Pervöltz The Central

A Transpersonal Guide. Everything Is Upside Down. But Not Necessarily
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-3-384-32005-6
Verlag: tredition
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 428 Seiten

This book helps you to get to know yourself in a fundamental yet concentrated and simple way. You can simply read it or you can engage with it. With the help of numerous 'exercitii', you are repeatedly invited to observe and experience yourself from two perspectives. On the one hand, there is your learned story, which began early in your life and with which you began to adapt in order to be loved or at least tolerated. It has something of an inner atmosphere that has become a habit for you and that determines your everyday life in a somewhat mechanical way, constantly repeating itself. This inner atmosphere helped you as a child to maintain your place in the family, but the older you get, the more it becomes an obstacle to you living your other side, namely your radiance, your Essence, your actual individual nature. Whenever you have the feeling that 'this can't be all there is,' something in you remembers this forgotten and buried erotic power. Such a dichotomy can be found in many psychological and spiritual teachings. The special feature of this book is that both sides are brought together to a central denominator. A simple red thread runs through both your learned story and your 'Essence', which accounts for your unmistakable individuality on both sides. You have not learned to perceive it, because complexity and confusion almost always have a preserving and stabilizing function in the old story. The book invites you on a journey that can increasingly bring you into contact with the simple, constantly recurring basic formula of how you create pain, fear and suffering in your life. At the same time, the ability to 'remember' your splendor and radiance may become stronger and stronger within you, opening the doors to a different perspective in which an unfamiliar lightness and joy form the basis of your life. However, all of this will only happen if the desire to come home to yourself is stronger than the mechanical compulsion to maintain your usual daily routine. The book is an invitation, but not a promise.

Rainer Pervöltz was born in 1944 and raised in Berlin. After graduating in German and Romance Studies, he accepted an invitation to go to California, where he discovered his true calling: He found several teachers from whom he learned forms of Gestalt and Bodywork Therapy, especially Jack Lee Rosenberg and Eric Marcus. It was here that he first came into contact with various Buddhist and Taoist teachings. Andrew DaPassano was his first spiritual teacher. In London, he studied Biodynamic Body Therapy with Gerda Boyesen, was a Biodynamic trainer for many years, and in 1983, together with friends, founded the Chiron Centre, a therapy and training center. He lived in London for twelve years and then returned to Germany. After Paris, Los Angeles, and London, Freiburg im Breisgau became his chosen home. Here too, together with friends, he founded a training center, the "Transpersonal School for Psychology and Psychotherapy," and later, in 2011, the "International Institute for Consciousness Research." He learned a lot from Mantak Chia in the field of Taoist energy teachings, and Arnold Mindell was one of his most important teachers in the broad field of dream body work. Rainer Pervöltz works as a therapist, supervisor, and teacher in Germany and other European countries. He now lives happily in a small village near Freiburg, Germany. Rainer Pervöltz offers trainings and seminars on the topic of "The Central." If you are interested, you can find information at www.bewusstseinserforschung.de and www.pervoeltz.de.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Pervöltz, Rainer

Weitere Mitwirkende

Johnson, Dennis

Leseproben

Initial Thoughts

This book is about how humans lose their radiance and how they can rediscover it. There is no doubt that we are all luminous beings, and we will certainly never lose that light completely. But we can believe that we have lost it, and then we usually shine less brightly.

For, unfortunately (or fortunately), all that we love, think, and reject is never about what is, but about what we believe.

This book, too, and what it will say, is not something in itself, but only something that you, dear reader, will perceive in your own special way. And what you experience is always only what you perceive. The way you perceive becomes your world. (You have to question even that and see if you want to believe it.)

You know, as the author of this book, I have to admit to you right at the beginning that I am in a considerable dilemma. For ten, maybe twenty years now, I have disliked books in which one person suggests that others should see the world as he or she sees it. This is often intelligibly disguised, for example, when a young, naive person meets a strange woman or an eccentric old man who pretends to put him to the test and at first rejects him bluntly. This is explained by the fact that the boy must really be sure of his worthiness to receive wisdom. As a reader, of course, you know that sooner or later things will get going; after all, the author wants to bring his wisdom into the world, and it would be nutty if the young, naive boy stopped appearing in the second chapter. So it always turns out that after a short or long struggle, the simple Simon realizes that he has ended up with someone who is infallible about where things are going.

And here's my dilemma (which could easily be mistaken for flirtatiousness): I'm going to say things that may sound true to some of you. But my intention is only to offer them as impulses, as playful forms, so to speak. This is how I invite you to understand it: take these offerings as opportunities and make your own truth out of them.

This applies to almost every sentence in this book. I hesitated for a long time whether to write it. It is, in a way, the (provisional) harvest of my therapeutic work and life, the fruit of my later years. Provisional because, despite my relatively advanced age, I still see myself as completely unfinished, and in a few years I will almost certainly see and say many things differently than I do now. You may think (not without reason), well, if he has nothing to say that has any substance, then he should keep quiet, there are already enough books in the world.

Exactly. I actually agree with you. But I hear this small voice inside of me that says there is something to this question of the Central. I've spent so much time trying to figure it out and went through the process of discovering the truth with so many people that it would be a shame if it never got recorded and documented. And then maybe one day it will have disappeared altogether. And again you can say, well and good, but the world will get over it.

Yes. You are right. You realize that I can't leave my narcissism out of it completely. Narcissism always has an upside and a downside, both "Oh, how wonderful and unique" and "My goodness, did you have to behave like that?" That's why the only authentic justification for me is the very serious offer that if you read this book at all, you should use it as a play form, as an impulse. My truth serves as an impetus, as a tool, as a means of transportation. The only thing that matters is that you find your own truth along the way.

I say this so emphatically because if you really want to get involved in the whole thing (the tricky business of getting to know your own Central), you may well be faced with a series of painful, shameful, sad moments (or periods). While the joy of finding yourself is usually greater than the toil and agonizing drudgery in the end, unless you're fooling yourself, you're not really getting anywhere if you're trying to avoid pain.

No one can tell you what will make you radiate. But please understand, that's why you're here. That's why you're alive in the first place: to remember who you really are. How could anyone else remember in your place?

***

Do you think it is possible to leave your own story behind? To break free from decades-old, lifelong habits? (I say habits a little provocatively here, you could also call it the drama of life.) For example, the way you withdraw and pout when you're offended or things don't go your way? Or your unique personal way of beating yourself up over and over again? How easily you get hurt when someone else finds fault with you, or how you blow up when someone touches your sore spot? That you can be endlessly stubborn, narrow-minded, and inflexible on certain issues? And that all of this could stop, gradually, but noticeably, fade away, fade out, be over (before you leave this earth): Do you think that's possible?

After all, these are just attitudes, thoughts, movements, and feelings that you have become accustomed to. Even how you have sex, how and what you eat, how you approach people, how you feel at parties, how you think about God, and how you are fussy about many things – all ways of dealing with life that you were not born with, but that you have become accustomed to. Did you ever choose them? Perhaps as an adult you have experimented with yourself, explored and tested yourself, and believe that you have some control over yourself – but as a child, did you choose to sit at the table this way or that way? To be afraid when you went to sleep? How you should react when your father scolds you or ignores you?

Well – I hope we can all agree on this: you never, ever had any kind of choice (although you certainly thought you did as a child – and perhaps today you still think you did). Rather, you reacted, you responded – to what they did to you, and always in such a way that you could be reasonably sure that they still loved you (or that they didn't reject you, depending on your domestic circumstances).

And now you're stuck with them, your habits, or rather, they run through your ordered life every day, every week. Perhaps you have arranged it so that you are relatively convinced that you are an appealing personality. Perhaps you are pleased to hear people say that they would live their lives exactly the same way again if they had the choice, and who believe that they have said something nice about themselves with this rather careless and somewhat insubstantial statement.

Anyway, there you have it. And maybe you'll never consider that all of this, the whole smorgasbord (your story), is nothing more than a bunch of habits. Just acquired things, learned mechanisms. Maybe you think – deep down below the level of communication – that all the wars, all the corrupt excess, the pollution, the exploited earth, the violence and oppression, the terror, that none of this really has anything to do with you, because after all (if you are honest) you are what one would call a more or less decent person.

The same is true for me.

But this is – I dare to say to you and to myself – a handsome howler. We've made all this together, some on a larger scale, others in a seemingly more private way. Just think about how many so-called running battles you've been involved in over the last month – with the people around you who just don't get it. Or the whole running battle with yourself to begin with. That's already enough.

Because you know, the way you treat yourself is the way you treat the world – without question. It's like a cosmic law, there's no other way. If you're in a bad mood, you're in a bad mood, in one way or another.

It may look different towards the world because you are more disguised there. But just think about all the thoughts you keep having: "Why did I just say that … What a terrible taste he has … She still has a lot to learn … How strange people are today … Why is my smile so awkward when I speak … He could be a little more polite …" And so on.

It's unbelievable what arrogant and/or self-deprecating garbage you and I think up every day. How unfriendly and – even if it remains concealed – hostile it comes across, both to ourselves and to the world. We've just become so used to it that we don't even react with shock and shame when we notice it.

For a long time I thought, well, that's just the way we are, and we don't need to play the moralist. But believe me, that is not my view anymore.

It's so clear how belligerent we all are. You could argue that gloating over my neighbor and dropping bombs on an enemy country are two different things. To be honest, I don't see much difference. When we live within the framework of our learned habits, we are mainly mechanical beings, dependent on our environment and circumstances. If someone says something nice to me, I lighten up; if they carp at me, I darken. If I think I'm responsible for a whole country and its protection, I'll drop a bomb on the country that criticizes us.

***

You may already realize that – as long as we are talking about human relationships in the context of habits – I have few joyful expectations. Maybe I used to. But over the course of my life, I have descended with too many people into the depths of their learned programs to believe that there is much flexibility there. You may object that I sometimes work with people who lack the skills to cope with life (and therefore seek therapy). However, I would disagree. I believe that everything in our world is upside down. And if you have never considered...