled him to renounce further association with his beloved mother and his loved ones, to answer the summons of the eternal Father— proving that the conscious ascension was possible for all!

After that ascension had taken place, it was a positive LOVE which carried Mary into Bethany with John, Peter and James, and it was LOVE which enabled them to establish there the unit which held the spiritual connection with beloved Jesus, through all that long period of thirty years and more, before Mary was called “Home.”

It is LOVE which brings Lord Michael (The Archangel) from his realm of perfection to serve in the psychic plane twenty hours out of every twenty four, as he has been doing for some years now. It is LOVE which brings the assistance of all the other Ascended Masters and Cosmic Beings into the atmosphere of Earth, to answer your calls. LOVE IS POSITIVE, CONSENTRATED ACTION, TO ASSIST MANKIND AT THE MOMRNT OF NEED—according to the receiving capacity of the lifestream which makes the call.

It is LOVE which sends certain lifestreams to the leper colony, joyously willing to give whatever assistance they can to the afflicted there. It is LOVE which makes the men or research work so persistently— often at considerable self-sacrifice—to bring forth those scientific findings which have proven to be of such assistance to the race. It is LOVE too which brings the comfort of convenience of your inventions into the use of man in his everyday life.

WITHOUT LOVE, NOTHING IS PERMANENTLY ACCOMPLISHED, without LOVE, the clearest vision retains but a cloudy vapor!

LOVE IS CONSTANCY UNDER THE MOST TRYING OF CIRCUMSTANCES AND ACTION AT THE MOMENT WHEN IT IS NEEDED MOST!

LOVE was signified by Abraham when he willingly laid Isaac upon the altar of sacrifice. That which was dearest to him, he offered to the Lord!

LOVE is the pouring forth of the fully gathered momentum of the good of your own lifestream for the good of all. Let lips be sealed which speak of LOVE if they cannot manifest that LOVE in action—in service—not mere words! It was LOVE which brought me here this morning and LOVE which brought you too, LOVE of God, LOVE of service, and LOVE of yourselves. All these entered into it and brought you here.”

Pax, Lux, Veritas,

Chris Hancock, LCSW, ACMHP

Franklin, TN

www.therapyoutsidethebox.com

615.430.2778

New Year, Zen Mind

Repost via Jeff Krasno’s Commune Commusings. I’ve always admired Marianne Williamson’s spiritual and sociopolitical conviction, passion, outspokenness, and dedicated embodiment of the core concepts put forth in Course in Miracles (a channeled text, incidentally). My own view has evolved away from the contracted classic spiritual position of ego/fear vs. love binary, in favor of a Multiplicity of Mind/IFS-informed view of the ego as a collection of protective parts. Parts in need of understanding, unburdening and integration with the Larger Self. As opposed to vilification, devaluation, or eradication, as some spiritual traditions still espouse. Nevertheless, I align with this topical message, especially the call to return to love; to a D.T. Suzuki-like Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind state. And I think she’s right. In this current climate, we do need a fucking miracle. And that starts on the internal, individual level. Enjoy.

New Year, Zen Mind

by Marianne Williamson



In the opening weeks of the New Year, our holiday-addled brains can take a moment to rest and reset. The most powerful somethings emerge from a space of no-thing; like the empty rice bowl often referred to in Eastern philosophies, it is a space left empty for the Tao to fill. 

The empty rice bowl is what in Zen Buddhism is referred to as the “beginner’s mind” — when ideas and images from the past are let go, thus making way for synapses and connections in the present that would not otherwise be possible. “Be ye as a little child” is much the same concept, with the consciousness of children so powerful precisely because they have no past to drag along with them. They know that they don’t know, which makes them teachable.

There is a saying often heard in AA: “Your best thinking got you here.” Western civilization might want to look at that. With all the geniuses who have lived among us, all the enlightened philosophies and laws that have been passed, all the think tanks and institutions of higher learning that exist — and yet we are still inches from the cliff. 

Western materialism and scientific thinking have not in fact delivered humanity from our worst nightmares; it has relieved us of some of them, to be sure, but it has created others. The naive idealism which led us to believe that external powers would be the saviors of humanity has crashed against the wall of ultimate reality, challenging us now to radically rethink. 

No matter how smart we are – no matter how scientifically or technologically advanced, and no matter how much financial or political power we have – without humility we are misguided, without ethics we are blind, and without love we are doomed.

So what do we do? What trick of the outer world does anyone think is going to save us now?

What’s going to save us is a more evolved state of consciousness — a shift in our thinking that takes us beyond the judgment, blame, fear and negativity that stand like shadows before the light. In A Course in Miracles it says it’s not our job to seek for love, but to seek within ourselves for all the barriers we hold against its coming. That makes all the difference in the world, because miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. When we withhold love, however, we deflect the miracle.

The only antidote to the myriad crises of our times – the hopelessness, cynicism, anger, and nihilism; the environmental degradation, systemic injustices and possible paths to fascism – is a miracle. It’s an inside rather than an outside shift that will expand our awareness, rearrange circumstances on our behalf, and pave the way for new beginnings. It says in A Course in Miracles that “Miracles are everyone’s right, but purification is necessary first.” What we most need to purify are the thoughts that hold us back.

The most powerful thing we can do as we start this new year is to clear away our impediments to love. That means doing the work, and the work can be messy and difficult. 

Who have we not forgiven, including ourselves? 
What are our character defects that make us obnoxious to others and self-sabotaging to ourselves? 
What are the tricks we play that keep us small and victimized? 
Where does our disengagement and complacency make us unconscious participants in the downward trends in our society? 
Where are we selfish, needy, controlling, angry, arrogant…? You get the picture.

This work done by enough of us on a personal, individual level is the path that will lead to global transformation. Only a critical mass of those who love deeply can counteract the power of those who do not love at all.

Love is the natural intelligence that runs the universe. So where there is love, life works pretty well. Things proceed in alignment with the same intelligence that turns acorns into oak trees and embryos into babies. When love is withheld, the system gets jammed and intelligence malfunctions. It still operates, but in an inverted, diseased way. Only when love returns – through atonement and forgiveness – can nature self-correct. “All hands on deck” is better stated “All minds on deck” right now. Each of us affects the whole, with every thought we think and every action that we take.

No one person, piece of legislation, or action of any kind is going to turn things around now. Human civilization is a very, very big ship that is heading in the wrong direction; it will take a massive operation to turn it around. That operation is the collective zeitgeist of our time: billions of people all over the planet now responding to a call that is coming from deep within all of us to do things a different way, to think and be as we have not thought or been before, to let go the past and let the future be made new. And with love.

That’s a lot of work we have to do this month, and nothing will help us do it more than spending enough time reflecting and doing nothing. In the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., “We’re materially passive but we’re spiritually active.”

So must we be now.

 

This essay is a reprint from Marianne’s substack, where paid subscribers receive daily meditations, monthly zoom calls, and more articles. Learn more at mariannewilliamson.substack.com.  
 

• • •

Marianne Williamson started lecturing on A Course in Miracles in 1983, and since that time has written 14 books (including four #1 NYTimes bestsellers), founded the non-profit organizations Project Angel Food and The Peace Alliance, worked extensively with people dealing with life-challenging illnesses and other critical situations, counseled hundreds of individuals and organizations, and been a political activist. In 2020 she ran for President of the United States.

J.O.Y.

Are you familiar with this traditional evangelical Christian teaching? I was not. Not this specific one. That is, until a previous client—a remarkable, intelligent, loving, caring individual who recently came back to begin bravely unearthing the roots of early religious trauma brought it to my attention.

I’m sure much has been written on it elsewhere. I haven’t looked. I just felt moved immediately upon hearing about it to present one therapist’s view of how teachings like this can easily set the stage for foundational interpersonal and emotional problems, not to mention spiritual confusion and disillusionment.

While I’d not heard of this particular concept, the essence of it— Self last in particular—is the scaffolding behind much of the psychological, emotional and interpersonal damage and toxicity I’ve seen throughout the years of facilitating recovery from the effects of oppressive religious dogma. Most from the indoctrination of uber-conservative Christian churches (Southern Baptist, Church of Christ), some from isolated insular religious (Amish, Mennonite, etc) communities, and a few from bona fide non-Christian cults (Children of God, Scientology).

Ya learn something knew (almost) every day.

But before I go any any farther, let me be clear. This is NOT about disparaging, judging or condemning anyone’s faith, system, path, or practice. There will be no indictment of Jesus or Christianity.

My background

I was raised Methodist. And liberally so. I’m fortunate that my insatiable questioning, curiosity, and truth seeking from an early age was at least tolerated. Well, except by my maternal Grandmother, who, God love her, would always just say “It’s Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and that’s it!!.” In any case, the tolerance otherwise was a very good thing, because nothing was going to put an end to my questioning. That’s for damn sure.

I was also blessed in my later twenties to have a mentor-mentee relationship with a quiet but brilliant, naturally compassionate assistant Methodist minister who turned out to be just the non-conforming Zen Universalist in sheep’s clothing I needed to encourage my seeking without rejecting or abandoning anything in my ever-evolving worldview. Equally as blessed was I to meet my therapist-mentor at about the same time— a former Franciscan priest with a resoundingly Gnostic/Universalistic heart and expansive Interfaith outlook.

My own spiritual quest, studies and many mystical experiences have only encouraged me to follow my intuition to an inclusive view that celebrates the unifying thread of the major and many lessor known philosophical, spiritual and religious schools of thought. More recently, my personal post-DNOTS/Awakening/spiritual initiation is guided by an assortment of guides, masters, saints, sages and cosmic culture collectives all aligned with larger Christ Consciousness. Since the onset of all this, I pray the Lord’s Prayer and Hail Mary Prayer, a few Gnostic mantras, and a custom surrender-in-service type decree, and recite a set of I AM ‘Violet Flame’ decrees nearly every day. I wear a Maltese Cross and a Mother Mary pendant around my neck —a reminder of the Divine mercy, guidance, love and support I received in my darkest hours.

Would I call myself a Christian? That’s what many would want to know, down here in the buckle of the belt anyway. The answer is yes and no. Yes because I recognize The Christ/Christos as archetypal Divine Master, Prophet, Wayshower of Truth, and Liberator. So yes, but more so in the gnostic/esoteric than the traditional (and what I view as limited) canonical sense. And no because I generally oppose labels and categorization especially in the spiritual realm. I couldn’t authentically identify as a Christian (neither did Jesus, the passively radical, peacefully anti-authoritarian Jewish Messiah that he was) to the exclusion of any other genuine, life-affirming path or teaching I align with. In my heart, I could be just as much a Catholic, a Buddhist, a Taoist, a Spiritualist, a Theosophist, a Universalist. Yet, I’m not one of these, exclusively. I see all p,aths as ‘fingers pointing to the moon,’ none the moon itself. J Krishnamurti taught that ‘truth is a pathless land.’ I’m with that. It resonates as objective truth in my heart and soul.

In short, in the immortal words of the Doobie Brothers, “Jesus is just alright with me, Jesus is just alright, oh yeah!”

J.O.Y.

Okay, so if you’re still with me, let’s get to it.

Jesus First. Others second. Yourself last.

Not rocket science. I understand the intention. To teach the Christian value of placing ones focus, love and heart on/with Jesus, above all. To place others before and above oneself—ostensibly, to deflate the selfish ego and maximize ones self-less attention in service to our fellow man, grounded in the ‘shirt off the back’ ethos exemplified by particular teachings and examples of the biblical Christ.

On the surface, perhaps, a beautiful idea. Maybe?

Now, any teaching, we could argue, takes on a life of its own beyond the creation and original essence of teaching itself. Similar to a songwriter’s song. Until it falls on any other ears and merges with the idiosyncratic subjectivity of the listeners psyche and assignment of meaning, it’s the artist’s and the artist’s alone. Vacuum sealed in a container of the actual inspiration and true original meaning. Once released, all bets are off. In a sense, the listening public now owns, adopts, and assigns an infinite number of meanings and applications to that piece of art.

So a teaching— in this case a religious/philosophical one— like an original song, painting or other work of art, is of course wide open to interpretation and practical application. How it’s understood has much to do with the intent, delivery, the larger context in which the teaching is adopted and delivered, as well as the expectation(s)- real or perceived, spoken or unspoken- in putting the teaching forth. As well as the receiver/students receptivity, psychological and emotional makeup, and what he or she understands as to where the teaching originates from, what its about, how it is to be applied, and probably most especially in the case of evangelical Christiandom, what the rewards and consequences of either living out or failing to live out the teaching would be.

selfless or self-less? (anything but “selfish”)

A Secure Sense of Self.

Arguably, the goal of all good therapy, inside or outside the box as it were, is to assist in fostering this. Yet so few of us have it coming in, so well does culture and the world at large begin eroding it from birth onward. And many religious institutions and teachings, well-meaning as many are, only aid and abet this erosion, I’ve found.

One of the most common themes in my work, literally from day one, has been around emotional and relational boundaries. Boundaries in the way are a natural outgrowth of the health or lack of health of our secure sense of Self. As I’ve spoken about before, the very first words my very first adult client ever spoke to me was: “I can tell you what my problem is. I can’t say no.” I tell you I’ll never forget this.

Women, in my experience, especially struggle to identify, set, communicate and maintain healthy, solid boundaries. Meaning, knowing where they end and the other begins. Where their responsibility lies. The struggle to be responsible to and not for others; to discern the difference between healthy helping/giving and dysfunctional enabling/disempowering. I see more women than men struggle with this for two reasons: 1 Women come to therapy more than men (more courage!) and 2 Women are socialized and culturally conditioned to be selfless / self-less / self-denying. Traditional patriarchal religious teachings on the whole do nothing to offset this. More often, they reinforce it, if only by omission.

The individual, my client, who brought J.O.Y. to my attention is a good case in point, but might as well be a composite since the overall dynamics are so common.

J.O.Y. unmasked

My client, having been raised within an evangelical philosophy and community in the south, in a home marked by paternal alcoholism, apparent narcissistic patriarchal, traditional ‘kept woman’ dynamics, and all around dysfunctional family roles, the church was the focal point of my client’s world most of their childhood.

The father, who was a type of lay leader for much of my client’s childhood, was the quintessential roost ruling, heavy handed king of the household with a penchant for getting let go of just about every job or position he had, usually for being too difficult to get along with. He was a “do as I say not as I do” espousing, behind the scenes hard drinking partier who set impossible standards and regularly scolded and invalidated my client for being “too much,” too emotional” and “asking too many questions.”

My client’s one sibling, a younger brother, appeared to inhabit the golden child role—something of a Jungian puer eternus (‘eternal child’) who seemingly magically escaped the critical eye and flew under the radar. My client was clearly the scapegoat, or, in older family therapy speak, the “IP” (Identified Patient). That’s the child in the dysfunctional system who receives the projection of the all the marriage and the family’s denied and disowned problems, along with the blame. Not a fun role. Although all such roles suck, because they’re all false facsimiles of who the child really is.

Hence, the roots of having no secure sense of Self. How would anyone even have a shot at this when they’re not even seen?

Religion appeared to be used in this household in all the worst ways. As a ‘out’ for the parents with respect to their denial, hypocrisy and harmful parenting, as a tool of coercion, a punishment in the classic ‘you’ll go to hell’ type of way, and a way to reinforce/justify the limiting family roles, especially that of the Mom/wife and my client.

And it sounds like J.O.Y was the go-to instrument of shame. So frequent were early instances of my client demonstrating appropriate reasonable desire, want or need—any indication of a thought of Self (before Jesus or others) that it would be met with the J.O.Y. stick, so to speak. Before long, my client learned what any child, pre teen or teen would eventually learn when a teaching like this is routinely misapplied in a psychologically abusive manner:

I don’t matter. I’m selfish. My needs will never be met because I’m unworthy. I’m a failure. I’m unlovable (by God/Jesus and others). All that’s important is pleasing others—that’s where my worth lies.

The mom herself appeared to have deep, religiously-informed esteem and security deficits, subservient and codependent, with underlying depression and anxiety problems that only further reinforced her sense of brokenness. This set the stage for a pattern of denying indiscretions on the husbands part—overlooking replete with self-blame and recrimination which funneled in part back to her own perceived failing to uphold her duty to perform her wifely and householder functions. Church doctrine and the good old boy evangelical system likely contributed to the brushing under the rug and providing of cherry picked scriptural counsel that ensured full responsibility on the husbands part for his actions would never take place, as well as spiritual chastisement for the wife’s sense of core unworthiness.

Almost needless to say, the marriage eventually ended via an affair. And with the addition of the new partner— a classic alcoholic enabler in her own right— the Father/abandonment wound on the part of my client would proceed to be ripped open and salted again and again throughout early adulthood.

rescuing and re-enactment

As mentioned, this client worked with me years back, but we never got much into the early religious trauma. As I recall, our work then centered largely around the effects of the fathers hypocrisy, mistreatment, emotional bait and switch abandonment, my client’s fraught friendships, and professional discernment themes.

Now ready to put the other pieces together, the J.O.Y concept had began reverberating in my client’s head, as if Higher Self were offering a skeleton key to unlock the secrets of the painfully distorted ideas of what being a sovereign, valuable person looks like. And what being in healthy relationship means, what it requires, what equality and true reciprocity looks like, and what a healthy partner is and should aspire to offer in return.

While this client long ago essentially turned away from organized religion, it was replaced, as it so often is, with a ever-evolving SBNR (spiritual but not religious) metaphysical outlook. Yet psychologically, emotionally, and relationally, J.O.Y had been running things on auto pilot since the get go. Specifically the Others first, Yourself last.

You could say, as my client now would, that J.O.Y., or the way it was administered, was a set up to becoming a professional level, unpaid rescuer.

Every one of the client’s romantic partnerships—from first serious love interest on—characteristically became some version of lopsided, dramatic, emotionally and verbally abusive, resulting ultimately in a sense of abandonment: a reflection and most common outcome of the core unworthiness wound (modeled by and absorbed from mother) and reinforced through the heavy handed, shaming way in which the J.O.Y. teaching was administered. The denial of needs, the lack of clear personal self-value, core relational values, and lack of boundaries led the client again and again to select the familiar: emotionally immature, dishonest, often substance-abusing partners (mirror: father) all too willing to take, to use, to siphon off every ounce of codependent energy in whatever form (sex, money, shelter, various forms of ‘help’) was willingly offered.

The last two partners, self-described polyamorists or ethical non-monogamists, appeared to haven no discernable ethics to be found. Giving authentic, integrous polyamorists/ENM’s everywhere a bad name (yes, they exist), both partners in their own ways evidenced callous disregard for the client whenever any objection would be raised as to their not walking the talk. And in both cases there appeared to be an unspoken expectation that my client agree to simply overlook or put up with anything she didn’t like, thus re-enacting the original patriarchal narcissistic patterns with father, father’s pattern with mother, and remaining true to the problematic essence of J.O.Y: putting Self last.

The rescuing concept, once my client was ready to dig into it, and now with the beginning to understand the roots, hit like a ton of bricks. With this last relationship as a catalyst—seeing the toxic dynamics in clearer light, and more unable to stomach giving in again and again to manipulative, albeit covert, requests for rescue, in this case financially by an otherwise able-bodied adult whose admitted priority was partying, seemed to break the camels back. Righteous anger!

For the first time recently, able to see and truly discern the difference between healthy helping and dysfunctional enabling, with abandonment fear in tow, my client found the will to test out the responsible to, not for concept. As a stop gap measure, we identified some ways of helping/giving distinct from rescuing, more along the lines of helping another learn to fish rather than repeatedly catching them fish, as the old Christian parable illustrates.

We’re now starting to incorporate intuitively-guided Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS) to assist the parts of her most directly impacted/burdened by the J.O.Y-related abuse burdens and concurrent dysfunctional beliefs.

But the joy-less rescuing tendency runs deep, as this tendency does in most who unconsciously employ it as an attempted, yet bound to fail, solution to childhood attachment wounding. In this case even beyond intimate relationships and friendships and into race-based activism efforts that, for all their purity of intention, are laced with the same shirt off the back victim-rescuer dynamics that often ensure similar dysfunctional patterns and outcomes. Why? Because, in my experience, anyone treated like a victim in need of rescue, as much as they may consent and allow it, unless they’re wholly actively involved in helping themselves, they ultimately resent it. That resentment turns to persecution of the rescuer, who then in turn feels victimized i.e. “for all I did for you, this is the thanks I get?” Thus completes the Drama Triangle (see: Stephen Karpman) in action. And around and around it goes.

Ultimately, what pulls us onto the triangle is the unwillingness to assume complete responsibility for ourselves, and hold others (adults) responsible for the same. When we’ve been trained or indoctrinated to see others as helpless/victims (usually a projection of our own unhealed helplessness/victimization) with the help of teachings like J.O.Y. that often teach and reinforce our own essential unworthiness and ‘selfishness,’ we’re especially ripe for living our lives and relationships on the triangle.

wwjS?

What WOULD Jesus say about J.O.Y?

Would Jesus think it sound? In integrity? Reflective of what’s in the highest and best good for all? Reflective of Absolute Truth?

In the course of mentalizing about this concept and writing this post, I submitted the query to my own Higher Guidance. (More about how this came about can be found here). For what’s it’s worth, all such inquires on my part are approached with care, humility, reverence, and the surrendering of all ego based, conscious, unconscious and personal agendas, biases, expectations and attachments to outcome.

The answer? To each of the above questions it was a “no.”

I then tested my own hunch about a revision that might be more sound, integrous, in the highest and best good, and reflective of Absolute Truth.

“G.Y.O.” God first. Yourself second. Others last.

(Doesn’t have the same neat ring as J.O.Y. I admit).

The answer? “Yes.” To each of the same queries: “Yes.” Are you surprised? I’m not.

Two personal principles at play in my own revision here:

One is, Paramahansa Yogananda’s frequent admonition: “GOD FIRST!” which I’ve always loved and resonated with. Because he truly lived it. His whole life was a testament to it (See: Autobiography of a Yogi).

It also reminds me of Apostle Paul’s admonition to “…pray without ceasing…”

Jesus himself also either taught or co-signed concepts like ‘Seek Ye First The Kingdom of God,” “The Kingdom of God is With You” and “Be Still and Know that I AM God” while himself essentially refusing to be personally deified.

And didn’t Christ offer plenty of examples from his own life of exceptional personal boundaries, of not allowing oneself or others to be taken advantage of, and even the appropriate use of force? (See: flipping tables over and throwing money changers out of the temple, calling out the Pharisees as hypocrites, etc).

The other is the oxygen mask principle. The idea that we cannot safely, truly help another unless and until we have helped ourselves. That we cannot pour (give) from an empty vessel. When we do, all parties lose.

So, what if it was God First. Yourself next. Others last?

Of course, putting oneself before others can be taken to unhealthy extremes of judgement and uncharitable-ness. That’s not what I’m suggesting with this revision. But in addition to the above, if we are all a spec of the Divine, a drop in the ocean and an ocean in a drop—and if we are all part of an interconnected, inseparable whole of the mind of God, then to deny or subjugate our own Selfhood—our essential worth— our own hierarchy of personal needs— is to deny our own divinity; to deny the whole.

I believe all of our overall emotional and interpersonal health and well being as spiritual beings having a human experience could stand to benefit greatly from this re-ordering. Once we’re dialed in on our fundamental worth, solid in our boundaries, clear on our values and sense of purpose, we’re then in a prime position to more fully inhabit our gift to the world. And to go forth serving our fellow man without rescue compulsion, undue self-sacrifice, or self-abandonment i.e self-betrayal.

If YOU are looking for an ‘outside the box’ Nashville Therapist or a Therapist in Franklin, TN to help you face religious trauma, deconstruct or deprogram from destructive religious dogma and/or cult indoctrination, my Integrative Counseling and/or my Spiritual Support specialty might be just the thing.

I’m also available via Telehealth/Secure Video from virtually anywhere in the world (provided we can make the time zone differences work).

Visit me at: Therapy Outside the Box or contact me directly at chris@therapyoutsidethebox.com or call me @ 615.430.2778.

Peace, love, and G.Y.O.!

Chris Hancock, LCSW, ACMHP

Franklin, TN

Spiritual Bypassing: An Alternate Take

Much has been written already on the topic of spiritual bypassing. Not reinventing the wheel here for sure. But it’s been on my mind a lot lately. That’s usually a sign something’s wanting to come through about it. Let’s see what that is…

To my knowledge, the phenomenon was originally spotted (framed as Spiritual Materialism) by the Buddhist master Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche in his classic work Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism. And transpersonal writer and healing practitioner Robert Augustus Masters offered an honest treatment in his book Spiritual Bypassing: When Spirituality Disconnects Us from What Really Matters.

Masters also elsewhere humorously referred to spiritual bypassing as “Avoidance in Holy Drag.” I howled when I heard that.

In any case, Masters wrote:

“When transcendence of our personal history takes precedence over our intimacy with our personal history, spiritual bypassing is inevitable. To not be intimate with our past- to not be deeply and thoroughly acquainted with our conditioning and its originating factors keeps it undigested and unintegrated, and therefore very much present.”

Meanwhile, the term spiritual bypassing is said to have been actually coined by author and Buddhist meditation teacher John Wellwood in the 80’s who described it as:

“…a tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks.”

Spiritual bypassing therefore a form of denial, describing the way that we can essentially deceive ourselves into using spirituality to separate us from honestly feeling our emotions, and employ various aspects of spirituality in defending and deflecting from our faults and shadows. So it’s essentially what the term implies— an [unconscious] attempt to spiritualize away our emotions, internal conflicts, maladaptive character traits, compulsions or addictions, or our larger physical and relational real world experience— the boots on the ground problems in living we all must contend with here in earth school.

While there’s really not much new to add definitionally, or descriptively, as with almost everything, there are differing lenses in which to view and attempt to understand it.

(Later, I’ll off a view through the lens of Multiplicity/Polypsychism).

I should note that some aligned with the new age/lightworker community have argued, perhaps rightly, that the term itself— especially when hoisted upon others— is merely a judgment. Nothing more. Fair. But that’s just the surface. The tip of the iceberg. Because insofar as all judgments of others are in essence projected self-judgement, and the identification and exploration of what’s being held in contempt and/or disowned (and therefore ripe for projection) is the entirely of the berg underneath the water line—and the where the real opportunity for healing and integration begins.

Composite case example: ‘The Penultimate Buddhist’

There’s an anecdote of one self-proclaimed staunch, militant Buddhist (as oxymoronic as that may seem). Someone who displayed a reflexive habit of frequently injecting their seriously spiritual Buddhist self-identity into all conversations, and developed a reputation over time for being sharply, harshly critical of others who claimed, practiced, or spoke about Buddhism in any manner they perceived to be somehow inferior (clue) to their [ungrounded, grandiose] image as the measuring stick of what it means to be a true or real Buddhist.

Long story short, sources would have it that one day someone of erudite status within the particular Buddhist tradition they aligned with spotted and pointed out this toxic trait directly to them. It was done so in a way that was compassionate yet direct, incisive yet fair, and that encouraged fearless self-examination and transmutational exorcism of the internal source of the apparent need to act as the self-appointed “Buddhism Police,” as evidenced by this compulsive ‘calling out’ others with a gross lack of compassion. Something especially curious given that cultivation and demonstration of compassion is such an essential, revered quality in the philosophy and practice of all schools of Buddhism.

It appeared, as the story goes, that this quantum karmic cause and effect schooling landed so hard that they soon after wholly renounced Buddhism, under the apparent guise of no longer needing to align with [i.e. ostensibly suddenly transcending] any formalized tradition, philosophy or school of thought, reverting to a pathless, generalized agnosticism of sorts. And while there’s merit and wisdom in any sincerely arrived position of ‘no middle man required,’ this is considered a textbook psychospiritual case study of shame-based, emotionally driven, hostile reactionary throwing out the baby/neurotic solution to the pain of imposter-like exposure; of being faced with and having to own years of long-projected shadow-driven bypass (and all that it was masking) in action.

Had there been just a wee bit of felt access to internal security in the tenuous sense of spiritual identity, and a modicum of pre-existing esteem and self-compassion, this would have been a golden, true awakening-level opportunity for transformation into a more genuinely secure, relaxed, flexible, life-affirming personal spiritual odyssey— one more stably aligned with Buddhist tradition and practices, the beginning of a quiet confidence, and probably more of a “live and let live” harmonious interplay with fellow spiritual travelers.

Though it may appear to be, this anecdote itself is no casting of judgment. Rather, an albeit extreme case illustration of the curious yet common ways in which many a spiritual aspirant—from the newbie to the ‘fully enlightened’ master guru— subtlety (or not so) can become seduced and ultimately captured by the insidious lure of spiritual bypassing— as a protective psycho-emotional phenomenon. Just think of the numerous master yogis and spiritual teachers accused and often found guilty of perpetrating abuse of power crimes, usually of a sexual nature, upon their own disciples. The complex thirst for power/domination, the lust impulse, our very own sexual nature, when denied/repressed (or “exiled”) with the support of both cultural and spiritual taboo, are common fodder for spiritualization bypass attempts. And unfortunately wakes of victims are behind to recover from the wreckage.

Now, we all deny shit. We all project. We’re hard-wired for it, it seems. And we all judge, on the thought level at least. Full stop. And haven’t we’ve all engaged in at least a little though doth protest too much behavior, that which thinly veils— until it fails and ultimately reveals— our underlying self-doubt and insecurity in reference to that which is being so hotly protested?

Sometimes our projections and judgments latch on to the most unlikely of things, appearing in the most paradoxical, even downright *seemingly hypocritical of ways. Reinforcing once again, our utter humanity, including that which may be so ornately adorned in “holy drag” cannot mask forever. *And I say seemingly, because all hypocrisy, all hypocritical positions and attitudes existing within a person can be understood and reconciled when viewed simply as parts or subpersonalities maintaining extreme, polarized positions within the individual Self-System. (More on this later).

As one of my early professors taught, absolutely anything and everything can be used as a mechanism of defense; of self-protection. Even spirituality, spiritual identity, spiritual allegiance, spiritual pursuit, spiritual status, spiritual attainment, spiritual accomplishment— right down to the most simple, private spiritual practices themselves.

personal example

During the first wave of my spiritual emergence from the murky depths of my Dark Night of the Soul experience some years back, not long after the blistering energetic darkness-piercing Violet Flame infusion I received from my apparent Ascended Master gateway guide during a surrender-fueled meditation one day, I started to recognize that a part of me was trying desperately to latch on and ride that wave of bliss right into unearned, unintegrated transcendence, never to have to be bothered with the workaday world again.

In fact, the first video podcast I did (on a platform that no longer exists), when I went back and watched, showed it to me starkly. I was excited, riding the wave. And while coherent, I was clearly not fully grounded, half in the clouds. In a state of what in Transpersonal Psychology would be called ‘Transpersonal Elation.’ A bypass attempt on the part of some part of me was in full force effect.

Three years and many more mystical events and happenings notwithstanding, here I am. Still in the body. Awaken-ing, but far from enlightened. Just living, loving, consulting, providing therapy, receiving therapy, succeeding, failing, boxing training, communing with nature, meditating, surrendering, decreeing and initiating each and every day. Waxing on, waxing off. And better for it. Because, there is no bypass. No shortcuts. No ultimately successful ones anyway.

The longer we remain in the grips of a part of us bent on bypassing our normal everyday pain, responsibilities, normal human needs and desires, the heavier the lifting on the other side. And the longer the road to the heightened self-awareness, peace, emergence, transcendence, transformation, Shangri-La, or wherever it is we most hope for.

These are the kinds of things I help people with, along with psychedelic preparation and integration (important to avoid bypassing-ready parts of ourselves!) and the exploration and integration of all manner of mystical and non-ordinary experiences in my Spiritual Support specialty called Support for Extraordinary Experience (SEE).

signs and signals

How do we know if we are, or at risk of, spiritual bypassing?

On the most obvious surface level, maybe by and through the level of ferocity, rigidity or righteousness with respect to our spiritual views, practices, or identity. The more fierceness, humorless seriousness, the more inflexibility, defensiveness, need to explain, pronounce and proclaim, the more social imaging, grandstanding, sense of specialness and/or to the degree we become intolerant of others who may question, think, act or believe differently, the more there is, likely, bypassing at play.

Likewise, the more we might be ungrounded, not in our body/disembodied, floating up above it all, tending toward denying and discounting our worldly day to day needs, and striving to literally transcend [rather than befriend, integrate, transmute] our human faults, frailties, sensitivities, foibles, and problems— we might be well on the way to the airy fairly bypass express train, only to arrive at gate number rude awakening.

How else might we know?

For sure, through our projections. Our judgements. Specifically, by what we’re hotly reactive to in and about others.

An old saying in recovery is if you spot it you got it. More to the point, if you spot it and you’re immediately and intensely reactive to it, ya probably got it. Meaning what we’re reactive to is ours denied. Our issue being projected.

We are crazy, complex creatures, are we not?

modern spin

I look at many things through the lens of Multiplicity of Mind/Personality. This is the philosophical and psychological perspective that we are, paradoxically, both one and many; that we all have a Self (i.e. Larger Self, Authentic Self, True Self) and subpersonalities, or parts, as we call it in Internal Family Systems Therapy, or IFS.

Historically this view has been grossly misunderstood, stigmatized and psychiatrically pathologized. Fortunately, that’s changing, albeit slowly.

In any case, some parts are young, vulnerable child parts (exiles). Some are protectors (managers) of those young parts and our Larger Self. Other parts (firefighters) snap us into extreme action (dissociation, substance abuse, spending sprees, compulsive spending, etc) when our internal systems threatens emotional overload, so to speak. (In our case example above, a ‘firefighter’ part likely would have initiated the face-saving denouncement of Buddhism, ostensibly in a effort to keep the extreme burdens and beliefs that young, vulnerable exiled parts were carrying from overwhelming the system, that normal protector parts were beginning to fail in their task of keeping exiled).

In IFS, anything that’s not the Self (characterized by the qualities of calmness, clarity, curiosity, compassion, creativity, connectedness, and courage, for example) is a part. Meaning, when we feel much of the energy of Self, then our Self is driving the bus. When we feel a lot of anything other than qualities of Self (anger, shame, anxiety, sadness, etc), then the exiled part of us carrying those burdens for us are driving the bus, obscuring our sense of Self, and therefore, our connection and embodiment of our seat of consciousness, soul, or true spiritual core.

So can a part— a protective part of us— hijack our however otherwise innocent and pure spiritual intent, behavior, practices, or spiritually-based worldly identity in the service of protecting us from encountering another part of us that’s carrying a heavy load of something unpleasant, or inducing us to engage a behavior that would be say contrary to our idealized spiritual identity? You bet. And this is often precisely the internal psychic mechanism behind the bypass itself.

But our parts are not to blame. All parts are just doing their job. In fact, in this way of thinking, nothing and no one is to blame.

‘no bad parts’ / ‘all parts welcome’

This stance is what I love about the IFS model and approach. It takes this stance unapologetically and without exception that there are no bad parts of us. Of anyone. Just parts whose pain, burdens, and roles in the psyche/system are not yet understood. Parts who may be frozen in time, playing extremely polarized roles within the system, and performing extreme protective functions, even in highly destructive ways.

But no matter what a part feels, believes, or is trying to do for us (always a positive intent) they are essentially good. Once accessed and once their story is told, all parts and what they’re trying to do ultimately makes sense. Then they can be helped to unload the burdens of the old pain and beliefs they carry and be guided in adopting new, more up to date roles in our system in service of the Larger Self.

Such as in the case example cited above, a part that has initiated spiritual bypass with the hopes of steering us clear of other parts carrying serious pain can, like any part, be helped to unload, take on a more functional, harmonious role with other parts as well. That way, the spiritual pursuit, and spiritual practices can be more cleanly engaged in the service of grounded transpersonal awareness, awake-ness and integrated elevation.

Are YOU seeking to cut through your spiritual roadblocks? Have you recognized a tendency toward spiritual bypassing, or a pattern of avoidance in general on a level that’s thwarting your larger growth goals? Take heart! These are just parts of you trying to protect and help you (albeit not in the most big-picture helpful way). Let’s get to know them, help them unburden, and take on newer roles aligned with Self.

If you’re seeking an integrative, transpersonal, psychospiritually-oriented Nashville Therapist, or a Therapist in Franklin, or, if you’d like to consult with me via Telehealth-Video from virtually anywhere, visit me at: Therapy Outside the Box … or email me at: chris@therapyoutsidethebox.com …or call me directly @ 615.430.2778.

Peace, Love, and Spiritual Integration,

Chris Hancock, LCSW, ACMHP

Franklin, TN

"Shadow Work:" A Modern Take

“Everyone carries a shadow. the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions.”

”Shadow is that hidden, repressed for the most part, inferior and guilt-laden personality whose ultimate ramifications reach back into the realm of our animal ancestors.”


C.G. Jung

Most would agree that the great Carl Jung did much to popularize the western understanding of the “shadow.” Yet the concept itself is ancient. It has timeless eastern/esoteric spiritual and shamanic roots that Jung was well-acquainted with.

Jung’s own ‘confrontation with the unconscious’ engaged with gusto throughout his now much better understood dark night of the soul/descent into madness trials with the release of the Red Book shines the light, so to speak, on the depth of commitment to understanding and integrating his own shadow/unconscious contents.

Fascinating too that even though as we’re only now entering what’s being called the age of embodiment, Jung himself spoke (such as in the above quote) way back when to the necessity of not only making conscious but embodying that which we access.

Shadow defined

The shadow can be described many a way. In essence, and in short, I understand it as the various aspects of our private inner experience—of our psyche—that we have a vested interest in remaining unaware of. Unconscious of. The experiences, emotions, traits, proclivities, tendencies, views and corresponding behaviors we’re most likely to have ‘repressed,’ and keep suppressed, by definition then, are what we’re most prone to project out onto others and the world. Because that energy has to go somewhere.

“What we resist persists” the saying goes.

“A man who is unconscious of himself acts in a blind, instinctive way and is in addition fooled by all the illusions that arise when he sees everything that he is not conscious of in himself coming to meet him from outside as projections upon his neighbor.”


C.g. Jung

Projection can be understood as the outward persistence of what we resist (owning). And projection, it’s said, is hard-wired. As hard-wired as attachment—as that we are social creatures hard-wired for connection.

Both projection and attachment can be seen in a fresh light, through a modern lens, but I’ll come back ‘round to that below.

Back to shadow…

Individuals have shadows. Families have shadows. Organizations and institutions have shadows. Religions and Spiritual Traditions (all of them) have shadows. This is probably why there’s so much truth to the adage “For every ism is an eventual schism.”

Countries have shadows, too. In fact, there’s a whole psychoanalytic subfield of study called Psychohistory founded upon the view that all socio-political dysfunction, all international conflict— wars and such— can be largely reduced to the outward projection of shadow contents. It’s a bit myopic (and projection-laden itself?) but a rich and interesting view.

If you’ll indulging me in reaching back into my traditional ‘inside the box’ psychodynamic training vault here for a minute, one concept that’s always stuck with me from which to consider shadow contents comes from the standpoint of these three essential intrapsychic positions of how we organize our internal experience:

Good Me / Bad Me / Not Me.

(There’s an interesting corollary to other triune concepts like the Drama Triangle: Victim, Rescuer, Persecutor. And the related Transactional Analysis Ego State Theory: Child, Parent, Adult that I’ll maybe attempt to tackle in another post).

Anyway…

Good Me contents would be all the aspects of ourselves that are ego syntonic; free of inner conflict and outwardly applauded, positively reinforced, clearly welcomed as societally acceptable. Early on these would be the traits and behaviors that our families, schoolteachers and other authority figures deemed “good;” desirable, pro-social, and encouraged more of. Good Me contents are easy to lead with, rewarding to own and display.

Bad Me contents would be those traits and behaviors that received negative reinforcement, negative attention, withdrawal of affection or approval, and outward consequences. In the absence of much Good Me reinforcement, many of us overdevelop our Bad Me positions, becoming rebels with or without a cause, and taking more and more anti, rather than pro positions.

Because, especially as children, any attention always beats none. Every time.

When Bad Me is effectively channeled, transmuted, sublimated, great things can be accomplished. Great subversive art can be made. Great social change can be accomplished. But for Bad Me presentations to be truly effective, it must conform to the Dylan Paradox, based on Bod Dylan’s famous assertion that “To live outside the law, you must be honest.”

In most reasonably well adjusted humans, Bad Me contents are usually judiciously engaged, selectively demonstrated, and controlled/controllable.

“The disowned part of self is an energy– an emotion or desire or need that’s been shamed every time it emerged. These energy patterns are repressed but not destroyed. They are alive in our unconscious.”

John Bradshaw

Now the Not Me is where it gets interesting and connects most directly to the shadow theme.

As the name suggests, this is the repository of disowned aspects of Self. The so-called deeply ‘repressed’ contents—the experiences (traumas most especially), traits, thought forms, emotions, attitudes and corresponding behaviors that would be most universally considered unacceptable, unconscionable, even anti-social/sociopathic. In other words, that which is most antithetical to the stability and the Good Me image of the individual.

Think of this as the deepest, darkest part of the shadow-dungeon.

Not Me forever connects in my mind to the treasure trove of spiritual wisdom that largely reduces a healthy mind, and corresponding fulfilling life, to the ability to accept all of ourselves. All of who we are. This means all of what we’re capable of. And we’re all capable of everything and anything that anyone else is. The idea is that ultimately, there are no new thoughts, no new emotions. That all of what we think, feel, perceive and experience, so some extent or another, has all been thought, felt and experienced before. This extends to the idea that given the right (or “wrong”) set of variable/conditions— we are all capable of anything. Right down to the most horrendous acts. All of it.

“I AM THAT” proclaimed Sri Nisargradatta Majaraj as the penultimate liberation and doorway to the Supreme Soul of the Universe.

We are One. We are Everyone and Everything.

Practical Not Me example:

On the more straightforward and common end, take a tendency toward judging others. In this case with a rigidly devout, overly pious, traditionally ‘God-fearing’ individual where such a thing might be considered un-Godly, even sinful.

This neurosis about judgment could easily become Not Me to the individual operating within a such a system of strict conformity and constraint that the mere capability— let alone demonstration— of judgement toward another would be a threat to the likely fragile, inauthentic, at least under-developed self-concept. As well as an affront to the group ethos and self-identity, thereby awakening the possibility of deep shame, abandonment/rejection and/or reprisal.

Given that everyone is capable of and experiences judgmental thoughts at times— an inescapable truth as long as we’re housed in the body— it would leave such an individual no choice but to outright ‘disown’ the very existence of this tendency, banishing it forever into the “shadow.” Ironically/paradoxically, said individual then likely becomes gripped by the counterforce—a compulsive urge to crusade against judgment itself and/or those that 'judge others.

Most of us have seen this time and again, notably in our most conservative public evangelists and political figures. Though doth protest too much, right?

On the opposite end of the spectrum, take adult sexual attraction to children. A psychosexual proclivity toward pedophilia. Outside of some periods of ancient Greece where there was actual cultural support for such attraction and behavior, very few modern adults would outright own and exhibit such deviancy. The aberrant trait itself therefore easily become Not Me (or Bad Me, or even to some degree Good Me in private, shadowy like-minded circles) and thereby it would find expression in all manner of distorted, projected, shadowy, underground ways. Because the energy, the flame of human desire shall not be extinguished in whatever form that desire directs.

“The patience of lust in infinite” wrote Graham Greene.

Of course, the impulse to sexually abuse children (or anyone) is not simply about lust or sex. It’s very much about power, dominance, violence, and in most if not all cases on the deepest level the distorted re-enactment of early trauma, pain, and humiliation stemming from the banishment (Not Me) of such experiences in the psyche and history of those who perpetrate. Talk about shadow.

There may be no better, and sadder, example than the world-wide Human Trafficking / Sex Trafficking epidemic. It’s well understood that this epidemic is driven by multiple individual and systemic factors, only one of which (although a major one) is Not Me pedophilia-related drives. It seems this Not Me expression is often converted into its opposite by some organized religious circles into an outward cloak of caring for and nurturing children, thereby Not Me-masking the darker impulse and true goings on underneath, and the projection of these Not Me contents onto those who question or threaten to expose the “shadow” of the organization or subculture and the actions of individuals involved. Historically, the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse cover up is prime example.

But I digress. If you’d like to know more about this, check out organizations such as End Slavery TN, and Free for Life International. Because believe it or not, it’s right there in your backyard. I guarantee it. Scary but true. And true liberation and freedom are to be found in the light of truth, not the darkness of denial.

shadow in a the light of today

The progressive spiritual community at large— the SBNR (spiritual but not religious) and universalistically/gnostically-minded in particular seem to be historically and only more so taken with the shadow concept, and with “shadow work.” And that’s a great thing. We all need healing and integration. Our world obviously needs healing. Desperately.

While there are always more than one way to skin a cat, and probably very few decidedly “wrong” or overtly harmful ways of accessing and engaging the disowned parts of ourselves, there is, as I frequently hear, much confusion as to the “how” of doing shadow work.

In others words, for many, it’s too shadowy. In my view, part of why is that the ‘shadow’ concept is kind of lagging behind in a river of somewhat outdated conceptualization, and locked in a mono-mind construct that doesn’t mirror current holistic, integrative, mindbodyspirit, trauma-related understandings, informed by modern neuroscience.

To this end, I offer an updated perspective and pathway. And this comes largely from—you might have guessed it— the philosophy of Polypsychism / Multiplicity of Mind, from which the wonderful, trauma-aware, evidenced-based Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS) model was born.

This is of course the view that the mind is naturally mosaic—made up of many “parts” that exist in a psychic constellation surrounding what in IFS is called the Self. Or the Larger Self. The Self is synonymous with the seat of consciousness, the soul if you will; the undamaged spiritual core of who we truly are, marked by such qualities as calmness, curiosity, compassion, courage and creativity.

I view the Self as not only all of the above and more, but as the direct link to Divinity; the Divinity within, if you will. (“As above, so below. As within, so without”).

Distinct from Self, our parts are those split off collections of subpersonalities within the system that had to separate from the Self, and adopt roles and functions to perform to help keep our system safe and protected. What is traditionally thought of as ‘defense mechanisms’ in psychology can be understood through IFS as parts doing what they learned to do.

In IFS, there are three classifications of parts:

Exiles

Mangers (aka protectors)

Firefighters

Exiles are typically thought of as our “lost inner children,” usually the youngest most vulnerable parts carrying the oldest, deepest pain.

Managers are those parts that protect the exiles, keeping them from flooding or overwhelming the Self.

Firefighters are the parts that spring us into extreme action (drinking binge, suicidality, etc) when something—usually an unexpected, frightening external event—occurs that threatens the ability of managers to contain the exiles.

In essence, the more difficult the childhood, the more parts we have, and the more extreme roles some of these parts are performing. The larger goal of IFS, like many forms of healing, is “all parts,” mindbodyspirit integration. Reliving our parts of their burdens, creating harmony where there is division, and helping our parts to adopt new, more updated and functional roles in support of the Larger Self.

shadow part(S)?

“Shadow work is the path of the heart warrior.”
C.G. Jung

From this modern perspective, at root, the ‘shadow’ then could be seen and treated as none other than a collection of parts split off from Self. Through this same lens, the popular concept of Ego could be liberated from the old (Freudian Id-Superego-Ego) construct, with its negative and selfish/self-centered implications, updated and reframed as as a collection of manager/protector parts just doing what know to do to keep us safe.

In other words, part of what we think of as shadow can be seen as exiles carrying the deepest, oldest pain, such as of being shamed, abused, humiliated and of which we are scarcely aware/unconscious. The pain our exiles carry could be considered Bad Me or perhaps in cases Not Me contents. Our manager parts could be seen as fiercely guarding our exiles through behaviors that could be considered Bad Me (defensiveness, judgment, hostile withdrawal, etc), yet they’re also just doing their job the only way they know how. And firefighters that attempt to help by snapping us into the ‘fight-flight’ response could be viewed as enacting impulsive “last resort” distracting, numbing or/or regulating behavior when Bad Me or Not Me-carrying parts threaten to overwhelm the system. Again, just doing their job.

What I love about this reframe and subsequent way of working with “shadow,” is that it normalizes, humanizes and provides a roadmap to helping these parts of us to unburden, heal, and join us (our Larger, Present Day Self) in a harmonious and cooperative effort at aligning with the leadership of our Larger Self, thereby contributing to humanity in pro-social ways.

It also reframes the “dark/shadow-light,” “good-bad,” “us-them” and “conscious/unconscious” polarizations into a more holistic, inclusive, and welcoming reality that we are all inherently multiple, all inherently good, and unified in that all parts of us have positive intent and are trying to do something for us, even if some of those ways are the worst ways imaginable.

In short, it really takes the business of healing and integration out of the shadows.

IFS shows us time and again that all parts are ultimately tired of the roles they’ve been forced into. These roles are adaptations, and not what they’ve ever truly desired to do, or be. Once understood and engaged, and once they feel okay with beginning to trust our Self, they are always amenable to change.

The Multiplicity-based mosaic mind view and the IFS approach offers a modern take on what we call “shadow work” by reframing it as “parts work,” out of the murky depths and into the bright, modern, multiplicitous light of day.

After all, we are both One and Many.

In this sense, it’s not so different or opposed to what the ancients elucidated, as Polypsychism is an ancient shamanic view, or in conflict with what Jung espoused as the larger goal of psychic integration, healing and wholeness.

Full circle.

other paths

Of course, there are sundry other ways to access and integrate all of who we are. Psychedelics— when utilized medicinally, mindfully, and ceremonially, with proper preparation, set and setting, on site guidance, and follow up integration support and exploration—- is one such way that’s clearly on the rise in our current climate of consciousness expansion. Never, ever to be embarked on lightly, one clear risk is skipping over or incomplete preparation work. Among other things, when our protector parts are not checked in with to see how they feel about a medicine journey, they can become overwhelmed by the intensity of the psychedelic experience, especially at high doses. Firefighters fearing exiles may flood the system can be triggered and an otherwise avoidable and unfortunate panic-laden flight/flight response can ensue mid-trip.

This is why IFS-focused sessions are always part of my preparation for my clients embarking on psychedelic journeys, be it ketamine infusion, psilocybin, LSD, ayahuasca ceremony or MDMA-assisted journeying.

Esoteric spiritual/meditational/devotional and supplication practices such as transmutational alchemy, trauma-focused bodywork, breathwork, certain forms of yoga (Kriya, Kundalini) and other somatic accompaniments, and even deep contact with nature all hold the promise of helping us make contact with our deeper mind, our long suppressed pain, and the exiled parts of ourselves.

Practicing radical self-honesty can’t hurt. Regularly, fearlessly looking deeply at how we see ourselves, others and the world. Committing to ‘catching ourselves in the act’ in real time of our projections and judgments compassionately, without judging and shaming ourselves, can take us a long way towards integrating the parts we’ve been historically conditioned to disown/project.

ready to discover and integrate your “shadow?”

If you’re seeking a Nashville Therapist or a Therapist in Franklin TN, if you want something different—a truly integrative and Outside the Box approach to mind body spirit healing and integration— visit me at Therapy Outside the Box for more information about me and the services I offer. Or email me at: chris@therapyoutsidethebox.com or call me directly at 615.430.2778.

Some of my services are available virtually anywhere via Telehealth/Secure Video. Discount multi-session packages are also always available.

“There’s an Outside the Box Solution for Every Problem.”

Peace, Love and “Parts Work”

Chris Hancock, LCSW, ACMHP

Franklin, TN

We Are Many

Recently, I was reminded of this profound poem by Pablo Neruda. Along with Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself, 51 (You know, “…Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.”) it might very well serve as the poetic underpinnings of the Multiplicity of Mind Theory, from which many robust psychological approaches have emerged.

Among them, is the beautifully intuitive Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS).

IFS posits that our internal psyche is essentially multiple—that we all have a Larger Self (our unbroken, undamaged essence—the core of our being, soul, or seat of consciousness), and various ‘parts,’ which carry our pain, parts that protect that pain, and still others that spring into firefighter-style action when our internal system is threatened.

The overarching goal of IFS is to create harmony amongst our parts, release them of their old, outdated burdens, encourage them to take on new, update roles kin the system, and generate more access to peaceful, playful, compassionate, calm, curious and creative Self Energy.

Here’s the Neruda poem, for your enjoyment:

We Are Many

Of the many men whom I am, whom we are,
I cannot settle on a single one.
They are lost to me under the cover of clothing
They have departed for another city.

When everything seems to be set
to show me off as a man of intelligence,
the fool I keep concealed on my person
takes over my talk and occupies my mouth.

On other occasions, I am dozing in the midst
of people of some distinction,
and when I summon my courageous self,
a coward completely unknown to me
swaddles my poor skeleton
in a thousand tiny reservations.

When a stately home bursts into flames,
instead of the fireman I summon,
an arsonist bursts on the scene,
and he is I. There is nothing I can do.
What must I do to distinguish myself?
How can I put myself together?

All the books I read
lionize dazzling hero figures,
brimming with self-assurance.
I die with envy of them;
and, in films where bullets fly on the wind,
I am left in envy of the cowboys,
left admiring even the horses.

But when I call upon my DASHING BEING,
out comes the same OLD LAZY SELF,
and so I never know just WHO I AM,
nor how many I am, nor WHO WE WILL BE BEING.
I would like to be able to touch a bell
and call up my real self, the truly me,
because if I really need my proper self,
I must not allow myself to disappear.

While I am writing, I am far away;
and when I come back, I have already left.
I should like to see if the same thing happens
to other people as it does to me,
to see if as many people are as I am,
and if they seem the same way to themselves.
When this problem has been thoroughly explored,
I am going to school myself so well in things
that, when I try to explain my problems,
I shall speak, not of self, but of geography.

Pablo Neruda

(Fun fact: A stranger on the interwebs with a strange bone to pick recently messaged me with an unsolicited scolding for not including the translators name. They themselves didn’t it, interestingly. I then received a good ole’ fashioned shaming for not responding ‘therapeutically” because I called out the unsolicted shaming. Then followed an IFS diagnosis of our interaction framed in or as ackowledgement/apology. I hoped that was the end of it. Alas, here they come again, this time offering the translators identity, presumably because I pointed out the irony of their not knowing it, and my saying I’d be happy to include it in the post. So here it is, according to the troll anyway: Alastair Reid. Disclaimer: May or may not be accurate :).

Interested in getting to know, befriend, and create harmony among the various ‘parts’ of yourself? And a safe, trauma-informed process of helping your parts unburdening themselves?

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is an intuitive, gentle but powerful, evidence based therapy that I’ve been studying and using with my clients since 2006. In true Outside the Box fashion, I offer a customized, Transpersonal approach to IFS.

Looking for an IFS Therapist in Nashville? or an IFS Therapist in Franklin?

Visit me at: Therapy Outside the Box or call me at 615.430.2778 or email me at: chris@therapyoutsidethebox.com.

Some services available virtually the world over via HIPPA-Compliant Telehealth/Video.

Peace, Love, and Self Energy!

Chris Hancock, LCSW, ACMHP

Franklin, TN