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Robert Augustus Masters on Intimacy

Posted November 24th, 2010 by Stanley in Psychology
In Reference to:
Spiritual Bypassing

We could try to live our life numb, fragmented, and in denial but it might be difficult to hold these qualities in a true intimate relationship. If such a transparent, vulnerable, no exit relationship is working, our shadows and neurosis will come to the surface to be healed. It sounds like a crazy arrangement. The deeper we love the more the worst in us arises. Our challenge seems to be to not to allow our dark parts to harm the one we love the most.

 

Robert’s work involves becoming more intimate with all parts, states, and qualities of our self including our anger, fear, sadness, shame, guilt, self criticism, and self hatred. We can not get rid of these and need not make these our leaders; but we need to know how to relate with them in a healthy way. Robert said that he only sees his psychotherapy clients a few times and I would like to believe that he gets good results this quickly. Has anyone worked with him? He invites us to equally value the personal, relational, and transcendent.

 

In a relationship there is connection and also separation. A good practice in a relationship is to allow a person to be who she is and hold her in a safe place of love. A good motivation for a relationship is to serve the World together.

 

Terry Patten is calling for a sangha where PEERS can be together in transparency, vulnerability, self awareness, strength, and inspiration for the World. A sangha of shared intimacy sounds like a most beautiful vision to me. Why not start right now with all the guests on these talks? Are they willing to walk the talk together? Are they willing to allow us to be with them as peers to heal, grow, and serve the World together? These are actual questions. I trust that such a bright and beautiful day is fast approaching.

 

A caution; as we become more and more open, sensitive and vulnerable we also need to have groundedness,  boundaries, strength,  power, spaciousness, and some numbness in order to survive in the sometimes painful and messy world of samsara. This business of life seems like a narrow line to walk well.

 

I found this talk to be a great blessing. Thank you.

 

http://beyondawakeningseries.com/blog/general/archive/  

 

 

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worthwhile…

Posted November 24th, 2010 by Charles Bowling

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Hi Stanley,

I'm pleased to be in agreement this post. Robert Augustus Masters is the real thing, and his book Spiritual Bypassing gets high marks with me; i can hardly remember an occasion when the few dollars i spent for its Kindle edition returned as much value for the money.

Such a work can only happen via authenticity…

Warmly,

Charles

88W13'31" 41N54'51"

 

 

 

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good stuff

Posted November 27th, 2010 by Ambo Suno

I agree, Stanley, good material that you synopsize well.

You could hear the truth in the tone of his voice and his words about his one-on-one relationship being a primary nest of challenging inner work. I am supposing that that sort of work generalizes to some extent to benefit the greater population of people, and I'm also supposing that there is some context specificity to that alchemy of transformation and of learning.

As to your wonderings about being peers, and who has worked with him, and I'm guessing you thinking about what it would be like to work with him, it seems that there could be some of the peerage that you might want. I am also imagining that personalities being as they are, even in people as advanced as RAM, fairly enduring in some form, and roles that people are attached to, that it would be a surprise for me to see the kind of egalitarian-feeling peer relationships that you might expect. Robert reminds us that judging and tenacious patterns of judgments don't easily go away, and certainly can't be simply presto-chango willed away, so he, for example, might not be able to be in a full-on peer relationship with me or you, in the busyness of judgments and working with those, even if he thought being your peer was a good idea. That's what I am thinking now.

I am also thinking that as wonderful as an approach sounds in dialogue and in theory, it may be that for some reason in the vast realm of our partial judgings (his included) of beauty, goodness and truth, that there isn't a therapeutic match. Depending on individual context for example, he might feel too aloof, or brusque, or assumptuous in his assertive hands-on-body approach for where you are at a moment. He may have a vision of what you need that may be too distant from your own vision or sensibilities. 3D reality of specific form may feel so different than the imagined one. I think that this happens plenty in therapy and healing treatments. Just to clarify further, I am not sure whether he could do his brand of work if he were to let go of his therapist/client-patient role in order to be one's peer. On the other hand, some who are looking for help are in such a receptive state that they can surrender, regardless of much form, to the therapist/healer and achieve profound change. (I am sure you know much of this already, and have your own evolving points of view on this topic many quite different from mine.)

The potency of his work with some people may be inextricably entwined with his achieved role and stature and with his personality that includes some fairly enduring assumptions, judgments, and styles such that he might not be able to shift enough to match up with many people, even those at a fairly high developmental level along important lines.

I notice in me a certain edge, perhaps some deep defensiveness as part of that edge, so what I am saying is certainly questionable. I Hope that in my reality of the moment I didn't rub all the pleasure of your inquiry away. Thanks.

ambo