Psychospiritual Growth: Excerpt from The Practice

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I’ve come to this work as a transpersonal guide after years of being on my own journey—at times I felt I was a heroine, at other times I felt like my demons were in control. Psychospiritual growth is an adventure. Ram Dass, the spiritual teacher, said that we are polishing a mirror, and by extension, I believe through the act of writing we create our mirror on the page. I’ve been drawn to speculative fiction and science fiction, and my mirror looks like a phantasmagorical, fantastic reflection of my heroine/demoness journey. These are just the forms my imagination comes into–visuals of other worlds and space, neon colored four-legged creatures and inanimate objects such as city buildings that come alive and talk in raspy voices. Yet, at all times, the fulcrum around which I wrote was a feeling of aliveness. The images in my mind were alive. They had energy. Engaging that energy is doing inner work—which happened after I could literally see it on the page.

A feeling of aliveness—your ability to feel alive—is a better measure of mental health and the health of your inner space than any diagnostic I have encountered.

The feeling of aliveness arrives with self awareness and conscious choice. While the inner world can be abstract or elusive to language, we have to try. That is the Yet, a work. I find imagination is the tool of choice here. Throw around phrases such as “finding myself,” “knowing myself,” “higher purpose”–they can come across as deflated. We live in a society that lacks aliveness. Those phrases are cliché and dead. Chose those phrases, and I’d say the space between the words you use, your thoughts, and you, the observer of them, is still too tight. Invoking imagination can be freeing so you can make conscious choices with your language, too, helping you to look in the mirror and identify, then dis-identify from the experience in your inner world. Create space here for agency and aliveness.

In other words, writing flexes an intrapsychic muscle–a muscle from inner space.

Allan Frater’s impulse to write Waking Dreams: Imagination in Psychotherapy and Everyday Life came from his desire to recover his own imagination. He says he hadn’t lost it per se, but he “wanted back those moments when an image would capture my whole attention—a russet autumnal sunset or even just a tattered plastic bag flapping in a hawthorn hedge, moments when I would stand and gaze, seduced into an implicit meaningfulness in just being alive.” What does it mean to experience being alive because imagination calls you to remember the feeling?

I think, too, that some folx thing they lose their imagination or imaginative spirit, and the journey ends there. The journey of self actualization never ends, but we do have to find our way back to it when the mind creates a block aka the mirror breaks. Engaging the imagination is an act of power and strong will. This is the first step toward cultivating space from the chaos inside.

  • Can you be present in the chaos?
  • Can you write details from the chaos?
  • Where is your mind in time-space to notice the details?

Striking details (a russet autumnal sunset, a tattered plastic bag) are what writers or anyone with creative projects strive to imbibe their work with; the details indicate a person who has their ear to the ground of the creative impulse and the signature creativity has in the mind-body-spirit feedback loop. The details that call us to life, call us to the precipice of conscious awareness. It’s from this place that reflection happens. We intuitively know that there is something very deep behind the observation. The images were called into our field of awareness for a reason—they are keys to unlock deeper levels of our journey.

Frater admits he doesn’t know what exactly imagination is—but he makes the case for imagination being a vital force, but one that we cannot inherently quantify. Many of his ideas and context come from his practice of psychotherapy. In one passage, he describes talking a patient through an experience of active imagination. He asks the client to focus on the images, asking what she noticed when she was present with imagery. This allows the client to have a sort of free association experience with her imagery, but it becomes useful because she has insights around the source of some anxiety and anxiety-associated behaviors. This is a really important bit—when we treat the forces inside the mind (imagination, and also the will) as things in themselves, we give some integrity and structure to an otherwise nebulous inner world. Words are energy. Words are subtle and powerful things. Significant shifts can happen when looking in the mirror on the page.

Frater writes that “pretty much everything we think, feel, say, and do is a repeating pattern of core identities and way of being deeply embedded within the psyche.” Basic patterns from different areas of life (such as work, sex, and dream life) can be teased out through careful observation of imagery that arises during a focused state. Imagination work is self-exploration (and self actualization) work. Waking dreams are entering, exploring, dialoguing, shapeshifting, emerging, and patterning the inner world. This is why I’ve included creative writing exercises at the end of this guidebook. Engaging with the archetypes is looking into the mirror full of characters—in whatever form they come to you as—and starting to learn they are all within you.

Imagination is a portal to spirituality, or the feeling of interconnectedness, because the wellspring of generative force—the creative force—is within the feeling alive, the moments we surge with energy, we can notice every detail around us. We are cultivated our own strength of self awareness and awareness of the outer world. That which makes us feel alive is that which plucks the chords of the soul.
What is the point of a practice, of a journey of personal evolution and development, if it is not for diving deeper into a feeling of aliveness? As I read Waking Imagination, I couldn’t help but think of another book (Re-Visioning Psychology by James Hillman) that invites the invocation of imagination into soul work. The invitation here is to consider mental health through the lens of what we are being told as right and wrong, healthy or unhealthy, and then let it go because imagination does not fall under anyone’s jurisdiction, except for the person doing the imagining.

In other words, to stay with the flood of imagination that can open during a hypnogogic state, is the ability to see into soul and, in my opinion, the interconnectedness of an individual to a greater whole. This is an organic way of altering consciousness and shifting to different states of awareness. Frater notes that imagination is “neither entirely inner or outer…imagination is woven into all perception.” Creative writing is the thread for these ideas to come together.
If you’re looking to work with imagination on your journey of self-exploration, I recommend Waking Imagination. And if you’d like a more in-depth psychological text that invites a re-thinking of what to do with the material that emerges, especially in an imaginative practice, try Re-Visioning Psychology by James Hillman. Hillman says that soul work is a verb. Imagination is a portal; it is the experience of a psychological state where images take on consciousness, the soul speaks, and as beings, we move toward more aliveness. Both have been highly influential in my practice and what I offer in workshops. Autofiction, writing yourself into the main character of the story, becomes a container for profound transformational work. We de-literalize our lives, put things into other (fantastical, surreal) situations, take ourselves out of a smothering reality to feel our aliveness. This is the exact point that I use to advocate for creative writing as a powerful tool for transformation. It is a process for experiencing aliveness. It is also the tool to use to envision discrete psychological processes and flex the intrapsychic muscle.

And then, the mirror becomes the page. The page is what we gaze into to examine our inner world with the intention work with what we find and initiate healing and transformation. And, in tandem with psychotically guidance, engaging the act of imagination might just be one of the strongest medicines out there for working with your inner chaos and reaching inner peace.

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A revised edition of The Practice: Write Your Own Story is coming summer 2023. Sign up on the right for the mailing list to know when the new edition is released!

***

Hi there! Thanks for reading. I’m a writer, editor, and transpersonal guide who explores psychospiritual growth.

I write my own story. In that light, my writing is service–the stories I share about my own psychospiritual growth, the process of self exploration & self transformation, and the way culture affects us are my gift to the world.

I share the knowledge and processes that anyone can implement to achieve inner peace. This is a transpersonal point of view and embodied transformation through creative writing.

And, I explore the deep stuff–what we do when we recall past life experiences; how we engage the archetypal resonance of embodied experience; when to call the “weird stuff” you’re experiencing a spiritual awakening and when to call a mental healthcare practitioner.

  • If you are a mental healthcare professional who would like to work with me on your journey of psychospiritual growth or integrating transpersonal psychology with your client practice, go here 
  • If you are a GenXer who wants to learn about a transpersonal worldview and write your own story in a group setting online, go here
  • If you are interested in my work with language and changing the mental healthcare narrative through transpersonal psychology, I invite you to read the curated pieces from my portfolio that are on this website and reach out

BTW: I love tattoos and coffee.

***

Curious about seeing the world and the mind as multidimensional? What does that mean for science?

  • Check out Public Parapsychology. Learn more about what psi is and why psi belongs to everyone. Join other seekers and citizen scientists who are exploring parapsychological phenomena for the benefit of understanding the spiritual nature of the material world.
  • Also consider joining The Parapsychological Association. Support an organization of professional scientists and independent researchers who are pushing the boundaries of our current understanding of the mind. Programming and publications include excellent resources for mental healthcare practitioners and healers who support individuals with transpersonal experiences. 

Psychospiritual Growth: How to make meaning of twists of fate and the surreal

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When I first sat down to write this blog, I thought I would document inner space like an authority. I would tell you that there are places we go beyond our personalities and senses of individual selves, places where we meet other souls.

Psychospiritual growth is not experienced in a way that is easy to discuss. It happens in burst of images, sensations, and boundaries of the inner and outer worlds.

Who am I to write with such authority about anyone beyond me? I can only write from a space of authority within myself. So here I go.

 

The universe doesn’t ask for consent. Wenn das Schicksal dir ‘was schenkt, fällt es schwer nein zu sagen, I say. It’s a lyric from a German hip hop group named Die Fantastischen Vier. It translates to “when fate throws you a gift, it’s hard to say no.” When I was sick in the beginning of 2023, it felt like fate. I spent a few weeks wondering if I had blood clots in overly swollen legs. I woke in the middle of the night with sweats, heart palpitations, and numb arms. It was mold that was causing undue stress on my otherwise healthy heart.

During the thick of symptoms and the long and arduous process of receiving healthcare in the Crescent City, I stayed in touch with colleagues across the globe via WhatsApp, a Wi-Fi-based messaging service. A Russian woman named Marianne who lives in South Africa—a fellow psychosynthesis practitioner—checked in often. It was as if she felt a disturbance in our shared field, one cultivated over the past year during online seminars. But we’ve never met. Despite distance and culture, we are uncannily close. She told me often of times I said something exactly as she needed to hear it. At the least, we share a strong psychic connection.

During recent challenging times in New Orleans, when I woke in the middle of the night with concerns about my health, I had a message from her asking if I was alright.

And while I had, on paper, hard and fast medical problems, I also knew that energetically I was shifting out of old patterns. That was reflected in the explosion of issues I was having in my body. One toxic pattern in particular—that I was only loveable based on the care that I gave to someone—was unraveling. I was exploring the subconscious roots of the pattern; being with the strong emotions that were repressed; expressing the stories raveled up with those emotions; and then letting the whole experience go. My heart couldn’t take any more heartbreak because I loved too much, without abandon, and without accountability from the other person. This is where the toxicity of loving too much starts: I could flood a person with compassion, and say it was okay if they couldn’t love me back because they weren’t in the right headspace (due to disorder, addiction, or just straight shitty self-mental healthcare). It’s toxic when I started to rationalize the other person’s behavior (“He was just having a bad day…”) and over time, the person balked when, on a good day, I asked for something that I needed.

The metaphor of having heart problems is not lost on me—and like any turn of personal evolution, any piece of spiritual growth, I matched the metaphor to my process.

The cranes above my bed.

Marianne walked the journey with me. She received my wails and woes over the waves of data beamed across the Interwebs. One day, she had a tarot card pulled that had a crane and a moon on it. She felt that the message wasn’t for her, so she reached out to me. Indeed, it had been the night of the Virgo full moon (purging and cleansing, shame, self-care themes) and it was one of my worst nights physically. And, I had pieces of wallpaper with cranes on it framed above my bed.

We took it as a validation of our psychic bond, our connection across time and space.

When Marianne checks in on me, it’s often because she has a dream. She has repeatedly met me in the dream space—I am unaware of it, but she is lucid. The image that she meets is of me standing behind a door. She coaxes me through. I interpret the door as stepping to the next level, and in particular, shutting the door on the toxic pattern of loving too much without accountability. I asked her to draw the door she sees me behind. It is a beautiful orange and blue door with a gold border. I loved the image so much that I put it on my leg as a tattoo—a way of honoring the inner work I was doing to pull the roots of this behavior.

The door tattoo, next to the alligator tattoo previously done to honor time lived in New Orleans.

Incidentally, the tattoo was the first thing that got infected and indicated a deeper problem was going on in my body.

There was initially a lack of clarity around what was causing my ill health. At the very least, I needed antibiotics for my legs. And there was a lack of ease receiving treatment and medication. Since I had a long period of not being able to walk, I had rented a car to take my dog to the park. Incidentally, a pharmacy that was supposed to dispense me antibiotics suddenly couldn’t. The only way to get what I needed was to literally drive to another town.

“And what if I don’t have a car?” I had cheekily asked, half daft in a fever fugue and half pissed and sassy.

The pharmacy attendant shrugged.

The challenge of living in a city like New Orleans is that just good enough is the baseline. And sometimes that didn’t even happen. It’s a city so traumatized and under resourced on so many levels that there is no health there. There is only survival and when ’s gone, party till the inevitable end. I drove what should have been the twenty-minute round trip to get my medicine. Through bad road conditions, traffic, and a glaring sunset that inhibited seeing anything past the hood of the rental, the trip took 3 hours.

It was the final straw. I decided that I would leave, not knowing where I would go or how I would pack and move when I couldn’t walk and breathing was difficult. As I sat in the rental and shielded my eyes, my energetic heart swelled, and I felt intuitively that this was the right decision. I knew it would work out although I didn’t know how.

Trust and geaux. (Writing it  as “geaux” is my homage to the New Orleans’ way of putting a French influence [via spelling] on regional language.)

I left New Orleans, Louisiana en route to the Catskill Mountains in New York, which had been the home that I needed to leave after a different crisis. However, I only made it 8 hours north of the Bacchanalian city, where I write from my new home in the woods of Ohatchee, Alabama.

It was a strange series of events that led me here, starting with a systemic infection based on mold toxicity that was stressing my heart. But it was intuition that held me the entire journey, that same intuition that flooded in as I sat in the rental. Support from my global community, like from my Russian colleague, let’s me know I am not on this journey alone. I write from direct experience of the place other souls met me along the way. I’m not sure if it was inner space or outer space, but I’m doubly not sure that it matters. What I mean by this is two-fold.

There was a need to take care of myself medically and physically. And there was equally a need to take care of myself mentally, as the stress of living in the city had taken its toll after two years. Leaving New Orleans happened in the three-dimensional world. I could call that outer space.

That tripped some strings in inner space, or the multidimensional world. I’m not sure the distinction of inner space matters, save for the perceptions that we have of these intuitions from the third eye and downloads that come through the multidimensional world.

Synchronicities emerge from the lower unconscious and higher unconscious in the presence of awareness. Jung refers to a famous story of synchronicity as a beetle tapping on a window precisely at the moment a patient of his brought one into conversation.

Beetle on the trailer in Ohatchee, Alabama.

There was a synchronicity of the deepest level on a day I was towing north toward New York.
I had resolved to buy a camper and a truck and make my way to New York, trusting and geauxing and figuring out the three-dimensional world as I went. I wasn’t much too excited about a drive day through Alabama. I hadn’t wanted to leave New Orleans on such short notice, but I did it for my wellness. I was tired. And I wanted a home.

I was lost in my thoughts, about four hours in and suddenly an alarm went off—Trailer Disconnected. I looked out my passenger-side window and saw smoke. I pulled off the highway and before I could even pull up the Geico app to call for help, a white truck pulled up in front of me on the shoulder. A man got out. I unconsciously started throwing him the meanest eye darts ever.

He lifted up his shirt and dipped—bowed—and I said, „Not now, asshole.“ I was fuming.

He approached my window and said, „Look, I can see you need help. I don’t have any guns and I have a chihuahua, too.“

I should have known—it has happened so many times. Someone lifts their shirt as a Southern code for guns (or no guns). He bowed because he was tryna be funny. He could tell I was pissed.

He offered to work on my trailer and I was too stunned to even speak. He said he couldn’t believe I didn’t flip the trailer—the tire was completely shredded. And my sway bars, unbeknownst to me, had popped off.

I had ridden past two accidents and four construction zones. I didn’t think twice about the bumpiness of the ride.

So, that. The tires on my trailer are not rated for speeds above 50mph and by the grace of this angel, I now know. Basically, they melt from the heat of friction, hence the smoke.

I was completely broken.

He asked me what I worked on, what kind of books I’m into, and I stuttered for a second. He said, „Throwing bones and weird shit? That’s the only thing that saved me.“

—As if he knew that’s my wheelhouse.

He said we should hurry up and get to Walmart—two exits down and then two lefts.

„We?“ I asked, more surprised at the naturalness of it all.

„Oh, I mean ‚yew‘,“ he replied in an Alabama drawl.

I offered to Venmo him money and with the most innocent response, he said, „What’s that?“

I asked how I could repay him. He said, „just give me a hug.“ (He got a shot of reiki energy, too.) And then he got back into his truck and drove off. Later that day, as I laid in my camper bed stranded in the Walmart parking lot, I questioned if he was real. Stories of guardian angels pepper the media. And he had been at exactly the right spot at the right time to help me.

Tire shredded after driving with incorrect weight and speed.

I decided the following day to find him, and I did through the power of Facebook and the photo I took. Someone pointed out that his truck was a Chevy, and goosebumps ran down my spine. My dad used to drive a Chevy and since the incident happened close to the anniversary of his death, where his discarnate energy may be more present on the Earth plane, I wondered if my dad hadn’t sent my guardian angel after all. I believe that my dad did, and so my guardian angel was real and not real. Or, he came from the surreal.

The synchronicity blew my mind.

After I sorted out my tires the next day, I got back on the road. I was overwhelmed by peace and I heard a voice inside me say, “I am home.”

I was passing through the woods of the Talladega Forest.

I checked into a campsite in Georgia to recover my nerves and wonder what any of it meant. What meaning could I make of the supernatural events?

I spent nearly three weeks in Georgia. I was in the countryside, parked next to a creek, under crystal clear night skies. I started to be able to breathe and walk without any problem. I was haunted by the incident in Alabama, especially the voice the next day, so I followed my intuition. I decided to go back. Head to Alabama today for an afternoon of wandering, and my loves Coco and Conan accompanied me.

Really, though, I could say that I followed my heart. It was my heart that was not healthy and in the general area that I had passed through the day after the incident with my trailer, I felt alive again. Well. Whole. During that drive, inner alarm bells started going off, telling me I was home. That day, I retraced my steps from Georgia to Alabama to confirm the intuition.

In other words, Earth energy led me here. The meaning I make of it is there are ruptures in the field of shared reality, and sometimes, the only way to navigate is through intuition. Meaning doesn’t matter here. It’s fate that is driving.

I got high on the smell of pine in the Talladega Forest, and things started to swirl, and I think I was in a Stephen King novel because a train appeared and took me to the other side of the universe. And the trees talked in serious tones and said this is the cost of passage to another world: lose your mind and trust your inner sense.

Walking in the Talladega Forest.

So I took the gift from fate: I intuited to stay.

I rode back and the smell of jasmine and honeysuckle and cow shit and wet hay flew in one window and out the other. The katydids or cicadas or whatever shape and name the crickety insects took changed into ghost hands, shaking down bones in a cup held by people long dead and fairy Earth energy who cheered me back to my campsite. The surreal and the real mixed.

The next day, I found a tiny home community perched on the banks of the Coosa River, near the Talladega Forest. Two days later, I got a lease.

I knew I was home.

I’ve since become friends with my guardian angel who goes by Jay. Marianne checks in regularly, and recently, told me she felt that she could really connect with me on a new level. A heart level. I think the sickness brought me to a new level of health. There is a strong psychic connection with both of these people, I want to remain in right relation and authentic to the meanings that I make from such relationships. They emerged from the transpersonal to the shared reality of the third dimension. They were part of my journey led by intuition to a new home.

Reflecting on that level of surreality into reality will have me in awe for a while.

 

***

Hi there! Thanks for reading. I’m a writer, editor, and transpersonal guide who explores psychospiritual growth.

I write my own story. In that light, my writing is service–the stories I share about my own psychospiritual growth, the process of self exploration & self transformation, and the way culture affects us are my gift to the world.

I share the knowledge and processes that anyone can implement to achieve inner peace. This is a transpersonal point of view and embodied transformation through creative writing.

And, I explore the deep stuff–what we do when we recall past life experiences; how we engage the archetypal resonance of embodied experience; when to call the “weird stuff” you’re experiencing a spiritual awakening and when to call a mental healthcare practitioner.

  • If you are a mental healthcare professional who would like to work with me on your journey of psychospiritual growth or integrating transpersonal psychology with your client practice, go here 
  • If you are a GenXer who wants to learn about a transpersonal worldview and write your own story in a group setting online, go here
  • If you are interested in my work with language and changing the mental healthcare narrative through transpersonal psychology, I invite you to read the curated pieces from my portfolio that are on this website and reach out

BTW: I love tattoos and coffee.

***

Curious about seeing the world and the mind as multidimensional? What does that mean for science?

  • Check out Public Parapsychology. Learn more about what psi is and why psi belongs to everyone. Join other seekers and citizen scientists who are exploring parapsychological phenomena for the benefit of understanding the spiritual nature of the material world.
  • Also consider joining The Parapsychological Association. Support an organization of professional scientists and independent researchers who are pushing the boundaries of our current understanding of the mind. Programming and publications include excellent resources for mental healthcare practitioners and healers who support individuals with transpersonal experiences. 

Conversations: Zara Kand and Anastasia Wasko

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The creative process, art, and spirituality intertwine by their natures. Creating art can be a spiritual experience, and spiritual experience informs art. Enjoy an unscripted conversation between two friends who are fascinated by these topics.

Zara Kand is an oil painter, animator, freelance art writer, curator, art instructor, and editor of The Gallerist Speaks. She was raised in Europe and has lived in the US for the greater part of her life. She has created art since she was old enough to hold a pencil and has exhibited throughout numerous venues within the US, as well as being featured internationally in many online and print publications. Her website is zarakand.com.