The Pyramid of Life by Robert Kirby
I vividly remember sitting excitedly in the Santa Monica Auditorium with three hundred souls. Everyone was anticipating a talk from modern day mystic and author of Soul Mates, Thomas Moore. He was late arriving from the airport but in true California style, no-one seemed to mind. Since he was a renowned psychotherapist turned spiritual guru, the audience was a mixed bag of professional and alternative thinking people.
His opening comments were intended to shock.
"Psychotherapy as know it today will cease to exist in ten years time. People are searching for the deeper meaning of their lives which cannot be found in modern psychology."
I watched the faces of the diversified audience with enormous amusement. You could imagine the polarised reactions which included several people walking out. Moore’s intention to shake people up was to get them thinking about their lives from a new paradigm.
Moore’s taught that light centred around physical objects. He said the wood and metal items in your home reflected the content of your soul. They should be important metaphors in your life that represent deep meaning. I felt his message was grounding for me but I was still searching. I wanted a complete answer.
Energy and Consciousness
I was completely spun out by all the café talk and home based discussion groups in California surrounding consciousness, past lives and the energy of life. The conflicting opinions and channelled messages of "divine origin" were overwhelming – even frightening. I could now see how cult followings emerged. People were looking for someone to tell them what truth is. They did not have to take responsibility for their lives.
I prayed for truth and guidance. The answer came through a shaman medicine woman. Cathy’s native American blood provided the wisdom I asked for. She perpetually returned the cause of my problems and the solution to my problems back onto my lap.
After a few years of remaining dense I finally got it! Consciousness emerges to the same degree that the life energy flows through the physical body. I could now see that psyche and soma were not connected – they were one. After seven years of training in native American wisdom; opening to the earth energy, spirit energy, body energy and psychic energy as one "universal consciousness", Cathy turned me over to my next teacher, John Pierrakos of Core Energetics.
The first time I met John he explained that my soul came into my body while I was in my mother’s womb. It was a comic spark that included my energy and consciousness. The soul contained my gifts as light and my distortions as darkness that needed purification.
The Personality
John further taught me that my personality was a mask that covered up the truth. In other words, my darkness needed to be exposed and transformed so my light could shine brightly. This can only happen through my personality because it’s the most authentic reflection of my character. Who I am speaks louder than anything I have ever said. Personality is a constant barometer of spiritual growth. It’s the only aspect of consciousness that can explore all the manifestations of love in the universe.
I realised my personality was the vehicle with which I experienced life, pain, joy and transformation. I also realised that parts of my personality generated deep feelings and even behaviours that I had no control over. But what were the origins of this dimension of my being?
The Power of Intention
John explained to me his reasons for bringing spirituality and pathwork lectures (based on spiritual psychology) into Bioenergetics. He said Eva Pierrakos had transmitted valuable information about human dimensions not touched by psychology. I asked him how this related to the painful patterns in my personality. He referred me to Eva’s lectures on intention. Her transmissions revealed intention was my most powerful tool for creation. Every thought I’ve had and every word I’ve ever spoken has created a positive or negative intention in the fertile soil of my soul. The electromagnetic energy beam (or life energy) follows my every intention. The overall condition or composite of my positive and negative intentions is the present state of my life. Wow!
This explained a lot of things. Now I knew why the Core Energetics model refused to see people as a victim. Everyone creates their own reality. Now I understood why every time I committed to a project, relationship or business with a strong "positive intention" it’s polarised opposite or "negative intention" came up to greet me.
This also explained to me why Pierrakos and Lowen were so devoted to Wilhelm Riech’s work on the body. Reich was a genius in understanding how trauma and negativity shaped the physical body by holding energy in chronic muscular contractions. These patterns in turn shaped the character and identity of the evolving personality. Reich called this character structure. Each person could be, through thorough analysis, slotted into one or more of five structures. In other words, the negative intentions of my entire life directed my life energy towards unhealthy patterns. To defend and protect myself from more pain and trauma my physical body assisted me by holding back or damming up the flow of energy. The holding pattern also kept my consciousness (or awareness of truth) stuck in repetitive issues.
By stuck I mean in denial or immature. It became obvious that everyone had aspects of their personalities that had not "grown up". The contracted areas of our bodies keep us out of the present moment. In certain areas we react to threat or conflict in the very same way we did as children.
This was beginning to make sense. I was still overwhelmed by the magnitude of being human. If the creative evolution of my energy and consciousness was determined by the freedom of my positive intentions to energetically flow through my physical body and express themselves (or not) through my personality, then what part did my psyche play?
To understand the bigger picture of life I built a three dimensional pyramid below:
Psyche
The psyche according to psychiatrist Alexander Lowen is the psychological make-up of an individual. It not only includes conscious and unconscious conflicting thoughts, feelings and drives, but in addition permeates different aspects of mind: ego, id and superego.
The pyramid of life put it all together for me. Psyche, deeply affected by the energy and consciousness that came in with my soul, had a profound effect on soma (body) even before I was born. Today in both a paradoxical and reciprocal relationship psyche and soma affect each other twenty four hours a day! My psychological history, and my body, simply cannot be ignored if I was to become free and whole.
Understanding psyche is no easy task. Thoughts, feelings, images, dreams, urges, obsessions and compulsions all interacted from the past, present and future and have a perpetual effect on my beliefs, intentions and personality.
Unifying all the Selves
As the years went by I came to know freedom was not an easy journey. The impact of Cathy and John had been immeasurable.
John O’Donahue, the Irish poet and mystic, wrote "the body fits into the soul like a glove". This beautiful metaphor tells us the same thing that science has discovered. The soul is a vibration of energy that includes consciousness. The aspect of the soul that possesses consciousness is the spirit. This Godly mystery of Life comes to us as a spark of Light and remains around the body as an aura until the moment of death.
To improve the quality of my life I must learn precious lessons about love and forgiveness. To be authentic the heartfelt love must be integrated into my personality. To transform my negative intentions I must be very devoted to the healing of my body and psyche. This is the work of Core Energetics and other profound modalities. This is clearly depicted in the Pyramid of Life. The spirals reflect the inter-connectedness of the human dimension. These dimensions remain split for many lifetimes. We remain stuck in the darkness until we admit we cannot love properly. The hatred and violence in humanity is a vivid example of the magnitude of the wound.
Purifying The Doors of Perception
Unifying my psyche, body and personality with positive intention permits my reality to move beyond the distortions and limitations of the past. Living from the core, the inner-most centre or heart of my being is the richest experience of life. This includes living in the present moment, giving and receiving love from a deep reservoir, expressing my unique creativity and fulfilling my soul’s destiny.
To accomplish this it was necessary to explore psyche to uncover my negative intention and distortions created from my childhood. This could happen only with a therapist’s help. Simultaneously, it was necessary to mobilise my energy through movement, breath and sound. The charged body now challenged the blocks, leaks and armouring that kept my consciousness stuck. As I opened up and discharged the pain and emotional energy it freed my soul and cleansed my reality. In other words, I could now live in the present and express my honest feelings.
Core Energetics Retreat with Robert Kirby October 2006
