The Transpersonal Center

The Transpersonal Center Creating the Next Generation of Conscious Lovers

The Transpersonal Center offers workshops, seminars, classes, psychedelic integration, tantric couples therapy, licensed psychotherapy, and transformational coaching.

11/18/2025

The feeling we have when experiencing a problem is largely due to the unconscious mind trying to keep us out of "danger."

Sometime in 2019 or 2020, I heard Alan Watts's 1959 lecture on "Pain, Eastern Wisdom and Modern Life," in which he said:...
11/17/2025

Sometime in 2019 or 2020, I heard Alan Watts's 1959 lecture on "Pain, Eastern Wisdom and Modern Life," in which he said:

"...the idea of the Buddha was to become delivered from suffering not by running away from it, but from looking at the actual concrete reality of what we feel and forgetting the context … is obviously something quite possible in the milder forms of suffering. But what happens when suffering becomes really acute? Perhaps, as an illustration of this, I might turn to a very extraordinary work of art. It is a sculpture of Saint Teresa by Bernini. Look at that face and try and decide what feeling that face is expressing. Is it agony? Is it a rapture of delight which would … cause one almost to swoon? … Actually, if you look back and see the whole scene, you will see that the saint is confronted by an angel who is piercing her with a dart, the dart representing the divine love. And so the figure represents Saint Teresa in ecstasy; in profound joy."

Google informed me that the statue he was referring to was "The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa." Although christened in a Catholic church, I have never identified with Catholicism, Christianity, or any organized religion. Still, I was transfixed by both the image on the screen and the idea Watts had set into motion in my consciousness - that mental suffering and its polar opposite can be separated by the thinnest of veils: subjective judgment. I wondered what it would feel like to occupy the space in front of this masterpiece, completed in 1652 by the master Gian Lorenzo Bernini (who also designed St. Peter's Square, including the 140 statues that sit atop its colonnades, as well as the angels who stand sentinel on the bridge bridge to Castle San't Angelo). On a trip to Rome in early November of 2022, my curiosity would be sated.

The Vatican's Square, museum, and Sistine Chapel rendered a divine assault on the senses - Michelangelo's 'Pieta' alone would have been worth the fourteen-hour flight - but Bernini's Teresa was located nowhere near this argosy of western masterpieces. She resides some four miles away, behind the deceptively demure facade of the church of Santa Maria Della Vittoria, where, nested in a small shrine high up on the left wall, she can be admired from any one of the 16 modest pews.

We almost missed her - my GPS had us running in circles, and as we finally entered the resplendent little chapel, mass was ending. The marble balustrade guarding Saint Teresa kept me some thirty feet away. I had to zoom in to get a good photo, after which I had every intention of moving aside so that others could do the same, but, resting my gaze on the face I'd first seen on a computer screen a few years before, I felt no need, nor any desire, to move. I don't know if Bernini had any inkling that, 370 years after he laid down his chisel and declared his part in this creation done, I would receive its transmission, but there I was, in a place where, for one moment, time gave way to beauty.

11/14/2025

Thoughts often distract us from the real problem…

11/07/2025

Why is the process of change often uncomfortable?
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The Transpersonal Center (formerly The Transpersonal Counseling Center) offers workshops, seminars, classes, psychedelic integration, ta**ra couples therapy, licensed psychotherapy, and transformational coaching for spiritual people. We work with issues such as depression, anxiety, relationships, addictions, stress, and confusion. We also offer specialized services such as spiritual assessment, spiritual direction, and removing blocks on your spiritual path. We share the ta***ic vision that all is sacred.