Awakening Beyond Therapy
by Dr. Joseph Bono, PH.D, PC
What if I told you there was a way to make yourself and everyone you know therapy proof? What if I told you there was a way to be rid of those conflicts, confusions, and fixations that soak up your attention and never seem to be resolved once and for all? Would you be interested? And I’m not talking about strengthening your powers of repression or increasing your ability to think rationally, but about actually releasing from your consciousness those stubborn problems that drive people to psychotherapists. I’m talking about actually dissolving them, and freeing up your attention to design the reality you prefer.
I didn’t believe it either. But if you’re still interested, read on. You might be surprised at what a great American has created. And while the statements in this article do not officially represent the policies or positions of the company and the author herein referred, they do reflect the unique opinion and viewpoint of one with direct experience of the programs and trainings described.
Somehow Star’s Edge International® obtained my mailing address several years ago and sent an issue of their quarterly The Avatar Journal. In spite of the audacity of the Journal’s name, my curiosity was piqued and I felt I owed it to myself to at least take a look inside. What I saw, as filtered through my then pompous sense of self, was more audacity. Instead of just promising students “Avatar®” training, the organization made it their expressed goal to “contribute to the creation of an enlightened planetary civilization®.”
That first exposure to the work of Harry Palmer was an essay on integrity where he introduces his “Enlightened Justice Procedure,” a new, but simple, method of handling transgressions where everyone wins. Here he offers a simple four-step process designed to restore integrity and honesty without the element of punishment or condemnation, the aspect of our current system that discourages people from coming forth to take full responsibility for themselves. Palmer argues that people who are sincere in their wish to handle their transgressions don’t need to be punished to correct their errors.
In summarizing the gist of his article, Palmer sees unhappiness in many people as the result of having “transgressions kept secret,” otherwise known as TKS’s (pronounced “ticks”) and hidden agendas, those private matters, misdeeds and misintentions people hide from the world that harden their consciousness with inflexible viewpoints. This hardening of identity that comes from hiding, justifying and denying transgressions short circuits the ability to assume responsibility and blocks the path to integrity, which to the Avatar is the path to happiness.
As a longtime observer/participant in the “human potential movement”, my interest was further piqued and I decided to contact one of the many “Masters” listed in the directory
of the journal. The lady I contacted agreed to meet for coffee in Ann Arbor and it was
there that I met my first “Avatar.” What I remember from that conversation was how
utterly happy she was and how her smile beamed during our conversation. She explained
the training program called Avatar was a technology for managing “beliefs,” and how
through this course one could take charge of their life with complete authenticity. The cost of $2300 for the basic 9-day course struck me as rather pricey. From this lady I
purchased Palmer’s books Living Deliberately and ReSurfacing®. Wanting to keep my options open, but not quite ready to commit to the course, I promised to stay in touch and give careful consideration to doing the course at a later date.
Left with books only, I read Palmer’s story and did the “Personality Profile” at the beginning of ReSurfacing. After that it was back to business as usual and the books went onto a shelf to collect dust. Many months later, after receiving additional copies of their journal, I made another call to a different contact listed in their directory. Bill was virtually the only other person listed in the directory from the Detroit area. So I decided to have lunch with him. As he explained to me how our beliefs determine our experiences, he graphically illustrated his point by drawing a diagram on a bar napkin. He explained that through Avatar one acquires the tools to effectively manage one’s belief system in order to create whatever reality one desires. Having been both recipient and provider of cognitive behavioral therapy, and having studied the great Albert Ellis as far back as a quarter of a century earlier, I failed to see how this “belief management” technology was anything new or revolutionary. Yet not wishing to be rude to the man, I made a halfhearted promise to do the Avatar course. Although I later came up with excuses to back out of the course, I offered the compromise to at least do the “ReSurfacing” weekend workshop at his house.
In doing “ReSurfacing” a few weeks later I learned a couple of interesting techniques for manipulating awareness, but nothing to write home about.
During the intervening years between 2001 and late October 2005 when I finally took the Avatar course, life moved on as a blur of business as usual with predictable mundane breakdowns and problems in daily living. Bill would call occasionally to invite me to a workshop or course, or simply out of courtesy. Of course, I was always too busy. Then, in the summer of 2005, Bill called again, just to say hello and to give me the URL of his new website. He suggested I download the free mini course on “The Forgiveness Option,” now available.
Being in a time of personal transition with slightly more than a modicum of emotional baggage weighing me down, I did the Forgiveness Option as Bill suggested. And I couldn’t have been more surprised. What unfolded from this mini course was so much more than expected that all doubt in the power of the Avatar materials vanished for me. Like all Avatar materials, the “Forgiveness Option” doesn’t just provide information about this important distinction in living, but provides the direct experience. Harry Palmer makes clear from the beginning of his teaching that unlike traditional “word lessons,” the Avatar materials provide “world lessons” which result in realizations that become integrated experiences. For me the Forgiveness Option led to a profound catharsis, and a new and refreshing viewpoint. The subsequent “debrief” at Bill’s house, in which he led me through an exercise known as “releasing fixed attention,” caused such a huge shift in viewpoint that I “saw” for the first time how what had previously seemed like an injustice was in fact my own creation. Deeply moved by the experience, I decided to do the full Avatar Course.
After more delays in logistical handling, I finally did the Avatar Course in late October of 2005 at the Marriott Hotel in Lake Mary, Florida. There were perhaps 300 participants in the course conference center, perhaps half doing the course and the other half being “masters” on site to assist. After registration I was seated at a table next to a lady master from Germany, there to assist her student who was a German engineer deployed by his company to Detroit. On my right was a young schoolteacher from Holland. At our table we had one other master from Holland, a kind lady who looked after me throughout my course. It took a while for the international representation to register. During the 9 days I would eventually meet people from Australia, New Zeeland, Korea, The Philippines, China, Japan, Columbia, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Ecuador, Canada, Britain, France, Holland, Germany, Israel, Iran and Palestine.
The first two days consisted of Section I, The ReSurfacing Workshop, designed to stimulate and redirect attention and awareness in a new and fresh manner. In all, the workshop contains 30 exercises that begin with a personality profile and ends with your own Epitaph. In between those end points are a variety of exercises designed for self-discovery, including techniques for recognizing your operating, indoctrinated, and transparent beliefs. Participants are also given exercises designed to atone for past mistakes as well as to increase one’s sense of compassion for others. In and of itself, the ReSurfacing Workshop is an excellent introduction to self-awareness for the student new to self-study. What helps to sustain interest is the involvement of each participant in their own personal exploration of consciousness, and the lack of judgment or evaluation by staff. What you discover is what you discover, and there is no standard by which a person is rated. Participants are given instructions in how to do the exercises, supported in their progress by the many masters on site, and are otherwise left to draw their own conclusions about what they discovered for themselves. Participants are given ample time to progress at their own rate, and move on with the program when they accomplish the objective of each exercise. By the end of the ReSurfacing Workshop participants are given the opportunity to set a number of “right-for-you” life goals. Some sense of direction and empowerment is attained before the actual Avatar Course begins.
Section II of the Avatar Course, The Exercises, continues and deepens one’s familiarity and facility with control and management of attention. One is given extended periods of time walking at a leisurely pace, practicing an exercise that develops skill in directing consciousness outward in an effort to better experience objects from a distance. The goal is to become comfortable with feeling rather than just thinking about the things you’re experiencing.
The exercises in Section II culminate in a procedure designed to clarify the nature of creation. Participants are given exhaustive interactive experience with masters and each other in identifying fundamental aspects of creation. The goal of this procedure gives the student the direct experience of “source” where they find themselves as the sovereign creator of their experience. This exercise produces many more laughs than tears, but in either case, leads one to the core issues and beliefs that heretofore obscured and interfered with the ability to be responsible for their personal creations. Once shown a technique for how experiences are created, you can take deliberate control of and responsibility for these creations.
At this point it becomes clearer why Harry Palmer’s system/theory is called “creationism.” When Palmer says, “the miracle isn’t that you exist in the universe, but that the universe exists in you”, he implies that we are all creators of our experiences, whether we’re willing to be responsible for them or not.
Throughout the course the student is reminded both explicitly and implicitly that Avatar training is in the exploration and management of belief systems, with Palmers’ premise being that the only difference between us is in our beliefs. The creation exercises thus become a vehicle to that end, where experience is shown to be directly the result of underlying beliefs. It follows then that a system or technology for the discreation and creation of beliefs can result in whatever experience the individual prefers.
With practice and coaching the exercises in creating primaries enable the individual to develop a more sensitive and subtle awareness of the viewpoint from which they’re operating, gradually and ultimately resulting in a separation of the thinking mind from source beingness or ones higher self. This is the awakening into an enlightened state that makes possible the application of more advanced and powerful exercises designed for the “discreation” of beliefs that are unaligned with the reality one prefers.
Inasmuch as Palmer has a background in educational psychology, his Avatar materials begin as psychological in orientation. Once the separation occurs between one’s thinking mind and awareness of self as source however, the mystical flair of the Avatar appears. And the shift to a mystical/spiritual/metaphysical orientation provides the opening to an exploration of new and wider dimensions of reality. In this regard, the Avatar materials become harmonically related to mysticism and Eastern thought.
Palmer’s spiritual orientation was dramatically advanced by his extensive experience in a sensory deprivation tank in the mid 1980s. He discusses his experience at length and with his characteristic sense of humor in his famous book “Living Deliberately.”
A few words about the ego vs. higher self are in order to clarify the shift in the direction the Avatar course leads. In the world of Avatar, the “ego” is considered an immature stage in the evolution of human consciousness, and that it is possible to free oneself of ego based operations in the service of the higher self. This stands as a challenge to the thinking of some of our greatest personality theorists with their emphasis on the importance of the ego. Even Jung once wrote that the ego is our “strongest and healthiest power.” Psychiatrists and psychologists have created countless new views and methodologies that promote and strengthen one’s adaptive behavior, ego strength, and coping ability. Here psychology and psychiatry stand aligned with the contemporary emphasis on the “individual.” We have an entire theoretical field used to explain developmental psychopathology and effective methods of intervention called “ego psychology.”
In Avatar training the transcendence from an ego-based system allows for the shedding of the cloak of external trappings, freeing up the individual for mobile forays into consciousness. The discovery that awareness exists outside and independent of the egoic thinking mind is the ultimate liberation and release from suffering. Ironically, the separation of awareness from the ego leads the individual to experience unity consciousness, revealing the illusion of separateness the ego for so long has pulled over on us. Seen from outside the box, the ego if finally revealed as the illusion it is, was and always will be. As a collection of thoughts and ideas whose main purpose is survival, the ego is finally seen as the origin of most human suffering. Perhaps more importantly, when seen from the perspective of the higher self, the egos caricatures and machinations are viewed with non-judgmental interest and compassion that finally lays it to rest.
One is repeatedly impressed with how the Avatar materials are designed to build upon one another, with each procedure laying a stronger foundation for later structures. Completion of the Avatar course thus lays the foundation for more advanced work in subsequent courses offered by Star’s Edge.
The Avatar materials are naturally copyright protected and are shared in confidence with course participants. They agree to refrain from sharing details that could be misused, confused, or trivialized by someone uninitiated in their proper use. My descriptions here are therefore summaries and intend only to hint at what amounts to profound changes and realizations in Avatar students. In this regard, I can only briefly explain the experience gained in the courses offered by Star’s Edge. Not only is the material copyright protected and safeguarded for the reasons aforementioned, but also it comprises an esoteric practice that can only be appreciated by attendees. Should you wish to know more about these courses, information at the end of this article can direct you to their source.
In the Masters Course, again I found myself in a hotel conference room surrounded by an international presence. There were perhaps 400 participants at my Masters course; again with translations into several languages. Here one is led to a deeper exploration of ones belief systems and a clearer articulation of right for you goals. One gains an appreciation for the mechanics of the discreation tool first introduced in the Avatar course. The Masters Course also trains the student in how to be present for another human being that at once conveys a deep appreciation for them and also allows them the space to create on their own without the interference or unconscious influence of the other. Here the love of humanity is shown to be, in Harry Palmers words: “an expression of the willingness to create space in which something is allowed to change.” The “Masters Presence” is an outcome of this course, enabling the individual to bring higher consciousness to all of his or her relationships.
In the Wizards Course 2000 participants gathered at the Daytona convention center for 14 days of sophisticated procedures aimed toward the command of states of consciousness. The 2006 Wizards course hosted a contingent of 500-600 Asian Avatars alone, along with an equal number of Europeans. In Wizards one is given increasingly advanced and powerful tools for the management of beliefs and identities. In Wizards the exercises train students to identify and access different levels of consciousness that further enhance one sense of mastery over life. In this 2-week module one is afforded a thorough housecleaning by freeing up attention that accumulates and gets stuck inside as secrets and hidden agendas. Extensive efforts are made to assist participants in clearing out this psychic material where attention is absorbed by old creations that persist as unresolved problems. The collection of processes used for this housecleaning is known as the advanced integrity rundown, which is as powerful a formula for getting clear and straight as you’ll find. The end result is a cleaner and lighter sense of self with huge increases in free attention that can be directed toward deliberate living. Wizards also engage participants in a searching and exhaustive exploration of self and identity, enabling the discreation of old identity patterns that heretofore ran unconsciously. Here viable and effective processes are learned that enable participants to handle what has persisted as unknown problems that have resisted all prior efforts at control or removal.
In the Avatar Professional Course one is given extensive experience in creating a field of appreciation in the service of making authentic contact with another human being. One finds joy in making this kind of genuine contact without judgment or opinion influencing or filtering the experience. Avatar Professionals are trained in how to speak of Avatar from the heart to anyone interested, instead of explaining intellectually what it’s all about. In getting aligned with the mission of contributing to the creation of an enlightened planetary civilization, the Avatar Pro gets prepared to spread and deliver Avatar to others wishing to follow this path, and becomes part of a collective consciousness working toward saving the planet from the destructive forces that have reigned for so long on Earth.
Avatar is thus a program for personal evolvement that leads to empowerment and fulfillment of goals and wishes. Perhaps the single most important gain in doing Avatar is the ability to take full responsibility for all of your creations, including yourself. Avatar shifts one out of the engrained victim mentality of the ego, and enables one to create beliefs that lead to deliberate living. The result is an increased ability to fashion one’s life according to one’s preferences. Avatar is a path to bliss consciousness and fulfills the birthright to a life that is joyous, happy, and free.
In my vision of an enlightened planetary civilization, talking therapies will be seen as the early creations of pioneers early on the path of self realization. The talking therapies will be seen as word lesson relics that have as much use as, say, steam engines have today. Those relics will be honored and cherished for the usefulness they served in their time, and they will be seen as necessary stepping-stones in our collective march toward higher consciousness. In an enlightened civilization, it will be common knowledge and accepted truth that the only thing that separates us is our beliefs and that those beliefs can be easily created or discreated to serve our purposes. Everyone will have the tools used to manage consciousness and beliefs, and everyone will align with the goal of greater abundance and well being for all. Psychotherapy will be replaced by an educational system that trains all in the command of their consciousness and sovereign ability to create their reality of preference. And everyone will know the long history of human suffering was self inflicted and that, out of compassion, the notion of hurting each other and ourselves will be unthinkable and unbelievable.
Granted we’re a long way from the enlightened planetary civilization toward which we’re evolving. But it’s not too early to take notice of the work of Harry Palmer, a little known name in mainstream psychology. Through his courage, compassion, and dedication we can all breathe a collective sign of relief that a path has been made clear toward a future where we no longer need to destroy ourselves. None of the major forces in contemporary psychology can lay claim to the ambitious goal Palmer and Star’s Edge define. Nor have the major forces in psychology curbed the egoic mania that still rips parts of our planet in unspeakable strife and horror. Avatar training is sweeping the globe in increasing numbers that collectively aim to cause a paradigm shift in consciousness the likes of which we have yet to witness.
Take notice Psychology, Harry Palmer and Star’s Edge are aligned with your true purpose and mission, and in my opinion, are ahead of anything else whose purpose is to alleviate suffering. They have a creation we can turn to and participate in for inspiration and hope. And for those skeptics and empiricists that need “proof” that I’m not just another true believer spewing platitudes, I challenge you to bring it on, and be prepared for an amazing discovery.
Joseph Bono, October 2007
For more information about Avatar, contact Star’s Edge International at 237 North Westmonte Drive, Altamonte Springs, Florida, 32714.
Avatar®, ReSurfacing®, Star’s Edge International®, and Enlightened Planetary Civilization® are registered trademarks of Star’s Edge, Inc. All Rights Reserved.