It has been
a truly humbling experience putting out this issue of Primal
Renaissance. The Primal Movement is now twenty-five years old . . . and it
shows. I hate to use the cliché, but, “you’ve come a long way,
baby.” No longer are the results of the primal process a matter of
conjecture. Most of the writers in this issue have been doing their process
for two decades or more. The “personal access” that Witty and Khamsi
speak of in their article—saying
that a new generation of researchers and theorists are coming forth with their
ideas grounded in their process—is patently evident in this issue.
So I feel
humbled and in awe of the wisdom and power that comes through in these pieces.
The authors in this issue come from widely different backgrounds, did their
therapy at different places, for the most part; and yet you will see how
congruent are their conclusions, especially as concerns “the farther reaches
of the primal process” (to borrow from Maslow).
What we now
know is that this journal is aptly named—primal renaissance—for we
see that there is much, much more to be gained from the primal process than
Janov or the other early primal pioneers ever fathomed. Not just for
sickies anymore. John Lennon may have been “crippled inside,” but
the vastness of his creativity, aided by the primal process he went through,
is an indication of the far greater potential inherent in Primal of which I
speak.
The writers
also let us know that spirituality and the transpersonal are parts of that
grander primal vista. Findeisen
talks about regaining our highest, yet earliest, self and equates that with
God and spirituality. Belden
Johnson stuns us with his “shaman’s song”—in a few pages
condensing the most powerful, positive, and beautiful vision of It All that I
think I have ever read. Do not be surprised if it brings you to tears,
as it did me, along with many other of the things I read in here. These
were tears of joy; tears of finally coming home; for myself, but more for the
movement with which I have identified. We are coming into our own. The
dark night of the soul is over. It is a downhill slide from here.
All we have to do is continue to follow the truth we have found; using the
resources we have unearthed in abundance; and ever following the vision,
positive self, and soul purposes with which we have at long last reunited.
There is
still work to be done, of course; but these pages also stress how much of that
begins to be centered in the outside world. As
I point out, we work on changing our environment to be more conducive to
eliciting our joyful self. But we also extend ourselves to manifest our
vision in the world; we commit ourselves to the destiny of us all, to making a
better world. For the process leads us inevitably to empathy and
compassion with others, as Witty and
Khamsi point out. We also get ever more rooted in a feeling of unity
with all of life; as Findeisen
and Johnson put it, We are all One;
we’re all in this together.
So en-joy.
Rohnert Park, California
Michael Adzema
20
February 1995
