Spiritual Psychology -

"Feeling Dissolve©" and Mirroring

Paper written by Maud Nordwald Pollock for presentation at The Association for Transpersonal Psychology  1992 Annual Conference,  Monterey, California    (Due to experience gained in the interim years I felt this article needed to be updated 2007 to reflect my current views)

How can Spiritual Psychology be de­fined? It is a Trans­personal approach that treats the human experience and interaction from the point of view of the soul.

     Spiritual psychology expands beyond the boundaries of personal­ity Ego psychology to work with the vibratory spiritual being in its wholeness; body, feelings, mind and soul. The focus of Spiritual Psychology, like Ego psychology is self-love. In this case it is a quality of love that comes about by integrating into the Divine being that we are. Through recognition of the Divine in ourselves, we are able to recognize it in all others. This quality of love, called Unconditional Love, is re-enforced through the insights provided by Spiritual Psychology and guides the personality Ego into wholeness. The closer the personality Ego comes to integrat­ing into its Divine aspect, the more it is able to step aside and let the divine be the guiding force. "Let go and let God", speaks of having faith in the inner knowing. 

Spiritual Psychology as a human interaction bases its premise on re-incarnation. Re-incarnation as a challenge for growth and evolution of the soul, the essence that is the soul, challeng­ing itself to actualize inherent potential, archetypal informa­tion by materializing itself as a spiritual/mate­rial being in time and space. A spiritual being that expresses the divine creativity by understanding it is responsible for what it creates.  

Spiritual Psychology helps the individualized personality Ego to move from an "I am a victim" of fate and life, "Poor me" attitude; to the "I am responsi­ble for creating and co-creating my life in every way", a creator conscious­ness. By understand­ing the process called "Mirror­ing" as a challenge to unresolved personality Ego issues; Spiritual psychology is able to resolve these by applying the method of "Feeling Dissolve©". As a result, the individual is able to go from "subjective thinking" into an "objective think­ing" mode. A detached form of thinking, that allows for insight and freedom from the pain and suffering experienced by the unresolved personality Ego.  

This freedom is not achieved by reasoning, suppressing or escap­ing emotions, not even by expressing them. Instead it is a method of "neutraliz­ing" these permanently. The neutralizing process results in a state of "acceptance", that someone or something is "neither good nor bad" they or it simply "is". The more one experiences this state of acceptance the closer one comes to the state of harmony, and ultimately a non judgmental state of Unconditional Love. The unconditional love that sees the divine process in its rightness at all times, not just every once in a while when the outcomes suits the personality Ego, ALL THE TIME. (As the saying goes: there is no such thing as a little pregnant)  

From the individual life's frame of reference, Spiritual Psychology under­stands the most poignant experiences and intimate rela­tion­ships such as parents, partners, children, co-workers and, adversar­ies are those challenges that stimulate the greatest growth. A working out of the old, of understanding and accept­ing the "good" and the "bad"; an opportunity to integrate into the whole all its aspects.  

Unlike personality Ego psychology, where the focus is on as­sist­ing the personality to live out what the personality Ego wants, and thinks is right, in Spiritual Psychology the focus is on what the soul is trying to achieve. The soul is seen as the guiding force that has chosen the challenges for its evolution and the evolu­tion of those it touches, from the Personality Ego's frame of reference, easy or difficult. The more difficult and pain filled the life is, the greater the challenge to pull it together and live the love.  

What enables Spiritual Psychology to function is a new insight into how to deal with the until now, greatest hurdle in our way, "our emotions". These are feelings that stimulate or are stimu­lated by attached thoughts. Until now we have dealt with our emotions in the following ways: acknowledged and expressed, dealt with in a partially neutralizing mode; denied and sup­pressed by  rationalizing them away; denied and run away from - escapism, workaholicism, busyness, addiction of all kinds and mental illnesses. 

Through new insight into the functioning of the human energy system we are now able to understand that the emotions are not a package or a unit "an Emotion". Emotions consist of separate increments, i.e. a feeling, and a thought. Each of these is repre­sentative of the qualities of a vibrational Light Body. Like the organs in the physical body, each one has it purpose and mode of functioning and is necessary for the functioning of the whole spiritual being.   

The thought as well as the feeling can be triggered by some­thing we see, hear, smell, taste, or touch. The physical experi­ence instantly activates a feeling as well as the thought in conjunction with the other, they provoke each other. These reactions represent unresolved memory stored in our holo­graphic system. This unresolved memory can be from a moment of the current life experience, held as a feeling in what I refer to as the Feeling Body and a "thought form" held in the Mental Body. Or it can be a pattern that was formed and comes from moments experienced as other lives, in other moments of the soul's historical time. This information is stored and contained in the vibrational system of yet another vibratory Light Body which I call the Astral Body.    

By understanding the separate aspects of emotions, we are able to work with these parts. Till now the Feeling Body has been the ruling body, its vibrational output forcing us and others to react instantly to these felt and emanated feelings. Instead of acting out of detachment, we have been subject by attach­ment, enveloping ourselves in very sticky, heavy, often dense feelings, a vibrational mass that influence our outlook to life. The denser the better has been the pattern. Suffer, suffer, suffer is what the Feeling Body loved. The more pain, fear, anger, disempower­ment it experienced the more it felt itself, knew that it is there. Just as individuals have been attached to their disease, we become attached to the vibrational quality of our feelings, like getting a high of fear while watching a horror movie.  

By separating the experienced feeling from the attached thoughts we are able to process them individually. With the tool of "Feeling Dissolve©" we are able to dissolve disruptive feelings. This in turn transforms the thought which affect the attitude towards a person or an event. We are able to move from a disempowered helpless victim of our own feelings state, to an empowered insightful creator, master of our feelings state, a manager of our emotions.  

"Feeling Dissolve©" is a tool that allows us to truly "let go" of issues. The "letting go" is not reasoned away, instead it is a body process, something experienced in the physical, which has an effect at the Feeling Body level.  

"Letting go" is a fundamental guidance of most spiritual teachings, as has been "acceptance", it has been modeled by great Spiritual Teachers and Gurus. Yet a simple tool for reaching detach­ment had not been at hand. Although I briefly touched on its fundamentals via Eugene Gendlin's "Focusing", I did not have my AHA on how "let go" functioned until I come across the Sedona "Release" method, originated by Lester Levin­son.  

Both the "Focusing" and "Release" methods, it seemed to me, concentrated their attention on personality Ego fulfillment.  Although individuals are successful in feeling better about them selves, as well as getting what they want, the great spiri­tual implication of what imple­menting this method was really about, went unrealized by most people. I feel it simply had to do with timing. The method was available yet the majority of people were not ready to accept the spiritual nuances that this method suggests. When I was confronted with its implications it made total sense to me, based on years studying Spiritual Science, a lifetime of implementing Rational Therapy, and years of teaching Therapeutic Touch. Synthesizing of all these, I developed my approach to Spiritual Psychology and the method I call "Feeling Dissolve©".  

What is the key to "letting go"?, it is not, as I mentioned before reasoning away issues, nor is it looking at them ac­knowledging the feelings, accepting that we are afraid, or attempting to confront our sorrow by crying it away nor scream­ing out our anger. These are only stop gap methods that deal with a part of the held feelings. The solution does not come from meditat­ing, where we learn to raise our vibratory frequen­cies to resonate with the higher frequency Light Bodies, while not dealing with all the stuff stored in the basement and attic. We can become spaced out and detached, yet not resolved. Re-birthing and other breathing methods come as close as I can ascertain to dissolving held feelings, yet again they deal with the personality ego. Re-incarnation therapy deals with the feeling memory of other lives and some therapists seem to assist their patients resolve these issues by using breathing.  

The saying goes "Time is the best healer", yet as I started to work with Spiritual Psychology I discovered that time may have diluted experiences, shelve them, and they had not disappeared. They were there, waiting for the right button to be pressed to trigger a reaction.  

Why not? Why don't old issues that were collected in our sub­conscious go away? Why do they continue to haunt us by making us vulnerable to behavior patterns despite so many wonderful tools that have come our way? Mostly because the majority of these tools work with Personality Ego, the Personality Ego has felt itself separate from its divine self. In this state of separation, we have been kept in the illusion that we are power­less, victims of circumstances. The Feeling Body assisted this process by neatly storing all the assembled feeling information that furthers the Personality Ego's illusion; by creating a dense feeling layer that separated it from the knowing of the soul. 

The process becomes even more complex, if we start to look into "other" life issues and the patterns from these that we bring with us into time and space. What kept the stored feelings alive and well is an instinctu­al mechanism of survival, like an automatic shut of valve, the natural faculty of not wishing to experience our feelings in all their magnitude. If we let all our pain come out, experiencing it, including that amassed pain of eons, we could be totally overwhelmed, might even flip out. Just as is experienced by the individual who stops "feeling suppressing" tranquilizing drastically or an addict that goes "cold turkey". Like a natural tranquilizer, we have a protective mecha­nism that covers or shuts off the pain, the fear, the anger etc., to allow us to go on living; to survive. 

The trick to "letting go" is not the admitting to the pain, fear, guilt, need or anger, instead it is "letting go" of the "not wanting" to experience these. This is an energetic block that can be identified as a feeling. A feeling that says, "I don't want to feel that feeling" of anger, pain etc in all its intensity, so I will become a little or a lot sad, mad etc., but just enough to keep them in control. And then I will suppress the rest by putting a lid on it like on a pot or a cork on a bottle. This feeling is the one that has to be put aside. So like lifting the rattling lid on a pot of boiling water that then releases the built up steam, or the pressure in a bottle of soda or champagne held in by the cork; we lift the lid, we let go of the cork, and the pressure built up by the held feeling, pours out, disperses, dissolves. Just like the boiling water that then returns to simmering, we become quiet and are able to have new insight.

If we want to understand it intellectually, what we are actual­ly doing is accepting our feelings. These feelings are energy stored in our Feeling Body, by opening up we are able to let out the "steam" and like steam it dissolves. The amazing thing is that we do not have to suffer the agony of the feelings, they simply melt away as soon as we release the energetic denial block.    

How is "Feeling Dissolve©" applied? It works in the following fashion with a very simple technique. Instead of focusing on the overall story causing the emotion, we re-focus on the particular moment that triggered an intensified feeling, stimulated by the event. We localize this feeling in our physical body, any place or chakra area, i.e. the solar-plexus chakra, the root chakra etc., by this we identify the vibrational feeling qualities held in our Feeling Body. Then using our creative imagination we attach a symbol, an image, a form, it can even feel like a vibration, to that feeling, which allows us to give the feeling some kind of concrete format to enable us to confront the quality and intensity of the held feeling. We are able to dissolve that feeling by focusing on the image, and using our hands we sweep the vibrational information out of the area were the image was located. During the identifying and sweeping, the amazing thing is that the image changes, it can change in size, color, intensity, and disperse or distance itself from our body. Ideal is that it disappear entirely.  Once this action is complete, we normally have the tendency of taking a deep breath, or having a deep sigh. This is a sign we have become free of our attachment to that felt feeling. The result of this proce­dure is that as we review the event that provoked the emotion, and we realize that we have new insight, new thoughts are able to come through, our attitude changes. The more we apply this technique, the freer we become from judgment, fear, needs, stress, pain and anger. The more we move out of our helpless state, the more we enter one in which we aware that we are actively creating our reality. Not the reality of the personal­ity Ego, the reality of the soul. Then the soul can use the personality Ego as a cooperative vehicle to enable it to inter­act in time and space.

How can events or people trigger our emotions? Emotions are triggered by the process I call "Mirroring". This mirroring is not like the experience of simply seeing our reflection in a mirror. This mirroring is a secondary reaction. It is what we experience, how we react to the reflection looking back at us from the mirror. In this case, how do I feel about myself when I see my image? Do I like and accept myself or not. The same takes place when others reflect for us. It is what I experi­ence, what feeling is stimulated within myself by this event or person. All the other is doing, is reminding me of what I have not resolved; of the feelings that I have been holding in my feeling or astral memory, of the thoughts that are colored and influenced by those feelings.

Is this memory can be one that I am not lovable, or one of disempower­ment. When I feel self-love, know who I am, I am not vulnerable to the attitudes and judgments of others. I do not need to react to their stimulus. I feel empow­ered and know that I can do only what is within my power, that is all. I know that I can change only myself and not another. I also understand that in changing myself and my attitudes I can allow the other to change, because in turn, they are no longer forced to "mirror" and challenge me to look at my unresolved feelings and thoughts.

It does not matter whether it is a person or an event that triggers the feeling in me, I am responsible for my own feel­ings no one else. My feeling about this event is a reminder of my unresolved issues. The other is making me a gift, giving me an opportunity to look within myself. It can be stimulated by something touched, seen, heard, smelt or tasted. Whatever my reaction, it is a signal that I have a memory attached to it, that is causing a response pleasant or unpleasant. We are able to become equally attached and or addicted to a pleasant expe­rience as well as an unpleasant one. The end result is that we need it. What is important is to understand the informa­tion, that there is a feeling, not the kind of feeling.    

Over the years, I have used the "Feeling Dissolve©" method in my workshops to assist my participants to resolve issues from this life or others. When we deal with "other life" feelings and ways of thinking, we do so because these resonate and affect the current life process. By "dissolving these feeling", a domino effect is created, which frees up the individual so that s/he can take new action in his/her "now" life. In understand­ing the human interaction as a cosmic dance, that until now has forced us to react in a robot like fashion, the individual becomes free to live his/her life to the maximum of its poten­tial, energized and empowered by the freedom from the energy consuming addiction to emotions, that hindered his or her progress and creativity.

The saying goes "The master is perfect, and s/he sees only perfection." There is no resonance to be triggered in the master.  The master had integrated all aspects of his/her being; the light and the shadow side. Just as happens during the rose period of being in love, when we are euphoric with love and see no fault in our partner, that is how everyone is, perfect, can do no wrong, because we are Divine beings, part of a vast ocean of Beingness. And because we can do no wrong, there is nothing to forgive. Every­thing simply is. That is how the master feels, there is no separation between him/her and the other, we are one. There is only love. Since there is only oneness, the other is myself "And that too am I", and since I act out of love I know the other does too. And as I act out of love, I will not harm the other, for if I harmed the other I would in fact be harming myself, which as someone who loves him/her self I do not do. If I have felt disempowered, that is my Personality Ego's fear that I had no power, was separate from it. If I felt pain, because I did not feel loved, then that is the pain of the separation from me, my own Divine love source. As the creative force of the Divine being that I am, I am immensely powerful and full of love.  What keeps me from living this is my fear of not having it or being it, which is represented by my Personalities Ego's "wanting". For what I have felt, I did not have, I have wanted. In wanting I go searching, and yet if I am still, and dissolve my separating fear, the love flows through all by itself. It is here always.

With this thought, I conclude a brief insight into the very vast subject I call Spiritual Psychology, the method of "Feel­ing Dissolve©" and the interaction called "Mirroring".

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