Soul-Centered Healing Update: Fall, 2020

To friends of Soul-Centered Healing,

I know this update is long past due. It’s been four years since I announced the publication of The Practice of Soul-Centered Healing – Vol. II: Navigating the Inner World. It was the third and last book of a trilogy on SCH.

Once the books were done, I imagined taking a break and then charting a course for bringing Soul-Centered Healing to the public. I considered it the third and last stage of my work with Gerod.

Within a day, maybe hours, of the book going to press, Donald Trump became the Republican nominee for president. I had just spent fifteen years intensely focused on writing about the psychic and spirit realities only to emerge into a world of Kellyanne Conway’s “alternate facts.” As you know, there’s not been a dull moment since.

For four years, I have watched with growing alarm the deepening division, anger, and mistrust as Trump’s dark view of humanity is acted out from the most powerful office in our country, and maybe the world. Extreme narcissism, bullying and intimidation, constant lies, fear-mongering, and incitement to anger characterize Trump’s world. All human relations are reduced to transactions of money, power, and self-interest. However, it is essential to understand that Trump did not create this climate of conflict, mistrust, and growing anxiety in our society and culture. This darkening has been a crisis, several crises in fact, that have been building for some time.

In these last few years, as I’ve observed what is happening in our country, I’ve had a devil of a time wrapping my head around it. They are dark times. Gerod said that darkness is “the place that lacks Light, Love, and Knowledge.” These times are not without Light and hope, of course, but tough times are tough times, and we’ve had our share in 2020. These are times of great pain and uncertainty. Things seem to change day to day. Nobody knows where we are headed, or what a new normal will look like. From a soul point of view, it can be trying. At an ego-level, it can trigger the instinctual terror of the unknown. It is important to remember, though, as Gerod said, these moves into darkness also trigger a soul to seek the Light.

I cannot help but think that the Covid pandemic is not a coincidence. Trump’s hastening of disruption has taken our mistrust in institutions and in ourselves to another level. The pandemic has gone further and deeper. It has created a global disruption that has touched—if not battered—nearly everyone on Earth, right down to our daily routines and basic needs. Covid has shown us how fragile are the rules and norms that hold us together.

Amid this global pain and chaos, we are also witnessing now an eruption of the pain and anger felt and held by an entire race of people over generations. The murder of George Floyd happening before our eyes has penetrated the national consciousness and revealed the systemic racism embedded in our culture. This awakening to what has always been part of our history is a reminder and maybe a warning that we have never dealt with America’s history of injustice and violence against native Americans first, and then the enslavement of the black race not long after.  We in the United States are not alone in this awakening, as evidenced by the worldwide reaction to the racial injustice in other countries.  Within the United States, it is unclear whether we, as a nation, will begin a true reckoning of the racism that betrays our constitution. Can we start to come to terms with the obvious levels of racism, but also the not-so-obvious involving the psychological, emotional, and instinctual levels that drive it?

I started this update at least two years ago, but I kept getting caught up in writing about present events. I could not divorce myself, or the healing process, from what I saw happening in our society on a daily basis. And it is still happening.

Twelve years ago, I gave a talk titled, Science and Soul: The Coming Age of Conversion. I think some of you were probably in attendance. The talk was about empirical science coming to a boundary it could not cross without a revolutionary shift in its paradigm of reality. The boundary involved the psychic and spirit dimensions that could not be reduced to matter and subjected to experimental control. Crossing the boundary to an expanded view of reality and consciousness meant that our Western culture, dominated by empirical science, would also become bound up in this revolution. Because I believed in science and its pursuit of truth, I believed it would ultimately come to recognize and acknowledge this boundary and begin to develop the means and tools to cross it. My views have not changed. These tools and concepts are being developed.

Last month, it struck me that maybe we are living right now inside the tipping point of the paradigm shift I talked about twelve years ago. A tsunami of change, with no idea where it will settle and come to some new equilibrium. Are these times the chrysalis where individual and collective transformation happens? I believe it’s possible. This move to a new normal is also an opportunity for the Light.

So, the update I started turned into an extended essay and now starts to look like a chapter of a book. I’ll continue working on it. The question for me is whether we are on the cusp of a new paradigm, and if so, whether we will cross that boundary and recognize the psychic and spirit dimensions of reality. Opening these dimensions to our collective awareness, exploration, and acceptance opens the way—or makes possible—a recognition of ourselves as souls incarnate. This is what I consider Gerod’s central message—we are souls of Light. He said the truth of this is within each of us. While we may not be able to define the soul, science can open the territory where body, mind, and spirit can be talked about in the same breathe.

Time will tell if I can bring this long treatise to conclusion.

Meanwhile, I do have a few announcements. First, a personal one: After 43 years, I officially retired from clinical practice on November 1, 2018, a month before my 70th birthday. Living without an appointment calendar and daily schedule after so many years took some adjustment. The most challenging thing has been saying no to people asking to make an appointment. This has only increased after my retirement as SCH becomes more widely known, at least in some circles. It has also given more importance to how best to make SCH available to the public.

Four months ago, I accepted an invitation to appear on Skeptiko – Science at the Tipping Point, an interview show hosted by Alex Tsakiris. There is both a video and audio version of the interview.

There was a very positive response to the show, and since then, I’ve accepted several other invitations. The links to those interviews are also listed on the home page, under Events. Some are posted as video, others are audio-only. (The Web site is in need of a re-design to make it easier for visitors to navigate the links. I hope to do that soon.)

A second announcement is the start of an online consultant/training group for hypnotherapists who wish to practice Soul-Centered Healing. This group will be limited to six practicing hypnotherapists, and the focus will be on clinical practice, case discussion, and developing a facility with the protocols. If you or someone you know would be interested, you can find the announcement and details here.

That’s all for now. I won’t set myself a deadline, but I’ll let you know what develops with Soul-Centered Healing. If you wish to comment or have a question, you can post it here.

With all good wishes and Light,

Tom