I know something about you…

Years ago, a very dear friend, Margot Taylor Fanger, A.C.S.W. (1929-2001) introduced me to the work of Milton H. Erickson, MD, Psychiatrist, and founder of what came to be called “Neurolinguistic Programming”. He would say, “I know something about you that you don’t know that I know and aren’t you going to be surprised when you find out what it is?” It would move his clients into a state of mind where they let go of their attachments to their illusory thinking – if I might be so bold as to use that term. I read the quote in a book about him by the man who has been called his biographer, Ernest Rossi, whose book, My Voice Will Go With You engaged me with the life of this remarkable physician. Erickson was a master at “double-binding” his patients to give themselves permission to see their self differently… free of self-delusions/illusions…. I have had several occasions to ask that question of individuals in H.O.P.E. Groups. It stimulates them to start thinking about what it could possibly be what I did know about them that would be surprising.
My sense of what that statement implies will be expressed later in this post. In the meantime, do keep it in mind as we look at what do I know about being human… like both you and me… that might be infinitely more surprising… to have meaning….
A life that becomes meaningless is a life that falls into despair, and it is my appreciation today that despair lies behind all addictions and suicides. Diederik Wolsak had the tragic experience as an eight-year-old of being captured by the Japanese army in the South Pacific and put in a prisoner of war camp! He believed he’d been abandoned by his family… imagine how traumatic that must have been! Wolsak’s life after liberation was one of becoming a meaningless, mean narcissist with multiple addictions. In his adult years he became motivated to see if there was a way of correcting that dysfunction, and he found the practice known as “Attitudinal Healing” that had healed a dis-functionally mean, nasty psychiatrist of the effects of being called a “dummy” during his growing years… (He was born dyslexic, but the condition had not been described before he reached his mid-teen years.) When he met the spiritual text called A Course In Miracles, he had an instantaneous, well documented complete healing. Wolsak had exactly the same thing happen to him when, helped by Attitudinal Healing, he got over his feeling of having been abandoned by his family when he was put in that prison camp.
I would like to share with you some other people’s appreciations of the fact that we are the product of a living loving Mystery that never makes mistakes, any more than it has “accidents”. No, my good humans, we are not mistakes or accidents: we are conscious expressions of the mysterious “Source” that started this whole issue evolving nearly 14 billion years ago. I would add that it has been described as a point of light, and it still is a point of light because you can’t get outside of it to analyze it. Yes, science describes the processes that comprise the Mystery, but cannot provide the answer to the questions, “Why? Where? When? Also, in an affirming way, we create religions to try to explain and explore the Mystery, but they commonly get lost in being judgmental. It is clear to me that today we are in the situation of being able to tell the story of how we ever came into being at all.
I have been moved to read and add Lipton and Bhaermann’s 2009 book, Spontaneous Evolution to Peter Kingsley’s 2018 Catafalque and to Caroline Myss’ recent three, 2-hour video presentations, Reflections: Healing Practices for Your Soul. Add to these the oft quoted statement about being spiritual beings immersed in the human condition and, if you are at all like me, you’ll find rich meaning to life. Consider that we are actively engaged in healing the deep soul wounds of the intellectual, misguided 17th century idea that the existence of the soul could not be scientifically proven, and, therefore, it does not exist.
Of interest and value, the Shaman societies that have managed to survive tragic practices of genocide know all about the soul. Late religions have joined René Descartes and his fellow rationalists of the 17th century in denying soul’s existence. It helped me to read Descartes’ The Passions of the Soul that he wrote some 40 years after his denial of the soul’s existence. He preserved the soul by placing it in the tiny little pineal gland in the brain… and that was where it was when a senior and well–known neurosurgeon taught my medical school class that there was such a thing as Soul beyond the Cartesian perception.
A thought from all of my resources going back some 40 years is that the soul is a form of consciousness that brings mind and spirit together as real entities. In other words, you and I each have a soul… it will leave this form when this form can no longer sustain its life. It will reincarnate bringing the experience of all previous incarnations into the next life…. Yes, as Peter Kingsley says in the closing words of his masterful study, Reality, “We are immortal.”
The power of the soul to change reality is a fundamental concept that H.O.P.E. promotes, and has demonstrated hundreds of times in H.O.P.E. Group meetings. It is the subject of Caroline Myss’ recent lectures.
Furthermore, the response to Erickson’s rhetorical question comes from the mindset of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin: “We are spiritual beings immersed in the human condition.” This is what Peter Kingsley, Caroline Myss, H.O.P.E. Group participants… and many others know is a Mystery calling us into the next level of evolution. I am of a mind that says that this is a mindset of purification that destroys the old judgmental ways of seeing each other, and sees us through God’s eyes… as collaborators in creation, which is exactly what I know about you. Does that surprise you?