This is a heartfelt tribute to my great friend, David Anderson, who sadly passed away several years ago. David started a rather obscure yet enjoyable organization called the Institute of Not Knowing, to which I was only a casual member. He was an animator, filmmaker, and a truly creative individual. In his later days, David would often fondly mention this institute, and I came to realize what a profound and ironic name it was. It highlighted his strong aversion to the rigid, didactic remarks that many of us teachers, therapists, and aspiring professionals tend to employ, which often reflect an attitude of “this is how it is.”
In Islamic Sufi (Taṣawwuf [1] Arabic: الْتَّصَوُّف) philosophy, there are said to be many stages of inner development. It was considered so vital that it was codified, structured and proscribed. There are many Sufi paths, with particular proclivities or processes that facilitate murids (students), each with a Sheikh or similar who represents the embodiment of a realised state. They arrived at this station due to their diligence and the hardships encountered on their particular path. The sheikh’s duty is to guide the initiate to foster their inner development, and these guides use many differing techniques to facilitate internal changes. These sheikhs, both men and women, on the whole, have lineages that can often be traced back through to the Prophet Mohammed pbuh himself, his offspring, relatives or his immediate companions. Recent additions are sheikhs who have been initiated as head of orders who are European or American; and whose lineages are not similar, have little resemblance to the classical notion of an order, that the barakah or blessing that is said to follow through the bloodlines of their sainted origins. This allows for new blood and thought to permeate through orthodox Sufi circles.
This process of inner development is not limited to the inner path of classical Islamic thought. Much of Sunni and even Shia dogma find the eccentric and to some, idolatrous path of the Sufi to be anathema; as it challenges the orthodoxy and the Sunna. This inner development has not ever been the sole proprietorship of the Sufi but is in every religious rite and exegesis. It includes shamans, ‘witch’ doctors, traditional healers and all the broad band of individuals around the world who facilitate others in their inner lives.
This site illustrates a process whereby we facilitate the pulling-up of narratives that dog individuals and prevent humans from finding their purpose, passion, humanity, and connection to higher understanding, As we lift our minds into larger schematics as in the noosphere or look towards the chthonic entities (the unseen realms of the underworld) we may expand our maps of the universe and of ourselves but may unwittingly bypass our inner spiritual life by keeping our minds engaged, excited and expanded. Our ability to receive inner guidance is altered but also enhanced, however, if we turn inward to our inner life and its guidance we can be led towards a purposeful, soulful life that guides us through our temporal lives. The person has a more human process rather than one guided by their constitution or hereditary, or one that is bigger than their emotional state (EQ). They can move out of old behaviours and mindsets to live bigger, wider and more meaningful lives.
In the process of learning InnerDialogue and the HTM process, participants will discover a larger worldview. With an expansion of human thought (noosphere), the allies and elements within the chthonic underworld and the recognition that within this understanding is the ascent of the soul. Our soul is the paramount entity that guides our outer lives. The new murid (student) will learn that we are in transition, ascent. We arrive with souls in the making, just as we may say we are ‘humans in the making’. For most of humankind, we are human, as we are all the same–the colour of blood is the same throughout all our races and nations. Deep within us, the soul ought to reside, and it may come into this life in various stages of development. We categorise this but do not point a finger accusingly at each station, for these, as the mystics would say, is sirr (Arabic: a divine secret–that which is covered or unseen and cannot be understood). We merely indicate that we are souls in development, and we may describe each, knowing that, in actuality, we are being developed bit by bit throughout our lives.
However, during therapy, most therapists operate from their particular maps, learning, biases and those pivotal moments that have left a barb, wound or hurt within. Our thoughts and behaviour, emotions and body states echo our historical upbringing; and those patterns are often hard to erase or to reset unless we know them. The Hippocratic modus operandi of ‘physician heal thyself’ is obviously, for many of us, paramount. However, often, we don’t know what therapy to utilise or how to pick the right therapist. Therapy and those of us who practice as therapists – irrespective of the title we may or may not sport, are always confronting the feeling that we don’t know what is wrong with our particular client’s infront of us. We don’t resonate with them, and thus cannot feel or intuit the causal pattern.
Consequently, it is inclement upon us to develop. Here, I reiterate the opening thought, that we need to develop internally, inwardly. I don’t ask us to go down the path of Sufism, but to nevertheless start to address the inner processes that create us. In order to do this we need to see that we are three-fold beings. We are made of two distinctly different aspects, outer and inward (internal) and inner.
[1] (a.) Taṣawwuf: the phenomenon of mysticism within Islam. It is the maṣdar of Form V of the radical ṣ-w-f, indicating primarily one who wears woollen clothes (ṣūf), the rough attire of ascetics and mystics. Other etymological derivations proposed in Western and, especially, Islamic sources are not tenable. Consequently, a mystic is referred to as a ṣūfī or mutaṣawwif, while the communities are called ṣūfiyya or mutaṣawwifa.