Healing, as opposed to a cure, is directly related to becoming conscious of one's true nature. And although as humans we share a heritage both historical and spiritual, the process of healing is extremely unique for each person because our wounds, though similar, are experienced in vastly different ways. In honoring our own specific wounds and therefore honoring what it is that seeks the deepest unfolding, we begin to heal. It is a tribute to the vastness and multiplicity of the creative force that this should be so.

One of my favorite authors, Ken Wilber, states in a rather deceptively simple way, "what I had long ago intuited but would not or could not, honor; and therefore, I suffered". Wilber says, "unity consciousness is the natural state of awareness". Years ago I used to try to convey this notion by using the body as metaphor: "We have two legs, wouldn't it be unnatural and even stupid to be using only one all the time? We have two arms, wouldn't it be unnatural and even stupid to tie one behind our backs and go through life as if we only had one? Well, that is what we do when we don't include the spiritual in our lives". As we bring the pieces together, as we re-connect with our spiritual reality, we find that much of what motivated us in the past falls by the wayside. Our values undergo profound changes and our desires shift; and so does the pain.

Jung compared the ego to a cork on a vast ocean. The I Ching refers to it as a "snail-sized blot of fear", and asks "shall we allow such a blot to rule us?" Roberto Assagioli referred to this state of being as one prey to "illusions and phantasms", a "fundamental infirmity of man", causing conflicts which "waste our energy".

Assagioli considers the first step to freedom to be that in which we become aware of the "conscious aspect of the components of the personality not a dim, passive awareness, but a deliberate assessment, valuation, understanding and control of them". In fact, if we are not even aware of the contents of our consciousness, we hold an illusion that we have control, when, in reality, the un-acknowledged contents of our consciousness control us. As we step back to observe, we gradually learn to identify our exact thoughts, state of body and emotions. Eventually we realize we are not them. The disidentification process is key, because, after all, how can one disidentify from something of which one is not aware? One would only be ignoring and not choosing to disidentify. Ferrucci says, "We can afford to ignore only what we have understood." In this sense, the observer position is an expanded conscious awareness, not yet including choice. The observer takes note, or, as Assagioli puts it, takes inventory.

Choice occurs when one has disidentified from the contents of body, mind and emotions. In other words, after acknowledging the exact contents, one can deliberately say "I am not such and such". This is one aspect of the "I" or the self, which Assagioli considers to be the "center of our consciousness". The other aspect of the "I" is to this very center, which is stable and permanent, unaffected by the "changing contents of (their) consciousness". An experience of this centered self or "I" can produce a sense of relief followed by joy because of the grounded knowing that this is what true power feels like. Such experiences are referred to as self- empowerment. Rather similarly, the Rune Teiwaz considers that the only battle is the battle with one's 'self': this is the path of the Spiritual Warrior. In an organic process, movement or evolution occurs along a spiral which integrates rather than disowns, and which, therefore, affords a wider view. Whenever we cooperate with such a conscious awareness process, we have, as Betsie Carter-Haar says, "an even greater range of expression available", and are increasingly able to choose when "to identify with any personality element, and when to be identified as the 'I'".

This "I" space is an even more expanded one, as compared to the observer space. In my own experience with the disidentification exercise, the felt experience of expansion of space was directly related to a true expansion of identity... I now have both legs available to me. This is what Carter-Haar calls a "sense of wholeness" and what Ferrucci describes as having "the whole personality available to the self". In fact, this is the process of re-membering. In relation to the re-connecting of one's self I have always enjoyed the story of Humpty Dumpty who "had a great fall and all the King's men couldn't put him back together again". Perhaps the King's men couldn't but the self and higher Self can. Jung used the tale of Humpty Dumpty to illustrate the fragmentation of the psyche and the process of bringing the pieces together as part of the process of individuation.

As we have seen, some of the benefits of being in the "I" space are choice and a sense of liberation and enlarged identity. This enlarging of the "map", as Wilber calls, it leads to freedom and authenticity. One is en-abled to be authentic because fear is absent in the "I" space. It is indeed an "unshakable ground", as Carter-Haar calls it. As much as the "I" space is an enlarged one, it is, so to speak, still in our own time-space continuum. I compare it to traveling at the speed of light. The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second. This is indeed enormous speed. Yet, it is still a speed and it therefore constitutes a limit. If we could travel beyond the speed of light (and there is a way), we would be in negative time/space, or to put it another way, time and therefore space would not exist. One could travel in any direction in time. This is the space of the higher Self.

From our "I" space we can re-claim our rights to live with dignity; to truly live the highest values of a human being and not be a mock shadow. As well, it is only from here that we can truly choose to engage the values or not. The contact with the higher Self allows us to re-claim our rights as beings of energy and light... as multi-dimensional beings. It is much like returning home after an extended absence. The beauty of this home is that it is not located in time-space you can carry this home with you, wherever you go. In an another insight which occurred for me during the exercise, I realized that not only was my higher Self lightening my "load", I need not carry it at all because ironically I am my higher Self and it is me. Connected to this space or as the "I", we can begin to re-claim our Divine rights.

As I search for a way to conclude, I see that Carter-Haar describes this process of reaching for the Transpersonal Self as one in which we experience universality, and "yet at the same time, paradoxically, the sense of 'I-ness' is enhanced." I observe that in the margins of her article I had noted, "The World in the Tarot". As we embody the World, we square the circle; we are able to bring Spirit into matter. The paradox is that as we experience the Divine, we are more and not less engaged in life. Perhaps, ironically once again, this is partly due to "the human heart by which we live" (Wordsworth).

The relationship of personal self to the higher Self is often, not an easy one at first. As Piero Ferrucci says in Inevitable Grace:

The Self is, after all an uncomfortable subject. It asks us to revolutionize our lives; it may temporarily make us more vulnerable; it gives us more responsibility, it demands hard work and exposes us to danger. Ignoring the whole matter and getting on with our everyday lives may be far easier. This response is the greatest form of betrayal -- the denial of what we really are....

In coming to a realization of "what we really are", we commit to doing our best to align our individual self with our higher Self. We learn we can use the personality self as the expression of our higher Self... that we can imbue our personality self with the light and wisdom of our higher Self, thereby bringing healing not only to our self but to our community as well. This is a journey which is unique for each and never-ending. And, this journey is, as Assagioli said, "profoundly joyous".

References
Roberto Assagioli, Psychosynthesis, 1965
Betsie Carter-Haar, Personality and Personal Freedom, 1975
Piero Ferrucci, Inevitable Grace, 1990 and What We May Be, 1976
Ken Wilber, No Boundary, 1979
Carol K. Antony, A Guide to the I Ching, 1988
Ralph H. Blum, The Book of Runes, 1993 ed.

Special thanks to Olga Denisko, Founding Director of Psychosynthesis Pathways of Montreal, for her support, guidance and editing.

Josee DiSanio B. A. studied psychosynthesis with Olga Denisko in Montreal and is a certified Reiki practitioner. She can be reached at: 2232 Wilson, Montreal, QC H4A 2T3, Canada.