What are the benefits of IDL? There are many, and they are quite varied. It’s fun, it’s different, it’s free, it’s practical, it’s interesting. It helps you solve problems, be creative, develop skills in listening and empathy, help others, and join a community.
All of this is done by accessing your emerging potentials. What is an emerging potential? Let’s go back and look at how humans develop and how they think. When we are young, we have no way of interpreting what we see or hear. We believe everything is the truth because we have no way to judge if it is,or it isn’t. These early beliefs become what we call our scripting, the way we understand how life works. We live out lives based on the beliefs we developed when we were children, and all of our experiences as adults are viewed through the filter of these beliefs, our scripting. If we want to change our lives, and our beliefs, first we have to realize we are seeing events in our lives not as they are, but as we think they are, based on our earlier beliefs about how life works. The early beliefs are stored in our subconscious mind. The subconscious mind does as it is told. It is the part that believes everything. Not only does it believe everything, it works to make sure that what it believes is true. It is in control of your bodily responses, and can organize all kinds of situations in your life in order to prove to you that the beliefs you hold are right. It reflects the scripting that we have believed and makes it appear true in the world. That’s a lot of power.
How can we get out of the grip of this scripting, of these beliefs we didn’t even recognize that we had? That is where emerging potentials come in. The characters in dreams, or the characters you assign to situations in your life, have a perspective that does not come through the normal beliefs, or scripting, that we usually use to view the world. When we talk to these characters, they are free to give us a totally new and unique view of our own life. The value here is that they can help us identify the beliefs, or scripts, that we are using to live our lives. Once we can see the beliefs we hold, then we can change them if we want to do that.
By using IDL to see the reasons we have created situations in our lives, we can then change our circumstances through healing, balancing and transforming.
IDL can help us heal by helping us outgrow our scripting, or what we believe about our beliefs, which we learned from our families, societies, and cultures. It can help us recognize and avoid toxic drama and self-defeating thoughts. It can also help us with nightmares, repetitive dreams, PTSD, phobias and anxiety.
IDL can help us balance our lives by letting us see how the scripted beliefs we live by affect us and when, so we can move beyond them. We learn to recognize within ourselves, when we are being affected by scripting without requiring someone else to point it out to us. It helps us increase confidence, assertiveness to stand up for ourselves, and setting up intensions and goals. Meditation and breathwork is part of the IDL curriculum and helps with the balance of our lives.
IDL can make a difference in your life by leading you to transformation. It is an effective therapeutic tool you can use for yourself. Learning to be a certified IDL coach will let you help make a difference in the lives of others as well.
Experiencing Oneness
Why do we want to experience oneness? The experience of oneness has been a desire of every spiritual group. Each has its own view of how to get to the experience. It is what humans strive for, to see beyond the individual self to become part of something larger and greater.
What does it mean to have an experience of oneness? It’s when we have a feeling of being connected to something larger than ourselves, a feeling that we belong, that we are part of a divine wholeness. This feeling can be experienced in different levels of our being. These levels are pre-personal, personal and transpersonal.
Pre-personal is when we have the feeling of a deep knowing within our bodies without requiring any thinking about the situation.
Personal is when we feel we are part of a larger whole, but we feel we are still our individual selves as well.
Transpersonal is a sense of being part of a vast oneness with no separation of you as an individual entity.
4 Levels of Oneness
You can experience feelings of oneness in 4 different ways:
Level 1 – Nature
The feeling of energy flow in all of nature, harmony with all life and the earth, your life force merging with everything, feeling of awe. It leaves you with a profound sense of oneness with the natural world, like you belong.
This feeling of oneness can be accessed through practices of eco-spirituality, shamanism and shamanic journeying, nature-based rituals, taking psychoactive substances, and psychic dreams that involve clairvoyance, precognition, and visitations.
IDL accesses this level of oneness with pranayama breathwork at the sensory level.
This level of oneness is experienced at the pre-personal level within the body.
Level 2 – Divinity and Devotion
Strong emotional connection to divinity in some form, with an overwhelming feeling of love and reverence for the divine, and a desire to surrender individual identity to merge with the divine. You have a profound sense of unity and love of the divine and see yourself as part of divine grace.
This feeling of oneness can be accessed through practices of bhakti yoga, prayer, and chanting.
IDL accesses this level of oneness during interviews when you experience a feeling of devotion to the subject of the interview.
This level of oneness is experienced at the pre-personal level within the body.
Level 3 – Empty Awareness
Pure emptiness beyond all forms and thoughts, infinite spaciousness, timelessness and peace. There is a profound sense of connectedness with the whole universe with no boundaries.
This feeling of oneness can be accessed through mindfulness meditation, Zen koan, Advaita Vedanta.
IDL accesses this level of oneness through the Naming Meditation.
This level of oneness is experienced at the pre-personal level within the body.
Level 4 – Non-duality, Transcendent Wholeness
Realization that the non-duality of oneness underlies everything, and nothing is separated from anything else. There is a profound sense of there only being one ultimate reality, with no separation of yourself from the rest of existence.
This feeling on oneness can be accessed through the practices of Advaita Vedanta, Dzogchen and mystical Christianity.
IDL accesses this level of oneness through using multiple interviews of dreams and life issues to reveal the non-dual nature of everyday experience.
This level of oneness is experienced at the transpersonal level of no separate sense of self.
Experiencing the Sacred
So, why do we want to experience the transpersonal level? If we can operate at the transpersonal level of oneness, we can see the world, and all of our day-to-day experiences as being sacred activities. From this perspective we no longer get caught in the drama of what is going on, we just see it without emotional involvement, so we can remain calm and centered. We can see any situation from multiple viewpoints and with a feeling of empathy for all of the parties involved. With this higher perspective we can be an island of emotional calm.
