psychotherapy

Jeffry Martin, Jeffrey Epstein, and high decoupling. some messy thoughts, would love y'all's takes

I. Jeffrey Martin tried to sell “enlightenment” to Jeffrey Epstein for $10 million USD.

More importantly: In the DOJ emails, he asks for “..a few (legal age) slave girls of my own choosing, in the event that at least some of your press coverage is accurate... ; )

But how can we trust Epstein? There's not enough evidence in there in this case... to quote Marco Beneteau “most people who know [Martin] think that the "slave-girl" quote was fabricated / injected by Epstein as it's out of character for Martin. This is possible and even likely given that Epstein was positioning himself as a professional blackmailer. There is also no reason for Martin, a serious businessman, to compromise himself in this way with a known criminal.”

Martin’s emails are shady AF, but to me (and most) Martin always seemed shady. That doesn’t discredit the genuine contributions he’s made; it does point to us being incredibly discerning about what he says and where it comes from.

It also points to whatever Martin is teaching being pretty weird; the concept of enlightenment is weird and sketch, so it asks us to be more discerning still.

II. High decoupling is an idea that you can separate the pieces from the whole.

Eg: MLK can be a womanizer yet still a civil rights role model. It’s super necessary for science to figure out causality by separating variables, and it’s helpful for the pursuit of truth since the key evolution into 3rd person objective, rational thinking is that stuff exists outside of its context. Newton had to actually prove this about physics—before him people genuinely didn’t know if gravity operated differently in America v Europe v the moon.

A person could be enlightened and charge $10 Million for it. A person could have useful tips and not be "enlightened" whatever that means. A bunch of other decouples...

III. Wholeness must include fragmentation to be whole

I talk a lot about seeing wholes, interconnectivity, and relationships, which one might think of as low-decoupling, or re-coupling, or something. But just like surrender includes your desire, the world being neutral means you get to fully engage in it, true wholeness includes parts and division. Your limited self-concept can’t threaten how much people love you, and decoupling can’t threaten the universe’s inherent interconnectivity. High decoupling and low decoupling are like directions on a circle -if you take either far enough the meet on the other side. eg:

• decoupling for love: consider a toddler behaving like a little dictator. Decoupling rather than seeing them as one thing might increase the love
• decoupling for truth: eg pulling what's good and useful from Martin's "research" and throwing out the rest

On the plethora of Therapeutic modalities.

There's a genre of book that's the therapy modality book. They're all the same. They go

I was a therapist and what I was doing wasn't working, and then I discovered <specific technique the book is advocating> and then it cured me and all my clients and now things are great and we just need to teach everybody this technique.

So many therapy books are like this. Focussing, the IFS book, the EFT book, to name a few. The various ACT books. Waking the Tiger.

And the specific technique is different from book to book. Radically different. And even contradictory.

So what's going on here? Apart from probably there's some book somewhere about how to write a therapy book, or some ghostwriter that's cranking these out?

If we take these stories as more or less true, how do we make sense of these seeming contradictions?

This is not a rhetorical question! I'm going to give you my best guess below, but please take a moment to think of your answer, and ideally post it in the comments for everyone to see. I am very much interested in other answers here.

Ok, my best guess (at least, the guess that I find most interesting):

What works is having a therapist who believes they are helping. It's like the placebo effect. If the doctor handing you a sugar pill is like "Yeah, idk, people told me this is helpful. lmk what you think", my guess is, you're not going to get much placebo effect out of that pill (actually they've done research and you do still get some but not as much iirc).

So when the therapist is out of school, they're doing what they were told works, but for a certain kind of mind, that doesn't give them confidence. So then they have to go on a big heroes journey, and come back with some technique, some approach, that for whatever reason they believe in.

Now they're back, and they believe it works, and low and behold, it does!

It's like Dumbo's magic feather.

"some technique, some approach, that for whatever reason they believe in."

So why do they believe in the technique they chose? Because they love to do it. Because, when they're doing it, they feel most like themselves, and they feel most connected with the person they're working with. Or they feel most connected with what they consider important, about a mind, about a heart, about a life.

And maybe this gives it some extra sauce too. Maybe this love of themselves, this intrinsic interest, radiates out, and reminds their clients that they too can love themselves, love life, be enthusiastic, and intrinsically interested.

Or maybe that last part is just what I have come to believe works ;)

Can we handle the truth? If UpTrust works the way it’s intended, it will make truth more accessible. But what percentage of the population currently has the capacity to face truth?

Perhaps alongside truth, the tech will make the skills for being with the truth more accessible too. And avoidance will come in for the assist when needed?

Whose your Mama? Navigating mother (or other) projections. In a Relateful session today, there was a participant projecting mother energy onto another participant. I often see this play out as an exploration of the projector’s experience and we hear from the projectee as to how they are receiving the projection. I’m curious about alternative approaches the projectee could take to discover more about herself, the dynamic, or the projector.

We’re working with and hosting energies that are larger than individual personalities and my sense is they want to flow freely. This makes me wonder how we can embrace more of ourselves beyond our usual personality playground, and embrace a wider I.

I have more questions than answers here. I wonder what you see as potentials in being the projectee that stay within the practice and promote more consciousness and love? How do you engage with projections in your facilitation or as a participant in groups?