life is a dream...just a beginner! although they say that’s a good thing • client for over 3...

Life is a Dream

A Process-Oriented Approach to Altered and Extreme States

of Consciousness

John Herold

Monday, May 8, 17

Thank you

• Will Hall, Kate Hill, Gary Reiss, Myriam Rahman, Kate Jobe, Joe Goodbread, Arnold and Amy Mindell, Hellene Gronda, Ingrid Rose, Alex Aris, Elsa Henderson, Amy Palatnick, Chris Allen, my MAPOF2 cohort, and so many more...

• But most of all my wife Beth

Monday, May 8, 17

Just a Beginner!Although they say that’s a good thing

• Client for over 3 years

• Student for almost 2 years

• Instructors say it takes 10 yearsto become good at Processwork

• So...

Monday, May 8, 17

My Goal

• Introduce you to Processwork

• Nudge you toward non-pathologizing ideas

• Encourage you to befriend disturbing energies in your life

• Think together, grow together

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What is Processwork?www.processwork.edu

• Philosophy of change and growth

• In ourselves, with others and in groups

• Focused on signals, role playing, body experiences, dreams, the flow of nature and altered states

• Process-Oriented Conflict Facilitation

• Bring familiar and emerging together!Let them duke it out, gain fluidity

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Most Important!

• Processwork welcomes disturbances

• Lean into, not away from what bothers you

• Opposite from many mainstream approaches

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Madness @ the Processwork Institute

• If you’ve had an extreme state, it’s often a source of marginalization and shame

• Often pathologized as mental illness

• At PWI, it’s a feather in your cap!

• We all study extreme states, but who has lived through one and can tell the tale?

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How I came to Processwork

• Extreme State of 2012 + hospitalization

• Madness Radio, Hearing Voices Network

• Will Hall, Kate Hill

• Gary Reiss

• School + Int’l Cohort

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Awareness Practice

• A Processworker’s job is to use their awareness to help an individual, couple or group gain stronger awareness of what is trying to happen in the moment

• Following, not leading!

• Integration of familiar and emerging

• Problems contain their own solution

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What are Altered States?

States of awareness that are outside our usual way of experiencing, perceiving and expressing

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Children are Altered!

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But then “Normal” Kicks In

• We go to school

• Culture and family influences us

• We learn what “normal” is

• We get punished for going astray

• Accusations: you’re weird, crazy

• Commonly we become unaware of experiences and feelings outside of normal, we marginalize them

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Unusual States are Marginalized, Run off the Road

(by others and ourselves)

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But Unusual States are Clever

• Unusual states visit us in our dreams!

• A parallel world of experience

• When usual mode of being is out of picture

• They introduce us to new parts of ourselves

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How are Altered States Useful?

• They bring important information to us about who we essentially are

• Wake us up to other ways of being, experiencing life

• Lesser known information, sometimes difficult to decipher

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Altered States Happen TO us!

• Trauma, illness, injury, accidents, belief systems, personal history, new learning

• Bad news, good news

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A Processwork Belief

• When something happens TO us, it’s calling to us!

• It wants to be included in our awareness, in who we are

• Not only for individuals, but also communities, societies and cultures

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What is “Pathologizing?”

• Assumes sickness

• “Make it go away”

• Sickness vs. wellness

• Quite DIGITAL

• On/Off

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Familiar vs. Emerging

• All people, relationships, groups, and cultures have a familiar identity

• In individual terms: It’s who YOU are

• Who do you identify yourself as in your daily life?

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Emerging

• But we also have an emerging identity which is more mysterious, less spoken about

• We tend to ignore the emerging identity

• It’s the part of us that’s behind the scenes, that we often would just rather not be there

• The emerging identity is MARGINALIZED

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Slightly Altered States

• Happen when we reach the LIMIT of what we know

• Unknown experiences

• Something shakes us up!

• We’re forced to look at things we don’t normally know

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FamiliarEmerging

The Edge

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At the Edge

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Marginalization

• When we marginalize a part of ourselves to an extreme, where is it going to go?

• That’s right, it comes back!

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Altered States

• All of us experience altered states

• All states exist within each of us

• Every emotion is an altered state

• Some are bigger than others

• Sometimes we get stuck

Monday, May 8, 17

Extreme Statesoften called “mental illness”

• Far outside mainstream “normal”Pathologized, disavowed, deeply marginalized

• Sometimes depart from consensus reality

• State takes over, no balcony view

• Difficulty describing state

• Emerging part runs the show, familiar disappears

• Trouble following feedbackMonday, May 8, 17

The Metacommunicator

• The observer in you. The one who notices

• The inner facilitator

• The balcony view

• The part that can describe a state to another person who is not in that state

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“The Balcony View”We see a lot!

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The Missing Metacommunicator

• Swept up by a state

• Cannot describe the state to someone who isn’t in that state

• Doesn’t notice what is happening, instead only reacts to it

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The Missing Feedback Loop

• Reduced awareness of others’ signals + ability to continue or change a particular behavior in response to those signals

• Leads to “inappropriate” behavior

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Familiar / Emerging Flip

• Suddenly the part of you who usually is behind the scenes, doesn’t get out muchIS RUNNING THE SHOW

• And the familiar part you identify as “you” has skipped town

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Deep Democracy

• All voices need to be heard to be whole

• As opposed to “majority rule”

• That means our states, moods, dreams too

• Marginalizing a voice = makes it stronger

• Allowing it to express itself = leads to meaning making, less polarity

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The 3 M’s

• Metaskills

• Metacommunication

• Metaphor

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What is a Metaskill?

• A feeling attitude

• Not the music, but how you play it

• Your beliefs, your traits, your presence

• What you see in people, what you believe is possible

Monday, May 8, 17

Metaskills to Consider

• Person in extreme state is still a person

• Recognize suffering before meaning

• Don’t push! Pacing is a good thing

• Some live with extreme states as a way of life. Support living it the best way possible

• Extreme states belong to the whole society, not just the person living in one

Monday, May 8, 17

Metacommunication

• Communicating about what you notice is HUGE

• What are you noticing, experiencing with your senses, with your awareness?

• Super useful when communication is difficult

• Bridges experience between people

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Metaphor

• In far-out states, we often speak in metaphor

• As opposed to speaking literally

• “I’m packing my bags” “I’m reeling in a fish”

• Guess into meaning, watch for feedback!

• Following feedback: Central to PW

Monday, May 8, 17

Four Ways to ApproachDisturbing States

1. No problems here

2. Mental illness! Make it go away

3. Who’s the figure that’s making me do this? What’s their energy? Steal it

4. Embrace altered states in daily life, become fluid at going there. Mine what comes from them!

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What is Reality?

• Misunderstood as objective

• Not just consensual

• Interconnected, entangled

• Non-causal, dreamlike

• Paranormal experiences = happen! Often around extreme states

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Quantum Physics

• Boils down to a couple huge discoveries:

• Double slit experiment: Reality behaves like a virtual reality or computer simulation

• Quantum entanglement experiments: We are interconnected even at great distances

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Maybe this is how “reality” works, too

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The Ice Cream ConeModel of Reality

Consensus Reality

Dreamland

Essence

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The Medical Model Works Too!(medicine is quite CR)

• Can bring us back to consensus reality

• Can calm us down, bring us up, even us out

• But it denies the dreamier parts of reality

• Denies meaning in “mental illness”

• Polarizes us against the state

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Teleological

• Life has meaning!

• Disturbances are here to teach us

• Dreams have meaning

• Quantum physics shows us that life is a dream too

• Extreme states have meaning!

Monday, May 8, 17

The City Shadow

• When the mainstream (city) marginalizes certain states, feelings, experiences, where are those experiences supposed to go?

• That’s right! They land on people who live in the city periphery “the city shadows”

• The city needs to pick their own unusual states MORE

Monday, May 8, 17

A Solution to Mental Illness

• Field phenomenon, in all of us

• Disavowed by most people

• “Mentally well” folks need to recognize their own psychosis

• So “it” lands on more sensitive people!

• Hey normies! Be MORE weird it relieves the field! Be MORE mentally ill!

Monday, May 8, 17

Thank You

e-mail: john@johnherold.netweb: www.johnherold.netfacebook @johnezraherold

Monday, May 8, 17