01 Feb Transpersonal Psychology and the Descending Line
The very idea of a descending line comes from the concept that spirit descends from the heavens to the earth, which is the wrong direction according to the major patriarchal religions. Heaven is good, and earth is bad. Heaven is good; body is bad. When the goal is to get to heaven, anything descending is not on the path and may be designated as sinful.
Wilber characterized the descending line as Pre-Axial, which positions it as less evolved than the ascending. Pre-Axial is before the rise of the mainstream religions and includes all types of Indigenous cultures and spiritual traditions, goddess cultures, and the intuitive and non-rational.
The characteristics of the descending line according to Daniels (2005) are: Indigenous religions, non-hierarchical, horizontal, circle or spiral, power for, yin, this world, maintenance, the body, spiritualized mater, the heart, embodied mysticism, the unconscious, compassion, intuition, relationship, connection, female, matriarchal, the Goddess and the Earth Mother, and roots (vs wings).
Examples of psychologies that reflect the descending line would be Freudian and Jungian explorations of the unconscious and the imaginal, somatic disciplines, Gendlin’s Focusing, psychodynamics, ecopsychology, and feminist and BIPOC contributions. Grof ‘s work would also be assigned as descending with his emphasis on perinatal psychology and his advocacy of methods that help participants regress back into their life and perhaps past lives. Humanistic psychology with its emphasis on the body and embodied awareness would be seen as regressive.
In general, the descending line can be summarized as caring about this world rather than focusing on arriving in the other, exploring the unconscious, developing compassion, and the vision of relationship as a spiritual path. It also includes putting down roots in one’s earthly existence, and caring about and working for the welfare of one’s community.
Daniels, M. (2021). Shadow, self, spirit revised edition: Essays in transpersonal psychology. Charlottesville, VA: Imprint Academic.
Wilber, K. (1977). The Spectrum of Consciousness. Quest Books
© 2023 Catherine Auman
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