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Drive to evolve

As far as I’m concerned, it is this ‘drive to evolve’ that we have in common with, for example, the apple tree in our allotment. The ‘drive’ of the apple tree is to manifest apples after the blossom. The ‘drive’ that we learn to work with in psychosynthesis is the drive to become who you are and to manifest what you want. The way in which psychosynthesis gives shape to this is, among other things, through the process of discovering what you want (Purpose) towards manifesting (putting into practice) to this goal. With this you are increasingly able to make conscious decisions.

The star-diagram invites us to become familiar with the different psychological functions through which we express and manifest ourselves in the world. These functions can both serve us in how we want to manifest ourselves, as well as hinder us through which we can ‘derail’. They have the function to take in information (through perception, introception and neuroception), to be perceived and judged from a free self and a free will, and then to express ourselves.

In order to get to know yourself in who you really are or would like to be, you sometimes have to discover who or what you are not. Most of the time we have become so identified and familiar with our ‘false self-images’ that we have come to believe that we are. Peeling off these ‘false’ self-images can be very enlightening and at the same time confronting.

Fogged windows

Because let’s be honest, how clean are our ‘windows’ through which we are used to looking? Isn’t it that we are usually occupied by our beliefs, expectations or maybe even held hostage by our feelings and emotions? Or perhaps it is our body that has taken over and is at the helm of our lives due to complaints, limitations, sexual desire or unrest.

Evocative words

Recently there is a small standard with cards in my practice. Cards with evocative words. Ordinary white cards with about 25 different words in all kinds of colors. I can remember that such a set of cards was also in the hall of the training institute. Every week when I entered the hall my attention was drawn to the cards and I was also curious which word would ‘fall my way’ this time.

Daisies (Madeliefjes)

Suddenly I knew again. They are Daisies (Madeliefjes). It was as if I was surprised by a childlike joy and wonder. For me, this is an example of the transpersonal forces that I occasionally feel connected to. As if it lifts me above the ordinary, everyday and personal. As if a message is delivered directly to me, sender unknown but at the right address. It’s a personal message to me! A power that I am becoming more and more aware that from the moment we arrive in this life will touch and enrapture us in a way that fits with who we are and what we need.

Good Friday 2021

Last Friday was Good Friday and traditionally I listened to one of the Passion stories as set to music by Bach. The Passion of Jesus as recorded in the Bible by various Evangelists (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) and passed on from generation to generation. A story about suffering and death, grief and rejection, abandonment and fear, but also about trust, hope and expectation, comfort and peace.

“May I ask you something Wim”? A question one of my clients asked me last week, when I wanted to start with her in practice with a practice session EMDR. “Why are you actually going to deepen and train in EMDR?” I asked her to practice the EMDR basic protocol with me for a number of sessions. I recently started training to get acquainted with and become familiar with this treatment method. In order to be able to apply the method properly, it is important to develop sufficient skills in addition to theoretical knowledge to be able to offer the method in practice in a responsible manner.

Where does the cliënt hang out?

When I start working with a client in practice, the first thing I ask myself is: Where does the client hang out? What is he or she most identified with? Which dynamics, which movement (both inner and outer) become visible in the story of this client? Where do we see the Will as the guiding mechanism of our human actions in action? Is the will free or is it occupied and held hostage by the will of someone or something else?

New Year’s Day 2021. A day on which we welcome a whole new year with everything we hope and expect. We hope that we will stay healthy and that it will be a year in which we can do things as we are used to. We may especially hope for a year without the limitations and consequences we have experienced in this past year with a virus that has affected us all. Whether we have been for or against the measures, calling it truth or madness, it has affected us all.

My mother was a caring and sweet mother who tried to give us everything she was able to do for us. But it was precisely that ‘ability’ that had been seriously affected by her personal past and her experiences with anger, disappointment, rejection and grief. She was present in the family outwardly as a mother, but inside was ‘occupied’. Outwardly a cheerful and committed woman, wife and mother, but inwardly withdrawn with an ‘weighted’ mind, through unconscious and unexpressed ‘grief’.

Where the personality is usually impatient and willful, does not like change or letting go and is focused on control, there is your Soul, involved, patient and willing to let go. Prepare to take the place it ought to take, namely the place of yourSelf. And when you have taken your place where you are free from and are free until then you will notice that you will experience life in the outside world, for example in relationships and in your work. Outer world and inner world are more consistent with each other. You say what you do and do what you say. Your personality in all its versatility including its limitations and limitations becomes a means to express yourself. Free from and free to!

Psychosynthesis guidance and Life coaching

Do you want to explore your inner space and get to know your own freedom and life force? Bringing your body, mind and spirit into alignment? Psychosynthesis offers you a number of tools to get to know and explore that space within yourself and then to give shape and direction to your own life in who you are and what you want. It also means that you commit yourself to face yourself in the turmoil and inner division within yourself. Because what we perceive outside of ourselves in the shifts that are becoming increasingly visible in our society is in part a reflection of the shifts in our own inner world.

As we become we are what we seek.

This relationship with so-called External Unifying Centers ensures that we can become who we are. Psychosynthesis often uses the metaphor of the Oak that is already present as a tree in the acorn. When we know how to surround ourselves with people and an environment that sees us and accepts us in who we are, then the acorn can sprout and grow into the tree it potentially already is. Who or what brings out the best in you? With whom or where can you further develop and become who you are? Who sees you as you really are and want to be?

Your healthy I

Your healthy I, what is that? Do you know yourself? Do you know the difference between a self that is healthy and a self that is not healthy? If you know that and then could and want to live it, then you are a privileged person. On the back of my business card it says: “Human is complex, Divine is simple”. Years ago I came across this text. It hit me right away. On the one hand because it makes me aware of the enormous complexity of our personality that I encounter time and again, both in my own life and in the guidance of my clients. And on the other hand because of the simplicity of the activity of life itself at the moment when we receive more and more awareness in it.

Psychosynthesis and trauma

Over the past year and a half I have deepened more and more in psychotrauma. It invites me to become increasingly familiar with different trauma theories and understanding my own trauma experiences. I now dare say that I was able to survive and endure my traumatic experiences in the Intensive Care Unit because I was already traumatized and had become familiar with survival. That may sound a bit strange, but that’s how I really feel it. When you are exposed to a traumatic event, our personality and body respond to it with all kinds of strategies to ensure that we survive or cope with the event. One of those strategies is the inner split. A split that we can easily confuse with dissociation.

Trauma biography

The Trauma biography that Ruppert talks about in his Psychotrauma Theory and Therapy goes beyond reflecting on the personal events in his own timeline. It adds multiple perspectives to working with the personal biography. For example, the perspective of the period before, during and after birth. And the perspective of the influence of previous generations. Trauma can be passed from one generation to the next. And when this trauma is not worked through and the energetic charge is broken, it is passed on unconsciously.

What if you found out that…

What if you discover that ….. as a boy you prefer to play with dolls than with cars, actually find boys much more exciting and attractive than girls. That you are used to saying yes most of the time, while sometimes you prefer to say no. That you remain nice, friendly and polite, when you are actually angry or sad. That people have an image of you that is not at all consistent with how you feel. That the pace of the world in which you move is much faster than what you can keep up with. That what you felt safe and secure with is suddenly not as safe and familiar as you thought. What happens to you then?

Your right to exist

“With ‘the care that it receives from its mother’ each infant is able to have a personal existence, and so begins to build up what might be called a continuity of being…..If maternal care is not good enough then the infant does not really come into existence, since there is no continuity of being…”

When the warmth of your own ‘light’ can no longer be felt

It seems so easy to answer the questions, who am I and what do I want in yourself. But believe me, it is not. Most of the answers you had already given yourself turn out to be inadequate and often are answers that you once adopted from someone else, your parents, the family you belong to, the church, the community where you grew up, etc. Only when you get older or when a crisis arises in your life do these fundamental questions seem to arise and shine through the ‘cracks’ of your complaints. Then you seek help and support to help you through this process, to get to know yourself, to face yourself in what lies ahead to be liberated.

Not knowing it yourself and relying on someone else.

When you look up the word trust, according to Wikipedia the word trust contains one of the following elements: Not knowing yourself, and relying on someone else. And this is exactly what I have been facing with my clients in recent months, as we begin to explore the process to setup an intention together. As a facilitator of the process, I dare to ‘rely on’ my cliënt’. To trust that everything is present in the client that is needed for his or her process and that it is essentially about daring to trust again in the own inner wisdom and life force that is waiting to be liberated by yourself. Then as a facilitator I only need to be present. Have confidence and trust in the cliënt and myself.

Psychosynthesis and Love

Although it is sung about, written about and talked about, it is not easy to say something about ‘Love’. It is therefore not my intention to explain what love exactly is. I can say something about how psychosynthesis looks at the meaning and effectiveness of love in the relationship between therapist and client. Then what role Love, and in particular the lack thereof, plays in the creation and healing of ‘primal wounding’. Primal wounding is a term used in Psychosynthesis to describe the disturbance, injury or lack of this Love.

The Basics of Psychosynthesis

The deliberate and purposefully use of self-identification – or dis-identification – is the foundation of psychosynthesis. The longer I work with clients in practice, the more I see and experience in myself and my clients, how important it is to become familiar with the process of identification and dis-identification. We generally have no idea what it means to become a conscious participant in this process. An experience that ultimately leads to freedom and responsibility.