Gilligan / Dilts The Hero's Journey

A Voyage of Self Discovery
1. Auflage 2010
ISBN: 978-1-84590-403-6
Verlag: Crown House Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 288 Seiten

Stephen Gilligan and Robert Dilts truly take you on a voyage of self-discovery. The Hero's Journey examines the questions: How can you live a meaningful life? What is the deepest life you are called to, and how can you respond to that call? It is about how to discover your calling and how to embark on the path of learning and transformation that will reconnect you with your spirit,change negative beliefs and habits, heal emotional wounds and physical symptoms, deepen intimacy, and improve self-image and self-love. Along this path we inevitably meet challenges and confronting these challenges forces us to develop and think in new ways and push us outside our comfort zone. The book takes the form of a transcript of a four day workshop conducted by Stephen and Robert. It is a powerful way of learning as you are so absorbed by the experiences of the participants that you feel you are actually there. A wonderful voyage of discovery for everyone who thinks that, 'there must be more to life than this'.

Stephen Gilligan PhD, has become a leading figure in Ericksonian hypnotherapy. He is the developer of the Generative Self approach to personal growth. A licensed psychologist, Stephen maintains a private practice in Encinitas, California.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Gilligan, Stephen

Dilts, Robert

Leseproben

SG: Good morning, everybody. We wish each of you a very, very good day today.

RD: And of course our main question is: Was it the third dream? Or were you very resistant and had at least two dreams?

Yesterday we began to explore this notion of “the call” to the hero’s journey – the idea that there is a unique energy in you that is the gift that you bring to the world. We also pointed out that each of us, on our journey through life, becomes wounded or carries the wounds of our cultures or our families, and that the hero’s journey is both about sharing our gifts and healing our wounds, and the wounds of others. So we want to start with a few readings, as usual. This first one, for me, relates a lot to what we will be doing today. It’s a passage by Marianne Williamson that is widely cited as having been read by Nelson Mandela at his inauguration:

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(A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of
“A Course in Miracles”, 1992)

RD: I think this beautiful prayer says something very important about the hero’s journey, namely, may you allow your light to shine, liberating yourself and others from fear.

I have a second brief reading from D. H. Lawrence:

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RD: So may we all leave our cages and get into the forest again today.

SG: Beautifully said, Robert. Today we’re going to be exploring the generative cognitive principle of sponsorship. This principle is implicit in the work of Tibetan Buddhism, which emphasizes that perhaps the greatest gift of human consciousness is the capacity to transmute negative energy into positive energy – to be able to connect with a negative pattern and to transform it into something that has value for human beings. Do you believe that we have that capacity?

RD: Say “Amen,” brothers and sisters! Say, “I !”

SG: And do you believe that it would make a difference in how you lead your daily life if had a pretty good confidence that you could do that? That if you just gave yourself a little bit of time, and a little bit of attention, that you could open up to whatever is there and use this great gift of your human consciousness to transform what’s there? The belief in this possibility underlies the process of sponsorship. You can hear it in this beautiful poem by Rumi, the great Sufi poet, from 700 years ago. Some say that he is the greatest poet of all time, and I don’t argue with them. This poem is called “A Goat Kneels.”

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SG: So you can hear in this poem the very important distinction between two levels of the cognitive mind. Just as yesterday we were talking about two levels of the somatic center – the content, and the space in which the content is held – we say the same thing about the generative cognitive mind. In the generative somatic, we create a sort of “body of bodies”; in the generative cognitive, we open a sort of “mind of minds.” It’s adding another contextual level.

RD: In NLP you might say it’s a “meta-mind” that includes and transcends the other minds.

SG: So in the generative mind, one’s identity is at the level of the field that holds all patterns.

RD: As Gregory Bateson used to say, it’s at the level of “the pattern which connects.”

SG: This generative meta-mind level differs markedly from what we are calling the ordinary ego level of the mind, where identity is in one position or one part of the field. So if Robert and I are in a field together, the ordinary mind would say: “This is here; and that’s there. And my identity is right . . . I’m .”

At this level of identity, when we have differences, which are inevitable, I will see his different perspective as threatening my identity. To therefore preserve “my self,” I must therefore deal with these differences by obliterating “the other.” I And somehow I must remove this horrible threat to my identity from the field, by whatever means necessary.

Now we’re laughing, but the way this plays out in the world is usually not so funny. It’s called fundamentalism, and unfortunately it is the most dominant ideology on the planet today. “My position is the one true position. And his is the position of the infidel. So he must be destroyed.” It’s nothing personal. It’s just business.

RD: When we are able move to a generative level, a higher level than the ordinary ego identity, instead of being opposites, we become complements. Moving to a generative field level of identity, you could say that we have created a third entity that holds both of us and much, much more. It’s a little bit like our earlier example of bringing two hydrogen atoms and an oxygen atom together and getting water. Water is not hydrogen, and it’s not oxygen. But it cannot exist without their relationship. It’s emergent from their interaction. And that’s the generative state: it emerges from holding all the members of the lower level in a harmonious way.

SG: Of course, this applies equally with humans. If you’ve ever been in an intimate relationship . . .

RD: . . . or read about somebody who has . . .

SG: . . . you can see that in the first stage of intimacy, the romantic phase, one plus one equals one. So love is thought of as “we merge, and live happily ever after.”

RD: Stevie, my love!

SG: And as Robert is showing, this romantic fusion is literally a drugged state. The brain releases chemicals that put you in the “oneness trance”; it is nature’s way of drawing you into a trap. “Come here, my little pretty . . .” Of course, all drugs wear off, so at some point you enter the second phase of intimacy where the differences become more salient than the oneness. All those things that used to be so cute in your partner, now bug the hell out of you! But for any intimate relationship, this movement to “two-ness” is an essential step. We are challenged to realize that even as we love each other, we have significant differences.

RD: Differentiation is necessary. It’s essential.

SG: This differentiation allows a shift from identifying with a single position, to identifying with a field that holds many positions. This is the third phase of intimacy. To enjoy mature, creative love, we must grow a field consciousness, an “us” that includes but goes beyond “you” and “me.” Our differences don’t disappear – in some ways they become more clear – but there is an emerging space that is holding the differences. This field consciousness is a higher level than the “ego position” consciousness. It is the basis not only for interpersonal generativity – where the “us” holds and guides the “you” and the “me” – but also for intrapersonal generativity, where the meta-space awareness makes room for every part of my thinking, behaving, feeling, and being. This allows complementarity, not competition; it allows a “both/and” rather than an “either/or” relationship. As we shall...