When we first entered this module, I was surprised that these experiences were contained within one threshold, but as I progressed with the videos and readings, it made sense. All of these experiences have to do with personal encounters with the transpersonal, whether through mystical...
Last week I attended a memorial at Beyond Baroque, the literary arts center, for a dearly-loved member of the L.A. writers’ community. The man who died was a popular member of the community, not necessarily because of his work, but for his friendliness, outgoing nature,...
I had to consider how to make this threshold a stretch for me as silence and solitude are my natural habitat. I devised an exercise that would bring me back in contact with another part of myself that has been starved while I’ve been engaged...
While I enjoyed the width and breadth of the voices and stories we read for this threshold, perhaps I was most moved and fascinated by Nick Walker’s amazingly well-written piece. This immediately brings to light one of my (previous) prejudices: I was surprised to find...
As Richards (2014) points out, the mainstreaming of psychedelics has opened the door for scientific researchers to explore and measure the mystical and ineffable. This will offer transpersonal psychology peer-reviewed empirical research studies to buoy up our own studies. Drugs offer reliability in a way...
I am familiar with solitude and silence. I cultivate it. One of my practices is that I get up every morning between 4-5 so that I can be alone for several hours before my husband or the rest of the world wake up. The silence...
The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) has published a psychedelic therapy model of a nine-month course of psychotherapy interspersed with three psychedelic sessions, usually MDMA or psilocybin. This model (Mitthoefer et al., 2014) allows the therapist to assess firstly for the stability of the...
It seems from the research that transpersonal experiences have been seen as healing for millennium, perhaps since the beginning of time, in all cultures except the rational, patriarchal Western ones. Transpersonal experiences were treated with great awe and respect, and the cultures that formed around...
Transpersonal experiences may be held as frightening, painful, overwhelming, or shattering to some people, and thus affect their lives in negative ways. Anyone who naively believes “there is no such thing as a bad trip” has never been on a locked psychiatric ward observing people...
Transpersonal sexual experiences are an overlooked phenomena (Woodward et al., 2009). They can happen to people by surprise (Wade, 2015) and to people with no spiritual practice or awareness, as well as to people who consciously cultivate such experiences (Effers, 2009). In their overview of...