About

About Becoming Authentic and its Author, SillyMickel Adzema

About This Site. The Next Frontier in Evolution

While this site, which includes several books and numerous posts, deals wholistically with personal growth, it is unique in that it includes a perspective from very deep psychotherapy. I have taught, trained, and facilitated in the fields of primal therapy, holotropic breathwork, rebirthing, and prenatal and perinatal psychology. I was, indeed, the first person in the United States to teach Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology at the university level, at Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, California, in the early Nineties. My research and experience have convinced me that the perspective that this kind of deep understanding brings to personal growth and spirituality are nothing short of revolutionary.

Let me be clear. My forty-five years of research in this field has convinced me that the time before birth is the unknown puzzle piece in the old paradigm and the key to the new one. It brings it all together in a new zeitgeist, a new comprehension and vision, as sweeping as the one that changed with the discovery of the Earth’s true shape. It is the next frontier in evolution … and the only one separating us from liberation … and from saving the planet and stopping war and greed.

Yes, I mean it.

This time at birth, in the womb, and as cells … this prenatal period … is similar to quantum physics in the way it is viewed. Physics goes on, in its ordinary pursuits, as if the discoveries of quantum physics never happened … piling up observations framed within an obsolete understanding … going on with research “as if” so-and-so were true … though they are not.

Whereas medicine, biology, and all the social sciences goes on, in its ordinary pursuits, as if there is no consciousness at or before birth and no memory of that time … though this is patently untrue and that notion has been debunked thoroughly over the course of the last fifty years. So these sciences pile up observations framed within an obsolete understanding … spinning theory upon theory leaving out the most important formative experiences/memories of our lives … going on with research “as if” consciousness erupted miraculously only at the time of birth … which is not only not true….

It is stupid. [Footnote 1]

About Me. My Personal Involvement with this Research into Our Actual, Positive “Human Nature” and What We Can Do to Become It

I am the author of this site, Becoming Authentic, and my name is Mickel Adzema, I also go by the names sillymickel and Michael Adzema. I am a writer, independent scholar, primal therapist, breathwork facilitator, and political activist. My expertise is in the fields of pre- and perinatal psychology; primal psychology; humanistic psychology; cross-cultural religious practices and rituals; great world religions and theologies; spirituality; altered states of consciousness research; Asian, especially Indian religious philosophy and culture; politics; Sixties politics, culture, movements, and people. I am a journeyman scholar in these fields: economics, anthropology, psychological anthropology, environmental studies.

For over forty years, beginning in 1972 when I was a senior undergraduate in college, I have been involved both personally and professionally in a comprehensive investigation into the phenomenon of re-experience. Also called reliving, this phenomenon is reported to consist of a full somato-cognitive remembering of previous events in a person’s life. Reliving involves experiential but also observable and measurable components, such as brain wave changes, characteristic physiological and neurological changes, and typical observable body movements.

This phenomenon can occur, to varying degrees, in many consciousness-altering modalities—including hypnosis, LSD psychotherapy, primal therapy, rebirthing, and holotropic breathwork; to a considerable degree in re-evaluation co-counseling and treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder; and, occasionally and spontaneously, even in mainstream forms of psychotherapy, counseling, and “growth seminars.”

Re-experience is a more vivid and more completely somatic catharsis than what has been described in psychotherapy in terms of abreaction. It is in such contrast to normal abreaction that when these seemingly bizarre yet healing events have spontaneously erupted in traditional or mainstream Western contexts they have usually been mistakenly labeled psychotic, been intervened upon, and then aborted—via drugs and other highly coercive measures—by the attending therapeutic authorities.

However, with an increasing appreciation for their therapeutic value, these events are gradually becoming understood and accepted in therapeutic contexts and thus allowed to complete themselves and to instruct the participants and observers in their meanings. Therefore, they appear to represent something new in our culture in terms of both a way of approaching knowledge and in terms of the kinds of information that are discovered (Grof 1976, 1985; Hannig 1982; Janov 1971; Lake 1966/1986; Noble, 1993; Stettbacher, 1992).

My Relationship to the Roots and Process of Authenticity … The Phenomenon of Re-Experience

My interest in the phenomenon of reliving began forty-four years ago at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. As an undergraduate there I was most inspired by a course in religious studies titled “Religious and Psychological Approaches To Self-Understanding.” I was so inspired by the course that I constructed my major around its topic and initially even used the same title for my program’s name. This major in “self-understanding” would lead me, in a few years, to a profound interest in and exploration of primal therapy, as presented by Arthur Janov (1970) in his much-publicized book, The Primal Scream: Primal Therapy: The Cure for Neurosis.

By 1972, I had completed all but the one final semester for a B.A. That semester was to include the cumulative project—required of such a Special Studies (individually structured) major. However, since my project would focus on primal therapy and one of primal therapy’s basic premises is that knowledge cannot really be known except through experience, I could not in good conscience turn in a project describing primal therapy without first experiencing it. Consequently I withdrew from college, for what was supposed to be only a semester, with the intention of “going through” primal therapy and then returning to school to write my cumulative project on it. In those days, the entire process of primal therapy was reputed to take only three to six months.

But a lot was unknown about that modality in those early days. As it turned out, I would not return to school to complete that final project until 1978—at which point I had five years’ experience of primal therapy behind me and was living in Denver, Colorado.

In addition to these experiences, I have amassed a broad array of other experience and training over the years that have contributed to my understanding of re-experience and of this field in general. Besides my two decades and more of primal therapy … both formally and in “the buddy system” … I have received training as a primal therapist. I am also a trained rebirther, having explored that modality since 1986. I have been experientially exploring the modality of holotropic breathwork since 1987 and did training with Stanislav and Christina Grof in that technique.

Finally, I have been facilitating people in their journeys into deep inner primal and holotropic states since 1975. I’ve given individual sessions in all three modalities of primal therapy, rebirthing, and holotropic breathwork. And with my wife, Mary Lynn Adzema, I conducted three day workshops in something we called primal breathwork. I’ve conducted two-day group workshops in this modality at conferences, which were attended by as many as sixty experiencers at a time.

Thus, I have experience in my own process in these modalities; but in addition I have facilitated for others on many occasions, and at times, it was my main profession—though most of my life I have spent in writing, teaching, and research.

Pre- and Perinatal Re-Experience

Re-experience of birth and of the events immediately prior to and after birth are termed perinatal—from the Greek, literally “surrounding birth.” It has been widely described at this point by a number of authors but is most closely associated with the work of Stanislav Grof, Arthur Janov, and Frank Lake.

However, one significant and as yet little explored or understood phenomenon, arising also from the modalities mentioned, is that of prenatal re-experience. In this case, the experiencer reports … and observationally appears to be … experiencing events that happened en utero, sometimes going back as far as sperm, egg, and zygote states (Buchheimer 1987; Farrant 1987; Grof 1976, 1985; Hannig 1982; Janov 1983; Lake 1981, 1982; Larimore 1990a, 1990b; Larimore & Farrant, 1995).

These reports of remembering experiences that occurred before birth are at such variance with Western professional and popular paradigms that they are met with near-universal incredulity and, too often, premature dismissal. Yet the evidence from the mounting numbers of experiential reports and empirical studies attests that something which is at least unique and interesting is going on here. Indeed this new perspective, this new information seems to call for an overthrow, or at least a reversal, of many of the aspects of the dominant paradigms in parenting, child development, psychotherapy, and spiritual growth. .

Nevertheless, much of this prenatal information is thus far unformulated, untheorized, and unintegrated into a coherent structure for making sense of these experiences. In this blog and its accompanying books, I am going a long way long way toward doing just that—making sense of prenatal experiences and exploring the implications and prospects of the knowledge gleaned from this fascinating new area of research and which arises from the vision that an exposure to this material induces.

My work here represents an attempt to bring this new information concerning our origins and our earliest experiences into such a coherent structure. For an initial overview of the field, which then jumps off into the first book, Falls from Grace, go to Everything You “Know” About Life You Learned as a Fetus: Foundations of Myth and Mind and my Personal Involvement with This Research into Our Actual “Human Nature”.

To actually begin reading the first book, Falls from Grace, go to the chapter preceding that, the first chapter, titled The Radical Rational View of Us and It: Falls from Grace, Introduction — “Normal” Truth Is Convenient Truth … and Is Anything But True.

About Me Personally

Things I take pride in: all of my writings; any way I’ve helped clients in therapy; any way I’ve helped students when I taught at the university; my websites and blogs, the fact that I was a hippie and a young radical and antiwar activist in the Sixties; the fact that I lived during the incredible Sixties and got to experience and get bitten by the idealism and global visionary bug, which I hold fast, to the this day; and the fact that I was the perfect age to understand and experience it – in my late teens and early twenties; the fact that I had the sense and courage to do thorough primal therapy in Denver during the years 1975-1980; my wife, Mary Lynn, and my family.

My main mission in life: Searching for truth in world of Lies, Liars; wanting to help as we kill the planet, all of us, all our children, grandchildren, and all the planetmates, all the beings, of which God made millions of species, who have lived and had a home on this planet until only lately, the planet-killing half-borns, the species, Homo Sapiens, evolved, to the extreme detriment of the millions of other planetmates.

Damn good example of why you should get references, ALWAYS, before allowing anyone to move in.

Footnote

1. Here is an excellent … astounding … video showing our prebirth journey, from ejaculation to fetus.

Continue with the beginning of Chapter One, Falls from Grace, The Radical Rational View of Us and It: Falls from Grace, Introduction — “Normal” Truth Is Convenient Truth … and Is Anything But True

Invite you to join me on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/sillymickel

friend me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sillymickel

Just for Fun

A Big “Thank You” to George W. Bush, with Admiration for the Great Bush-Paulson-“Filthy Rich” Caper by SillyMickel Adzema

A Video. A satirical piece. A supposed admirer-fan-chum of George W. Bush encourages thank-yous for Bush’s “accomplishments, ” which, described glowingly by the fan, sound quite the opposite to the listener. The fan has the most admiration for the great caper Bush “pulled off” at the end. Combining the actual facts of recent news with a simple, unspun speculation of them, coming from the mouth of a fawning admirer who, for that reason, is allowed to elaborate on the shady dealings.

So Bush, it is intimated, basks in the glory of having his ideas for illegal dealings praised as clever and awesome, or even cute.

This is political satire that will have you laughing from the total incongruity and irony of the monologue, but it will also leave you more informed and thinking. This is provocative, funny stuff.

Auto Salesman Speaks His Mind on SillyMickel

An Audio. Click the video below for some highly self-deprecating humor by SillyMickel’s “evil twin,” Auto Salesman, about SillyMickel, which makes a point.

More Seriously … And So You Don’t Think My Voice Is Actually Like the Ones Above

Love’s Wake-Up Call and Why We Must Give Our All: Apocalypse Emergency – FULL

Continue with the beginning of Chapter One, Falls from Grace, The Radical Rational View of Us and It: Falls from Grace, Introduction — “Normal” Truth Is Convenient Truth … and Is Anything But True

Invite you to join me on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/sillymickel

friend me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sillymickel

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