About This Site and Its Author

About Becoming Authentic and its Author, Michael Adzema

The Next Frontier in Evolution and About Me, Michael Adzema

“…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.”

I am a prenatal/perinatal psychologist, a long-time environmental-political activist, a primal therapist, a breathwork facilitator, a speaker, and an author, with nine books to date and many more in the works.

My websites, blogs, and social media pages include the writings from published and upcoming books and nearly 1000 different posts and articles. While, in these, I address and present my research around the topics of our apocalyptic environmental emergency; our current political and societal crises from a progressive, an Occupy perspective; and 45 years of research and experience in spirituality and consciousness-related topics from a shamanistic viewpoint … and they deal wholistically with personal growth … my writings and insights are unique in that they also present a perspective gleaned from my parallel 45-year involvement with and comprehensive research in very deep experiential psychotherapy.

I have experienced, taught, trained, and facilitated in the fields of primal therapy, holotropic breathwork, rebirthing, and prenatal and perinatal psychology. I am one of the pioneers in the field of prenatal/perinatal psychology.

I have one of the small number of advanced degrees in this robust new field of discovery in psychology … with a program of study that, because of the field still being in its infancy, I personally had to trail blaze at the graduate level. My curriculum and its work resulted in a publication that is listed professionally, in a number of places, academically and otherwise, including Wikipedia, as a reference work in this new field. Incidentally, while it was published academically in 1994 as a Master’s Thesis from Sonoma State University, in California, and it is referred to in that context, I have quite recently published it independently as my book Falls from Grace: The Devolution and Revolution of Consciousness (2014).

Additionally, I was the editor for one of the few professional journals in this new field for several years. Under the auspices of the International Primal Association, in 1994 through 1998, I created, designed, edited, produced, administered, and wrote extensively for the new publication, Primal Renaissance: The Journal of Primal Psychology. And coincidentally I served on that organization’s Board of Directors, while also serving on the Board of Editors of several other professional journals in the fields of pre- and perinatal psychology, and anthropology, which is a field I also did graduate work in, at the University of California, San Diego.

All in all, I have contributed, significantly, to the theoretical evolution of this new field — pre- and perinatal psychology and primal psychology — via  my writings in professional journals in psychology, positions on Boards in it and related fields, presentations at conferences, convention workshops, and teaching at the university level. I was, in fact, 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—a fact that was announced in the newsletter of this new field’s major association, The Association for Pre- and Prenatal Psychology and Health (APPPAH).

The reason for detailing this comprehensive background of mine in this field is to establish the solid grounding, standing upon which I can make the following astounding claims:

My research and experience have convinced me that the perspective that this kind of deep understanding of our earliest experiences in life, from the single cell, through womb experience, to birth and the earliest days and weeks of life (“prenatal” – before birth; “perinatal” – surrounding birth) brings to social, political, and environmental problems and events, not to mention to personal growth and spirituality, are nothing short of revolutionary … in the most profound, zeitgeist shattering, new-paradigm revealing, and hope-inspiring visionary way.

Let me be clear. My forty-five years of research in this field have 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, a traditional physics understanding … going on with research “as if” such-and-such were true … though they are not.

Whereas medicine, biology, and all the social sciences go on, in their 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 not only absurd and seemingly stupid….

The idea that consciousness and memory and the formative experiences of personality and lifelong behavior begin only when those on the outside of the infant … the observers, theoreticians, psychologists, and observers … can see the infant … and not when the experiencer, the fetus, the prenate, the baby actually have the experiences … reveals itself to be astoundingly hard to believe that notion was actually embraced by all psychology and social sciences for the entire hundreds-year’s history of all those disciplines. Hard to believe that notion was ever entertained. Let alone that entire theoretical systems in all relevant social and behavioral and psychological science were built up and constructed upon, and deeply rooted within such ludicrous presuppositions.  (see Footnote 1]

You might very well right now, in fact, be questioning that science actually did (does) hold that presupposition that only the behavior and learning occurring from birth on contribute to personality and later thinking and behavior. Now that I have exposed the feeble underpinnings of vast arrays of understanding in behavioral, psychological, and social sciences, the resulting cognitive dissonance might be so acute that you have “jumped the gap” to the new understanding and are questioning yourself that it was ever really assumed that it all began at birth. But be honest, dear reader. Or at least check for yourself.

The fact is that, even at this very moment, the great majority of social and psychological science … not to mention common, lay belief … have it that only the events after birth, sometimes not even at birth itself, contribute to the person that the infant will become in later life. Look and you will see that it is virtually always held forth that any behavior that is not attributable to events occurring after birth are … genetic!

That’s right. Events that an outside observer can see are rightfully included in causes in what can happen later in life. But anything that cannot be seen, any “behavior” or events or “experiences” that are not seeable, that is, that occur in the womb, are not considered causes … that anything in the person with causes prior to birth are considered genetic, are considered to be “built into” the genes.

Well, that is so outright ridiculous that, if we were not so conditioned to be in lockstep with that thinking around us, right now we would be laughing. For that is like saying that in this area alone, when it happens with humans, with babies, unviewable events don’t occur. Which is like saying that chemical reactions occurring on the molecular level do not occur, in chemistry, because we do not usually view them. Not to mention on the subatomic level … or that events that we cannot observe happening in outer space do not occur, though we have all this accumulated scientific evidence that they do.

A simple scan of relevant scientific literature will reveal that in the nurture versus nature catalog of causes of personality and later behavior it is quite rigid: Events occurring after birth are nurture. That is, they are affected by culture, by people, and by decisions and actions … and they are variable. But that any causes coming from before birth are genetic. … they are nature, not nurture… which means they are not affected by culture, by people, and by decisions and actions. … and they are not variable.

Well, now consider that ALL that is wrong. And the consequences of that change in thought changes everything. It means that there are events and experiences that occur to individuals prior to birth that affect them for life, that are caused by all kinds of things that are variable, in the mother, in the culture that the mother is in, and the events that happen to the mother. So they are changeable. We know this biologically for things like toxins that the mother absorbs into her system affecting the fetus biologically … the effects of smoking and alcohol, for example. But now we know that the emotions of the mother, and the day to day events that happen to the mother that physically affect the fetus are different from one fetus to the next. They are as different as the different events that happen in later life. And it is has been said that an “entire life” in a sense, is lived by the prenate prior to being born. Individuals who come out with characteristics and traits at birth, we now know, are most likely to have their causes in events happening to the fetus in the womb. They are caused by experiences that the prenate has, just as a person after birth experiences events that affect her or him later. And we now know that there is memory, even though it is most often unconscious memory, memory that is not easily retrievable (though it can be and indeed, has been demonstrated to be retrievable … and verifiable … Indeed, this is one of those facts that was discovered that exposed the field to be such a rich new vein of understanding, worth mining for fresh new insights into humanity!) There is memory that we carry from so far back in our individual lives that I dare not reveal how far back that has been demonstrated to be the case… not yet… Quite frankly, you’re not ready to accept that yet, and I will satisfy myself that what I have said so far is already a big enough bite, needing to be digested, for now.  [for a hint, though, see Footnote 1]

At any rate, it is now so obvious that this is true … it is so obvious that events happen before birth and they are causes for events and traits and psychological characteristics in the later individual … and it is so easy to see that the fact that it was not believed to be true up till now jumps out as calling for an explanation. And a ready one answers the call. For if everything that happens to the baby prior to birth is not affected by anything happening to the mother or in her surroundings, then there is simply no responsibility carried by the parents, or the culture or society surrounding. Thus, nature is the easy scapegoat. We can say, for anything we don’t like that happened that is hard to understand as having any cause after birth that, “Oh, that’s genetic.” And we don’t have to look any deeper. No harm. No foul.

Still, this easy getting off from any blame has a cost. For we do not, in so doing, realize that there are things that the mother, the society, the family, and the culture can do to help, ease, and facilitate the individual to have a better experience in the womb and a better life afterwards.

At any rate, the resulting upheaval in systems of thoughts is truly revolutionary; an entire paradigm comes crashing down; and the theoretical surface area laid so much to waste that entire new systems of thoughts and new visions, insights, and revelations spring instantly to life, lusty and fresh, wet and alive and hopeful … as inspiring and hopeful as the full-throated cries of newly arrived, freshly revealed babies…..

QUOTES

“I am one of the pioneers in the field of prenatal/perinatal psychology.”

“All in all, I have contributed, significantly, to the theoretical evolution of this new field — pre- and perinatal psychology and primal psychology….”

“My research and experience have convinced me that the perspective that this kind of deep understanding of our earliest experiences in life, from the single cell, through womb experience, to birth and the earliest days and weeks of life … brings to social, political, and environmental problems and events, not to mention to personal growth and spirituality, are nothing short of revolutionary … in the most profound, zeitgeist shattering, new-paradigm revealing, and hope-inspiring visionary way.”

“…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.”

“…any causes coming from before birth are genetic. … they are nature, not nurture… which means they are not affected by culture, by people, and by decisions and actions. … and they are not variable.”

“…now consider that ALL that is wrong. And the consequences of that change in thought changes everything. It means that there are events and experiences that occur to individuals prior to birth that affect them for life, that are caused by all kinds of things that are variable, in the mother, in the culture that the mother is in, and the events that happen to the mother. So they are changeable.”

“…an “entire life” in a sense, is lived by the prenate prior to being born.”

“Individuals who come out with characteristics and traits at birth, we now know, are most likely to have their causes in events happening to the fetus in the womb. They are caused by experiences that the prenate has….”

“There is memory that we carry from so far back in our individual lives that I dare not reveal how far back that has been demonstrated to be the case… not yet….”

“…if everything that happens to the baby prior to birth is not affected by anything happening to the mother or in her surroundings, then there is so simply no responsibility carried by the parents, or the culture or society surrounding. Thus, nature is the easy scapegoat.”

“…this easy getting off from any blame has a cost. For we do not, in so doing, realize that there are things that the mother, the society, the family, and the culture can do to help, ease, and facilitate the individual to have a better experience in the womb and a better life afterwards.”

“…the resulting upheaval in systems of thoughts is truly revolutionary; an entire paradigm comes crashing down; and the theoretical surface area laid so much to waste that entire new systems of thoughts and new visions, insights, and revelations spring instantly to life, lusty and fresh, wet and alive and hopeful … as inspiring and hopeful as the full-throated cries of newly arrived, freshly revealed babies…..”

For  Falls from Grace: The Devolution and Revolution of Consciousness  by Michael Adzema, go to Amazon at

http://www.amazon.com/Falls-Grace-Devolution-Revolution-Consciousness/dp/1499297998/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

For any of Michael Adzema’s books, go to Michael Adzema at Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Michael-Adzema/e/B00J7Fe_cont_book_10URC/ref=dp_bylin

#evolution #bio #prenatal #perinatal #psychology #revolution #paradigm #memory #personality #primal therapy #holotropic breathwork #experiential psychotherapy #rebirthing #pre and perinatal psychology #Falls from Grace #Primal Renaissance #primal psychology #research #new paradigm #birth #womb #consciousness #science #social science #behavioral science #genetic #nature #nurture #genes #cause #effect #experiences #babies #mother #culture #prenate #unconscious

Footnote

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

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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