When I first began this assignment, I had no idea what a model of transpersonal identity was supposed to be, how I was going to define it, and how I was going to write about it for ten pages. But then I began reading the course material. And I went back to re-read some material and papers from my UMD experience. These led to other new material, and, well, one thing led to another, until finally the problem was not how to find enough to write about, but rather how to condense what I wanted to say. I now probably have enough material and ideas to begin a book of my own!

In "Lesson VI: A Model for Understanding the Nature of Man," we read that models are tools "to help us organize what we already know, to help us see new relationships, and to keep us from being dazzled by the full-blown complexity of the subject matter." Edgar Cayce stressed that it is the practical application of knowledge that is important rather than knowledge itself. According to Cayce, our spiritual progress depends on how we live our daily lives and how we treat the people around us, in other words, manifesting a life of love. He believed that setting an ideal, that is, establishing spiritual values, is our most vital task. "The most important experience of this or any individual entity is to first know what is the ideal--spiritually. Who and what is thy pattern? (357-13). By choosing the spiritual values which will guide us in our daily lives, we choose our goals. When our goals are shallow, superficial, or self-centered, we suffer the consequences of the same kind of life. But when we listen to our inner selves and obey the urge that encourages us to act for the good of others, good things come to us in return. Setting an ideal "serves to awaken within us a high sense of purpose." It is vital to our spiritual growth--the soul's growth. When we use our ideal to guide our growth, we continue to develop spiritually and understand our purpose in life. Moreover, an ideal is personal, something we believe in--not something we think we should believe in. It is a "valued pattern of perfection that is used as a standard of excellence, quality or spirituality."

Cayce advised that we let our spiritual ideal suggest a corresponding mental attitude (love awakened), and then let that attitude suggest a specific action or approach using our spirit, mind and will (love applied). The sequence in using these three attributes--pure energy directed through a mental pattern into an observable manifestation of the will--is the process of creation. When we become lost and out of touch with the Creator, we lose the conscious choosing of the shape the energy will take. "Physical conditions--whether pertaining to social, to money, to station in life, to likes and dislikes--are the application of those mental images builded within the body, seated, guided, directed, by the spiritual. . . .(349-4) Our minds create our conscious world, and we respond to that world according to the way we see it. Our response, in turn, affects the world itself. The Creator "wants us to become more conscious and aware of this fact so that we can assume more responsibility in our role as co-creators with God. We are given the freedom and responsibility to create our lives as we choose."

As I envision my model of transpersonal identity--my "pattern"--I feel myself approaching the end of the old me. The individualistic, self-absorbed me is dying, and as I stretch out on my deathbed, I sense a new me emerging like a butterfly from its cocoon. I think this feeling could be described as cycle two of Edward Edinger's Self-Ego axis, the "ego alienated from the Self." As I move through this cycle to the next, I hope that I will not get distracted along the way, that I will allow my quest to take me through continually deeper and more complex levels of thought and experience, until eventually I am reunited with the Self and reach the ultimate goal of manifesting the ideal of a "life of love." When I choose to open my soul to that self and lovingly embrace both her and a life of love, "I" will choose to die--and by that choice, "i" will finally begin to live.

In order to achieve an ideal, a pattern must be established which first defines the ideal, then suggests a philosophy for achieving it. To be totally committed to a life of love I must embrace such a life, then choose paths that lead me to the realization of that ideal. Yet I do not believe it is possible to develop a model for transpersonal growth without including a perspective on the world we live in and are a part of both physically and spiritually. If the concept of interrelatedness is central to our development, how can it be otherwise? Since life is experienced on two levels, spiritual and physical, actually practicing my transpersonal beliefs in the community creates within me a transformational synthesis culminating in a transcendent, transpersonal identity. This identity is totally balanced, and manifested as an image of the Christ on both levels.

Walsh and Vaughan tell us that "growth involves movement into the unknown and often requires surrendering familiar ways of being. Consequently, we tend to fear growth." According to these writers, society encourages personal development only to a certain point before setting "developmental limits." Beyond that point, society actively hinders development. In fact, they say, ". . . much of our individual, social, and global distress reflects this frustrated development . . .," and they go on to question how we can overcome not only our own fear, but also that of society. In other words, how can I discover what my transpersonal identity should be, and then how do I achieve it? And, how does my transpersonal identity affect/persuade/ interrelate with society? The goal of developing a model of transpersonal identity and implementing it now becomes multifaceted. In Walsh and Vaughan's words,

Transpersonal development, therefore, involves several steps: seeing through the limitations of convention and recognizing further developmental potentials; undertaking a practice capable of realizing those potentials; experiencing for oneself the flashes of illumination that transform future potentials into present realities; extending flashes of illumination into abiding light, and bringing that light into the world for the benefit of all. . . .

Honoring the transpersonal, religious, philosophical, and aesthetic dimensions of life may be essential for the health and development of both individuals and cultures.

This course of action, they say, leads to transformed consciousness as well as transpersonal development.

The conceptual framework for my theory of transpersonal identity is interdisciplinary. It is based in part on the intuitive readings of Edgar Cayce; however, it also includes thoughts and ideas garnered from other sources including feminists, futurists, anthropologists, philosophers, theologians, physicists, and the authors of our course readings. My goal is to create a model for a personally transformed consciousness which embraces both my own wholeness and that of the world I live in, and balances them in a synergistic, spiritual integration of the ideal and the real. To paraphrase Jack Kornfield, I have to expand my notion of practice to include all of life.

The articles in Paths Beyond Ego: The Transpersonal Vision mention a number of ways to achieve this integration. First and foremost among them is meditation. In fact, Walsh and Vaughan inform us that "almost all paths include some form of meditation. Meditation is central because it works directly on so many processes essential to transpersonal development." And in almost every book and article I have read on spiritual development, meditation is recommended as one of the most important methods for achieving growth. Meditation also can be practiced alone or in a group, making it a perfect way to foster transformational experiences both personally and communally. Combining meditation with prayer and ritual, alone and with groups of like-minded people, opens both mind and spirit to guidance from the Creative Force.

The next step along the path to a transpersonal identity takes the revelations received during the meditative state and activates them; contemplation leads to creation. Creativity can take many forms such as art, music, dance, cooking, etc. However, I believe that volunteering and other means of service, working towards a greater understanding of ourselves and our world through science and education, and striving for justice through social and/or political activism, are creative, too--creative in that the way we envision our lives leads to how we activate our beliefs, which in turn leads to the state and shape of our reality. If we live according to the ideal of a life of love, we create love.

In Work As A Spiritual Path, Marsha Sinetar says that living such a life of love fosters within us the ardent desire "to produce something unique and beautiful." She believes that work is a "spiritual exercise" and service is "motivated, prompted, and fueled by love." Each of us, she believes,

. . . can reveal our love as we work, and think of our work as a gift we give from within ourselves to whoever is recipient of it, and once we begin to practice in this way, our entire experience, from the time we awake in the morning `till the time we go to sleep at night, has the potential of being a prayer, a surrender of ourselves to something divine.

Viewed from this perspective, we can move consciously and smoothly from meditation to work (whatever activity that may be) and back, with the process becoming at once a continuous prayer and a complete life of love. In this way our philosophy not only informs our work, it permeates our religion, our science, and our culture.

Charlene Spretnak encourages this same sort of life in her book States of Grace: The Recovery of Meaning in the Postmodern Age. She tells us that we must "stimulate spiritual practice" and get back to an appreciation of basic spiritual insights. Compelled by modern society's failure to provide a better life, we must search for "new, or perhaps recovered, modes of understanding our nature and the relation between our species and the rest of the natural world." Spretnak echoes Jack Kornfield (p 68) when she asks the question "what chance have we to heal ourselves and move beyond the constrictive parameters and broken processes of modernity unless we can find practical ways to ease mental agitation, recognize kinship with nature, honor the body, and cherish justice and community? Those ways, according to Spretnak, can be found in the four spiritual practices she refers to as the wisdom traditions:

The subtle interconnectedness underlying our apparent separateness becomes apparent as an experiential realization in the great wisdom traditions. In Buddhism the process of purifying the mind and cultivating lovingkindness [sic] leads one to a desire to alleviate the suffering of others. In Native American spirituality the desire for balance within the community and with the rest of the cosmos leads to communal concern for well-being. In Goddess spirituality, as well, active care for the personal, familial, communal, and cosmic embodiments grows from spiritual practice that encourages awareness of the web of life. In the Semitic, or Abrahamic, cluster of religions, however, the quality of one's faith is thought to deepen through a sincere practice of righteous acts; that is, waging justice is not an outgrowth of the spiritual practice but an inherent component of the core teachings.

No matter what spiritual practice or religion our beliefs entail, engaging in the kind of endeavors described by Spretnak exemplifies a life of love, and creates experiences that can lead to a transformation of the total spirit.

The truth of these concepts can be validated by personal experience. My journey to Russia is a vivid example of the reality my expectations can devise; I expected the worst sort of living conditions and that is exactly what I got. I will never forget those nightly trips to the outhouse, or the food I found so hard to eat. But then, neither will I forget the loving welcome my host family gave me, and their surprise that anyone from the USA would be interested enough to actually travel all the way to their country to find out how Russian people live.

But more often these experiences are not as outstanding as that trip. Often I have thought about a person, and then for no apparent reason run into her on the street or in the grocery store the very next day. Or many times I have had a question with no ready answer, then just "happen" to pick up a book and find it in a random passage. I know for a fact that the expression "what goes around, comes around" is true. I have suffered--and enjoyed--the consequences of my actions too many times to deny it.

In addition to personal experience, much of what I base my model on is intuitive; simply a belief that what I have read or heard clearly feels right. The revelations communicated to me in those instances are my Truth, and they are the stepping stones for my actions, my spirituality, my transformed identity.

But this model does not have to rely only on my experiences and intuition. Roger Walsh informs us that meditation research is being vigorously pursued in the hope of finding a link between consciousness disciplines and science. Moreover, researchers are engaged in meaningful studies of lucid dreaming, transpersonal anthropology, psychedelics, biofeedback, and near-death experiences, all of which make considerable contributions to the nature of the relationship between science/technology and the transpersonal. However, I believe it is in the field of quantum mechanics that we will finally find a way to bridge the gap between the spiritual and the physical which will be accepted both scientifically and spiritually. Gary Zukav explains how:

The distinction between the "in here" and the "out there" upon which science was founded, is becoming blurred. . . .

The new physics tells us that an observer cannot observe without altering what he sees. Observer and observed are interrelated in a real and fundamental sense. The exact nature of this interrelation is not clear, but there is a growing body of evidence that the distinction between the "in here" and the "out there" is illusion.

. . . quantum mechanics, supported by massive volumes of experimental data, forces contemporary physicists to express themselves in a manner that sounds, even to the uninitiated, like the language of mystics.

Access to the physical world is through experience. The common denominator of all experiences is the "I" that does the experiencing. In short, what we experience is not external reality, but our interaction with it.

Compare this to "Lesson X: The Soul--God's Companion: where we read that, according to Edgar Cayce, our most important asset is the proper use of our will in making choices which may change the "circumstances, directions and outcomes" of our lives. In other words, we are not just bystanders somewhere "out there" letting things happen to us in our lives; we can actually influence and alter the paths we take by what we think "in here."

Philosopher Dr. Wallace M. Beasley, Jr. of The Baylor School explains this connection another way. He says that

. . . What many scientists have come to realize is that the objective universe of objects is really a universe of events and that the nature of these events is integrally connected to the subjective consciousness of the observer. The objective and subjective universe can be viewed as different manifestations of consciousness. . . . Another way of saying this is that consciousness is reality and that this reality manifests itself in two directions: the direction of internal space where we live in our mind and the direction of external space where we live in our body. In a sense, the final uniting of these two directions, through consciousness, constitutes on the one hand, the basis of mystical enlightenment, and on the other hand, the theoretical basis of the new physics. In both mysticism and modern physics, consciousness itself is viewed as the factor which underlies and unites the various parts of an interpenetrating universe.

Thus, as manifestations of consciousness, the relationship between meditation and quantum mechanics may provide the link between modern science and religion. Rather than being opposing aspects of our worldview, they can, as Fritjof Capra believes, complement each other in a dynamic interplay, creating a balance between reason and intuition.

These writers explain difficult concepts so clearly that it is easy to merely quote their words in defining a theory of how I imagine my transformed self to be. So let me summarize my thoughts in my own words:

1. My vision of my transformed self is a person who is a living image of the Christ--that is, one who envisions and practices love for the Creator and all Creation.

2. My ideal is a life of love, and the choice of this ideal determines how I will cope with life's circumstances (mental attitude/love awakened) and how I can mold them to coincide with my values (specific action/love applied). The path to achieving this ideal is twofold: meditation to define and expand my values on a spiritual level, and creative activity to incorporate these values on a physical level.

3. Meditation and creative activities are interrelated. Performed from an attitude of love they implement a life of love, which leads to balance between the spiritual self and the physical self, and a transformed identity.

4. The framework for my model is interdisciplinary, including many fields such as anthropology, religion, science, education, politics, psychology, and metaphysics.

5. My model is intuitive and experiential, supported by the writings and examples of many authors, as well as by personal experience and intuition.

6. My model is scientific and experiential. Quantum physics informs us by theory and experiment that we cannot observe reality without changing it, so in that sense we are constantly changing the reality we see as we see it; that is, we create a new reality as we experience life from moment to moment.

The catalyst for this theory is my belief that a model must lead to balance in some way. And it seems to me that modern physics has the potential for showing us how to connect the "in here" with the "out there"--to eliminate the dualisms of our culture: science/nature; observation/experience; reason/intuition; male/female; fear/faith; real/ideal. By using my pattern (as only one example of many models to choose from), we can stimulate each other to eliminate the dualism of different/same and become All/One.

People's experiences, indeed their whole existence, must be validated as legitimate, worthwhile, and meaningful to themselves and to society as a whole. We must begin to learn as children that our opinions do count; our participation is necessary and wanted; our experiences are real and can benefit others; and that we are worthy of and need each other's love. Somehow, we have to transform ourselves from an exploitative world society to a global community where we are at once both teachers and students rather than either experts or outsiders.

Love is the answer. It is always the answer. If you love someone, that person is no longer an unknown entity. If you love everyone, you can no longer not care what happens to them, and you will look for ways to enrich their lives rather than richen yours. I can begin this process for myself by following Marsha Sinetar's advice to pay special attention to the details of my work to make sure that the lofty ideals I talk about everyday when I speak about love, are present in my moment to moment responses to the demands of each day.

Footnotes

1Henry Reed, "Experience Is the Great Teacher," course readings.

2Henry Reed, Edgar Cayce on the Mysteries of the Mind, ed. Charles Thomas Cayce (New York: Warner Books, 1989), 117.

3John G. Fuller, Edgar Cayce Answers Life's Ten Most Important Questions, ed. Charles Thomas Cayce (New York: Warner Books, 1989), 84.

4Reed, Cayce Mysteries, 127.

5Ibid., 243.

6Ibid., 91.

7"Psychological Model Connects People With God," course readings.

8"Lesson VI: A Model for Understanding the Nature of Man," course readings.

9Roger Walsh and Frances Vaughan, "Transpersonal Dimensions of Development," Paths Beyond Ego: The Transpersonal Vision, eds. Roger Walsh and Frances Vaughan (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1993), 110.

10Ibid.

11Ibid., 114.

12Jack Kornfield, "Even the Best Meditators Have Old Wounds to Heal: Combining Meditation and Psychotherapy," Paths Beyond Ego: The Transpersonal Vision, eds. Roger Walsh and Frances Vaughan (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1993), 69.

13Walsh and Vaughan, 52.

14Marsha Sinetar, Work As A Spiritual Path: How To Bring Joy and Meaning To your Work Life (Boulder, CO: Sounds True Recordings, 1992), audiocassette.

15Ibid.

16Charlene Spretnak, States of Grace: The Recovery of Meaning in the Postmodern Age (HarperSan Francisco; New York: Harper Collins, 1991), 8, 12.

17Ibid., 84.

18Ibid., 158.

19Roger Walsh, "The State of the Art," Paths Beyond Ego: The Transpersonal Vision, eds. Roger Walsh and Frances Vaughan (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1993), 60.

20Walsh and Vaughan, 179-180.

21Gary Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics (New York: Bantam Books, 1980), 92-93.

22Dr. Wallace M. Beasley, Jr., "Consciousness, Physics, and the Subject Universe," Contemporary Philosophy Vol 9, #1 (1982).

23Fritjof Capra, "Science and Mysticism," Paths Beyond Ego: The Transpersonal Vision, eds. Roger Walsh and Frances Vaughan (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1993), 189-190.

24Sinetar, audiocassette.