23 Aug Honoring Diversity
When we seek to carry the vision of Daniel’s (2021) “extending stream” forward in the field of transpersonal psychology, it is most important that we honor numerous voices as we have been doing in this class. It is also important that we continue to challenge the definition of “spiritual” that was codified by celibate men which only has to do with the ascending stream.
These lovely poetic images of trees being connected underground as related by Brown (2017) and the poem shared by Lyla June Johnson (2020) remind us of cultures in which the individual is not paramount, where community and the good of the whole are honored. Shiela VanDerveer, the midwife, shares that collaboration is a deep listening to what the other person needs, as surprising a revelation as her sharing that birth could be “undisturbed” and that the new being entering our world knows what it is doing and “how to get out.”
We have been socialized that our individual development is what matters, and that we should strive to evolve as “high” as we can. However, as Dan Siegal (2012) reminds us, each person’s state both influences and is influenced by the other – there actually is no development outside of connection. Since attachment norms are culture specific, we do not necessarily choose to see this as it does not match with our individualism myth.
I have been quite surprised returning to transpersonal study to find that the field has been taken over by people who privilege rational, scientific thought and wish to usher transpersonal psychology into the mainstream. When we have this as our goal, we lose the importance of the extending stream, because we buy into the male model of hierarchy.
Our field can continue to champion a myriad of voices with alternate points of view, explore strange and wonderful topics, write and communicate in ways that do not omit subjective experience, and proudly choose to exist outside the mainstream.
© 2023 Catherine Auman
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.