PAXSUM blog
What is the point of self-inquiry?
Over time, I have come to think of it as the key to human growth.
12. Fundamental Experience #6: Synthesis
Synthesis (from greek): to put together, to combine separate elements to form a connected whole As is inherent in the name, synthesis is central to psychosynthesis. This process of connecting elements is ongoing in all life. What changes along the path of...
11. Fundamental Experience #5: The Ideal Model
Once our will to explore our inner worlds is activated, it is helpful to set a direction for how to go about it. To this end, Assagioli developed his ideal model. It is a method which takes help from the imagination and intuition to set our transpersonal development...
10. Fundamental Experience #4: the Will
I remember reading many years ago how the Dalai Lama asked a group of Western scientists about whether it was possible to separate one's awareness of a certain stimulus from one's reaction to it. Could we choose our response more deliberately, if we were able to pause...
9. Fundamental Experience #3: the Personal Self and Attention
This is Evert Taube, troubadour whose songs have been widely sung since he wrote them on his travels by sea around the world in the 20s and 30s and later. Taube could capture the beauty of the moment, even when marked by hardship. One of my favorites goes like this:...
8. Fundamental Experience #1&2: Disidentification & Subpersonalities
We are dominated by everything with which our self is identified. We can dominate and control everything from which we disidentify ourselves. The normal mistake we all make is to identify ourselves with some content of consciousness rather than with consciousness...
7. A Model: the Star Diagram
One of the psychosynthesis models which has informed my self-inquiry is the Star. In it, Assagioli captures six psychological functions through which we as human beings form our knowing: sensation, feeling, thought, intuition, imagination and impulse. We develop these...
6. What is it to Inquire into the Self?
"But what have I done with my life?" asks Mrs Ramsay. And on flows her inquiry through Virginia Woolf's dancing prose -- through her motions of listlessly serving dinner to her family, into visions of her brighter past, pulled back again into the tricky dynamics...
Summa Pax - trust the process
My striving is deep inner peace. I believe this attitude can change the world. And to get there, we must engage in getting to know ourselves. In this space I explore three questions:
- What is the point of self-inquiry?
- What is it?
- How do we do it?
Time will tell what will come of it. I trust the process. /Anna Thurdin Hedblad