I spent a training weekend with a virtual Susan Brown, LCSW and EMDR psychotherapist. This event coincided with my reading the book Seth, Dreams And Projections Of Consciousness, published posthumously in 1986, two years after the death of its author, Jane Roberts.

Susan Brown addresses the integration of sub-personality parts work with classic EMDR therapy as applied to treating addictions. For her, the multiplicity of fragmented parts that we become when separated from our wholeness of Self, through traumatic encounter, continue to serve our healing quest for connection with, and restoration of, our lost wholeness of Self.

Susan counsels that we value, accept and respect all parts of Self with equanimity, regardless of their apparent dysfunctionality. Wholeness, once again, requires acceptance of everything that we are. Her intent could be characterized as a modern day shamanic soul retrieval, where the adult self is brought into living connection with its lost parts, as the overall personality is restored to healthy balance and cooperative oneness.

Carlos Castaneda highlighted this shift in modern shamanism by insisting that we are now all our own redeemers. We must all become our own Naguals, or High Selves, as Susan Brown might characterize them, and assume central responsibility for the healing and individuation journey to our true wholeness of Self.

The therapist or shaman is a facilitator but does not assume responsibility for retrieval of a lost part in the underworld of the unconscious. The evolving relationship between adult self and High Self, and its variety of part personalities, is the magic and centerpiece of healing in this empowered journey of recovery.

Seth, the entity whom Jane Roberts channelled, explained that probable selves represent living permutations of the life we are currently in. These sub-personalities, or parts, are intimately connected and interactive with the life we are currently living, though they are completely autonomous and may be functioning largely outside of our conscious awareness.

For instance, Jane Roberts, and her husband Rob, had once travelled to Maine for a vacation. One night while there, they went to a night club and were drawn to sit opposite a couple whom they experienced as bitter, disgruntled versions of their future selves, miserably shut down and disconnected from their creative cores.

Seth explained to them that their present selves had created, or birthed, these versions of themselves from the shadows of their fears. As opposed to mere psychological projections, these beings were actual entities, with lives of their own, seeking their own resolutions.

This synchronistic encounter with their probable future selves served all four beings well, as their connection spawned many possibilities and reflected knowledge extremely useful to the making of decisions that would go on to change their future lives.

We all have our personal astral network of probable selves that we interact with, largely in dreaming and through the practice of, what Jung called, active imagination. These connections are real, living connections that exist as parts of our greater wholeness, regardless of our awareness of them. Just as we have neural plasticity networks in the brain, we also have, what I would term, the astral-plasticity to grow through greater awareness and connectivity with our probable selves.

Astral-plasticity utilizes lucid dreaming, where present selves volitionally encounter their probable other selves, meeting with the intent of respect and offering the opportunity to share and gain knowledge gleaned from their separate lives lived.

Astral-plasticity also generates the merging of healing intentions, wherein separate lives move beyond being unconsciously, compensatorily related, to being joined in similar healing intentions at different dimensions of Self.

I have suggested, in previous blog posts, that our current world crisis is reflecting a chaotic macro-encounter between the presently embodied World Self and the probable shadow self of past generational decisions, still alive and well on the astral plane, all demanding a physical replaying to reach a higher level of global Self-realization. We have at present slipped into a probable World Self that resembles Gotham City of Batman ilk. The advanced prefrontal cortex of current world civilization is becoming increasingly entranced by its limbic ancestors, all seeking a new world order.

Rather than pass the buck, through solidarity with the repression of prior generations, we are being called upon to live with the misery and lament of what appears to be irreconcilable differences. Accepting the role of taking the hit for the greater whole, by embodying these epic challenges, offers us the very real option of once and for all healing the deep splits that have perennially haunted human history. It also requires that we fully experience and reckon with the genuine threats to our current world’s survival.

Our best opportunity for healing rests in our capacity to summon our adult Self, with its ability to exercise its free will in the service of the greater good. Furthermore, we have the resource of our probable part selves, alternate selves who appreciate our efforts and contributions toward their own evolution and whom support us in ours. How critical it is that we get to know and make peace with all our parts. Ultimately, as Susan Brown points out, all parts matter!

Where to start? Set boundaries, but treat all parts with compassion and respect. Every part has a story to share that weaves together the mystery and wonder of Self.

Weaving,
Chuck