Sunday, May 1, 2011

Director's Message for May 2011

Greetings Sacred Path Community,


We have a rare opportunity to spend time with one of the most influential spiritual teachers in modern history. On June 3rd and 4th Leonard Orr will be in Los Angeles and will be with our Sacred Path community offering an evening presentation and a day-long experiential retreat. Leonard and I have been devoted friends since the mid 70’s, but have not worked together in several years. His travels take him around the world extensively as he shares his insights and offers trainings on spiritual purification and conscious connected breath-work. My work has been mostly in LA, yet the building of our spiritual community is very consistent with Leonard’s vision for the expansion of conscious communities comprised of individuals committed to self-development and worldwide transformation. Leonard and I did have an opportunity to see each other at this time last year. That is when I invited him to come back to LA this year to work with us and he accepted the invitation.


I encourage you to not miss this opportunity. Leonard likes to suggest that learning and mastering the simple and pleasurable principles of spiritual purification can “be hazardous to your misery.” I can attest that my meeting and working with Leonard during the 70’s and 80’s made a tremendous difference in the quality of my life, both personally and professionally. I credit Leonard as being one of my most significant teachers and mentors. He will awaken you to a higher realm of awareness regarding your self, your relationships and your purpose for living on Earth at this most turbulent time. We are in the period that has been called the “Quickening,” also referred to as “The Great Awakening,” and each and every one of us is called to move beyond self-limiting thoughts, to expand our awareness and join the ranks of those who are enlisting to make a positive difference where it counts, and I believe we all know that it counts now more than ever.


I have included an article that I wrote that offers some insights about spiritual purification through the process of Rebirthing. Also included in this issue are a couple of articles by Leonard and some information regarding his June training in Sierraville, California. The early discount is extended to anyone wishing to attend the training who registers for Leonard’s events with us in LA. His events are open to both men and women. There is no limit to enrollments for Friday evening, but we will be limiting the number of participants for the Saturday event, so I encourage you to sign up now to reserve your spot. On Saturday, we will experience the conscious connected breathing process with a trained Rebirther facilitating each dyadic team. If by chance on Friday night there were any openings for the Saturday event, you would still be able to register, but better to be safe than sorry.


On another note, we had a great spring Sacred Path Men’s Retreat and are already planning for an invigorating fall Retreat. I believe that what we are working on presently will come together and that we’ll be providing some very exciting news regarding the fall retreat in our next issue.

Be sure to mark your calendars now to hold the dates: 24th Annual Fall Sacred Path Men’s Retreat, October 20 – 23, 2011.


Would you like to be involved in a weekly men's therapeutic support group? I have two openings in my Tuesday night group that meets in my Beverly Hills office from 7-9pm. The core group of members are great guys, so you'd be in good company. Send me a message at DrJ@DrStephenJohnson.com if you're interested and we'll discuss.


In the spirit of community,

Stephen


To download the flyer/application for the June 3-4 presentation with Leonard Orr, click HERE

Two Events for Men and Women with Leonard Orr

On Friday, June 3rd, from 7 to 9ish pm, Leonard Orr will speak about “The Five Greatest Ideas of the Century” and on Saturday, June 4th, from 8:30am to 4:30pm, you will experience Conscious Connected Breathing, which is one of the key elements to attaining Spiritual Purification.


Along with such folk heroes as Ram Dass, Fritz Perls and Timothy Leary, who said of Leonard’s book, Breaking the Death Habit, “Leonard Orr’s book is the most realistic and practical one in the field of conquering death.”


Leonard is one of the originators and elders of what we term today, “The New Age Movement.” The founder of Rebirthing Breathwork and the conscious breathing movement, he has published more than 20 books in more than a dozen languages.


His International Rebirthing Movement has served over ten million people on six continents, and he is a pioneer in the Physical Immortality Movement.


Dr. Stephen Johnson stated that, “Leonard is one of my most influential teachers and mentors. Our relationship commenced in the mid 70’s when I joined a group assisting him during the pioneering stage of his birthing the Conscious Connected Breathing Process (aka Rebirthing). Through this work I was privileged to co-found the Los Angeles Rebirthing Community. Leonard has many unique ideas and concepts that he will share in his presentation on Friday, June 3rd, and you will have the opportunity under his guidance to experience the transformational breathing process on Saturday. These events are open to both men and women. I’m giving you the heads up and suggesting that you register right away because the Saturday event will have a limited enrollment.”


To download the flyer/application, click HERE

Conscious Connected Breathing and Spiritual Purification

by Stephen J. Johnson, Ph.D.

In 1974 I completed my Doctoral Dissertation and graduated from the University of Southern California with a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology. The topic of my Dissertation was The Effects of Yoga Therapy on Self-Concept, Conflict Resolution and Emotional Adjustment. The research was performed through the Kundalini Research Institute, and I had significant results from my study evidencing the value of practicing Kundalini Yoga Therapy to support one’s personal well-being.

I taught Hatha and Kundalini Yoga for about 5 years as an extension of my psychotherapy practice. Yoga is still very much a part of my life today. Dr. Leo Buscaglia, Professor of Special Education and renowned lecturer on the topic of Love, had become an advisor, mentor and friend who sat on my doctoral committee. We had a mutual interest in Yoga and commenced our study together, taking classes on campus.

At the time I was also utilizing certain psychoactive plants and drugs to enhance the depth of my work selectively with some of my patients. I was being mentored by Dr. Gary Fisher, who was studying the effects of hallucinogens such as LSD in the treatment of severely disturbed patients. He had written approximately 200 journal articles on the topic.

In 1975 I met Leonard Orr at a Humanistic Psychology Conference held on the campus of UC Berkeley. Leonard was exploring the power of conscious breathing and had coined the term Rebirthing due to his awareness that circular breathing could unlock the effects of traumatic events, including birth trauma, held in one’s cellular memory. I was eager to experience the process and found it to be as powerfully effective in inducing an altered state of consciousness as the psychoactive elements I was working with at the time. Rebirthing has also been referred to as Maha Yoga or supreme Yoga.

I went on to support Leonard in his pioneering work, and along with two associates created Holistic Arts Productions and began to host Leonard’s Rebirthing Trainings in Los Angeles. We established the Rebirthing LA Community and then hosted Sondra Ray’s Loving Relationship Training, becoming the LA training center for Leonard and Sondra’s work. I joined the ranks of Certified Rebirthers and began offering my own workshops and trainings as well.

Sacred Breathing Sessions became central to the therapeutic work that I was facilitating through my psychotherapy practice, seminars, practicums and retreats. Learning Leonard’s concepts regarding spiritual purification through the elements of earth, air, water and fire has served as a tremendous influence on my life personally and professionally.

Rebirthing is essentially a conscious-connected breathing process that integrates body, mind and spirit, helping you to maintain a perpetual state of relaxation. As you clean and balance your energy field, a profound sense of well-being is produced. Effects on life are immediate. As negative patterns held in the mind and body start to dissolve, you begin to experience your natural center.

The primary purpose of the process is to release restrictions in your breathing and resistance held throughout your body since birth. The goal is to teach you to breathe energy as well as air. Consciously breathing energy is the secret to deep relaxation and therefore plays a big part in a tension-free and dis-ease free lifestyle. Over the years that I have taught people how to balance and clean their energy fields I have witnessed significant transformation and successful results in their lives.

I have found circular breathing sessions to be quite beneficial in treating patients who experience a lot of anxiety and are prone to panic attacks. We have found that having approximately 10 one- to two-hour coached Mindful breathing lessons can be just what the doctor ordered to transform your consciousness and put your life on the right track.

Leonard Orr: The Two Trees

There is new hope. A new Nostradamus book has been found. It says that when the true meaning of the Garden Trees is revealed, the Age of Truth will come...

In the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve there were two special Trees.

Do you remember what they are called? The tree of temptation was called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The Bible says that if Adam and Eve ate the fruit of this tree they would surely die.

Understanding the true meaning of this story is a matter of Life and Death. And yet I have never in my life heard a sermon in any church that explained the true meaning of this story. Here is the true meaning of these trees and if you honor this meaning and practice these simple truths, you will have the secret to Life, to success, and to personal mastery.

The name of the second tree is The Tree of Life. To eat of this tree, the Bible says, gives us Everlasting Life. Since Adam, very very few people have discovered the meaning of this Tree. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is the Mind. It is the fruit of this Tree that produces death in our thoughts, beliefs, and feelings. When we get trapped in our thoughts, beliefs, and feelings, we die. We cut ourselves – our mind and body – off from the Source.

The Tree of Life is Life Itself – the space between our thoughts, beliefs, and feelings. The Tree of Life is the Energy evenly distributed throughout time and space. It is the Eternal Spirit, God, Infinite Being. It is Life Itself.

To eat of the Tree of Life is to Live in the reality beyond the Mind, which is the Source of the Mind and all things. It is the thinker. To bring our Mind into harmony with our Divine Nature is Eternal Life. Learning to live with Spirit Power instead of Mind Power or Physical Power. Absolute Power is Perfect Rest. When people are stuck in their Mind, “the Spirit no longer strives with them."

To eat of the Tree of Knowledge is to be dependent upon the Mind and external reality.
To eat of the Tree of Life is to be dependent only upon Infinite Eternal Spirit. We have to Live in Spirit which is Love, Simplicity, and Truth. We have to learn how to get our strength and power and peace and rest from Spirit rather than forcing it with the mind and physical power. This doesn't mean being lazy and sitting around meditating on a mantra. It means using the mantra to motivate ourselves to move, and love, and be of service. Not just running around doing nothing, but intelligent action grounded in wisdom and joyous, creative artistic Self expression. We can find ways of serving God, ourselves, others, and the planet in eco-friendly ways that are designed to support high quality Life for everyone.

Since Pure Life exists in the space between all our thoughts and we have over 50,000 thoughts per day, we are involuntarily visiting our Source over 50,000 times per day. But most people don't realize that this space is the Tree of Life. They are not aware of their Divine Nature and do not build it into their self-esteem nor listen to it. The ultimate True Religion is Silence. In Perfect Silence there can be no argument; no doctrinal differences. There is only unity and Oneness. This Oneness can resolve all conflicts. Oneness can stop all wars.

Everything that exists is created by mind. But we are the Source of Mind and all thoughts, doctrines, beliefs, and feelings. They all are optional and subject to choice. The purpose of conflicts are to expand our communication and raise us into higher Truth until we dwell in Truth, Simplicity and Love which is Knowledge of Life Itself. When we master our relationship to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life We become the masters of our own Eternal Life.

However, in order to eat of the Tree of Life, we have to get past the flaming sword and get back into the garden. The flaming sword is the symbol for spiritual purification. What is this? Simple spiritual practices with earth, air, water, and fire do the job.

Earth practices are vegetarian diet, regular fasting, a personal exercise system, massage, sound (music, percussion,,etc), and doing work that we love - a career of loving service.

Air practices are conscious energy breathing.

Water practices are bathing twice per day and being conscious of the quality of our drinking water.

Fire purification is done by sitting with an open flame alone for 5 to 19 hours while meditating on our energy body.

In addition to these simple practices, we have to watch the quality of those 50,000 thoughts per day and have harmony in all our relationships, in other words, to live in love all the time.
Meditating on the names of God continually is the basic form of prayer that pulls the Presence of God into our lives and raises the quality of our live into the Presence of God.
Think spiritual community!

Each of the above simple practices is scientific and self-validating and yields a Life of Pleasure and Inspiration, even Bliss.

Leonard Orr: Rebirthing and the 8 Biggies

Rebirthing is a tool for healing, personal growth, and spiritual awakening.
Conscious Breathing helps us to process our minds and emotions by supplying the energy and the power needed to transform ourselves, heal our emotions, and reach a greater inner balance. It is a safe, effective, and natural technique.
Rebirthing was created by Leonard Orr in 1974 and has since been practiced by millions of people worldwide. Some yogis have practiced the circular breathing rhythm used in Rebirthing for centuries. It is said in the Vedas (Indian Scriptures) that circular breathing leads to eternity.

The Biggest Biggie
By
Leonard D. Orr

In the 1970's I became internationally famous for listing and clarifying the major sources of human trauma. I called them the Biggies – the 8 major causes of human trauma – mental and physical illness.
They are:
Birth Trauma – including prenatal and infancy memories. Infancy memories stuck in the body are the basic cause of most terminal diseases. They are terminal only because we use wrong methods for attempting to heal them.
Parental Disapproval Syndrome – this is what most psychoanalysis is about.
Specific Negatives – misusing the tremendous power of the human mind to create our own trauma and negative experiences.
Unconscious Death Urge is rooted in the belief that death is inevitable and beyond our control, but usually works according to family tradition.
Karma from Past Lives – if we had some, and most people do. Conscious reincarnation is an alternative to physical immortality.
School Trauma – most people had their divine nature and creativity totally stifled and destroyed by school through emotional energy pollution and unnatural curriculum. Many people become zombies by their 20's, if not earlier.
Religion Trauma – few religions develop our natural divinity and teach mental practices that enable us to realize our potential.
Senility – senility and old age are not death sentences, but the beginning of the youthing process. But without mastering spiritual purification, the goal of the human civilization seems to make people zombies.
The common denominator of all these sources of human debilitation is emotional energy pollution. We are inundated with Energy and information that we cannot digest. This emotional energy pollution is not transmitted verbally nor rationally, but by the contact of one person’s emotional body with another person’s emotional body.
Emotional energy pollution is nonverbal. It is a basic undercurrent in all human interaction.
We not only feel anger, fear, depression and illness from other people, we can also feel peace, happiness and health. We automatically pick up excess energy impregnated with information that doesn’t necessarily have any rational content.
E.E.P. is also called psychic dirt, the pain body, stress and tension, habits, unconscious beliefs and feelings, sin or just memories.
Sin is a meaningless word for most people. The Greek word for sin means to miss the mark. When you realize that the mark is the constant experience of Oneness, the word takes on rich meaning.
We absorb emotional energy pollution when we are sitting in a meeting, bus, train or plane, or when we go to the supermarket or pass people on the street. It can be felt and even measured somewhat by spiritually sensitive persons. Most people are already inundated by so much E.E.P. that they don’t feel much – they are already zombies. These people are the chief polluters.
But even relatively pure people who bathe twice per day, meditate, do spiritual purification with fire, breathing, good diet and exercise, also have some E.E.P. that we can feel.
When I met a 2000-year old man, his presence felt like a feather. We don’t often meet people who are totally clear.
If you look at the 8 biggies of human trauma, obviously only people who have survived old age and senility are basically clear and clean in their energy body. So we have to be victorious over the basic human condition to be actually spiritually enlightened. Otherwise, it is just a theory – a very valuable theory. But the theory of enlightenment has to be practiced and actualized.
Most people don’t achieve much spiritually in this Life because they are overwhelmed by E.E.P.
Three of my best friends died in the last few years of being trapped in the guru syndrome. I am pointing out to you that E.E.P. is probably the greatest killer. E.E.P. kills more people than eating meat, believing that death is inevitable and even automobiles. Eating meat is the basic cause of heart disease and cancer and all kinds of victim consciousness. And E.E.P. even kills people who believe in and strive for physical immortality. This is true because our diet is largely controlled by E.E.P. Emotional energy pollution is just energy that contains information. It doesn’t matter if the information is good or bad. All information that is not the knowledge of the Tree of Life is the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and kills people if they eat it. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is the mind. The fruit of this tree is our thoughts, beliefs and feelings.
The knowledge of the Tree of Life is the knowledge of the substantive qualities of Life Itself. These are the eternal qualities of our Divine Nature.
People who are trapped in their own thoughts, beliefs, doctrines and feelings in a way that cuts them off from the Tree of Life, must die. Death is inevitable for them, but for people who are entering the Tree of Life, death is optional.
Even the belief in physical immortality can kill us if we allow it to separate us from the Transcendental State. We have to Live in the Reality above the Mind – in the reality that is beyond reality and is the Source of Reality. Physical Immortality philosophy is not a substitute for Living in the Presence of God.
We don’t have to do anything to be immortal. We are immortal by nature. We just have to remember this above all things: thoughts, beliefs, doctrines, memories, habits, attitudes and feelings. This is the Science of Life and Personal Aliveness.
“For God (Spirit, Energy, Being) so loved the earth, air, water and fire (the world), that He gave us His Natural Divinity (His son) that whoever knows (believes in Him), his/her Divine Nature will not perish, but have Everlasting Life.”
Our Divine Nature is Energy, thought and Form – the Holy Trinity, with nothing added.
Our body is created by Thought and maintained by following the rules built into its health and aliveness. The physical body is created and maintained by the Energy Body and the emotional body – mind. Our body is the effect of our mind. Our body-mind includes our conditioning and this is E.E.P. - it includes thoughts, feelings, beliefs and unconscious energy concentrations – energy colored by thoughts and feelings of other people whether it is conscious or unconscious. It is positive or negative mental mass floating in their aura and ours.
We can clean this stuff out of our aura with the basic spiritual purification practices of fasting, good diet, exercise (earth), conscious energy breathing (air), bathing twice per day (water purification), especially with the snorkel habit, and fire – sitting by an open flame.
These basic Spiritual Purification habits can clean the mind faster than the mind can clean the mind. Knowing this is the supreme wisdom of the mind. Winning the spiritual purification game is what keeps us alive and enables us to defeat death. This is the teaching of Babaji from the beginning of creation and will be until the end. These are the rules for an immortal body. Eventually the practices allow us to experience our body as points of light – a light body – seen and experienced as physical – a hologram that can be perceived and touched by others. We can realize the Ideal Divine Body.
When we are losing the spiritual purification game, we can see it through our symptoms – including stiffness; lack of flexibility in mind and body; feeling miserable, depressed or angry; and the guru belly phenomenon. Our death urge can get out of control. We tend to indulge in self-sabotaging behavior, become non-functional and unproductive, and sabotage relationships and our success in every area of our lives. We become zombies – walking dead people. The obvious solution for this condition is to do enough spiritual purification practices with earth, air, water and fire to get our joy of Life back.
The deathist state is accelerated to the extent that we neglect the practices.
Even though we do these practices, the guru syndrome can still kill us. When I work too much with other people, my guru belly exceeds 40 inches and the “noise” of others` E.E.P. destroys my quality and joy of Life so much that I feel like dying.
Solitude works, especially when I do it with the earth, air, water and fire practices.
The E.E.P. includes birth trauma, infancy atrophy, parental disapproval, eating habits, the death urge, heavy feelings and foggy emotions we absorbed from our family and schoolmates, past life karma, senile behaviors, physical weakness, faulty religious perceptions and excess noise that cripples our productivity and makes us non-functional and lazy. It is both – mental and physical paralysis.
The best cure for this state is nothing – to do nothing but relax and wait on the Lord to enter our body and bring us back into abundant Aliveness and Health. And while we are waiting on the Lord, to sit or sleep with fire, bathe before sunrise and sunset, eat healthy food and fast, stay in good physical condition with hiking, manual labor or hatha yoga, and conscious energy breathing. Mantra japa also fuels all this with Divine Power and Love.
The guru syndrome can keep us from doing all this. And we have to teach our students to do it, as well as teaching them to unravel the death urge which they learned from their family tradition, past lives, cultural and religious conditioning, etc.
Babaji says very simply, “The wise do spiritual practices,” and he sets the example in all of His bodies on Earth.
The practices do work! Fasting and fire purification can liberate our breathing. And people who only know and practice Rebirthing – conscious energy breathing – discover sometimes that it no longer works. Obviously, these people have to learn and add the practices with earth, fire and water.
E.E.P. can be very dangerous. It has killed my friends. It could kill me if I am not aware of it and don’t watch it. It can make me very miserable, but the practices with earth, air, water and fire take it away. Earth, air, water and fire can clean the mind faster than the mind can clean the mind. This is the supreme wisdom of the mind. Jesus and all great saints died because of E.E.P. Even Babaji died of E.E.P. to teach us how it works.
Energy plus information is mental mass.
If you have an inch of dust on your floor, it won’t go away if you have beautiful thoughts about yourself or God.
You have to get a broom and a dustpan and clean it up and throw it away. The same is true of E.E.P. We have to do the work and get rid of it. It takes as long as it takes.
I wish the problem would go away, but Babaji once told me that earth, air, water and fire is the eternal Sadhana. The problem of E.E.P. and cleansing it with spiritual purification is built into the nature of Energy, thought and Form.
It won’t go away, just as the process of cleaning our homes, dishes, clothes, etc, doesn’t go away.
Our Energy Body is invincible; it even survives death over and over. However, we have to take care of it, if we desire for it to keep the physical body in great shape.
There are two kinds of body types: the obese body and the stiff body. Without soaking in water, spending enough time with the fire and conscious energy breathing, even exercise can turn people into stiff zombies. People who depend on diet alone – even the best raw food diet – die because of lack of water, fire and air purification.
Breathing is the queen of yoga – pranayama.
Thinking is the king of yoga – meditation.
But even energy breathing and meditation together doesn’t work without earth and water. We have to consciously use all the four elements in balance.
Together they produce victory over the greatest danger in this world – E.E.P.

Leonard Orr: Return to the Sacred

Stephen Johnson and Leonard Orr, 1985

Elder Brotherhood at its Best

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Welcome to Dan Franklin's Website

Dan Franklin, my friend, colleague and Associate Director of MCLA, is launching his new web site and monthly newsletter. You can click on the link that will take you to his site and first edition of his newsletter and you can register to receive his monthly mailings if you wish. Just click here: www.danfranklinmft.com