Avatar And The Denial Zone - by Emma Bragdon, Ph.D.

AVATAR® AND THE DENIAL ZONE

by Emma Bragdon, Ph.D. (Author of The Call of Spiritual Emergency Harper & Row)

Denial Zone: a psychic space between a familiar sense of reality and a new sense of reality where the two realities appear polarized, each one inimical to the other. In this space emotions run high or are out of reach, i.e. you may feel overwhelmed with anger fear grief desire, etc. or numb. Unusual sensations may arise, e.g. dizziness, nausea, muscle cramps, etc. To the extent you resist feeling what is happening in this zone you will stay stuck in it.

I came across this concept while involved in a program called AVATAR. The Avatar training added new dimensions to my thinking about spiritual emergency and also gave me techniques to efficiently move out of a denial zone within minutes -- and help others do the same. For this reason, I thought many of you would like to know more about Avatar.

The techniques of Avatar training take you gently into pure awareness within a few days. From this source, you, as "aware will," create change in your life by working with the beliefs which underlie your experience of life. You learn the "how to" of creating beliefs which work for you and discreating those that no longer serve you.

The program takes about 80 hours and is usually taught over 8 consecutive days, each day lasting 10 hours. The training is intense, efficient, and more fun than any psycho-spiritual program I know of. Changes people make include getting rid of self-limiting attitudes and beliefs, physical healing, losing weight, increasing tolerance for others, experiencing unconditional love, exploring the furthest reaches of human potential, finding motivation and direction in life, revitalizing relationships, embracing prosperity and, literally, inspiring artistic expression.

The Avatar course is a good choice for those people interested in an accelerated pace of growth, those willing to take responsibility for managing their beliefs, and those who are willing to have the path be light. A recent graduate said, "The Course in Miracles talks about how life works. Avatar shows you how to live life according to those principles." Another graduate (who had done EST and several Buddhist retreats amongst other psycho-spiritual trainings) remarked, "Avatar is the most useful and the most gentle process of all that I have done."

Palmer's Creativism: The Art of Living Deliberately. This title describes the direction of the course but only hints at the empowerment offered.

People often ask, "Is Avatar like est, or Lifespring?" (or any of many other group experiences popularized in the last 15 years).

Avatar is similar only in that it facilitates increased awareness. The training is different in that it is self-paced and designed to help each person take control of his or her life. This means that there are no time restrictions mandated by trainers about when to do each part of the course. Students take breaks when they need them and pace themselves through the exercises.

From the start of the course, it is obvious that you are the one in control - not an outside authority. You are not being indoctrinated or intimidated through group-think into a reality which is "it." In Avatar you are being given an opportunity to have a personal experience of being source. It arises from your own feelings -- not someone else's knowledge of source.

Also, there is no special recognition given for self-disclosure. Un like other programs which hold a premium on spilling your guts or making confessions, Avatar training respects individual needs for privacy. You choose how much you want to disclose and to whom. Above all, there is a respect for the individual's choice. This is consistent with the goal of the course: you are the creator of your world! You decide.

The Avatar Course was originated in 1987 by Harry Palmer, M.A. in Educational Psychology, venturing after the purest source of creativity. He found this Source in the experience of "Pure Awareness," a state of mind called "consciousness without content" in sacred texts. In this state you are not identified with any feelings or thoughts. What you have identified as "you" is suspended -- it is a blissful surrender -- into profound peace.

The experiential exercises of this training are so effective that you can not only experience but be come comfortable with Source quite easily within a few days. More importantly, the succession of exercises is put together in such a way that by the time you move into Source, you do not feel disoriented or afraid of the boundlessness which characterizes this state. You automatically identify the state as the ground from which you can begin creating what you choose in life, a much sought after empowerment. Thus, pure awareness be comes a delightful playground and your identity easily shifts to creator, or Source. You do not get lost looking for an answer to the question, "Who am I?" Instead, you begin to play more consciously with, "What do I want to explore?"

When I first watched people move into experiencing themselves as Source, I expected to see symptoms of the "denial zone" - cathartic emotional outbursts, anxiety and fear, muscular spasms and unusual somatic sensations so typical of Kundalini breaking through chronic resistances. (After all, I have written two books on spiritual emergency, and I BELIEVED that these symptoms arise as people approach the state of pure aware ness.) I was amazed to see that students of Avatar were not caught in these patterns. In fact, their typical expression was joy in discovery, affection and laughter!

"What? No spiritual emergency? How can this be?" I thought about Gopi Krishna and his years of psychological and physical turmoil as his body approached the wide- open state of pure awareness. I thought about Ram Dass' story of the man who wanted to rush his spiritual awakening and was told by the guru, "there are no shortcuts." I thought of the years of spiritual exercises practiced by Christians, Buddhists, Moslems, Hindus, shamen and medicine women in order to attain the state of oneness with all this is, or God. I reflected cynically on the American way: gravitating always toward instant gratification. My mind did not want to believe that a psycho spiritual intensive could deliver the experience of pure awareness to people within a few days and seemingly avoid any symptoms of spiritual emergency.

Then, I allowed myself to recollect channeled messages I have heard or read: You have all come to witness the lifting of the veil to be present when the remembering of who you are takes place....

I remembered poems. For in stance, part of Robert Bly's translation of a Kabir poem:

I laugh when I hear that the fish in the water is thirsty. You don 't grasp the fact that what is most alive of all is inside your own house; and so you walk from one holy city to the next with a confused look!

These messages and poems beckon me to acknowledge it may be time to accept a quicker path to transcendental oneness.

What does this tell me about spiritual emergency? First, I see a path where spiritual emergency is not necessary for spiritual emergence. In fact, those who are attached to the BELIEF that crises are part of spiritual growth may very well be putting creative energy toward manufacturing crises. Our BELIEFS about the path give form to our path, how we perceive the path and how we are open to experience it. Second, without self limiting BELIEFS about the path of spiritual emergence, all possibilities are open. The way may be utterly simple. It could even be fun! (How all-American that sounds!)

A typical example: Imagine, if you will, that I am a stereotypical scientist. I am so attached to my BELIEF that "nothing is real that can't be objectively measured and duplicated" that I have few options to handle unusual subjective experience. One day I have an out- of-body experience during a car accident. Before I return to ordinary consciousness I speak to an angel. How do I think about the experience? I can say it was a dream or hallucination, a psychochemical event produced by stress, and thus deny its reality and not threaten my own reality. I can selectively forget it happened. I can refuse to tell anyone about it. I can refuse to process what it might mean "if,' it had any reality to it. A likely out come: my body somatizes when the psyche refuses to feel. Heart dis ease, migraine headaches or some other malady may ensue. Or, per haps a bit more emotional rigidity - a stronger denial system and less ability to flow with life - all to preserve the BELIEFS about what is real and unreal.

Another example: a person is traveling in Europe and experiences a psychic opening leaving her capable of seeing past lives and hearing channeled messages about her family's future. She has no prior knowledge of these realms of experience and BELIEVES she must be over the edge, i.e. crazy. Under a physician's supervision, she can get anti-psychotic medications to stop the "auditory hallucinations and visions." Another alternative is to consult a Helper from the Spiritual Emergence Net work who can reassure her she is not crazy and facilitate her integrating this new aspect of herself. To integrate her psychic opening she must change her BELIEFS so that her psychic opening is a positive evolutionary step rather than a "symptom" of being crazy.

She may be on the road to becoming something of a seer. At the least, she will have more to give herself and her family as she opens up to her extraordinariness.

Is enlightenment what Avatar delivers? My experience as a teacher of Avatar is that graduates can choose to be in Source at will. They can choose to lighten up any area of life they want to. They have trained themselves to go beyond resistance, so they are not apt to

get stuck in a denial zone. The graduates have not become instant saints, but with deep compassion they take full responsibility for their lives. They no longer lose themselves in the identity of "victim." They no longer lose themselves projecting source outside themselves onto a guru or idol. They have peeled off layers of judgment on self and others so they find it easier to love all people.

What is this love? Palmer writes, "Love is an expression of the willingness to create space in which something is al lowed to change." It is in this space that the course is delivered.

Finally, I want to paraphrase Harry Palmer's message to a graduating class of trainers because it illustrates the lightness which extends into the Avatar training. His words also point the way toward a process of spiritual emergence that can be a source of consistent joy. Palmer suggests we Celebrate!...

Many of us have become used to the path of "whacking the beast," that is, making it our business to whack away at those bits and pieces that we think keep us from being fully awake. Why not choose to celebrate instead? After all, right now you are the most perfect embodiment of consciousness you have been to date. Celebrate your gains and your direction. Once you become the perfect embodiment of consciousness there will be no one (i.e. no identity) left to celebrate, so celebrate now. (A good point!) ***