The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.
(Meister Eckhart)
My Worldview
The task of healing the world, the task is not yours to finish.
But neither are you free not to take part in it.
(Rabbi Tarfon, as cited by Gabor Maté)
Resistance: Our Social Immune System
- Healthy anger is important. Healthy anger simply maintains a boundary and says: NO.
- There is the repression of anger which undermines physiological health, and it enables political control.
- Then there is the rage where suppressed anger breaks out of you and that’s damaging to you and everybody else as well.
- Resistance really is a form of healthy anger.
- Furthermore, resistance on a political level is breaking out of the individualistic isolated mindset that capitalism imposes on people.
- Activism on a political level restores that communalism of belonging to something greater which immediately gives you more meaning in life.
- Resistance, just as the body needs to resist invasive bacteria, viruses—we talk about resistance in that sense—political resistance is also a way of manifesting our immune system on a social scale
(Gabor Maté)
I have a strong interest in consciousness studies and the non-dual philosophy of Kashmir Shaivism:
If you would like to learn more about my view on the current state of the world you may read my article Facing the World That Materialist Science Leads Us Towards—published in the Irish Journal of Counselling and Psychotherapy.
In this context, it seems important to mention five truly human beings who have influenced me strongly, not only in my take on therapy but also in my view of the world. It's impossible for me to fully separate therapy from my worldview. This is just a little selection to give you some impression:
1. Iain McGilchrist
I regard Iain McGilchrist's 2-volume work The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World as the most important book of our times. McGilchrist makes you really understand what has been poisoning our minds and our souls: see also McGilchrist.
Here is a short video summary of McGilchrist's discovery about the divided brain in the evolutionary context of our unnatural culture:
Follow this wonderful series of dialogues between Iain McGilchrist and Alex Gomez-Marin exploring The Matter With Things chapter by chapter:
For McGilchrist, AI=Artificial Intelligence does not exist. Listen to what McGilchrist has to say about AI=Artificial Information Processing, as "we are mesmerised by the least intelligent part of our brain"
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“Tell me what you pay attention to and I will tell you who you are.”
― José Ortega y Gasset
2. Stanislav Grof
Stan Grof is the most groundbreaking and innovative researcher and philosopher in the field of holotropic states of consciousness. Seeking the meaning of existence after decades of research he proposes the idea of life as a vast cosmic game. He draws, e.g., on Sri Aurobindo stating that the Atheist is God playing hide and seek with Himself.
3. Carl Jung:
Jung was far ahead of his time and his extensive work is more relevant than ever. Here are my favourite quotes:
- Our unconscious […] hides living water, spirit that has become nature, and that is why it is disturbed. Heaven has become for us the cosmic space of the physicists, and the divine empyrean a fair memory of things that once were. But “the heart glows,” and a secret unrest gnaws at the roots of our being.
- There is only one way and that is your way; there is only one salvation and that is your salvation. Why are you looking around for help? Do you believe that help will come from outside? What is to come will be created in you and from you. Hence look into yourself. Do not compare, do not measure. No other way is like yours. All other ways deceive and tempt you. You must fulfil the way that is in you.
- Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes.
- Our intellect has created a new world that dominates nature, and has populated it with monstrous machines. The latter are so indubitably useful that we cannot see even a possibility of getting rid of them or our subservience to them. Man is bound to follow the adventurous promptings of his scientific and inventive mind and to admire himself for his splendid achievements. At the same time, his genius shows the uncanny tendency to invent things that become more and more dangerous, because they represent better and better means for wholesale suicide.
- In spite of our proud domination of nature we are still her victims as much as ever and have not even learnt to control our own nature, which slowly and inevitably courts disaster.
4. Gabor Maté
Mate's Groundbreaking Conclusions:
- If we could begin to see much illness itself [...] as an expected and therefore normal consequence of abnormal, unnatural circumstances, it would have revolutionary implications for how we approach everything health related.
- It all starts with waking up: waking up to what is real and authentic in and around us and what isn't; waking up to who we are and who we're not; waking up to what our bodies are experiencing and our minds are suppressing; waking up to our wounds and our gifts; waking up to what we have believed and what we actually value; waking up to what we no longer tolerate and what we can now accept; waking up to the myths that bind us and the interconnections that define us; waking up to the past as it has been, the present as it is, and the future as it may yet be; waking up, most especially, to the gap between what our essence calls for and what "normal" has demanded of us.
5. Mark Dyczkowski:
Mark is one of the world’s leading authorities on Tantric Shaivism and a wonderful authentic teacher:
- The sacred is purity itself, the sacred is pure. For that we must have clean hearts. We should take our shoes off—this is sacred ground. We should also be pure.
- We are encouraged to cultivate our recognition of the sacred by being taught how wonderful it is—rather than how terrible it is if you don't [...] But it's true both ways. It is very terrible if you have no reverence for the sacred. Sooner or later it's terrible what will happen to all of us. We have nothing to save us from. We have no protection, nowhere to turn, like a house built on sand.