About Transpersonal Development
TRANSPERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
Transpersonal means “beyond the personality.” It refers to the innate deeper qualities of peace, wisdom and purpose in each person without exception. The goal of our books is to guide you to discover and experience your own innate transpersonal nature. Peace, wisdom and purpose are more than nice ideas – waking them up literally changes the quality of your life every day. And because they are already present in you, you have the potential to feel them no matter what life is bringing you. We say this based on 45 years of direct clinical experience working with hundreds of patients and clients.
Why the Transpersonal Matters
We started our professional private practices in New York City in 1978. Before that, we had worked in nursing and rehabilitation counseling in surgery, oncology, cardiology, addictions recovery and adolescent and adult psychiatry. Our office was right up the avenue from the World Trade Center before the attack and murders on September 11th, 2001.
In our practices, we specialized in working with people in recovery from drugs and alcohol - and then the first HIV-AIDS crisis hit in the 1980s. Our caseloads filled with people desperately seeking peace in the face of a then-incurable disease. Because we had trained in psychosynthesis, the transpersonal psychology of Dr. Roberto Assagioli of Florence, Italy, we became known for bringing meditation, imagery and psychospiritual discoveries to the HIV-AIDS patient population and the recovery community.
Our work led us to develop the Vulnerability Model in the 1980s. Our first book, Healing Addictions: The Vulnerability Model of Recovery, focused on applying the model to people overcoming their addictions. We have since taught it internationally.
Our second book, Dante’s Path, was published by Penguin Putnam and featured in many national magazines (e.g., Oprah’s O). We were drawing on the profound wisdom of Dante, the Medieval Florentine author of the world masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, which describes the spiritual journey from despair to enlightenment. (There was nothing fanciful about Dante’s insights – he was living in forced exile with a death sentence on his head.) Because New York was still traumatized by the September 11th attack, the publishers saw Dante’s Path as a profound source of guidance. In all modesty, we say that the book attracted letters from around the world. This included individuals in hospitals and prisons, an American soldier fighting in Iraq and from priests, ministers, rabbis and imams from a wide range of spiritual traditions.
Our third book, The End of Fear, spoke of vulnerability in a personal statement that readers could fully identify with. We feel that accepting our shared universal vulnerability is the only way toward peace both in our own mind and in the world.
Our fourth book, The Florentine Promise, utilized Dante’s own words and spiritual journey as a realistic path for each of us. We were motivated to write this because of our studies in Florence of psychosynthesis, the work of the 20th Century Florentine psychiatrist, Dr. Roberto Assagioli, who was himself inspired by Dante.
Dr. Assagioli’s vision also inspired our fifth book, Transpersonal Development: Cultivating the Human Resources of Peace, Wisdom, Purpose and Oneness. We were honored to have the Veterans Administration give us a federal grant to write this book and to use it as a training manual for the variety of health professionals working with the veterans experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder. One quick vignette: after the first 3-hour training session, a psychiatrist walked up to us and said he didn’t “buy” all this meditation and visualization “stuff.” In the second training session, he had a profound breakthrough experience about his own past and shook and held our hands.
This kind of experience can happen when you learn how to open up to the deeper resources in your nature.