Type-appropriate personality development and spiritual unfolding with the life matrix
Author: Martin Bertsch
Issue No: TV 96
This article describes an integral development of personality and consciousness. Those who “merely” meditate cannot master all challenges on their path of development. A multidimensional approach is needed that ultimately also bridges the gap between Eastern spiritual and Western psychological approaches. Martin Bertsch succeeds in building this bridge with the independent method of Integral Deep Coaching ITC. The basis of this approach is a transparent holistic type model that enables a targeted type-appropriate development.
»Nicht dadurch ist das Grundrätsel des Lebens zu lösen, dass wir abstrakte Vorstellungen und Begriffe hinpfahlen. Das allgemeine Menschenrätsel kann man in Bildern lösen.«
Rudolf Steiner
Challenges of becoming aware
For purely drive-driven people, subjectively neither personality development nor consciousness development is an issue. In the development of consciousness, however, people sooner or later inevitably come to the point, usually through painful experiences, where they become aware of themselves as part of what is happening. The inner observer (witness or centaur consciousness) begins to recognise himself as the original creative force of his world. Thus, the human being leaves the hitherto unconsciously prevailing victim role in the eternally turning hamster wheel of life.
This increasing certainty and realisation of being the creator of one’s life ignites a fire of irrepressible life-shaping power in us. However, it also raises many questions about who we really are and where our path of unfolding and becoming conscious begins and leads. The dilemma of life becomes clear:
We are all born without an instruction manual
and the meaning of life and the true paths of development are usually only revealed through countless painful experiences, not infrequently caused by the same mistakes we make over and over again.
My personal path of human unfoldment began with a frightening realisation that ultimately led me to a profound truth. It opened up to me in the direct confrontation with myself and my counselling work with clients.
A frightening discovery and a way out
“If what I call myself consists essentially of imprints from my environment and unconscious patterns: Who am I in truth?” One hundred years of psychological research make us aware of how formative early childhood experiences are, how deeply impressions may be imprinted in the unconsolidated self of the human being, how strongly especially painful losses and unmet needs carve themselves into our soul. Systemic research reveals influences of our ancestors beyond the personal biographical life as transgenerational traumas or influences of our collective pain experience. Prenatal psychology, in turn, recognizes how maternal and family pain patterns have a formative effect prenatally on the becoming of our physical-mental foundation. All of these factors make it clear how strongly we are pre-formed and bound in patterns. Not to mention that against the background of reincarnation we also carry karmic fetters within us.
The cognitive knowledge of these profound interrelationships is one thing. Another is to see oneself in this light. Until then, I believed I knew who I was. Now, all at once, this edifice of my self drastically crumbled to dust. To the urgent question of who I myself am, an astonishingly simple answer beyond esoteric teachings, which initially captivated me, came to me at that time.
At that time I was intensively occupied with Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy, then with the Anglo-Theosophy of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Alice Bailey. I increasingly developed an uneasiness towards all these esoteric teachings. They seemed to me remote, abstract and inaccessible. What fascinated me, however, was the cosmic structure of order of the seven rays, a teaching that ultimately reaches much further back into the misty prehistory of mankind.
This colorful ray of hope pierced as a rainbow through my foggy mind of norm-boundedness. Maybe we are not just one thing, I thought, maybe we are many things, or even everything? The promising multicolored rainbow as a symbol of the multiplicity in the unity and unity in the multiplicity did not let me go any more.
About the author:
Martin Bertsch is a social worker FH, coach BSO and ICF, body therapist IKP, adult educator and training director in the coaching field. He works independently at the Visions Schmiede in Bern, Switzerland. He is particularly interested in personal development and spiritual unfolding.
This article was originally published on the German website: Die Ogdoadische Tradition
