A Conversation with Jacquelyn Small ------- by Guy Spiro, of Chicago's Monthly Aspectarian Late Spring, 2000 posted on site: 8/4/2000

The Monthly Aspectarian: Jacquie, it's been a few years since we talked last. What's new?

Jacquelyn Small:

I've written eight books now, and they're all about how the human psyche transforms and changes us into a greater and greater self. We keep our work in the workshops around the country rather low key because it is very intensive and it requires a commitment for people to want to do it.

Since we talked, I wrote a book called Rising to the Call which gives people an understanding of how to find their life purpose and move into a process of spiritual psychology that gives them a better understanding of the whole self - which is both an ego and a soul. And I wrote a book called Becoming a Practical Mystic, which outlines the different ways that the new kind of mystic is showing up in the world now as a new archetype that's coming up in our unconscious mind. As you know, mystics of old were considered to be seers of wisdom but not necessarily doers of wisdom. The new mystics are sort of a combination of spiritual teachers and technicians. They know how to build new forms, new institutions, how to create and be architects for our new world.

TMA: How do you see that manifesting?

JS:

I think it's manifesting by people getting inspired and learning to use their creative imaginations… and through their dream life. They can go into a non-ordinary state of consciousness where they receive messages from their soul or their deeper self. People are getting inspired about the new ways that we need to shape our world. I'm meeting people like that weekly, who are really turned on to some new way they want to design a program or some aspect of mental health work.

TMA: We see more and more people who are inner directed, listening to the voice within and actually acting on it.

JS:

Yes, and acting on it is what makes them a practical mystic. I have a new book coming out with Tarcher-Putnum that's called Psyche's Quest, and it teaches about the path of spiritual illumination through personal love.

TMA: Talk a little about what you mean by breathwork.

JS:

What Integrative Breathwork™ is, is a way to open the human psyche according to what the human consciousness researchers have found to be our human psyche, which is layers and bands of consciousness that go from the personal all the way to the cosmic. As you know, cross-culturally, there has always been some way that every culture has had to go into a non-ordinary state of consciousness.

It's associated with the belief that we're powerful spiritual beings, that these are forces that enable us to access the mystical, or what people would think of as the magico-religious and therapeutic ways of knowing ourselves. In other words, as you know, when you have an other-worldly experience inside your own psyche, you have important revelations about the spiritual dimensions of yourself that give an actual contact with what we think of as supernatural. I've realized that none of this is really supernatural. That all these are different levels of consciousness that we can experience when we let go of the ego. Breathwork is a powerful healer in that it opens the psyche and it removes us from our ordinary way of being, which is anchored by how we breathe, how we see and how we hear. When you alter those three factors, the ego recedes and allows us to open to cellular memory, things that have been repressed in us, and carries us gently into a state of wholeness.

What people don't realize is that we haven't just repressed our old family of origin stuff and all of our neuroses and our problems, we have also repressed our highest goodness. We have repressed the remembrance that we're divine, that we have the power to be co-creators in the world. Right now, what I see happening in the world more than anything else, Guy, is that people are looking for meaning and purpose. They ask me questions like "What is my life work?" "What am I really here to do and be?" "Why was I born?" "Does life have any meaning?" "I can't work at this job anymore because it just makes no sense to me." Those are the kind of things that are coming up for people.

TMA: It's the nature of age that we're going into… that people are taking self responsibility for their inner lives.

JS:

I agree. It's like everything is just dramatically changing right now. A lot of people are feeling, too, that they're sort of hanging in the angle between their old way of being and their new way.

TMA: We're in a time of transition where the old ways don't really work anymore, and the new ways don't seem to have quite taken form yet.

JS:

That's exactly right. It's like we're rebirthing. We're coming through a spiritual womb now. It's not our physical birth, it's a rebirth into a new dimension of consciousness that some people are calling the fifth dimension.

TMA: You're finding through your breathwork that people are not only able to remember past traumas and such but also are tapping into the higher realms within themselves?

JS:

Absolutely. They can experience personal contact and a relationship with the supernatural realities that give us the ability to participate in what Carl Jung called "the divine world drama." You know, in an altered state of consciousness, a lot of times you get into the observer self and you're able to see the bigger picture of what your life is really about. It's just awesome to hear people report what they get. I am constantly amazed. That's why I never get tired of this work. In an Integrative Breathwork™ experience, which is done to music – two hours of the most beautiful music you've ever heard – the music itself sets up a vibratory field so that when people access a certain memory, it's because their consciousness is resonating to that particular frequency in the music at the moment. When those two match, there's either a catharsis, which means that a person releases something old that they don't need anymore, something that's holding them back, some belief system they may have or some old wound that needs to be healed . . . or it gives them a revelation, something from a very high consciousness place where they can see more powerfully how they are identified with the archetypal dimension with gods and goddesses, with sources of power that we think of as being non-ordinary. And yet, all of this is part of our human experience.

TMA: I think an old stereotypical thought that people have is that anything they might experience in a mystical sense wouldn't have a practical application. But we're finding out that that stereotype doesn't apply.

JS:

The aboriginal cultures have never lost sight of this. They've always known that everything we do here in this world is sacred. They have such a sacred connection with the earth and with the naturalness of God. Somehow or other, we all just got so intellectual that we got off track. I see a great need in human beings today to get back in touch with the spiritual and what you might think of as the psychospiritual integrative ways that we can know ourselves.

Cross-culturally, there have always been ways to go into non-ordinary states of consciousness in order to access spirit. Breathwork is one of those methods that do that very safely. The breathwork is done in pairs so that you have a partner who is holding your space very sacred for you while you go inward. At noontime we switch partners and the person who did the breathwork in the morning becomes the sitter for his or her partner. You've got that close connection with one other individual and then you've got the processing that happens in the larger group. Everybody has a way of speaking, then, about what came out of their unconscious mind.

What we find is that even though we're all individuals and we have different experiences when we go internal like that, we also find we're really all connected as one humanity. We've all got one great big unconscious mind that we're a part of. So nothing we ever do is just personal. If I access some part of myself that helps me heal something and I can share that with you, you'll find that it also helps you heal some part of yourself. It's a very moving experience, these weekend workshops. People get really close and really feel at home with a lot of the yearnings that they have about having a deeper and a richer life.

I want to say that when you go inward like that, what you access is your soul consciousness, and the soul, thank God, never forgets its original intention. We have all come here for a meaning and a purpose to express. Every one of us has a sacred lifework that we're supposed to be putting out here in the world. Once people turn on to that reason that they individually have come here to express, they begin to get a sense that life has a sacred meaning and purpose to it. And that in itself is a healer. When people get that attitude about themselves, they're able to go through life's processes, some of which are pretty hard, like the death of loved ones, or losing a job or losing our money source, or having terror… we go through times like that much more easily when we have this bigger picture about who we are.

TMA: Do you have a statement of essence to close on?

JS:

I think that it is really time for all of us to wake up to the possibility that we are co-creators and that we can all participate in creating a world that we would be much, much happier to live in, that would be closer to our spiritual ideals. That's what my hope is for people today – that we'll start waking up to this deeper aspect of who we all are.

TMA: We find that we're co-creators whether we know it or not. This leads us to the conclusion that we might as well be conscious of it.

JS:

Yes, because we're always creating, or we're mis-creating. There's no way around it. As you say, it's time for us to take responsibility for all the powers that we do have as human souls.

© 2000-2002 Eupsychia Institute, Inc.