TRANSFORMATIONAL THINKING: Healing The Crack In The Cosmic Egg
by
William Cottringer, Ph.D.


“You can’t solve a problem with the same type of thinking that created it.”
~Albert Einstein.

My Native American Totem is the deer. What this means for me is that the deer spirit is here to guide me in fulfilling my unique purpose in life. This unique purpose is to communicate between the material and spirit worlds. And of course the purpose of the communication is to find truth that transcends dualistic consciousness and reconciles both, in healing the crack in the cosmic egg.

This role is not an easy one because I am living in two realms of existence that are entirely different from each other, playing by much different game rules. It is much like verbal and non-verbal communication. Verbal communication can become precise and definitive with hard work; hard work only confuses, convolutes and complicates the understanding and translation of non-verbal communication.

What is the purpose of being born into the material world and being able to glimpse into the spirit world? I have always been very attracted to the two sayings “know thyself” and “the truth shall set you free.” Both these truths and what they really mean, now becoming more obvious to me, come from the spirit world; and they have everything in the world to do with solving worldly problems. Their purpose is to inspire transformational growth in human consciousness from trying to solve material world problems with material world thinking. I sense this is the ultimate lesson Einstein meant with his quote above.

My formal training is in the field of psychology, with the goals of observing, understanding, predicting and controlling behavior. But nobody ever told me in graduate school which reality realm we were referring to—the objective, tangible, material world reality or the fuzzy, subjective, spiritual world reality? I had to figure out that one the hard way.

We are all really psychologists learning the basic tools of observation, understanding, prediction and control in order to make our unique contribution in helping life to become better. In our individual quest to become smart and successful in doing this, we spend a great deal of time developing and using our critical thinking skills in order to successfully solve material world problems. But sooner or later we all get confronted with a proverbial brick wall that won’t go away no matter how skilled we are in problem-solving or how much effort we put into it. The maddening failure comes whether it is from trying to:

• Overcome extreme physical pain and suffering, or the untimely death of a loved one.

• Work through a very sticky emotional conflict with someone in a personal relationship.

• Find your purpose in life, leave a legacy or make a real difference.

• Help your business or work team maintain and grow during difficult times.

• Keep from sinking hopelessly into debt.

I have had my share of bleeding, bruises and broken bones from trying to attack my own brick walls in life and I guess it is those very painful experiences that woke me up to the value of the deer totem. This totem is really not “mine,” but rather available to us all. At this point, it is valuable to stop, pause and rethink the two sayings above—“Know thyself” and “the truth shall set you free.”

When you begin to “know thyself,” especially during one of these brick wall experiences, you begin to realize that you are really only half way through your journey in life and have only arrived at the halftime break. At this point a humble realization takes over—you have been successful in being the psychologist solving problems in the material world, but that success level is only half the picture. This process is also not a singular experience, but one that keeps repeating itself to give you deeper and deeper understanding, just with different brick wall tests.

This is half of the meaning of “the truth shall set your free.” The other half is letting go to the truth that it is now time for you to give up the security you have accumulated from your success as an objective, material world psychologist. Time for some transformational thinking to heal the crack in the cosmic egg. This is another way of translating the popular business phrase of “what got you here won’t get you there.”

These two fundamental challenges to enduring success and genuine satisfaction—“knowing yourself” and “the truth shall set you free”—have been spoken loudly from the beginning of time in every form of psychology, religion and spirituality. But each of us hear and understand the profoundness of their true meanings in different magnitudes and at different times.

The only real communication between people is when they are both close together in time and space, having such an intimate conversation, finally realizing that you can’t move mountains with your hands, only minds, and it has to start with your own mind. But this usually doesn’t happen until you become much more humbly aware of and uncomfortable with our real failures of not falling forward to thrive in unfolding our infinite potential as spiritual beings on a human journey.

The second half of our journey is traveling with the deer totem—letting our minds wander over into the spirit world to understand, accept and bring back the kind of thinking that can solve previously unsolvable problems in the material world and find true abundance of the only things that can really satisfy our souls. These things are the peace of understanding, compassion, forgiveness, wisdom, creativity, unconditional love, nonjudgmental acceptance, unity and equality. These things are more real than the physical world of rain, rivers and mountains and all the worries, angst and fears we can possibly imagine, run from or try to cure.

William Cottringer, Ph.D. is President of Puget Sound Security in Bellevue, WA., along with being a Sport Psychologist, Business Success Coach, Photographer and Writer. He is author of several business and self-development books, including, You Can Have Your Cheese & Eat It Too (Executive Excellence), The Bow-Wow Secrets (Wisdom Tree), and Do What Matters Most and “P” Point Management (Atlantic Book Publishers). This article is part of his new book Rational Reality Repair Rx coming soon. Bill can be reached for comments or questions at (425) 454-5011 or bcottringer.pssp.net