Flow and Movement

What if at our best we are embodiments of curiosity and wonder,

traits that are fueled by open minds and hearts?

~ Ronald Chapman

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Over the past few decades, a powerful therapeutic framework has arisen: Internal Family Systems. In short, it proposes that Walt Whitman was right: we do contain multitudes.

No, we are not all suffering from multiple personality disorder. However, we do have many “parts.” As a result of our deepening understanding of psychology, we can now appreciate that each of us come through early childhood development with these aspects formed as a result of some strange mix of nature and nurture. And we know that the greater the degree of functionality and nurturance in our childhood, the greater the likelihood they are reasonably functional and healthy.

Of course, if we encounter much of what today we would call childhood “trauma,” we are increasingly likely to find ourselves with dysfunctions and unhealthiness.

Regardless of the nature of our “parts,” and to be clear, we all have them, a great secret is in how we come to integrate ourselves and thereby move toward greater and greater realization of the beings we were created to be.

Here’s an excellent framing of our human and divine beings from D.H. Lawrence:

... This is what I believe:

That I am I.

That my soul is a dark forest.

That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest.

That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my

known self, and then go back.

That I must have the courage to let them come and go.

That I will never let mankind put anything over me, but that I will try always

to recognize and submit to the gods in me and the gods in other

men and women.

There is my creed.