Trauma + Transcendence - Polly Young-Eisendrath – The Gates of Mercy: Portals of Transcendence

This presentation draws principally on two models of substrate consciousness: Jung’s collective unconscious and the Buddhist (Yogacara) alaya-vijnana or store-house consciousness. Looked at from the perspectives of everyday life and psychotherapy, these models of mind are mapping the way to an awareness that is wiser and more transcendent than mundane consciousness. When we collide with loss, trauma, failure, pain, hurt, and some aspects of dreaming and meditating, our sense of a continuous self is disrupted. These disruptions are potential openings to a transcendent reality. I will present and compare these two models of mind and talk about how and why the human mental construct of self creates an illusion of control and how dropping that control is the only true path to grace and healing.