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#2064 - Thursday, February 24, 2005 - Editor: Jerry Katz


 

 

 

This issue continues with the selection from the new book, Healing with Qualities, by Manuel Schoch.

 

From the website:  Manuel Schoch is a gifted Swiss mystic, healer, therapist, and teacher, and the creator of Time Therapy. He has drawn on 30 years of careful observation of the human energy system to give us a holistic way to transform our habitual patterns. Combining awareness and natural energy processes, Time Therapy is a stunningly direct and practical way to consciously realize the potential of your individual strengths and qualities. Rather than focusing on the past as a tool for dealing with the present, as does traditional psychotherapy, Time Therapy works on the premise that you can change your patterns in the present through specific meditation techniques.

Schoch was the co-founder of the Analytic Centre in Zurich and the founder and director of the HiHo-Collective, an anti-psychiatric institution which was widely known in the 70s. He went on to found the Tune In Centre for Human Growth in Zurich, London, and Athens, where he currently practices Time Therapy. He also teaches at the University of Zurich.

Manuel Schoch will be giving a workshop entitled The Feeling Revolution at Omega Institute on the weekend of May 20-22. The schedule for the event is:

·  Friday 8-10 pm

·  Saturday 9-12 am

·  2:30-5 pm Sunday 9-12 am

 

more info here:  http://www.sentientpublications.com/catalog/healing.php

 

 

 


 

 

 

HEALING WITH QUALITIES: The Essence of Time Therapy

by Manuel Schoch

 

 

 

Chapter 11

 

Creating the Atmosphere of the Qualities

 

(Editor's note: The "Qualities" are "the real essence of your being." The following text is a continuation of the text given in Highlights #2062.)

 

The mind and safety

 

As we have seen, we can create a history and an explanation with a problem or a weakness, and whenever the mind sees the possibility of creating a cause, it creates the illusion of security. Security, as we know, eases the mind. It can even justify absurdities; for example, there are cases where the mind feels more at ease if it can be convinced that a person has cancer because of some past life issue. The mind is more comfortable with the most far-fetched explanation than it is with staying with whatever may be there at any given time. The mind is not even ready to entertain the possibility that whatever problem you have, the problem is still not as big as your quality.

 

Our qualites are there, however, despite you or any of our efforts. You cannot develop them or get rid of them; you cannot even take credit for them. You cannot go into lengthy explanations about the qualities when they have nothing to do with you personally. It is just part of the life force, our qi, and you were born with them. The essence therefore is far more vast than the problem.

 

Imagine that you are forty years old with two children, and you have been diagnosed with terminal cancer. In such a situation I cannot imagine anyone wishing to die. Imagine that you are spiritually "advanced" to the point where you do not object to the thought of death, but you still worry about what will happen to your two children of five and eight years of age after your death. Once you have actually died you will realize that despite all the psychological pain and sorrow for your children, and all the physical pain due to the cancer, your qualities have not been destroyed.

 

The trauma of coming into this world and manifesting in a material structure focuses us too much on the material level. You can look around you and see how our society is incredibly obsessed with the body. If people spent the millions that they put into health and care of their bodies on caring for their qualities, the world would be a better place. This is not, of course, to suggest that we should not take care of the body, but there has to be a balance. The balance becomes possible when the mind can see that constantly watching out for that which might be a danger, for whatever you feel is not good in you, is a huge barrier to expression of the qualities. We can easily create a greater barrier by judging ourselves.

 

This is just how the mind functions; we need to just be aware of why it is happening. Our qualities want to be able to come into expression, to be used and to be lived. Once we are in touch with our qualities we realize how valueless it is to invest time and energy in looking at the past.

 

Perspective and association

 

The person who says that they have been harmed by their past and seriously believes that to be true will be viewing the past from a negative perspective. We cannot really see our past as it was, so what is the use of looking at it? If, however, you are healthy, intelligent and without problems, you will see the past as it truly was. If you are functioning out of a neurotic structure, you will see nothing other than what it is to look at something from a neurotic structure. This then becomes a psychological game.

 

If you go into therapy with a therapist who has not found inner peace, joy or happiness and has not embraced or been penetrated by the atmosphere of their respective qualities, then they will be deceiving themselves and also their clients. The clients are part of this deception, as they believe that someone else is better placed than themselves to tell them who they are. In situations like this the less the therapist is in touch with their own atmosphere, the less space they will give the client.

 

Giving a client space means that the therapist is not subscribing to psychoanalytical theories of resistance, repression, the unconscious or even spiritual theorizing such as whether or not people have achieved a certain level of enlightenment. Any readers of this book who are thinking of consulting a therapist are advised to bear this in mind and avoid a therapist who tries to fit a client into a frame by labelling, defining or interpreting within the confines of a theoretical structure.

 

There is a beautiful saying from a spiritual tribe in Africa: "The laws of nature cease to exist in the person who is penetrated by God." In other words, the more we are in touch with our qualities, then the less the need to adhere to whatever laws there may be. Laws or rules are a description of something we observe. What we fail to realize is that the description is only valuable at the very moment of observing and may not be applicable again.

 

The past in fact means the absence of the qualities because the past does not project into the present. If we go back to the beginning and consider how the futrue creates the past, try to penetrate this statement on a feeling level, not by understanding it intellectually. Qualities are blocked because of the past. Both Buddhism and Christianity give us hints and guidelines in the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path and the Ten Commandments, and in the Bhagavad Gita Krishna says that enlightenment has nothing to do with reincarnation or the past.

 

If we limit our understanding to the associative thought process, it will hinder us from developing a perspective for the future. The qualities become blocked as a result of identifying with both the past and the future. Jesus said, "Be like the flowers in the field," meaning do not be concerned about the past, about that which has happened or is happening, as paradise -- the future -- lies somewhere else. If you are concerned with the past and give descriptions to it, the future loses its perspective and becomes fear.

 

Krishna was a revolutionary because in his time, the karma and reincarnation belief system was heavily subscribed to, and sadly it remains so now. He attacked it directly by saying that reincarnation is not there to be understood, to be turned into a description or for us to find out what has happened in past lives and to elucidate what has gone wrong. To do this would only encourage us to identify with the past and be a hindrance to our future. The creation of a perspective for our lives can be brought about only by expressing our qualities.

 

In order for us to penetrate the mind and our thinking processes, we need to understand the mind's source, its own root. To go back to the image of white light being broken down into different colors, white represents consciousness, and when consciousness is broken down into pieces, this simply means that we become aware of a particular thing and then we have thoughts centered around it. This means that the idea of unconscious and conscious is an absurd theoretical concept. It is very important to understand this simply because once we are in touch with the qualities, the mind can pretend that we cannot be directly in contact with them. You may feel a little confused about your qualities -- maybe you think there are still some unconscious problems that you have not worked with or have repressed.

 

This is a beautiful way out for the mind. It creates a barrier through all of these excuses for why it may not be possible to be in touch with the qualities.

 

~ ~ ~

 

Like this book? I'll print more in the next issue. The author, Manuel Schoch, is appearing at the Omega Institute in May. details and further info about this book are here: http://www.sentientpublications.com/catalog/healing.php 

 

Reprinted with implied permission by the publisher.

 

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