Front door

Why?

Because I felt like a person living three parallel lives. Through words and pictures and the ‘everywhere/anywhere’ magic of the internet, this blog is a place joining all the parts of my life. Perhaps if you come to know me through one door, you might knock on it here and find yourself leaving through another. With enough wandering visitors, the walls might wobble and fall….

Note on the Categories

Writing Life- Due to the fact I have strong opinions and an underdeveloped throat, I am afflicted with the masochistic desire to polish my expression in print. The entries on this page are pieces writtten for publication, as well as some comments about my writing life.

Past Pieces- Essays, articles, stories from the vault

What’s Charlie Doing?- If I can tell you then we’ll both know…

Process Work- I have been dipping into PW since 1994 and an enrolled student since 2004. Here I hope to share something of my path through the Diploma program run by the PW Institute in Portland ( http://www.processwork.org/), and also shed some light for those in the dark on what PW is, at least for me.

About Process Work: PW,  or Process-Oriented Psychology is a cross-disciplinary approach to supporting individuals and groups to discover the meaning and creative insights within the problems, conflicts, dreams and body symptoms they face.

Process Work is a set of skills for engaging with and understanding the mysterious force that supports, shapes and guides our everyday lives, as well as those of the groups, organisations and the world to which we belong. This force is sometimes referred to as ‘Dreaming’[1]. Dreaming is the communication of what Process Work calls the ‘dreambody’. It communicates to us though night dreams, body symptoms, relationship and global conflicts, world events and perceptual ‘flirts’ that cause small reactions within us (often unnoticed). Process Work trains you to become aware of these ‘flirts’ and ‘hotspots’, to notice and encourage them by paying them attention and allowing them to become bigger.

Process Work focuses on applying this work in individuals and groups. As a facilitator, when you are skilled at this, at some point you will become a little embarrassed, surprised or nervous and you will have a great ‘Aha!’ moment, often right on top of each other. This happens because these experiences are disavowed parts of our (shared or personal) identity- they are forced to communicate with us, sometimes very repetitively, through our sensory channels, dreams and communicative conflicts because we don’t identify with them. When we pay attention to them we are confronted with the fact that the new experience is beyond the ‘edge’ of our present self-concept. The ‘aha!’ moment is great, because it can only occur spontaneously. It comes when we discover how the content of this alien new behaviour relates to our normal life and sense of self- how what previously seemed like a problem or a meaningless ‘trip’ contains stuff useful for the here and now, for our being in the world.

PW’s  way of working with reality is supported by ideas in Buddhism, quantum physics and Jungian psychology about life guiding us towards growth or greater awareness.

---

[1] The sense that Process Workers use the word ‘dreaming’ is related to, but quite different from, the way that it is used in relation to Indigenous Australian spirituality. It can be argued that the word has been appropriated and I apologise if this causes any offence. I also feel it is the best word to use in this context. It is also my experience that ‘dreaming’ and ‘dreamtime’ are used much more frequently by non-Indigenous people than the aboriginal Australians I know to describe their own beliefs