Journeying into the Fifth Dimension

I am being hurled into the 5th Dimension to stay there indefinitely.

There's the Third Dimension, a physical reality - which is real enough. We do live in a material time and space reality most of the time.

There's the Fourth Dimension - a magical reality of the emotional body - real enough, as well. It's the stuff of which dreams are made - a place of unexplained healing - of unconditional love and forgiveness.

Then there's the Fifth Dimension - a miraculous non-time, non-space, BEING PRESENT to the wonder of it all, grateful for each moment reality. It is the experience of creating one's own reality. Until recent times, this has been the conscious experience of a chosen few.

I am, as perhaps are you, am not unfamiliar with this Fifth Dimension. I have experienced my fair share of miracles. I have experienced moments of Oneness with all that is, was, and is yet to be. I am not convinced, however, that I experienced this in the fullness of its intended purpose.

The Fifth Dimension is a unitive consciousness.

Recently, I attended a weekend retreat where I learned to give Deeksha blessings. In this retreat I also journeyed into a a great "aha'. For years I had been yearning for a reunion with the Divine in a most personal way - that experience of "Oneness of All creation, wholly engulfed...." (who wrote that poetry?).

This weekend's experience literally drove me to take a journey where I could BE One with All as a life style - of the mystical dance.

And so the journey begins.

I experienced the human suffering, abolished it within, and was among a grand movement of the Spirit through the 60's, 70's and into the 80's. Much love was poured into thousands of local communities and a few important policy makers stood up and paid attention.  This grand strategy fizzled out. What is left is demonstrations of possibility where there was no hope at all. This, I would suggest, has been a dance of Third and Fourth Dimensional. The model community was called 5th City.

Many efforts have been made to continue and rebuild that momentum of taking 5th City to the world, but this new Fifth Dimension conscious has arrived, beckoning exploration, welcoming its experience.

So, while I will pilgrimage to a land where the Fifth Dimension is alive and well, I am beginning the dance here and  now.

Care to come along? Shall we dance?

The Motivation Source

Welcome Banner at the AAP Conference

In order to follow through on creating a conference, let alone anything else time and energy consuming, there has to be a motivating purpose.

In the case of Psychosynthesis: At the Heart of Systems Transformation, this came  from the Divine Source of guidance on one's life path.  The Divine came to me in a personified form, a woman who had been a friend, a colleague, a guide in my own psychosynthesis training, and a role model to me.

Her name is Martha Crampton, one of the original pioneers in bringing psychosynthesis to North America. She moved on to a non-physical realm in 2009, but her Soul still had some unfinished business - to assure that life coaching and psychosynthesis would become dance partners.

This is how it happened.

The pioneer of transpersonal life coaching in North America trained Martha. In the course of their relationship they created a psychosynthesis life coaching training which never got saved for future editing and presentation. Pat Williams related to me that Martha was committed to life coaching being introduced to the psychosynthesis community for various compatible correlations between the two. He added that empowering the will of a client  to act on a life purpose was a difficult part of the healing process and that  his life coaching approach was a valuable addition.

Didi  was creating a transformational coaching course about the same time that Pat and I were having these conversations. She offered research reports that had been done and pointed out that life coaching was gaining popularity in the the world of healing arts.

A North American conference was coming up.Messages from Martha in meditations indicated that the conference would be a perfect dance floor for introducing life coaching to psychosynthesis practitioners and psychosynthesis to life coaching practitioners.

Pat was asked, and he accepted to present the opening keynote at the conference. Didi was asked and accepted to present psychosynthesis transformational coaching at the closing of the conference.

A concerted effort was made to reach out to life coaches, especially in the area near where the conference would be.  Thousands of coaches were contacted. None came forward. I have to confess that to do this was not communicated by Martha in my meditation time where I received her guidance.

There was a good deal of controversy around this strategy which soon subsided as psychosynthesists resigned to the direction we were going, perhaps beginning to understand why. I never mentioned, until the last few weeks, that I was receiving guidance from Martha in my meditations focused on the conference.

I found two photos I took many years ago, of Martha. I put them together in one frame. One showed her with her most beautiful and radiant smile that communicated loving acceptance to the receiver. The other was a side view where her strong will was a constant reminder that the direction of this conference was correct.

The conference proceeded as was intended and was a total success.  I have only heard one person remark that she has not bought into coaching still - but that is fine - the plan was not to produce buy-ins, it was to affirm the coaching dynamic in psychosynthesis already present and to clear the transpersonal dance floor for psychosynthesis and life coaching to strut their stuff in high style.

 Done.

Yes, the Divine can be called God and Martha could as easily have been a face of Jesus. I, however, am who I am and have  learned to pay attention to the still small voice resounding from my heart, which comes in a vast reservoir full of metaphors and images, appropriate for the moment.

Who is a personification of the Divine for you - other than the traditional divinities of your religion - who in essence guide you through the impossible?

A Conference of Note

David and Kevin practicing in a corner of the room before plenary session

During the week of the summer solstice, I was imersed in coordinating a conference for the Association for the Advancement of Psychosynthesis (AAP) (www.aap-psychosynthesis.org). This conference had been in the making for two years and involved many people doing many tasks to prepare for what we were intending to be a new beginning for AAP, to open up to another discipline - in this case making a concerted effort to attract life coaches interested in a transpersonal approach to their practice, to welcome the new pscyosynthesis coaching course,  to introduce new people to psychosynthesis, and be a gathering of long time colleagues to "catch up" personally and have a lot of fun as well.

The conference was held on an eco-friendly campus in Burlington, VT, known as a  place of  environmentally friendly innovations. The cafeteria, served by an organic whole foods distributor, provided meals for the many different diets folks are committed to these days.

 The 28 workshops and the four pre-conferences, were all masterful presentations by those new to AAP and long time trainers, as well. The three plenary sessions introduced life coaching by the man who pioneered the approach in North America, presented the complexity of systems which exist when attempting to unify a community, and ended with an introduction to the principles of psychosynthesis coaching by the first  graduating class.

The preparation team went out of their way to create an intentional space. Initially disappointed that there would not be a logo to hang, we were surprised to see one displayed boldly in the three storied window space of the atrium - place of registration and the bookstore. Following a discussion, another appeared for the plenary room (for a small fee). A flute player volunteered to provide impromptu music at the beginning of each plenary session. He soon had a combo, including bongo drums, a guitar, and singers. By the all out efforts to create an intentional sacred space, this campus was very definitely the site of a grand conference.

Also woven into the fabric of this community event, were co-creative dialogue groups. Seven groups formed, semi-organically. The leaders of the groups agreed before hand and Friday evening when the conference broke into these groups, participants joined in where they felt drawn. Seven reports on Sunday, revealed that an abundance of creative dialogue had occurred in their meetings, some with next steps planned.

To have the conference coordinator be the same person as the co-chair of AAP, was unusual and seemingly impossible.  However, in the beginning of the planning, there was not much interest in a conference, so three of us, overworked already, took it on. The world conference in Italy the year before had been a huge success with over 500 (unheard of) attending and some felt was a demonstration of a supreme synthesis that Roberto Assagioli, father of psychosynthesis, had introduced. This left a sense among most that this conference would last forever!!  The year before that, the AAP conference planning fizzled out half way through the preparation. In 2010, there was a huge blow up in a workshop on the role of esoterism in psychosynthesis that marked that conference's fame.

So, there I was. Momentum built slowly but surely. Soon enough, there was a theme, a place, a logo, and a team in place. Even with the team, I was working ten hours a day for months - meditating and relaxing as I went. Nevertheless, when I went in for a relatively simple heart procedure, I ended up in ICU for five days and flat on my back for another ten days. this was a reminder to me that working as a team is  a critical element of such an event. Even before I was back on my feet, I was making a concerted effort to have that be our  modus operandi.

Because I was the contact person for solving all the little problems that come up in the course of an event happening, I was not feeling the success that was unfolding even with input from so many. One very wise long time colleague asked me if I was feeling this. This question was an opportunity to take some time to reflect and to "smell the roses" (an appropriate idiom of experiencing the beauty of it all in the midst of all the activity going on).

What a feeling!! I reveled in rejoicing that I did it! I manifest a practical vision that I had held in my heart. People were excited, community was renewed, old wounds were healed, new life was in the making. I sure hope the others who poured so much love into the making of this conference are experiencing the same feeling of success.  It was an amazingly complex event, filled with wonder, filling heart space, being transformed.

Asked to say what I felt was the highlight - the part which holds the whole in one image - of the conference, I have to say it was just before the final plenary. The flute player, was playing "Summertime" (and the livin' is easy...) and those already in the room broke out in song.

The great learning was that the way to interest new people is to introduce them through local networking introductory events (we did not draw life coaches who were strangers to psychosynthesis - this time anyway!!)

Can it get any better? When has this great "Yes" that is available to us all, been a  candle lit in the darkness of drowning in the minutia of implementation?