In traditional Parts Work (Resource Therapy, Ego State Therapy, Internal Family Systems, Ideo-Ego Dynamics, Voice Dialogue, Transactional Analysis, etc), we approach the inner parts of ourselves directly in order to engage and productively harmonise with other parts of the self to serve the psychological health of the individual. In these therapies it is generally assumed that the various parts (or resources) engaged with are complexes, patterns, or personas of the individual who presents with a problem they want to resolve.
Transpersonal Parts Therapy takes this a step further and recognises that the parts of our psyche which together make up what we call the person are not necessarily the only parts we have the opportunity to access. While we may work with those parts of the subconscious that are hidden, wounded or dysfunctional (as in Resource Therapy) there is also a largely untapped potential of connection to a broader world of intelligence and wisdom not necessarily limited to our own psychic self. These may include accessing a higher consciousness (we may say the transpersonal superconscious as opposed to simply the personal subconscious), past lives, spirit guides, ancestral wisdom, power (totem) animals, guardian angels, or any similar experiences that religious traditions extending back to our earliest shamanic origins have identified and worked with.
It is interesting to note that much of the process of traditional Parts Work is in many ways similar to the techniques of hypnotherapists who work with Past Life regression, and the shamanic techniques of many animist indigenous cultures in their journeys into “other worlds”, conversing with spirits, ancestors, totem animals, etc,
These similarities raise some interesting questions, particularly from a psychotherapeutic point of view. From that psychological perspective, we are not expected to believe in past lives, nor are we asked to assume any spiritual and external entity, angel, ancestor, spirit or guide is being communicated with. Transpersonal Parts Therapy however, does not discount that possibility but rather assumes that such potentials do indeed exist and can be explored creatively and therapeutically.
In Transpersonal Parts Therapy there is no debate about whether such experiences are right or wrong, “true” or not, personal parts or transpersonal entities, etc. It does not assert any particular position is necessarily proven at the expense of any other. It avoids any metaphysical argument and simply relates to the therapeutic potential present, primarily determined by the beliefs of each individual. It is not simply the experience of shamanic or animist beliefs here; virtually all religions of the world hold amongst their foundational premises the belief that other worldly and discarnate beings do indeed exist, and have had a well-attested history of engaging with believers. Angels (particularly personal guardian angels), demons, gods, djinns, faeries/elves, ghosts, ancestors and an array of spirits both helpful and harmful, for example, are commonly held assumptions of many, if not all, religious traditions.
In Transpersonal Parts Therapy the focus is not on “do these spirits exist”, “are such transpersonal experiences real,” or “are they personal parts or impersonal entities,” Rather each part or entity, subconscious or superconscious, that presents to share wisdom and experience may be approached as distinct and discrete parts, entities, or states of being willing and able to communicate to the therapist and client in whatever way is most therapeutically-appropriate, and respectful to the beliefs and lived experience of each.
Transpersonal Parts Therapy may also utilise classical divination tools for enhanced psycho-spiritual exploration. In this context, Big Sky Mind may employ tarot as a distinct form of Therapeutic Divination.The use of any classic oracular method can often be a particularly efficacious way to gain awareness and provide insight into specific problems or neuroses that otherwise may be resistant to engagement.
Transpersonal Parts Therapy can engage any one, or a combination, of classic Parts Work (Resource Therapy), hypnotherapy, past-life regression, therapeutic meditation, divination or shamanic methods. The five primary disciplines of Transpersonal Parts Therapy are Spiritual Hypnosis (Accessing Higher Consciousness Resources), Past Lives Regression Therapy, Shamanic Counselling, Therapeutic Divination and Spirit Releasement Therapy.
Big Sky Mind further explores Contemplative Psychotherapy (Therapeutic Meditation) to deepen the potential of Transpersonal Parts Therapy for the spiritual growth and psychological wellbeing of the client.
How do the principles of Parts Work relate to transpersonal practice and experience? One might say that traditional psychotherapy works with the personal subconscious whereas transpersonal therapies open this engagement to include the transpersonal superconscious. As human beings, transpersonal psychotherapy assumes we can as readily engage this transpersonal superconscious as we can our own personal subconscious. Both these realms are accessible to us as personal or transpersonal, subconscious or superconscious experience. Our inner child, for instance, is a part we can recognise as an aspect within our personal subconscious, and a guardian angel or spirit guide may be seen as accessible parts of our transpersonal superconscious. Our Higher Self may be seen as belonging to either realm, or both.
The Transpersonal Parts Therapy theory of consciousness would suggest four aspects which can be worked with in therapeutic and spiritual ways; the Personal Subconscious, the Personal Unconscious, the Collective Unconscious, and the Transpersonal Superconscious:
- The Personal Subconscious:
This is where traditional psychotherapy and parts work practice such as Resource Therapy typically operates, engaging and bringing to back to health those dysfunctional, ignored and wounded parts of the psyche. Traumas and pains that leave their mark in the psyche operate at this level. Here we have not only pathological states in need of healing and expression, but also inner states which provide us with abilities, strengths and experience to draw upon as resources. These states/resources are in fact physiological conditions which have been developed through neural synaptic connections, axions and dendrites in the brain developed through repeated use and conditioning.
Transpersonal Parts Therapy primarily uses Resource Therapy and hypnotherapy in this context. - The Personal Unconscious:
Here lies the ancestral wisdom related to genetic history and ethnic and cultural lineage, as well as possible past lives experience. Indigenous traditions which refer to the presence of ancestors guiding the lives of their descendents, and even ancestral blessings and curses. “The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children” Exodus 20:5-6) is a Biblical example, and similar principles are held in ancient Norse as well as Chinese and Japanese traditions, among many others. Also relevant here are the events of past lives which directly impact the circumstances and psychological condition of the individual alive today.
Transpersonal Parts Therapy primarily uses Past Life Regression Therapy (and Life Between Lives therapy) to work with these parts of the personal unconscious. - The Collective Unconscious:
This is the domain of the inner world patterns shared by humanity through the ages. These are the classic Jungian archetypes (from the Greek, “original pattern”) such as the Mother, Father, Child, Shadow, Wise Man, Anima and Animus amongst others. Divinatory systems such as the tarot employ just such images to provide symbolic representation of the patterns in the collective unconscious. These archetypal patterns and their attendant myths can be explored as presenting in an individual’s lived experience.
Transpersonal Parts Therapy uses Therapeutic Divination to explore these patterns as they are represented in the life of the client. - The Transpersonal Superconscious:
When we speak of gods, angels, divas, cosmic intelligence, higher awareness, or divine consciousness we are typically referring to those parts of the transpersonal superconscious which we as human beings also participate in. There is a clear overlap between this realm and the domain of the collective unconscious and it is not always certain where the distinctions (if any) may lie. But one can assume the transpersonal superconsciousness is less limited in its scope than the collective unconscious of the human experience, as it also can be said to express the consciousness of the non-human world, whether that be planetary, cosmic or divine and which exists beyond human experience.
Transpersonal Parts Therapy uses Spiritual Hypnosis (Accessing Higher Consciousness), and Shamanic Counselling (the shamanic techniques or “technology of transcendence” and “techniques of ecstasy” referred to by anthropologist Mircea Eliade) and the practices of meditation and contemplative psychotherapy to attune the individual to the quiet voice of the transpersonal superconscious. The more transpersonal applications of Resource Therapy protocols and treatment can also be employed to directly engage the personal subconscious as a bridge to a direct experience of the transpersonal superconscious
Spiritual Hypnosis (Accessing Higher Consciousness)
Master hypnotist, teacher and author Roy Hunter popularised the term “spiritual hypnosis” to demonstrate the possibilities of accessing higher states of consciousness, which could be labelled as God, Higher Self, the Divine Mind, or even Guides and Guardian Angels (as determined by his clients themselves) to directly engage in the therapeutic process. Although he stumbled on this process intuitively in his hypnosis and parts work practice, he quickly learned that he was not the first to have discovered this potential but rather he was sharing in the same experiences of other therapists who had had those same experiences As Hunter perfected his techniques and further researched this phenomenon he eventually labelled the process as “spiritual hypnosis”. Similar principles (as Hunter was to discover) are also to be found in other schools of therapy and have developed further since the popularisation of his work in the 1990s.
Subliminal Therapy, developed by Dr Edwin Yager in the 1980s, coined the term “Centrum” to define that aspect of self that represented the individual’s highest wisdom, strength and compassion and which could be drawn upon to help and guide all other parts of the person. Professor Gordon Emmerson, founder of Resource Therapy, had also explored the idea of “Inner Strength” as a key accessible resource available to everyone, and the Wise Self is also seen as an important part of the self in Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT).
Accessing this part, which can also be referred to as one’s Higher Self, Christ-consciousness, Buddha-self, or even for atheists, “highest wisdom”, may be explored as a deeper application of Resource Therapy protocols designed to access resources of inner strength and wisdom. It is the process of opening to and expressing the highest form of wisdom the client has access to at that time, whether that be a psychological “part” of the individual psyche or perhaps a guiding spirit, angel or guardian the client can directly engage with. This Higher Consciousness can be accessed as a source of higher wisdom, and can also be used as a mediator trusted by other parts to resolve conflicts between aspects of self.
Accessing higher consciousness explores the most clearly spiritual potential of Resource Therapy, and transpersonal therapy in general. It assumes that the subconscious may be the most directly accessible gateway to spiritual experience and a direct path to receiving love, wisdom and strength from that part of the client most deeply connected to God, Higher Wisdom, Superconsciousness or Divine Awareness.
This process also awakens the deeper intuition and personal wisdom of the client which can be experienced to help resolve confusions, neuroses, phobias and anxieties, In Transpersonal Parts Therapy, this Higher Consciousness may be called upon directly using the protocols of traditional Resource Therapy, spiritual hypnosis, shamanic journeying or therapeutic divination to provide oversight, mediation and insight for all the inner parts of the client, both conscious and unconscious.
Past Lives Regression Therapy
The majority of the world’s population, for the majority of human history, have (and still do) believe in reincarnation and in the journey of the soul from one lifetime to another. In a modern therapeutic context, hypnotherapy has been used to access memories from past lives (or, as some might prefer to think, “parallel lives”) to draw upon inner resources, experience and wisdom. Past Life Regression can provide insights into a client’s current issues, confusions, anxieties and phobias, and it can help resolve relationship issues and provide understanding and meaning for the problems one faces in this life.
The exploration of possible past lives as a form of therapy in its own right first became popularised by Dr Brian Weiss in the 1980s, a psychiatrist who found that under hypnosis clients could spontaneously regress to life times prior to this one. While people may question whether these occurrences represent genuine past life experience, or whether the subconscious brings parts of the self to consciousness in mysterious ways we may not understand (“parallel lives”), Dr Weiss regardless demonstrated that working with these lives, or parts, could have profound healing and spiritual benefits for the individual.
Past Life Regression also includes Life Between Lives exploration, where the individual can access a review of past lives, and learn the lessons each or specific lives may have had to offer, and work done or still yet to do on the ongoing spiritual journey.
In Clinical Hypnotherapy, and intrinsic to much of Resource Therapy, age-regression is assumed to be not only important, but generally necessary, to any likely therapeutic resolution of past traumas. This age regression may even go to the pre-birth experience of the womb. And where conventional hypnotherapy stops at that point, Past Life Regression Therapy takes that very barrier as its “stepping off” point for further exploration. Although different disciplines, the two can easily be seen as simply differing on the question of where the continuum of human experience begins and ends. From the perspective of Transpersonal Parts Therapy the therapeutic engagement with the regressed four year old of this life is exactly the same engagement a therapist might use with the regressed four year old of a past life. Both are addressed with the intent to gain insight and provide healing for the client in the here and now.
Transpersonal Parts Therapy avoids the need to assert where human consciousness can be said to stop or start. It simply follows in the lived experience of the person presenting to the therapist.
Another way of looking at how regression therapy operates in both conventional and transpersonal therapy is to suggest that age regression works with the client’s personal subconscious (stored experiences of this physical existence) whereas past life regression works with the client’s personal unconscious (stored experiences of transpersonal existence).
More than simply providing entertainment or curiosity-value, Past Life Regression therapy provides a powerful program for change and can also help develop a rich and deeper sense of personal identity and spiritual purpose in this life. Transpersonal Parts Therapy uses the experience of identifiable past or parallel lives as resources one can draw on in the context of a broader and transpersonal approach to Parts Work.
Shamanic Counselling
Anthropologist and founder of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, Dr Michael Harner, in his ground-breaking book Way Of The Shaman wrote “Shamanism represents the most widespread and ancient methodological system of mind-body healing known to humanity.” In the 1980s Dr Harner revolutionised understanding of how shamanic practices contain core principles and practices that can be found not only across ancient (and still extant) shamanic and animist cultures, but also in the themes of modern religion and psychology. These shared principles inform his system of “Core Shamanism”, a rapidly growing spiritual practice commonly adopted by contemporary traditions of shamanism and which identifies the universal or near universal characteristics of shamanic practices across time and cultures. The Foundation has also developed a system of Shamanic Counselling that utilises the practice of journeying to access “upper world” teachers who can guide and provide wisdom for the client.
Dr Harner writes in the appendix to Sandra Harner’s text “Ema’s Odyssey” that his method of shamanic counselling “has at its goal life enlightenment, not the treatment of psycho-pathology. It is a problem-solving system for discovering one’s own spiritual power and the wisdom to deal successfully with daily life.” He further elaborates that “in essence, the client becomes a practitioner of divinatory shamanism, with help and guidance (in ordinary reality) of the shamanic counsellor.”
As one may point out that hypnosis and hypnotherapy have clearly recognisable roots in shamanic practice, Transpersonal Parts Therapy further sees the potential of modern transpersonal therapy as being the natural evolution of ancient shamanic practice. Where the traditional shaman might have contacted and utilised animal and plant spirits in the healing journey, the modern hypnoshaman uses inner resources and psychic parts of self to access power and wisdom. And where the traditional shaman may have undertaken personal journeys to the upper, middle and lower worlds, the modern hypnoshaman guides the clients to journey the superconscious, normal conscious, and subconscious to access similar resources, insights and guidance.
The Transpersonal Parts Therapist, as hypnoshaman, primarily practices shamanic counselling but may use any of the practices of Core Shamanism, such as trance, the inner journey, “vision quest”, or meeting power animals or spirit guides, or soul-retrieval methods to aid the client in their spiritual and therapeutic journey.
Therapeutic Divination
As has been the widespread practice of virtually all cultures and all times, a wise application of divination methods (such as tarot, runes, I Ching, etc) can provide insight into one’s life and circumstances, and the psychological forces at work within the client in relation to them. More than simply the sort of fortune telling which presumes we are merely simple robots fixed in a universe of absolute fate which we are powerless to influence, true divination can help us understand and recognise the conditions of our past, to clearly understand our situation now, and help us foresee the possible futures likely to develop from those often overlooked conditions of past and present.
Especially amongst Jungian, humanistic and transpersonal therapists, there has been an increasing acceptance of divination as a means to greater awareness and insight, with a peculiar power to elicit those “Aha!” moments which help crystallise a client’s inner wisdom and affirm their own innate capacity to heal.
In his book Tarot And Psychology, psychologist Dr Arthur Rosengarten, quoting from I Ching: The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change (Ritsema & Karcher), points out:
“The idea that words, things, and events can become omens that open communication with a spirit world is based on an insight in the way the psyche works – that in every symptom, conflict or problem we experience there is a spirit trying to communicate with us. Each encounter with trouble is an opening to this spirit, usually opposed by the ego because it wants to enforce its will on the world.”
From this perspective engagement with the “spirit” of an apparently randomly selected card allows for communication with a transpersonal experience, which can further be seen as an engagement with specific “parts” of a deeper (or higher) transpersonal intelligence. Carl Jung wrote extensively on the psychotherapeutic application of oracles as a means of engaging with archetypal forces that can only ever be directly encountered through visionary and psychic means. The tarot provides a comprehensive compendium of precisely these types of archetypal energies. Guided visualisations employing these energies can further uncover a rich trove of inner resources and wisdom.
In her book Tarot Mirrors: Reflections of Personal Meaning, the celebrated tarot authority Mary Greer identified four basic interpretive styles tarot readers tend to use; specifically, Analytic, Therapeutic, Psychic and Magical. She also suggests that a good reader will often draw upon them all. A transpersonal psychotherapist will tend to the Analytic and Therapeutic interpretive styles, but in recognising psychism as a form of intuition will also be open to that numinous dimension of knowing.
In this regard, therapeutic divination can be used in two distinct ways: one is as a classically oracular device, often described as a “reading”, providing insight into one’s situation and psychological condition and suggesting likely outcomes and informed choices based on that insight; and the other is to use specific cards as a launching point for visionary journeys, usually employing hypnosis inductions, as a sort of tarot shamanry to communicate with higher (or deeper) transpersonal intelligences in the ancient manner of shamanic pathworkings or journeys.
Spirit Releasement Therapy
Dr William Baldwin was the first to coin the term “Spirit Release Therapy” in the mid 1990s and apply it in a contemporary clinical context. It has been further explored and developed by author, teacher and master hypnotherapist Mark Beale and addresses the possibility of external and negative entities becoming attached to the individual causing harm, confusion and acute anxiety and depression. It represents the most esoteric, and controversial, potential of transpersonal psychotherapy, but is an undeniably ancient and universal experience.
Although such occurrences are certainly rare, this is of course not a new idea. Indeed, it can be argued that the assumption of external entities, demons, malevolent spirits, lost or confused discarnate entitites causing human pain and anguish is found in the very earliest belief of humans when it comes to mental and physical health. That it endures to this day, and is being seriously explored in clinical therapeutic contexts, gives good cause to believe in the distinct possibility of such external and malefic forces able and willing to influence and even harm people. From clearings, banishings and, of course, exorcism all major religious traditions from earliest prehistory to this day maintain that such forces do indeed exist. Contemporary Spirit Release Therapy addresses similar issues in a more clearly therapeutic context with less assumed religious content.
In Resource Therapy there is a recognition of OPIs (Other Personalised Identities), and Internal Family Systems similarly references UB’s (Unattached Burdens). Although neither focuses on them, and is understandably cautious with diagnosing or assuming their presence, clinical experience nonetheless (supported by the testimony of many clinical hypnotherapists) has made the possibility of negative and harmful entities becoming attached to an individual impossible to discount.
Transpersonal Parts Therapy recognises that Spirit Release Therapy is an important and, while rare, sometimes necessary part of the spiritual and therapeutic journey.
Big Sky Mnd 