Regina Hess
Track: Inner Ecology, Collective Psyche and Social Transformation
Coming Home - The Intimacy of Consciousness Exploration
In this talk the question “What is coming home?” will be addressed. In our modern, multifaceted and complex world, it is easy to feel a sense of estrangement and alienation from anything we might call a home within. But where is there such an inner home? What have we lost, and what are we searching to find? Where do we actually arrive, when we “arrive”? By contrast, a sense of “arriving home” and a concomitant sense of belonging are generally associated with a feeling of ease. These questions can appear in many different forms, but whatever shape they may take: the search for a homecoming is more than a naïve desire.
When exemplars of stories about home from the world cultures were reviewed and intertwined with insights and understandings gained from guiding individual quests and listening to collective stories, a core theme emerged: Coming home as an experience of diving into the innermost intimacy deep within the multiple layers of exploring consciousness - or, to put it in a more spiritual context, as a quest for God, the Divine Feminine, the Cosmos and a tapping into the Sacred. When we consider that since the dawn of languages we have been asking ourselves about this particular place its importance to all of us becomes apparent.
Drawing on the concept of interconnectedness, it is intended to show how the intimacy of in-depth consciousness exploration mirrors the inner and outer ecologies, individually and collectively, in the quest for the Sacred. Arriving home can then be seen as a place of embodied understanding where being and knowing merge with each other, and become co-creatively one.
Concluding remarks will refer to a homecoming that takes place right here in the midst of life, and how it links our everyday existence with the Sacred, making simple things the true teachers of our heart. It is a call for a coming home on many different levels, leading to a sense of being present in the moment and taking radical responsibility for transformation and social change—in support of the evolutionary process towards the wholeness of the earth in harmony with humanity.
Regina U. Hess, PhD, Germany, is a clinical psychologist, transpersonal psychotherapist, researcher, writer and speaker. She is the founder of the Ase World Forum for the investigation of ancient transcultural healing modalities and their integration into modern intervention and research. She specializes in shamanic traditions, spiritual paths, the use of altered states of consciousness for healing, and transcultural research. These interests are reflected in her international publications, which include co-editing and contributing to the forthcoming books Coming Home: The intimacy of consciousness exploration and transpersonal psychotherapy; and Metamorphosis through conscious living: A transpersonal psychology perspective.
Regina is a core member of the International Institute for Consciousness Exploration and Psychotherapy, Freiburg, Germany, and is faculty at Ubiquity University and other international transpersonal institutes. She is a member of the editorial team at the Integral Transpersonal Journal and the Forum Qualitative Social Research. Regina is on the Board of Directors of the European Transpersonal Association (EUROTAS) and the International Transpersonal Association (ITA) and is a member of the ITA Council. She is co-founder of the Transpersonal Research Network (TRN) and the EUROTAS Division of Transpersonal Research (EDTR). She co-organizes and co-facilitates the annual Transpersonal Research Colloquium (TRC). Regina is a member of the Swiss Medical Society for Psycholytic Therapy (SÄPT).
E-Mail: [email protected], webpage: www.drreginahess.com