Duality To Unity: A Heuristic Exploration Of The Experience Of Being The Other

Working with one's own unconscious experience of being an outsider—through dreams, creative exercises, self-interviews, visualizations, bodywork, drawing, and sand tray therapy—can lead to greater spiritual wholeness and improved relationships with self and others. A six-month heuristic self-study using Moustakas' stages and an alchemical interpretive lens demonstrated this path, grounded in the Afro-centric spiritual belief that relationship to the other is a route to wholeness.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Centred in the afro-centric spiritual belief that relationship to the other is a path to wholeness my research asserts that we all have an experience of being other. Combining heuristic research methods with creative techniques common to Transpersonal psychotherapy, my belief is that by working with one’s unconscious experience as the outsider metaphorically and symbolically it is possible to access spiritual wholeness. Following Moustakas’ heuristic stages, this researcher therefore undertook a six-month study into his own experience as other. As well as the recording of dreams and creative exercises designed to access the deeper symbolic experience as other, this researcher also undertook 4 ‘self-interviews’ designed to challenge his own resistance to entering the shadow. During the interviews visualisations, bodywork and drawing were used to understand the internalised experience as other, whilst sand tray work, common to play therapy, utilised symbolism and metaphor to express the unconscious experience as other via projection. By observing the products of the interviews and the creative exercises through the lens of an alchemical process, it was found that working heuristically with one’s experience as other is a route towards better relationship with self and others. KEYWORDS Transpersonal, difference, diversity, creativity, individuation