SCH #1 – A Paradigm Shift

Ayahuasca Boundaryby Thomas Zinser Ed.D.

Soul-Centered Healing (SCH) is a cross between hypnotherapy and shamanism. It’s an approach that recognizes other dimensions of a person besides the physical. Using hypnosis, SCH can help a person identify and resolve sources of pain, conflict, or confusion that operate at these levels outside ordinary consciousness.

These are the levels that “talk therapy” often cannot get to because of the inner blocking and defenses. These blocks keep the conscious mind away and, in the process, protect the self from pain, fear, and hurt.

Soul-Centered Healing recognizes these defenses. It  recognizes that there are energetic, psychic, and spirit dimensions of the self. SCH also recognizes that there are phenomena, conditions, entities, and energies operating at these levels that can cause someone emotional and psychological distress. Soul-Centered Healing uses specific methods and protocols, then, to help a person access and work at these levels for healing.

Generally speaking, there are four primary categories of phenomena that Soul-Centered Healing usually deals with at these unconscious levels. They are 1) ego-states, also called sub-personalities, 2) intrusion or interference by spirits or other dimensional beings,3) energy disruption. and 4) past life history and influence. For any specific individual, one or more of these levels may be involved in his or her difficulties.

Before I talk about these phenomena and healing methods, however, there is an important issue that needs to be addressed first. It’s the issue of paradigms: one’s point of view. A paradigm is a culture’s worldview—a set of fundamental assumptions and common beliefs about reality that are shared in general by the members of a society.

In our present-day Western culture, we live in a paradigm dominated by empirical science. It has been labeled scientific materialism. It’s a paradigm that assumes that matter is the ground of all reality. If something cannot be reduced to its tiniest physical components, then it’s not real.

At the same time, many of the phenomena and realities dealt with in Soul-Centered Healing contradict what our Western paradigm says is real and what isn’t. Take for example the existence of spirits. SCH recognizes that beings exist who are conscious and aware, but who do not possess a physical body. It recognizes, too, that there are realms of spirits, and that there are certain conditions where spirits and humans can interact.

From within an empirical paradigm, however, the very thought that spirits exist is non-sensical. You cannot have something made of nothing. So, let’s not waste time and money talking nonsense.

Strict empirical science can be expected to adopt the same attitude toward Soul-Centered Healing (as it has toward so many approaches to healing that deal with these subtle realms)—it’s all nonsense. The same applies to so many of the phenomena that SCH recognizes as energetic, psychic, and spiritual reailties. They are phenomena and realities that cannot be fully understood or explained within a strictly empirical framework of thinking.

This contradiction between paradigms needs to be acknowledged up-front. The limitations of empirical science force us intellectually and logically into an all-or-none position regarding psychic and spirit realities. For empirical science, there is no in-between. Either spirits (and other paranormal phenomena) exist and empirical science is wrong in its basic assumptions; or empirical science is correct, and any claims about spirits, past lives, or psychic phenomena, etc. must necessarily be delusions, fantasy, or deception.

Soul-Centered Healing presumes a yes on this all-or-none question: there are other levels of consciousness and reality beyond the physical, and beyond ego-awareness. For those who already accept this, Soul-Centered Healing is an exploration into inner worlds of the self and into some of these different realms of consciousness and spirit.

For those who do not believe, or are not sure, I’m asking that you temporarily set aside the empirical assumptions about what is real. Understanding Soul-Centered Healing, with all its implications, requires a shift in paradigms. If it’s going to make sense at all, the reader will need to treat these dimensions and phenomena “as if” they are real. Only in this suspension of disbelief can these realities be understood and evaluated on their own terms.

Next: The Inner Selves

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