Posts Tagged ‘core connection’

Mind and Movement 2 – Mind and Movement

Carl Jung said that within each of us are resources of information and wisdom which are usually overlooked. He called this aspect of human experience The Transcendent Function. People who were able to work with this function, he said, experienced meaningful change from negative feelings and attitudes to more inclusive and positive ones. Often they found healing of physical ills too. Yet although Jung saw the Transcendent Function as a natural part of a persons resources – a spontaneous and self-regulatory source of healing – he never explained clearly to the public how they could access it themselves. His method has remained largely clinical and in the hands of professional ‘Jungians’.

Others, like Dr. Wilhelm Reich, have also described this source of healing, but still they have left a gap in their explanation. Namely they have not described in a way understandable to the public what the source of healing and help is, and how it can be tapped.

On the other hand many ancient cultures, in traditional teachings such as found in Yoga, Tai Chi, Setai and Meditation, have attempted to make publicly available knowledge of how to use this internal and wonderful process. Their symbolism and viewpoint is so different to ours however, that it is difficult to accept or understand many of their rather strange claims. This was made very plain to me while working in Japan with my wife Hyone. She had been helping a man, who was obviously very tense, to release the tension in his muscles. As this occurred he experienced powerful spontaneous movement, which is a feature of the self-regulatory process. Afterwards the man came to us with some of the other Japanese people attending the class and they asked us what point on the body or nervous system we had pressed to produce so powerful a response. They were so steeped in the oriental viewpoint expressed in acupuncture, they felt what they had experienced must have been produced from pressure points. To the Western structure of thought, much in acupuncture still remains outside of rational explanation. In my years of work in this field I have attempted both to understand in a Western sense what that Japanese man experienced, and to explain it in a way that makes it available for other ordinary people like myself to use.

During a period when I had just gone through divorce, the starting of a new relationship, and taking over a tumble-down property, I developed a permanent pain in my right forearm. I talked about this to a doctor who diagnosed it as tennis elbow. He told me there was nothing I could do except avoid exertion. As I was working to renovate our house, that was difficult, and the pain continued for six months without any change. I decided to ask my unconscious if there was anything I could do to help the condition. It was a technique that was accessible using the self-regulatory  processes described later. I had used this approach many times before, so had some experience of it. Holding in mind the pain in the arm I waited for the responses to arise from within. Soon, spontaneous fantasies and ideas bubbled into awareness, almost as if someone were explaining the situation to me. I was led to understand that during the past year I had not only been working hard physically to renovate the building, but because of divorce, family conflict within my new relationship, plus the change of home, I had experienced much stress and anger. During my sawing, planning and hammering, I had discharged much of this anger and stress. As with any hard work, the cells in my right arm had broken down, but the anger and tension had prevented the cells from regenerating adequately.

As this insight emerged I could see what a shrewd summary of my recent unconscious attitudes it was. The emerging explanation went on to say that each cell is a tiny individual life, and in the body, they each take on a particular task. Some live as workers in the muscles; some are thinking beings in the brain, and some act as transformers, as in the liver. Each cell depends upon the others to co-operatively share food, oxygen and pleasure. The cells in my arm didn’t mind the hard work, but they also needed to share the pleasures of eating, music and love making. I had been unconsciously deluging them with anger and tension, and denying them laughter and relaxation.

I started to use this information. For instance when I ate I would consciously allow the pleasure I felt in my mouth to be felt by the rest of my body, particularly the right arm. When I made love, I attempted to relax and let my whole body feel the pleasure, not keep it in the genitals. I frequently concentrated on my right arm, relaxing it and allowing pleasure felt elsewhere to flow to it. Within a week it was completely free of the pain, and the problem has never returned.

The technique of consciously co-operating with or listening to the processes of life active in the unconscious, and allowing them to become known, I call Coex. I have coined the word from two other words -consciousness and expansion- because the process of coex is partly that of expanding our awareness into areas of ourselves previously unconscious. It holds in it many exciting possibilities, such as:- 1] Tapping the activity of natural forces in us toward healing of physical and psychological problems.  2] Gaining information which we hold within us, but which is usually unconscious.  3] Using the creative process of the unconscious to enrich our work and relationships.  4] Tuning into the body’s self regulating processes to discover a spontaneous form of exercise or dance which releases tension and keeps the body fit.  5] Through expanded awareness discovering our connections with the rest of life and cosmos.

So what is coex, and what makes it function?

During 1968, while teaching relaxation techniques to people at the Tyringham Naturopathic Clinic in Buckinghamshire, I found the first clues to an exciting possibility in human beings. I had been teaching the usual form of relaxation in which one consciously tenses the muscles, then relaxes them. As an aid to people experiencing the pleasure of dropping tension as fully as possible, I often went to each person in the class and gently lifted an arm or leg. The aim was to give them the experience of someone else moving their body, so they could give up their own effort or tension. I found that many people’s limbs were very difficult to move because they were rigid with tension. Surprisingly when I asked the person how they felt, they would usually say they felt relaxed and comfortable. Meeting this in person after person, no matter their age or sex, led me to realise how ineffective ‘normal’ forms of relaxation and stress release were. Also, more important, it showed that many of us are living with quite enormous unconscious tensions operating in us. Unconscious because the people I tested were unaware of their tenseness, and ‘felt’ relaxed. Yet to maintain the sort of muscular effort which makes an arm or leg difficult to move uses a great deal of energy. If you lived with such tensions, because of the energy wasted in maintaining them, you would have less energy to use in the other departments of your life.

I started to search for ways I could help people to release such tensions. Because people have always lived with tension and the forces of unconscious life within them, many men and women in the past and present have attempted to understand them. Each age and culture has developed its own approach, but they all have evident similarities. This is because they are dealing with the same natural inner processes. In general these different approaches break down into two different types. Historically the approach was usually of a very religious or sectarian nature. At the present the approach to the unconscious is often clinical, as in psychiatry. So in looking for already established techniques there was the choice of a clinical approach or that of a sect. Yet the forces of life in us are not bounded by authoritarian psychiatry nor by the narrow beliefs of a sect. Both of these groups attempt to own what belongs to everyone. So I sought to find what is common and functional in the different approaches.

For instance, as long ago as the seventeen hundreds Franz Mesmer found that by helping people to relax muscular tension, but remain open to movement, there was a spontaneous cathartic healing action. The person experienced spontaneous movements and feelings which led to the healing of their illness.

In this century, Dr. Wilhelm Reich, working from the background of a medical doctor, a biologist, and a Freudian psychoanalyst, did not feel content with the usual years of analysis needed to help people with serious psychological difficulties. From the standpoint of the body and mind being a unity, he began to look for signs of the mental condition in the state of the body. He found that all his patients had unconscious abdominal tension. One patient who was resisting change in his life exhibited powerful neck tensions. People repressing their emotions usually had tensions in their rib cage, whereas restrained sexuality produced tensions and pain in the pelvis and lower back. Many of our commonly used words, such as ‘stiff-necked’, ‘held back’, or ‘stone-hearted’, are recognitions of how our attitudes shape our body tensions.

Reich observed that when any of these tensions were released a great deal of physical and/or emotional energy was released also. In fact the tension was a block or suppression of the natural flow of energy in the person’s being. The energy itself can be expressed as physical movement, sexuality, emotions, drives such as parental caring, or the process of thinking. Usually, as a tension dissolves, the person experiences spontaneous movements. These are an extension to the usual spontaneous movements we make all the time, such as breathing, sneezing and yawning. But they are often movements we do not associate with general spontaneous activity.

Reich noticed, as had Mesmer before him, that if this spontaneous release of movement and feeling was allowed and worked with, the person was helped toward greater equilibrium. Reich also defined that the spontaneous movements occurred through the release of tension. He saw such physical and emotional release as an expression of the homeostatic or self regulating process. Homeostasis is the function in our being which directs such activities as the balancing of body heat, and blood pressure, and is behind the regulation of growth. Jung and Hadfield also speak of dreams as being connected with this self regulatory function acting in the area of the mind. They see dreams as helping to keep psychological balance, just as perspiration helps to keep a physical balance through loss of excess heat.

To clarify just what activities in human beings Reich and Mesmer were dealing with we need to look at some typical experiences of coex in action.

The first is that of a woman – Linda – who came to me at the recommendation of her doctor because she was ‘on the verge of a breakdown’. Linda was married for the second time, had three children from her first marriage, and felt very tense. She was the first person I taught coex to in a one-to-one situation. Until then I had been teaching general relaxation, and as this hadn’t helped Linda I asked if she wanted to learn coex as I thought it might be useful to her. She agreed and we decided to work once a week until we could see if she benefited or not. During the first session I began by asking Linda to stand while I moved her arms and body to see if there were any obvious muscular tensions. When I moved her arms by lifting them away from her hips, I found there was a point, when her hands were about a foot away from her body, where her arms remained suspended by shoulder tensions. I asked her to be aware of this without interfering. She did this as well as she could, and her arms remained suspended in the tension for about half an hour before we finished the session.

In the second session the tensions in the shoulders [deltoid] were found again and her arms remained suspended. The reason for this waiting is that prior to leaving the limbs in the position held by the tension, the person is usually unaware of having the tensions. If one ‘relaxes the tension away’ it does not in fact disappear, it merely slips back into the unconscious. By leaving it showing, so to speak, what was unconscious enters into awareness. The person is then in a learning situation. They learn to be aware of and allow into consciousness something that was unconscious. I see this as learning the skill to work with unconscious content. So once more I encouraged Linda to be aware of the tensions without interfering by relaxing them away or by trying to interpret what the tension meant. As she did this small jerks occurred in her arms. I assured her this was alright as she felt slightly disturbed by these spontaneous spasms. As it was a completely new experience, it took her a while to learn the ability to allow her body freedom of movement without interfering or stopping its activity. I therefore explained to her that the spasms were the muscular tension beginning to discharge, and that learning to allow the discharge was rather like learning to ride a bicycle – it was a new skill which became an easy habit through practice. We spent a full hour allowing these small spontaneous movements before finishing this second session.

This stage of honouring simple movement is important in coex because all the processes and expressions of life in us express as the swing between movement and relaxation. Obvious movements in this connection are the heartbeat, breathing, and the peristaltic action of the digestive tract. The feeling reactions we experience as an organism in relationship to our environment can also be thought of as movements expressive of a life process. Consciousness is a ‘life process’, and when we cry or feel angry, our body makes movements to express these feelings. Crying is a very strong muscular movement, and includes subtler but powerful movements such as the discharge of tears. Anger too involves a lot of physical movements, including faster heartbeat, glandular discharge, and maybe powerful punching or kicking. Sex expresses as strong and subtle body movements. If through tension or suppression we hold back what our being is feeling in response to our environment, we block these powerful and subtle motivations to MOVE. Therefore, in the body we can often find these blocked motivations as muscular tension. If we release the tension, then the self regulatory process in us begins to express the movements. And don’t forget that here I am talking about movements as including glandular discharge, tears, emotions, muscular activity, and mental functioning.

Supposing that what we are holding back are the movements connected with sexuality. Supposing we have done this because we have either a fear, or have been hurt in connection with it. In allowing a tension to become conscious that we had been unknowingly using to immobilise the pelvis, we would, in a sense, be uncovering a powerful ‘NO’. i.e. “No, I will not allow sexuality and its accompanying movements because they are frightening or painful. By letting the tension remain in consciousness it usually begins to vacillate to a ‘YES’ – it begins to break down or release. For a while it may swing backwards and forwards between the ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Physically this means the tension releases for a moment but snaps back again, causing jerks or trembling. Sometimes, if a great deal of energy is held back by the tension being released, the trembling will be intense and the person may feel cold. Occasionally the person then complains that the room is very cold.

Linda began to feel she was learning to co-operate with her inner process in the third session. She began to discover how to allow the tension to release without interfering. The jerks then became tentative movements. Her hands spontaneously moved to her lower abdomen and made pressing movements. At this point neither of us understood what this meant, or what her inner process was beginning to express. Because the movements were strong enough, and Linda could allow the spontaneous action easily now, I suggested she lay down instead of standing.

The fourth and final session began with Linda lying on a blanket. Her arms quickly began the spontaneous movements to her abdomen without needing any priming by finding the tensions. The movements were much stronger this time and her whole body became involved. Her knees drew up and her abdominal area domed. She made very little sound – some people are extremely vocal – but she was intensely absorbed in the movements for nearly an hour before they stopped and she lay peacefully. She then sat up and told me she had experienced something extraordinary. She said that four years earlier she had been divorced and went to live in Spain with her children. While there she had an affair with a Spaniard and became pregnant. Because she already had children and was not wanting to stay with the man, she had an abortion. During her body movements it had seemed to her as if the life in her had said the abortion had hurt it. It then led her through the spontaneous movements to complete the process of birth of that baby, and in that way she now felt whole. The process of birth which had been cut off had been able to complete itself.

Although I have already quoted the next experience in my publication THE INSTANT DREAM BOOK. I use it again here because it describes the spontaneity and unanticipated nature of coex so well. Su had attended a seminar at which I explained how to work with coex. She describes her experience as follows: “When Tony came to explain coex to the group, I had just reached the point of despair with my marriage. A few days before I had taken the first step towards breaking it. From the first my experience of coex wove itself, directly or indirectly, into my outer life. It was never a separate thing going on inside only.

“Tony explained to us about letting whatever came, come. I did not understand too well, but lay down with the others and he came to each of us briefly and moved our arms, and left us lying. Perhaps two minutes passed when I felt a distinct twitching around my brow, which was repeated, and then it spread down my face, a downward pressing movement. My face was involved then in a big muscular movement, pressing down, seeming to flatten the face, and then spread down the body towards the feet. Gradually my whole body became involved in big waves of pressing movement which flowed down, lifting and tossing my legs, so that my heels were banging on the floor. Wave succeeded wave. I did as he said, and let it happen, using the skills to relax which I had learnt. I wasn’t afraid, although I couldn’t imagine what was happening to me. Instead I felt happy and elated, warmed through. I knew I had found something of great significance, but it was many months before I could put words to it. It remained an intriguing mystery, like a dropping away of chains, or a touching of promise, while I passed through the pain of divorce. I feel that my experience that day released considerable energy. It did not break my marriage – that would have happened anyway. But I received strength which I used for my needs at that time. Months later it came to me with the force of revelation, that I had been born that day.”

Linda and Su’s experience demonstrate that simply by changing the way they related to themselves they opened the door to a power and expressive part of their nature. Neither of them previously suspected what was hidden behind a change of attitude. It is worth noting also that while Su’s experience was an unusual form of movement, Linda’s was a particular theme. But neither of them were haphazard or random. Noting this same fact generally in people using coex, I felt it must express some basic process and wondered what it was. Gradually I have come to believe that one of the main processes at work is that which also lies behind the creation of dreams.

All mammals are known to experience a stage of sleep characterised by rapid eye movements [REM] behind closed eyelids. In humans this REM sleep in connected with dreaming. Until recently however, it was not known just what animals dreamt. But while investigating a condition called ‘narcolepsy’, a condition characterised by sudden and uncontrollable lapses into REM sleep in animals, Adrian Morrison at the University of Pennsylvania, uncovered some interesting information. Usually, in animals and humans, a small area of the pons in the brain, prevents our muscular system from responding to signals from the brain while we are dreaming. Morrison noticed that in mammals in which this area is damaged, full body movements are made during REM sleep. This shows that not only can the dream process create a spontaneous fantasy or experience we call a dream; not only can it invest the dream with deeply felt emotions or creative ideas, it also expresses as full body movement. Except in cases of sleep walking, such body activities are prevented by the pons from being expressed except perhaps in small jerks or movements. Nevertheless, speech, walking, dancing, fighting and making love, are all frequent dream subjects. So human beings have at least two centres which can direct body processes. We are used to making conscious decisions about walking or moving our hands, but few of us suspect that another part of our being outside our conscious volition is capable and practised in making full body movements and expressing in complex speech.

I believe that by letting things happen without criticism or interference, we are actually allowing the dream process to break through into waking life and express in full body movements, speech, a dramatic theme, and deeply felt emotions. This is another reason why I have named this process COnsciousness EXpansion, because the usual boundaries of our awareness have been enlarged. We begin to be aware of things that usually happen to our psyche only while we sleep. Our consciousness is expanded to the point where it includes a realm of experience which is in many ways different from our waking world. In quite a real sense we begin to ‘wake up’ in what was sleep. As exciting as that is, it might not have much point, apart from a novelty, if it were not for the many possibilities the awakening holds. Freud was reasonably cautious in ascribing to the dream function anything which was not easily observed, yet if we look at his definitions of what occurs in dreams, we begin to understand something of the possibilities in coex.

1] Dreams are ‘thoughts-in pictures’. It seems likely that early in human evolution, prior to the development of complex spoken language, people used images as tools of thought instead of words. So dreams may be in part a return to this earlier level of thinking. Silberer, a student of Freud’s, gives an example in that while falling asleep he was thinking about something he had written, and decided to tidy up its rough edges. He then realised he was dreaming of planning a rough piece of wood.

2] Dreams are ‘ego alien’. This means that they happen to us rather than that we deliberately create them. David Foulkes points out that this has led many people to believe that dreams are given to us by God or gods, or come from the dead, or from some force outside oneself. In general however, all this means is that they arise from a motivation in ourselves which lies outside of our conscious volition and awareness.

3] Dreams are ‘hallucinatory’. In dreams we create, seemingly outside of ourselves, apparently real characters in environments which we feel deeply involved in. When we sit and have a daydream or think, there is not this sense of really doing or being what we are thinking. Yet in a dream this is so.

] Dreams are ‘drama’. Most of our dreams are not merely a tumbling kaleidoscope of images and feelings. They have definite plots, with a beginning middle and end. They describe scenes which are understandable to other people. Sometimes they are as well produced as a first class film or play. In fact, many stories have been written from dreams. Nothing so highly structured could be the result of random neuronal firing. Because of this, Freud thought dreams must be ‘constructed by a highly complicated activity of the mind’.

5] Dreams have different ‘moral standards’. In dreams we rape, pillage, murder and adventurously act in ways we would resist with horror in waking life.

6] Dreams have access to a more active ‘association of ideas’. This means that not only can we have a much wider response to any idea we hold in mind, but also the response jumps beyond the usual pathways of our thoughts. It can thus be very creative.

Since Freud’s research, many other people have added to his findings. So Jung, Hadfield, and people like Caldwell, writing about waking dreaming in therapeutic situations, have enlarged understanding of dream functions. Therefore we can add to the above definitions as follows:-

7] Dreams are compensatory or ‘self-regulatory’. Hadfield says of this, “There is in the psyche an automatic movement toward readjustment, towards an equilibrium, toward a restoration of the balance of our personality. This automatic adaptation of the organism is one of the main functions of the dream as indeed it is of bodily functions and of the personality as a whole. This idea need not cause us much concern for this automatic self-regulating process is a well known phenomenon in Physics and Physiology. The function of compensation which Jung has emphasised appears to be one of the means by which this automatic adaptation takes place, for the expression of repressed tendencies has the effect of getting rid of conflict in the personality. For

the time being, it is true, the release may make the conflict more acute as the repressed emotions emerge, and we have violent dreams from which we wake with a start. But by this means, the balance of our personality is restored.”

8] Dreams have access to ‘complete memory’. Penfield’s experiments definitely proved that no experience is lost from memory. Many dreams exhibit memories from earliest childhood – ones not know by the person, and only confirmed later. This includes memories dating from before birth.

9] Dreams ‘incorporate ESP’. Whether we consider ESP to be the result of realisations arising from already held but unconscious material, or because some part of mind transcends space and time, dreams certainly exhibit this function.

Without any exaggeration, if we can accept that the above are reasonable definitions of dream functions, and if coex gives access to the dream process while awake, then through it we have at our disposal a variety of tools, whether mental or physical, which we do not have otherwise. Linda and Su’s examples show some of these possibilities in action. Through thinking in pictures we can often clarify a situation by bringing it down to its simplest factors that general thought left unclear. Co-operating with the self-regulating process enables us to more efficiently keep our health. Having the doorway to wider association of ideas enhances our creativity. Being able to bring to awareness parts of our memory usually lost in childhood, makes it possible to re-program the gut level reactions which were imprinted on us in babyhood, which are frequently completely out of place in adult life. And the ESP faculty sometimes gives us the bonus of extending our awareness and gathering information helpful to work and life in general.

Because LifeStream is based on two of the most universal and fundamental functions in humans – dreaming and the self-regulatory process – it has been available to human use throughout history. Although this has given rise to many different approaches there remain certain aspects that have to be similar.

One of these is the need to have an open and allowing state of mind and body. Writing about this in relationship to problem solving in his commentary to the book SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER, Carl Jung says:-

“…the essential urge to find a new way lay in the fact that the fundamental problem of the patient seemed insoluble to me unless violence was done to the one or the other side of his nature. I always worked with the temperamental conviction that in the last analysis there are no insoluble problems, and experience has so far justified me in that I have often seen individuals who simply outgrew a problem which had destroyed others. This ‘outgrowing’, as I called it previously, revealed itself on further experience to be the raising of the level of consciousness…..

“Here and there it happened in my practice that a patient grew beyond the dark possibilities within himself, and the observation of the fact was an experience of the foremost importance to me. In the meantime I had learned to see that the greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They must be so, because they express the necessary polarity inherent in every self-regulating system. They cannot be solved, but only outgrown. I therefore asked myself whether this possibility of outgrowing, or further psychic development, was normal, while to remain caught in a conflict was something pathological. Everyone must posses that higher level [of possible growth], at least in embryonic form, and in favourable circumstances, must be able to develop the possibility. When I examined the way of development of those persons who, quietly, and as if unconsciously, grew beyond themselves, I saw that their fates had something in common. Whether arising from without or within, the new thing came to all those person from a dark field of possibilities; they accepted it and developed further by means of it….

“What then did these people do in order to achieve the progress which freed them? As far as I could see they did nothing but let things happen… The art of letting things happen, action in non action, letting go of oneself, as taught by Master Eckhart, became a key for me… The key is this: we must be able to let things happen in the psyche. For us, this becomes a real art of which few people know anything. Consciousness is forever interfering, helping, correcting, and negating, and never leaving the simple growth of the psychic processes in peace. It would be a simple enough thing to do if only simplicity were not the most difficult of all things. It consists solely in watching objectively the development of any fragment of fantasy. Nothing could be simpler than this, and yet right here the difficulties begin. Apparently no fantasy fragment is at hand – yes there is one, but it is too stupid! Thousands of good excuses are brought against it: one cannot concentrate on it; it is too boring; what could come of it? It is ‘nothing but’, etc. The conscious raises prolific objections. In fact, it often seems bent on blotting out the spontaneous fantasy activity despite the intention, nay, the firm determination of the individual, to allow the psychic processes to go forward without intervention. In many cases there exists a veritable spasm of the conscious.

If one is successful in overcoming the initial difficulties, criticism is likely to start afterwards and attempt to interpret the fantasy, to classify, to Aestheticise, or to depreciate it. The temptation to do this is almost irresistible. After a complete and faithful observation, free rein can be given to the impatience of the conscious; in fact it must be given, else obstructing resistances develop. But each time the fantasy material is to be produced, the activity of the conscious must be put aside.

“In most cases the results of these efforts are not very encouraging at first. Moreover, the way of getting at the fantasies is individually different… oftentimes the hands alone can fantasy; they model or draw figures that are quite foreign to the conscious.

“These exercises must be continued until the cramp in the conscious is released, or, in other words, until one can let things happen; which was the immediate goal of the exercise. In this way, a new attitude is created, an attitude which accepts the irrational and the unbelievable, simply because it is what is happening. The attitude would be poison for a person who has already been overwhelmed by things that just happen, but it is of the highest value for one who, with an exclusively conscious critique, chooses from the things that happen only those appropriate to his consciousness, and thus gets gradually drawn away from the stream of life into a stagnant backwater.”

Very few people have written so powerfully, or with such insight as Jung has on the nature and practise of coex. That is why he has been quoted at such length. Also, some of the above statements are important to our understanding of what coex is and what it can do. It must be realised however, that Reich and Jung were doctors, and so write on the subject from the viewpoint of dealing with illness or human problems. Coex is a great deal more than a doorway to the possibility of healing. As Jung himself mentions, it is also a way of growing beyond our present limitations, of finding ‘more’ in life. That more might be that we simply extend our awareness. A description given by David explains this.

“I had learnt coex and, at first, used it to deal with personal problems. But as these became less pressing I discovered other possibilities in it. Tony had helped me to see that each of us pick up thousands of impressions from our environment without realising. With that in mind, one day when I had a job to do two hundred miles away from home I used coex to check something out. I had agreed to mend someone’s flat roof. The job was not difficult, but needed a reasonably dry day. If I travelled two hundred miles and it rained, I would be well out of pocket. As the weather had been unsettled and with days of heavy rain, I asked my unconscious if it had any impressions on what the weather was likely to be in the area I needed to work. I allowed spontaneous images and feelings as I had learnt, and was amazed at the result. It was as if some part of my being was looking at the most immense forces. All the time they moved and shifted, with so much power I felt that if humans could harness one tiny part of them our energy needs would be solved. From the overall view my inner awareness then shifted and gave me the impression that there would be occasional light showers in the area I had asked about, nothing heavy enough to warrant not going. I was so impressed by the clarity and strength of the impressions I drove to the job. While I worked there were a couple of showers as heavy clouds passed nearby, but nothing that delayed me or penetrated the uncovered roof.”

I have myself frequently used coex to clarify or give more information on important situations. Part of the action of coex is to release to consciousness areas of our experience or impressions which may be relevant to our present needs, but which have remained unnoticed or forgotten. For instance, while working in Japan teaching coex, I was asked to show a young Japanese women how to use the technique. She was experiencing feelings of tension and discomfort in her chest, and could not understand their cause.

Akiko was married to a Westerner and pregnant with their first child. As she allowed the spontaneous movements of coex she began coughing and choking. This continued for some time without change and I became puzzled as to what her body was expressing. When I asked her if she could feel what was behind her movements she shook her head. Wondering whether my unconscious had understood her body language I sought it’s help. Straightaway a flow of impression and feelings arose which suggested that Akiko feared her husband would look for another woman after her child was born. I therefore suggested to her that the feeling in her chest was connected with her husband and the baby. She exploded into tears, as she had apparently been holding back that very fear for some time without expressing it.

In an attempt to understand where my unconscious had gathered this helpful piece of information I later explored the impressions. I saw that what had appeared to come almost magically to mind from nowhere was based on a forgotten sentence Akiko had spoken to me two days before about her coming baby. I had said that the baby would probably be quite a beautiful mixture of East and West. In a rather diffident voice she had said, “I hope so.” At the time I had not attached any great importance to this mixture of words and feelings. Yet my unconscious had understood very well what she was saying.

As human beings we have a great many more possibilities in our life than we  presently use. Coex in action demonstrates that we have the ability to use faculties which often lie dormant. Whether the faculty is that of healing through a release of the self regulatory process; or whether it is that of bringing to consciousness information or realisations we had previously been unaware of, the act of allowing something to be experienced or known in body or mind, which was not evident there before, is fundamental. This bringing into operation what was previously only latent, is something we live with every moment of our life. The everyday remembrance of how to walk and talk, of simple facts such as our telephone number, show how we constantly call into the arena of our awareness what is usually stored elsewhere. Words such as conscious and unconscious are sometimes made to appear very complex. When we connect them with memory though, it is obvious the experience we have gathered is never all at the one time in awareness. Only tiny parts of it are evident at any one moment. The rest is ‘unconscious’. Also, between what we are aware of and what is unconscious there is a threshold. We can think of this as a screen of resistance which holds back the major part of what would otherwise flood into our awareness and cause massive confusion. To overcome this resistance a certain active force or procedure is necessary. Because this procedure is used so often we seldom notice what it is we do, but it is a little like a swinging door. When we hold a question in mind, or there is any call for information such as words to use in speech, we simply wait with a clear mind for the natural response we call memory to take place. In a similar way physical movements are a response to our motivation to walk or reach for something. So when we are actively thinking or willing something the ‘door’ swings from our consciousness to unconsciousness. What we thought or willed is then entered into memory. If we then call upon our memory and wait with an open mind, the ‘door’ swings in the other direction to let the unconscious express its contents. It is upon this basic action of calling a response from our unconscious, that coex is founded.

It is quite easy to see that all of us have huge areas of our memory which we seldom or never use. But occasionally we may meet a school friend, or begin a conversation, which stimulates us to recall memories we thought long gone. Likewise there are areas of mind or body, the potential of which we hardly use. We need to remember also that because most of what emerges through the resistant screen of our ‘threshold’ is what we have sought or allowed, we may only build into our personality from within what appeals to us, what we like or agree with. This leads us to become one sided. In everyday terms it means that one person develops their intellect to the point where all of their views and decisions are dictated by it, while another person almost totally lives in their emotions or sexual drive. this may not be too important in terms of physical survival, but it can be extremely unhealthy in terms of our personality relating to the whole realm of biological, instinctual and life processes active within us. In the quest for the things which they value as a personality, many people find themselves in direct conflict with what their body or life in them wants.  Having watched many people as they worked with coex, I have seen this battle between Life and the personality rage in the person’s body, largely unconsciously. It has reminded me of national revolution, where a small elite – the intellectual government – rule the lives of millions of people who constitute the ‘body’ of a nation. If the governing group have not listened to the needs of the body of their nation, then conflict arises. Worse still in personal terms, we miss awareness of much of our own potential and satisfaction. It matters not that we dub ourselves ‘spiritual’, ‘conservationists’ etc., if we have not taken the time to carefully allow our own being to speak to us, then we are one sided and out of touch.

These considerations made clear some of Jung’s statements, and explain the rationale behind them. The ‘dark possibilities within’ are those aspects of ourselves or our stored experience which have not been allowed or encouraged to break through the threshold of resistance into conscious expression. They are dark because they are unconscious. ‘Letting go of oneself’ can also be seen as a rational necessity if we are to allow not only a balancing and healing of our personality, but also if we wish to contact the riches of what life in us knows. We have to ‘let go’ because otherwise the swinging door cannot open for the unconscious to release its contents. The changed attitude of mind is as relevant as pushing in he clutch if we wish to change gear in a car. In other words, unless we understand the functions of our being, we cannot use it wisely or well. The open, non critical state of mind and body is the very first step in coex. The next step is to ‘continue these exercises’ of listening to the unconscious ‘until the cramp in the conscious is released.

Although the simple use of the open-listening state of mind and body is sufficient for most people to establish communication with their inner resources, there are other factors which I have noticed are very important. These are to do not only with personal, but also cultural attitudes and concepts about the unconscious. Most people brought up in a western, Christian culture are deeply suspicious of the unconscious. We train ourselves and our children to remain in control; of our feelings and drives to such a degree that to allow anything spontaneous is highly threatening. Many people I have worked with have said the same thing to me at the outset of learning coex. “But how will I know if it is good or bad?”

This statement sums up the fears most people have about the unknown of their own nature. They want to know in advance what is going to emerge so that they can edit it, change it, make it socially acceptable. I believe this shows a deep sense of not trusting ones own innate nature.

Something else many people say is, “But it might not make sense!” or “I don’t know what to do.” This suggests a sense of needing to have ready made ideas about what to do. During classes in which the people were asked to explore body movements, most people gave up after one minute or so. Some of these classes were ones in which the people had been exercising with ‘given movements weekly for many months. Yet after a class in which they were asked to discover their own spontaneous movements, several of the class dropped out and never returned. This I take to be an expression of an apprehension about anything new emerging into the person’s life. Also, there is an element of these people not believing in their own power of discrimination to sort out what is useful for them. For myself, I have never found the unconscious to lie, but of course we can fool ourselves in projecting beliefs or hopes onto what it presents.

These anxieties, hopes, attitudes and expectations stand in the way of an easy and honest relationship with our inner process, just as they can stand in the way of an honest relationship between two people. In fact, the deepening of a ones experience of coex is based on the same factors as the deepening of a person to person relationship – trust, patience and an attempt to grow into further understanding and co-operation.

When I attempt to have an overall view of these different pieces of information pertaining to coex, then I see something which appears very important in human evolution. It seems quite clear that for millions of years the human animal lived without rational thought – which is a very recent thing – and they lived without what we call self awareness. Their actions did not arise out of thought as we know it, but out of a feeling response, a directive from the experience of their unconscious which  had its own wisdom gathered from countless generations. This feeling or intuitive response was probably manifested in direct impulses to move, or in dreamlike thought processes. The very tools of early writing were pictures, which probably indicates the mental life of those times. But as human beings developed a sense of personal identity, as they gave themselves personal and individual names, the ancient feeling sense, still obvious in such peoples as the Eskimos and Aborigines, was pushed out of use. When reasoning too became a common tool in human mental life, the separation between the sense which had guided human life for millions of years, and the modern individual life was complete. Not only separation but also division and even conflict. So we arrive at the dilemma of modern human beings who have a personality that is out of touch with major areas of their own being and unaware of their heritage of wisdom and problem solving faculties from the past.  Therefore, I see the process of coex as a means of bringing about wholeness where there was division, integration in the place of the terrible weakness which self-conscious personality, being the veneer it is, has brought about.

Mind and Movement 5 – Creative and Healing Facets of Coex

Apart from using coex for general purposes we can approach it with a specific situation. Maria, a woman in her sixties wanted to learn coex because she was experiencing arthritic type pains in her arms and hands. She also frequently felt depressed and seldom went out of her house. She was married, with a retired husband and children living independently. They had a very nice cottage with a garden in a country village. So Maria’s home and surroundings were not stressful, and apart from her pains and depression she was still healthy and good looking.

 From a physical point of view Maria was somewhat withdrawn. She seldom went out and was cautious in the way she expressed in her movements. She was shown how to allow spontaneous movements with her arms, something which she had never even considered before. At first she was hesitant and shy about making such movements in front of her tutor, but persisted. By the third session her movements were vigorous and began to include her whole body. At that point she stated that quite strong inner feelings of sensual pleasure, even sexuality accompanied the movements she made. This disturbed her a little, but when she had talked it over with her tutor she could accept them as her own healthy feelings being allowed to express. Over the following two weeks a rapid change occurred in her. She started going out again and enjoyed it. She bought herself a new outfit of clothes, and the pains in her arms disappeared. At the end of six sessions Maria said she no longer needed further appointments, she had found the change in herself which she had sought.

 It seems likely that Maria had been negating her own healthy flow of pleasure and energy, and it had become depressed instead of expressed. By learning to allow her being to move and express freely she found a way of changing her habits of withdrawal. Because her suppression of her own pleasure left her feeling depressed, she had begun to believe she was ill in some way. The rapid change had dispelled those feelings and reaffirmed her self confidence.

 Maria approached coex with specific problems and they were dealt with even though she did not attempt to explore causes or analyse herself. Many people will find the same applies to them also. This is because although they are not attempting an analytical approach, or ‘concentrating’ on the area of their difficulty coex itself often works at the causes of their problem automatically. In coex one is learning to use the process of self-regulation. This process is an automatic natural function dealing with imbalances anyway. So when we allow it to function more fully in coex, it may very well deal with the problem which concerns us. In any case, it is advisable to learn the general application of coex before attempting to guide it toward dealing with problem areas. This is not because one cannot guide it from the start, but simply that because it is something we learn, it is not worth trying to direct it until it is expressing fairly easily and fluidly. Once you find yourself at home with it, OR HAVE TRIED FOR SOME TIME AND CANNOT FIND FREE EXPRESSION, then try the specific methods described below.

FOCUSING ON SPECIFIC QUESTIONS

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The technique of FOCUSING described by Eugene Gendlin in his book of the same name, I find is a very helpful addition to the use of coex. Focusing seems to be an approach to the function of self regulation using certain steps. It is the steps which will be described here, as they are a great aid in looking at a specific problem or question in ones life.

 Gendlin calls the stages MOVEMENTS. I will call them steps or stages so as not to create confusion when talking about coex movement reaction. The first stage is CLEARING A SPACE. To do this you start by asking yourself what is it that stops you from feeling satisfied with life, good and happy RIGHT NOW. You need to ask yourself this and be well and ready to respond fully and honestly. Don’t hold back on any moans however small they may seem. State what they are and imagine putting them in a heap away from you, perhaps on the other side of the room. In stating your problem(s) in this way you may have just one thing you say, such as, “There’s something wrong with the way I relate to work lately. I keep destroying the very things I’m trying to create.” Or you might have a whole list of things such as, “My teeth ache a lot lately. Things would be okay if only I had a regular income. I begin to feel my age, and sometimes feel like I’m too tired to carry on. If my wife/husband wasn’t constantly pressurising me life might improve too. Yes, and also, the damn roof has started leaking again.”

 Whatever there is to say, let it come out and stack it on the pile until you can say, “Yes, if it weren’t for those I would feel okay.” Until you reach that feeling keep emptying out your difficulties, and don’t get hung up on any one of them by describing it at length. Stay reasonably detached, but don’t hold back even a small grouse.

 Gendlin describes the steps as if everyone has some sort of discomfort in their life. I wish to stress however that it may be that it is not a ‘problem’ you wish to explore, but a ‘question’. And from my experience the question can be about anything which is important to you. So you could ask: Do I have any unexpressed preferences between choosing college or university? — There is something I am missing in what this patient is telling me – what is it? — I am working on the plot for my novel about the Star Wars crisis and it needs more drama – any ideas? — My son is trying to decide a careers direction and has asked my help – what sense do I have from years of living with him? etc.

 The second step is FINDING THE FELT SENSE OF THE PROBLEM OR QUESTION. From all that you have put out on the pile, is there one which feels worse or most pressing? Is there one which brings some sort of reaction like an ache in the belly, or a sense of stickyness or heaviness. If it is a question you have asked, see if there is a feeling or body movement which arises in connection with it. You can take that one to look at, or simply choose one you want to work on. Now use the same ‘open screen’ form of observation described in chapter two in exercise three. Notice what you are feeling in yourself, then take hold of the question/problem you have chosen and notice what changes occur on the screen of your body condition. Take the question/problem as a whole, not any one part of it. Consider what your feeling reaction is to it, not what you think about it. Have the open-being condition used to allow coex.

 Gendlin’s advice is particularly good at this point. He says that one may begin to experience a lot of ‘static’ from the mind as you enter this stage. You may begin to lecture yourself about the problem – “I simply haven’t got what it takes at work. When will I admit it and give up trying to achieve something in life. It’s like a disease I’ve got.”  Or you may begin to analyse the problem – “It all started back at school; no with my dad really, when I got into that authority struggle with him. Now I keep it up with anyone who I happen to feel is in charge.” Of if it is a question – “I’ve never been able to figure this out, and frigging about talking to myself like a nut isn’t going to help.”

 Drop the mental noise away, just as you have learnt to drop away the critical faculty to allow coex. Put it all aside for a while. This is a special thing you are doing, and you have hours in which to indulge in useless theorising later. Look inside to the feelings which exist beyond words. Maybe at first there is just emptiness. Never mind, watch it to see if a shift occurs. As you watch with the problem loosely held, your inner process will respond to it out of its mass of unconscious experience. Look at the place in yourself which has not yet been verbalised to see what feeling arises in response to the question you choose to look at.

 A schoolteacher, Gerald, tried this technique just to see if it would work. He said he had no problems, was happily married, but was interested to find out if there was anything in the technique. When he got to the point of watching his inner screen he said he noticed a slight sensation in his chest. It was like a fluttery feeling, “nothing important.” He would usually have passed it by as having no usefulness and no relevance to him. When I asked him to give it attention and allow it to develop, it moved to his throat. It then became a choking feeling and he cried. His tears were an expression of feelings he never normally allowed himself. In the school in which he worked, there was so much disinterest from the pupils in what was being offered by the teachers, that it moved him deeply to see how many of the children were wasting opportunity in their life. His inner being was moved by the situation –  however, he had not previously admitted this to himself. Of course you may feel there is no point in crying about something which, although it touches the very noblest feelings in you, cannot be altered. In denigrating this part of oneself however, it is well to remember such a life as that of Dr Ignaz Semmelweis who discovered the cure for the fever (puerperal) which killed thousands of women at childbirth. Semmelweis did not dismiss the inner feelings he had when he watched women die in dozens in the hospital. His fellow doctors told him to ignore such foolish reactions. It was his feelings however, which drove him on to search for a cure.

 Gerald’s ‘unimportant’ fluttery feeling was the very way in which his non verbalised unconscious content was expressing. It is important not to denigrate such slight feeling changes or apparently unimportant movements. It is only by giving these previously ignored parts of oneself a chance to be known, that we form a link with the creative or healing response within us. Whatever the feeling situation is in this second stage, stay with it. Gendlin does not remark on the importance of allowing a movement response to the question, but this may exist even if no feeling is contacted. It may, as in Rhijn’s explanation, be an expression of the question at a level outside of feelings. By allowing movement the feelings and insight may be able to form.

 The third step is FINDING A HANDLE. You need to now consider what is the quality of the feeling or movement. Can you put a word to it that fits? The word might be something like ‘tight’ – ‘sleepy’ – ‘lost’ – or anything  descriptive which applies. Or it might be a short phrase such as, ‘looking for something’ – ‘shutting people out’ – ‘almost grasping something’. If you have become quite expressive in coex, then it might be that you have spontaneous speech or words, or an image or scene comes to mind descriptive of what you are sensing inside. Andrew, who was exploring the reason for his lack of motivation in work, and had already discovered easy spontaneous vocalisation, experienced himself saying, “Pride was my only defence.” He didn’t understand what the words meant, but let the question as to their meaning hang in his thoughts gently. He then quite quickly  had a mental picture of his father showing him his school books. His father was saying, “Look how neatly I used to write. See – no blots. Look at these drawings, how much care I took over them. Why can’t you keep your books clean and take care like that?” It was an actual memory of an event. Later Andrew contacted the feelings of humiliation he had felt as a youth in relationship with his father. He had used pride as a defence against feeling incapable and worthless. But he had stopped expressing himself in areas in which his father could criticise. This had continued into adult life. He had never put himself in a position where he could be criticised by any authority figure, which had curtailed his whole work creativity.

 Do not force your word, phrase or image to fit your response. Just try different words until you find what feels right.

 The fourth stage is RESONATING. Move backwards and forwards between your word or image and your inner feeling or movement. Do this until you sense you have made a satisfying connection. This is similar to exploring the image of the seed with body positions until you find one which fits. It is like the game one played as a child where something is hidden, then everyone shouts, ‘Cold, colder, freezing!’ as you move away, and ‘Warm, warmer, boiling hot!’ as you get closer.

 When you do manage to ‘resonate’ a noticeable change occurs in what you are experiencing. Recently a person who was working told me afterwards, “I felt really lost and incapable of understanding why my life is as it is. Then when I found the word which described what was happening in me I felt a tremendous relief. It seemed almost as if being able to clearly describe it had cleared the problem.” At this point one has not necessarily cleared the problem or found a clear response to the question, but it is certainly a step toward that. So when you can verbalise what you felt, give yourself time to respond to what arises, whether in changing feelings, movements or further images.

 The fifth stage is ASKING. When Andrew had got to the point of receiving the words, he was still not clear about what caused his work problem. He let the question as to what the words meant dangle in his thoughts without attempting to interfere with his spontaneous inner response. He didn’t let the ‘static’ and analysing process crowd in again. This is ASKING.

 It may be that this stage of response comes very quickly as Andrew’s did. Or it may take time to gradually discover the details of insight one seeks. Stay in the open receiving state however, without intellectualising, but certainly with curiosity and an asking frame of mind. The response may be in further movements, verbalisation, images or feelings. Perhaps many bits of information arise but you cannot get a cohesive satisfying understanding. Recognise that you still do not understand, but remain open. If you persist, a point is reached where there is integration, you feel, often suddenly, that at last you understand. It is not that you have simply found a likely theory, you actually have a feeling of insight and satisfaction. In Gestalt this is called an ‘Aha!’ This is because one almost shouts out, “Aha, I’ve got it!”

 Gendlin calls the sixth stage RECEIVING. This is an attitude more than something that is done. It is a stance we take in relation to what has arisen, however little. The practice of coex is a form of active respect for the process of life in oneself and its innate wisdom and creativity. It is active because one has to consciously create a receptive attitude which honours the life-giving inner forces. In successful use of coex we use the mental and physical functions which aid problem solving and our sense of social, environmental and internal activities. When we ask a question of ourselves, and allow the process of coex to respond we are listening to what this sense tells us. This sense is not as immediate or as formed as our sense of sight, for instance. After all, what we are sensing is a complex web and interplay of forces both within ourselves, as memories and biological activities, and around us as forces which are subtle – such as social pressure – but nevertheless very real. Although we sense these things, they are not at first formed into concrete visual images or intellectual concepts for our inspection. One has to listen for them, or reach out and touch as one would a gentle pulse. And this is important and fundamental in coex because, feeling that pulse, you will know you have a connection and a bond with the heart of things, both in yourself and beyond.

 We need to honour whatever arises for us. Our unconscious does not lie to us.  So whatever it presents needs to be honoured. When Andrew received the words about pride, he could not see how they related to him at all. But because he had learnt to trust his own process, he honoured them enough to continue ‘receiving’. Even then, once he had remembered the event with his father, he still had not touched the feelings surrounding that event. That came in another session. So part of ‘receiving’ is to recognise that what arises may come in paragraphs. In our first session we may receive only an introduction to what we seek to understand or deal with. We do not need to believe or blindly accept what it is. Andrew didn’t believe or accept the words ‘Pride was my only defence’. In a sense he said to himself, ‘I don’t know what this means, and I can’t see how it applies to me. Nevertheless I accept there may be some relevance that I do not yet see, so I will continue with the question – What does this mean?’ Don’t negate or throw away what you have received in your session. As Gendlin says, don’t let your negative criticisms “dump a truckload of cement on this new green shoot that just came up.” The relationship with yourself takes time to develop and expand, just like any other relationship.

HONE THE INNER GENIUS

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After I had been using coex for a year and had a fluid response physically, emotionally, and vocally I tried using it as an aid in understanding particular questions important to me. I found that whatever I sought to understand I received a response to. Sometimes it was very little, sometimes full and helpful. Then one day, because I was working with physical education, I began a session in which I asked the question  – Is there some form of exercise which would integrate the practitioner physically and emotionally? The response was so startling I found it difficult to believe. As if from a textbook, laid out in order and sequence, I began to receive the whole set of movements described in chapter three. So much detailed information came, which I spoke onto tape and still have, that I have only given the bare bones in this book. It took perhaps ten or more sessions to receive. Many of the concepts were quite new to me. They looked at the question I had asked from viewpoints I had never considered before. Some of the information was so new to me I could not remember it even a little while afterwards. As an experiment I asked for some of the details about energy movements in the pelvic area again without listening to the tape to refresh my memory. Out it flowed once more, and when I checked one against the other, there was no flaw. For the first time in my life I felt an awe for the possibilities available to us if we connect with the unconscious.

 Over the years I found there are particular ways of working with this possibility that are helpful. Firstly your body, feelings and mind need to be capable of  responding easily. Only in this way is it possible for what is held within yourself to express to consciousness. If you are not fluid in the use of coex, then the exercises given in chapter three need to be continued until you are.

 Secondly, you need to put aside for a while what you consider to be possible or true. Consciously let go of whatever viewpoint you look at life, or the question in hand, from. If you have rigid views about politics, religion, society, or the subject you are trying to research, they act upon the formation of creative realisation just as a rigid tense body would act upon the expression of a dance. As much as possible relax them.

 Five years ago my wife, Hyone’s, brother was living at Totnes, about a hundred miles from us. We decided to visit him and drove over the open moorland of Dartmoor. On our way back we stopped on the moor for a picnic and a toilet break. Hyone realised she no longer had her glasses, but we could not remember whether she had them since leaving her brother. Hyone thought she had and we searched the car, our picnic area, and the track and place she had gone to pee. I gave up after about fifteen minutes, but Hyone searched for much longer without success. When we arrived home we checked with her brother, but the glasses were not found. Nor did they turn up in the weeks that followed. It was seventy miles to where we had picnicked, so having searched so extensively already it didn’t seem worth returning for a casual search. But we were faced by the decision – was it worth while returning to search, or should Hyone buy new glasses. As they were specially tinted they would cost about #70. We decided to use coex to ask where the glasses might be. Hyone had never used coex in this way before. As she began her body started moving and bending. She almost stopped the action with the thoughts of, ‘What possible use can this be?’ She relaxed the thought and continued, and her body went into a squatting position.

 Meanwhile I had similar negative reactions in the way of feelings suggesting this was a hopeless quest and a waste of time. I dropped the feelings though, and quickly had images of a low bank and the glasses under a bush on the bank. When we compared our experiences they tallied. Hyone’s squatting she realised was suggesting the place where she squatted to pee. My bank was by the side of that very place. We drove there that day. Under the heather on the bank of the place she had squatted to pee, slightly covered in snow, lay her glasses.

 If our already formed concepts that it was pointless to ask our unconscious where the glasses were had been allowed to dominate, we would not have been able to receive the impressions we did. Also, we each received our impressions in a different way. Hyone’s was purely in physical movement, while mine was in images. This is why I suggest bringing as much of ourselves to the process of coex as we can. With body, voice, emotions, sexuality, and mind, there is more likelihood that some part of us can express what we need to know. Perhaps, as with Hyone, the reply comes in the form of mime. So we need to be open to look for the way the reply arises. In other words, if the body acts out something in movements, and you are looking for the response in the form of mental knowing, then you may think you have failed.

 Supposing the response comes but you don’t understand it; then you need to work with the coex response just as you would with someone you were conversing. If you have not clarified what you are seeking to understand, ask for clarification and ‘receive’ the next response. If that too is not clear enough, ask again in a back and forth response. If you clarify some of what you are looking for but some remains out of reach, return to it in another session.

 Don’t forget that you are working with the very forces of creativity. Sometimes the answer lies ready made within yourself, waiting to be let into consciousness. But sometimes what you seek is on the furthest edge of your knowing, or of your ability to live or understand. To receive it you must grow as a person, you may even have to carve the answer out of unformed experience. How many creative geniuses have left their masterpiece in the world without hard work, without facing and resolving conflicts of decision, without feeling deeply? Even when the work is first done, it may need revision after revision to shape it to what the artist wants. At our own level we are all creative geniuses. Our field of creativity may be helping to grow the unfolding personality of our children. It may be in meeting the ever changing demands of a commercial market. We might be a doctor attempting a fuller insight into a patient; or simply ourselves facing the challenge of existing and surviving. Therefore if the answer doesn’t come ready made, take up the challenge of your life. If you do, you will create something with your life that would otherwise have been unsaid. In its present situation, humanity needs that type of creative genius.

 Something I have seen which often frustrates the creative potential of coex is an attitude linked with being gullible. Let me take the example of someone I will call Sally. Sally has gained a good degree of mobility in allowing a spontaneous response.  Whatever arises however, she neatly fits into her preconceived ideas. At no time does she say, ‘I don’t understand what that was about.’ This is like me saying to Sally, ‘The other day I met someone and I immediately disliked them.”  So Sally says, ‘Oh, that must be because you knew each other in a past life.’ That doesn’t bring any insight to me, and although I want to explore the event to find an understanding which I can observe to fit what happened, Sally closes herself to any further communication. In this way Sally makes her sessions of coex say just whatever she wants them to say. They express exactly what she wants to believe. They do not rob her of the supports she emotionally craves. Due to her need to feel in control, she will believe that coex is healing any breakdown which occurs in her body. For Sally this works to the extent that she copes with the difficulties of her life because of the support of her beliefs. But as far as creativity is concerned it robs her of the opportunity to stand confounded by life. She may never know the wonder of unveiling from within herself a completely new view of things. With a mind already made up, she will never find what she did not already know. It also leaves her unclear of where her boundaries are in a real sense. If she believes her body is healing when it isn’t, she will not take the creative leap of looking for something that actually works. Such a leap means that we are ready to admit our present approach is inadequate, let go of it, and open to the new. Creativity constantly demands that of us. So if we are to use coex for such an end, we must be aware of our connection with what we already accept and believe, and hold it loosely.

HEALING THE BODY

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I began using coex partly because I was ill. I have learnt since then that I was ill because over a long period of time I had bottled up frustrations, hurts, love and tensions. As these were released or acknowledged the illness cleared. My present use of coex acts now like a preventative measure rather than a healing agent. It is like practising hygiene daily instead of trying to heal skin sores due to not washing. The tensions, the creative drives and feelings, instead of bottling up, are frequently met and dealt with. Because the prime aim of our self regulatory process is to maintain physical and psychological health, it is usually enough to use coex in a general sense, for its action to start improving our health. The homeostatic action will use all its resources if we are working with it.

 John, a 54 year old television reporter, had experienced years of illness, including T.B.. Describing his experience of coex he says:- “The body postures and movements were near miraculous to me because during the previous nine years, two serious accidents and a disease had resulted in five separate spinal fractures. For a period I had been encased from hips to jaw in a metal and leather support harness. For years I had endured great pain, and never in my prayers for help had I really hoped for the return of mobility of movement which is now shown in my childlike coex play movements.

 “The return of mobility is only one of the blessings I have enjoyed since beginning coex. For many years I had experienced consistently poor health; a lifetime of asthma compounded by T.B. in both lungs, and poor digestion with its attendant consequences, had all produced a dismal attenuation of minimal well being with serious illness. In the first four weeks of coex I felt great draughts of air pouring into my lungs. At the end of eighteen months my chest had expanded by four inches, which I discovered when I bought new underwear. My spine moved more freely than it had for years. My indigestion, with its accompanying constipation, disappeared. I am fitter than I have been for the previous forty five years.”

 Ann, a married woman with three children, approached coex from a different health situation than John. She explains her situation as follows:- “After practising coex for nearly two and a half years there are considerable physical changes of which I am aware. They are not dramatic in the sense of ‘pick up thy bed and walk’, but have come about gradually.

 “I was always a very cold person – I felt shrivelled up with cold, and wore numerous jerseys to keep warm. I ached with cold, and being thin I felt this keenly. However, I haven’t worn a vest now for a year, I am far more often warm than cold, and feel so much more alive because of this. My feet were usually cold – now even though I wear sandals they are warm. I feel so much more energy and joy of living. I feel it flow through me.

 “I used to have a permanently sore and red throat. I was often sick with diarrhoea for 48 hours at a stretch, several times each year. I feel these were due to tension. I was verbally suppressed as a child. Now if my throat feels sore I realise I am withholding my speech. The diarrhoea I think was a way of releasing tension which I no longer need. In coex I was able to release my feelings in words, and I was often led to chanting and singing. Although I am not completely released in this area yet, my voice is already lower and more relaxed.

 “Other things are that I used to tilt my head on one side a great deal, and kept my shoulders permanently raised. This was accompanied by shallow breathing and hand clenching. These have gone now, and my digestion, which was ‘delicate’ has altered too. I can digest raw vegetables and fruit skins easily, and because of this I eat and enjoy more useful foods. Yet again it happened slowly and almost unnoticeably over two years. Perhaps that is not slowly though, when I had been suffering for nearly 30 years.

 “Before I started coex I considered myself to be a ‘normally functioning person’, not a freak. I don’t know how I went on year after year imposing such strain on my system – but I did. It was not until I had used coex for two and a half years that I began to understand what real living is. Not manipulated by fears and tension. Not ‘putting on’ a self in the morning. Sometimes now I find myself off centre. But I know now when this is happening so can watch to see why. I live more fully from what I call my intuitive centre, and begin to instinctively know what I need, and follow it. Best of all though is having MYSELF, which is so wonderful!”

 John and Ann practised their coex in slightly different ways. John started by practising with the guidance of someone teaching him. He then began to practise alone at home. Ann first began coex in a group in Exeter. She then felt she needed individual help, so worked with a teacher.

 Health is not simply being able to jog for a couple of miles, or bend and touch ones toes. Our being cannot be split into neat compartments of body health and mental health. Every thought acts directly within the body, often leading it into dynamic action. When coex is working in us, it uses therapeutic tools I have never heard applied in straight psychotherapy. It doesn’t have the limitations of a theoretical school to bind it, so its action uses whatever is appropriate. This may be movements of a regular sort, posture, strange jerks, or dancing. But it may deal with our health by mobilising our feelings and mental health. Here is a description by Mark of a session of this type.

 “Started this session very quickly, singing in what sounded like a foreign language, and foot stamping. The song wasn’t coming out very well, and my right arm began to swing round and round. This seemed to lead me into bark-like sounds and from there into full African singing. I don’t think I have ever sung as noisily or as lustily as I did in this session. Gradually the singing chant became more and more forceful and fluent. I surrendered into it deeply and a torrent of words poured out. I really felt like an African Chief chanting to a great crowd of people – not just because of the sounds, but because my feelings were flowing. The chant became even more forceful, filling the hall with sound, and finally in a tremendous roar or bellow, I called out, just as if warriors had been roused, and the roar sent them on their way to battle.”

 This type of chanting is fairly common in coex. It is a well known phenomenon connected with the unconscious, often known as ‘glossolalia’, sometimes called speaking in tongues, and recorded for thousands of years. My experience of it suggests it is the way the unconscious expresses its feeling contents prior to  understandable verbalisation. So in Van Rhijn’s scale it would be an expression of level three. The streaming feelings which usually accompany this spontaneous chanting act to cleanse and balance ones inner life. I can only talk from my impression of this, but it seems to act similarly to circulation. If we sit a lot our circulation becomes sluggish. A brisk walk will stimulate circulation and help clear away waste products and activate cell growth in muscles and bones. Similarly, if our feelings are not stimulated frequently, they need this flowing activity to clear away negative feeling debris, and promote a healthy soul. In this way the many facets of our energy and feelings move into a fuller, freer expression of themselves. They feel like exercises of the soul.

 Jung says that our psyche is both male and female. The man, he shows, also has a female side to his psyche, and the woman a male side. From the above experiences it seems likely that although we may be born a white male or a black female, we also have within us the characteristics not only of the opposite sex, but also of the other racial types, as well as animals, plants and minerals. Jung says that a lot of illness occurs when the secondary sexual characteristics are suppressed, and we become unbalanced. Balance seems to be when the different aspects of our being, including the minerals in our bones, the vegetative processes in our cells, the animal behaviour patterns in our unconscious, the opposite sexual characteristics, are balanced and in a reasonable degree integrated into our waking personality.

 ’s experience is an example of how a great deal of ill health and poor functioning is caused by living with a lot of unconscious tension. Ann was a very courageous and hard worker as far as coex is concerned, and was willing to face many experiences she had previously bottled up inside herself. To give some sort of understanding of what this means I will quote Ann at length regarding one aspect of her coex. She says that “During one coex session I was deeply involved in re-experiencing parts of several of my children’s births. These experiences all centred on surgical shocks, which at the time I accepted passively, but which when I re-experienced them, were more fully understood by me to have been terrifying assaults on my body and threats to my yet unborn babies.

 “The first one was a surgical induction of my third baby and I deeply felt that as the doctor thrust a pair of scissors inside my vagina that he would pierce my baby. In coex I could feel the terror which engulfed me but which I had not allowed myself, or had not been allowed by the hospital setting, to feel and react to. This time I was able to shout and cry out -’Don’t; don’t do it, you’ll hurt my baby!’ and I let out the fullness of my feelings.

 “But the strangest experience was of my son’s birth. I had never fully understood what it meant. It was a blurred and painful memory for me, until this session, when so much was made clear. It was a Caesarean birth, followed by my sterilisation in hospital. It sounds straightforward, and technically it probably was. But a part of my being was numbed by the strangeness, the unreality of this birth. I could not feel that my son was born because I had not experienced the birth pains. I was like a bewildered animal at times, asking for him. ‘Have I had my baby?’ I asked the nurses. They looked at me very oddly – they didn’t understand. At night I got up and looked for him. I had to hold him, in order to believe.

 “After his birth he was kept from me for two days for a thorough examination. I was frantic with longing to hold him – I even made my way along the endless length of corridor to search for him – although I was hardly able to walk. In the end I was taken in a wheelchair to see him through a glass window. My whole being ached for him. In the session I screamed for him and sobbed, ‘he’s mine, he’s mine’ over and over. When I did have him I wasn’t allowed to feed him because I had recently had T.B. It was such a deep blow to my motherhood. At the time I was mute with anguish – now I released the words I had longed to say. I felt that my son had been taken away from me. Taken from my womb, taken to the examination room; taken from my breast; taken even by my husband. The nurse fed him with a bottle, flicking the soles of his feet to make him suck. I saw my husband pick him up. ‘At last I have a little son’ he said. His joy was a delight I couldn’t share. He was my fourth baby and all the other births had been occasions of great joy. I didn’t understand the clinical Caesarean birth, and all the surrounding complications which enveloped me. I felt such coldness, such a lack of understanding. It was against my nature. Against my instinctive mother longings. No one explained that this unnatural birth might bring such feelings.

 “In looking at and re-experiencing these birth traumas, I am more and more sure that during childbirth women have an extra sensory awareness, an aura of sensitivity which surrounds them and makes them alert to any threat to their baby. So when any surgical assault is made on their bodies at this time, any artificial or interfering gesture, even an injection – it is very deeply felt. I don’t think that enough is understood of the primitive, instinctive side of childbirth.

 “Six days after my son’s birth I passed out. When I awoke on my bed I was sobbing from the core of my being. I was engulfed in my crying for a long period of time – tears broke from me in waves. Then I thrashed about and screamed. At one point I was above my bed looking down on myself lying there. I let go completely. But of course I was injected with tranquillising drugs, calmed down and held down. After that I was given tranquillisers three times a day and I became a good, quiet, well behaved patient. But there was so much seething inside me, kept down – I now understand – so that only in this coex session seven years later could I see that my sterilisation had killed my creative energy – could I feel my maternal creative energy had been destroyed, tied up inside me, killed – could I understand how I resented the death of my precious pregnancies. I had flowered so sweetly during my pregnancies. Now they were gone. I even resented my husband for it, because he had agreed it as a good idea. I could no longer enjoy intercourse for the sadness hung over me – but I hadn’t understood this at the time. Outwardly I accepted it – inwardly I pined.

 “I went to a psychiatrist for treatment for deep depression after I returned home. I felt so guilty too as I could read the reproaches in people’s eyes – ‘she has a beautiful little son, and she’s depressed.’ I was given more drugs, first stimulants then tranquillisers – and told that it would pass, that time is a great healer. I learnt to live on my tranquillisers for the first five years, until I began coex and gave them up. Then after two years of coex I uncovered the truth – and I feel that although I can never give my son those things that were missing at the time, I can now really accept my sorrow and can build from there. I also feel that my creative energies are beginning to flow again in other channels.”

 In moving toward health using coex, unless your condition is a simple one which needs self help rather than professional direction, it is wise to work with the guidance of your doctor. At least check out whether your condition is directly physical or psychosomatic. If it is physical, like an infection, coex can help, but one obviously needs to follow common sense as well, such as sufficient rest and healthy diet. Coex is an expression of your own innate healing function. If it worked perfectly no one would be ill anyway. Co-operating with it increases its efficiency, but it only occasionally achieves miracles. Anyway, miracles are only the functioning of natural law which we have perhaps not yet defined.

 If your illness does not respond to coex, you need to suspect that there are suppressed past experiences which have not yet been released. Ask what it is, and be ready to work via symbols to start with. Ann took five years to unearth some of her most important tensions. It is seldom the hardest we release first. However, some ill health or difficult feelings – perhaps the largest percentage – are due to habits. Habits to do with eating, with exercise, with the way we react to situations, and the way we tangle up or smooth our inner energies. Because coex gradually expands our awareness of ourselves, these habits become noticeable. Of course, that does not magically banish them. Only your own skill and persistence in re-creating yourself can do that.

 CREATIVE IMAGINATION COEX AND HEALTH

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Ann’s discovery that a particular time of her life was the ‘site’ of her tension is applicable to most of us. Sometimes the cause of the tense state occurred in a period of time lasting only a few minutes. I remember a conversation with my mother about masturbation which lasted a minute at the most. Although it was short it so terrified me – with great emotion she told me masturbation would certainly kill me – that the results of it lasted thirty years. Sometimes what troubles our inner functioning has entered us over a longer period such as puberty, or the years of marriage to one partner. Or it may be the sum total of a relationship with one person such as our father.

 If we seek to release these areas of tension, one way we can approach coex is to work through our life consecutively. I am not suggesting that in one clean sweep we can remove the tensions in our life. Left to itself the unconscious tends to deal with whatever is ‘loose’ first, or nearest the surface. It jumps from one age or life period to another, backwards and forwards, clearing a bit here, rebuilding there. So when we attempt to organise it consecutively it will not completely comply as it has its own rhythms. The point of working in this way however, is to purposefully recognise that certain areas of our life may need renovating, and starting the process of bringing awareness to them.

 Therefore, what I suggest, once you are mobile in coex, is to list the moments or periods of your life when there were obvious or possible difficulties. On the list should be put any times in hospital, especially as a child away from mother; birth of a younger brother or sister; puberty; death of parent or someone very close; major accidents; difficult times of relationship with a parent or home; birth; times when you heard something negative about yourself, such as mother saying she tried to abort you. List these out in sequence and, starting from the one nearest in time work back through them.

 The way to do this is that where possible, such as with birth and operations, take the physical position connected with the situation. It doesn’t matter if this is simply your imaginative concept of what the position should be. Hold the thought of the event and let free movement and fantasy arise. Do not concern yourself with whether what arises actually took place. It may do, it may not. To test whether people do have memories of early childhood Dr. Cheek used hypnosis. While deeply relaxed his subjects were asked to remember what position their head was in at birth. Their response was checked against their medical records and found to be 100% correct. Nevertheless, it is not a wise thing to get stuck in expecting ‘correct’ memories. The unconscious often needs to release its ‘fantasies’ about some area of our life. Even though these are not actual memories, they are just as healing, sometimes more so. After all, it may not have been the event that disturbed us. It may have been our feeling reaction to it, or our imagination about it, which created misery and tension in us.

 To work wisely in this way we must not forget that only a small portion of our being is a conscious, rational, entity. We are largely a biological and feeling creature which may be tied up by many invisible but potent influences. I remember working with a young girl who had a terror of injections. When she was relaxed I suggested she remember the cause of her fear and experience the feelings of it. She allowed her spontaneous response to this, and re-enacted a scene in which she was visiting a hospital out-patients to receive an injection for an allergy she suffered. It was to be an intravenous injection, but the nurse could not hit the vein, so was injecting again and again….and again. The girl was calling for her mother who stood some feet away. The mother didn’t respond because she was held by the invisible bonds of respecting the authority of the nurse and wanting her daughter to have the injection. The girl wanted to fight and run away but was held by wanting to comply with her mother’s judgement, and not wanting to fight with the nurse. Outside of those bonds, she as a natural creature would have screamed, fought, and attempted to run away. Holding back the urges to do so created tension and fear in her. Her organism, or her being, needed to allow the urges to be expressed. Therefore, when you approach any event in your life through coex, drop what you think ought to happen, and simply let your organism express what it needs to. Perhaps it will not stick to social niceties, but that is a part of healing. There is no fear of the unsociable expression spreading beyond the session. But if you cannot allow your being to relax from all the social do’s and don’ts sometime, you are bound to build up tension.

 During each session, allow yourself to express whatever arises. If you do not feel you have completed whatever was happening, come back to what you were considering at other sessions until you arrive at a peacefulness. Sometimes this takes a number of sessions, sometimes just one. Once completed however, move on to the next event to be worked on. As already said, the reason for working in this way is to begin the process of extending awareness into parts of our experience where tension and hurt may be. Therefore, once you have worked back through your list, you can either practice coex without direction; or you may have become aware that certain areas need more work.

 Because doctors, nurses and therapists do not have unlimited time in which to work with each individual patient, the use of coex has a very real part to play within the healing techniques used today. By teaching the fundamentals of it to patients; by helping them to accept the need their organism has to express in this way, and by creating an environment in which an individual or group can use coex, a great deal can be done to reduce stress and stimulate positive health in patients.

Collective Consciousness – The Dawn of Awareness

Dreams are an expression of biological life forming a dim awareness of itself, an ill-defined awareness as it came alive in the creatures swarming on our planet. Life became conscious in that way millions of years ago. From the human point of view we do not see it as a powerful form of consciousness. But the focused self-aware consciousness of human beings feeds back into that unfocused ocean of awareness because we are a connected part of it. That fundamental awareness, or what the Australian aborigines call the Dreamtime, and what a lot of people probably mean when they use the word God, is transforming constantly through the impact of new experience. This transformation comes about through an interaction between the focused self-awareness of human beings and that fundamental awareness behind existence. That core awareness is archaic and ancient, a collective experience of everything that has lived. That core awareness is unfocused, but in that is its wonder. It doesn’t particularise. It doesn’t end up being any one thing. It remains all encompassing, a collective. Because of the interaction between physical life forms and that core awareness it is evolving all the time.

At times I have explored that deep ocean of unfocussed sentience, and at one time as I dropped deeply into it I had the sense, or the awareness, that life has a unified consciousness. In that consciousness life has the awareness of millions of years of experience through all its creatures. This awareness developed into a living framework, a living matrix. Life learned how to build, how to develop an integrated system. The lesson was learned slowly, but it was unfolded from the already existing building blocks or framework that formed the universe. Integration means connectivity. It means symbiosis, working together for mutual gain. It means love in its most profound sense – the giving of self to another as happens in pregnancy and child rearing; as happens in life where to survive we live on the death of other things such as when we eat plants or animals.

All that life has learned is now a great matrix of influence that continues to flow into the way things work, and who we are. This is like an enormous structure that directs things and holds them to that pattern. I suppose this could be seen as a sort of establishment – what is established. But this would not be a real insight into that collective awareness. Because all the time, in a sort of flashing newness of creativity the collective awareness constantly upgrades, it constantly experiments, it constantly tries out new things. It does this because of the factor of randomness, because an aspect of the universe and life is chaotic, and it has through that a freedom to do the unexpected. And Life integrates what it learns.

Life learned how to build, how to develop an integrated system. The lesson was  learned slowly, but it was unfolded from the already existing building blocks or framework that formed the universe. Integration means connectivity. It means symbiosis, working together for mutual gain. It means love in its most profound sense – the giving of self to another as happens in pregnancy and child rearing; as happens in life where to survive we live on the death of other things such as when we eat plants or animals. All that life has learned is now a great matrix of influence that continues to flow into the way things work, and who we are. This is like an enormous structure that directs things and holds them to that pattern. I suppose this could be seen as a sort of establishment – what is established. But this would not be a real insight into that collective awareness. Because all the time, in a sort of flashing newness of creativity the collective awareness constantly upgrades, it constantly experiments, it constantly tries out new things. And it integrates what it learns.

Human society with its immense variety, it is enormous range of experience, its conflicts, its pain and challenges, is the most amazing source of experience and experiment. It constantly presents variety and opportunity to try out new things. And I saw that life is learning about energy exchange, about shifts, about not holding on. Or perhaps it has learned that and it is offering that as possible behavioural responses to us human beings. In any case, for me personally, I saw that I do not need to hold on to any particular form of relationship. One of the most powerful stances we can take is that of balance. Not holding on to the shifting experiences we meet is the balance that allows us to move and shift according to this moment, this need, this person we are dealing with now.

I saw that dreams express an archaic wisdom. They express that wisdom mentioned above that the collective awareness has gathered through unimaginable variety of life experience. It expresses the possibility of all the behavioural responses that it has learned. For instance, in human society there are all manner of relationship between the man and the woman. There are men with one wife, no wife, or many wives. There are men who never enter a relationship all their life. There are women with no husband, with one husband, with several husbands, or several partners. Of course the unusual forms of sexuality such as prostitution and homosexuality explore yet more varieties of personal experience. It isn’t that any of these are right or wrong, they are simply variations on a theme. As in music that satisfies, the theme may explore conflicts, pain, or discord as the music moves toward integration, toward synthesis and satisfaction.

It is not only genetic coding that influences us to respond to present events. There is also an experience that lies behind that coding. There are the millions of years of life experience that led to the code. The archaic in us exists because of connections. The whole matrix of life exists because of connections. Many of these are obvious as we see in the food chain, as we see in the relationship between plant life and the sun and the earth. We see these connections in the way that bacterial life and plant life and human life work together. One thing relates to and depends upon another thing. At a deep level we all acknowledge that dependence. We feel it as a sort of holiness or awe. We see it as a fundamental truth but unfortunately often ignore it.

Our tribal religions frequently, and unfortunately, get disconnected from that archaic source of life. The religion, although it states it is about the creative impulse in us all, often doesn’t help us to connect with that creative source, with that internal archaic awareness. So dreams, and the love that people have for each other, are always a more direct route to re-connection. They take us back to that wisdom, that tried and true experience. They arouse again the awareness of our connection with each other.

Some things life has learned are fundamental. Of course the collective consciousness has experience of all types of human relationship. That core experience knows that it is only out of the death of one life form that another exists. It is only by acknowledging and living our place in the scheme of things that we keep our own connection with that core of awareness open. In that way we maintain our integrity and growth. Each of us, from our forebears, from the circumstances of our birth and culture, through pain or wonder experienced, have achieved a particular shape or personality structure. Being that shape, we do not need to conform to somebody else’s shape or requirements. It is the variety that the core awareness treasures and absorbs. Our particular shape has its own qualities and weaknesses. What does need to happen though, is that we need to stand openly, as the shape we are, before that fundamental awareness. We need to bring ourselves just as we are to that connection with life so that it may experience us more fully. In that connection we share with it, and it shares with us. It savours us, and we savour it. If we feel guilty or attempt to hide parts of ourselves, then we remain unwhole. Unwhole in the sense that part of our nature is the core awareness. If we lack that we are only a fraction of what we might be. We are the odd shape we have become. With our core connection we are whole no matter what shape we are. Without that connection we remain separated and alone. See You Are a Dual Being

Certain things are holy, like motherhood, or fatherhood. They are holy because they are so fundamental to life as it expresses on our planet. Marriage is such a holy thing because it represents and is an expression of the wonder of reproduction and parenthood. This should not be confused with partnership, such as occurs in a homosexual relationship.(1) Because things such as marriage, that manifest the most primordial aspects of life, are holy we need to honour them, and perhaps kneel before them in some way. They transcend any one person’s life and experience. Because of this, things like motherhood develop into an immense archetype. In other words they become a focused collection of uncountable human experiences. All such huge areas of experience are patterns in the core awareness. They are immense patterns in the internal structure of human life. And although life itself honours them, although life itself largely flows through the patterns they are, life does not stop us making leaps right beyond the boundaries of those archetypes. In that way we make new connections new possibilities for life itself and for the environment.

() That is not to say that a homosexual relationship does not express another of the most profound aspects of life, that of love. But love should be seen as a transcending influence rather than simply a genital desire or an expression of need or dependence.

See Sorg.