The European Transpersonal Association

Newsletter Number 3
19 April 1999

Dear EUROTAS Council Members and friends of EUROTAS

1. The Founding Assembly of the Creative Initiative and EUROTAS Council Meeting Hungary 4-8 August 1999. We are making good progress for our meeting. May I ask you please to ensure that dates are firmly in your diary and that you remind colleagues coming from your country to make travel arrangements. Please arrive in time for the evening of Wednesday 4 August and leave any time on Sunday 8 August. We will have a good representation from across Europe. Why not bring a friend or two and perhaps stay over for a few extra days in Budapest, which is a very lovely city? We will send you further details next month. Rumold Moll, after his recent visit to Hungary is working with the founders of the Creative Initiative (Beata Bishop, Tanna Jakubowicz- Mount and Monique Tiberghien) to finalise the Programme and ensure that there is space in it for everyone. If you do not have participants to join us from your country, now is the time to invite them. Please email or fax (profdrew@eurotas.org or + 44 181 455 4516) and we will send you further updated material. Beata Bishop (of whom more below) is in Hungary at the moment for three weeks and I am sure that with her continued support we will have a creative and enjoyable time at Dobogoke Village which is on a beautiful bend of the Danube with forests and cool walks. The cost will be in the region of 190 Euros for four days including hotel, all meals and the Conference.

With the tragic events of Kosovo so much in our hearts and minds, it will be especially nourishing for us to meet at this time. What can we do to help, we wonder every day that passes? Please invite participants from your country. Some really special guests are coming, and there will be people present and experiences too that will influence our lives.

2. News from Hungary. Peter Markus is now the President of the Hungarian Transpersonal Association (MTE) and according to Rumold Moll: "Peter and five very energetic and dynamic young ladies are ready to guide the MTE and host the EUROTAS August Meeting. Kati Orosz and Agnes Furedi continue as the representatives of EUROTAS. I spoke to Agnes recently. She was in the middle of moving house, but was her usual lively self and sends best wishes to all EUROTAS friends. Beata Bishop is doing the most remarkable work in Budapest, helping to establish Transpersonal Training based partly on the work of the Centre for Transpersonal Psychology in London. It is hoped also to organise a Hungarian Summer School once again and to streamline the EUROTAS East-West Project.

3. The United Kingdom. A splendid brochure from the Transpersonal Psychology Scotland describes the thriving way in which it is offering the Centre for Transpersonal Psychology London training. Barbara Somers and Elizabeth McCormick are among its distinguished consultants. The new brochure contains some first class explanations for new students about the transpersonal approach. More information from: 39 West Crescent, East Saltoun, Pencaitland, East Lothian EH34 5EF Scotland, U.K. Elisabeth McCormick concerned about her husband John’s health and the writing of two books, one on the Transpersonal Training in the UK and the other on "Listening to the Heart," writes: " and so dear friends, I have to say no to Hungary, but will support you and the Creative Initiative in any way I can."

4. Research. Pia Keiding, EUROTAS Director of Research writes: " Again thank you to those who so kindly responded to my October letter. EUROTAS would be very happy to hear from all of you who know about on going research projects. Please send ideas or recorded results in whatever form. You can now email me directly, even with your reflections. Looking forward to hearing from you on pia@ibm.net or fax 00322 280 0276 or letter to Pia Keiding, Rue Charles Martel 33, B-1000 Bruxelles, Belgium. Warm greetings, Pia. " Please keep us informed of your research so that we can act as an information exchange. There is so much going on and we need to let one another know what and where.


5. News from Portugal. "Our web page has been updated. There is news about research, links, the 1999 conference and more. If you have any comments or suggestions, please drop us a line. The web page is still under construction and will be updated frequently. Best regards, Vítor Rodrigues & Sandra Gonçalves (Vitor and Rodrigues are prolific emailers and put the rest of us to shame!) walden@mail.telepac.pt and web page Alubrat - http://www.terravista.pt/Bilene/3355

6. News from Spain. Manuel Almendro, President of ATRE (the Spanish Transpersonal Association.) has published a new book ‘Consciencia Transpersonal’- " In which have participated many people from Europe and America." Manuel is researching Theories of Chaos applied to Transpersonal Psychology when not busy running a very full Spanish programme. He writes: " our position in EUROTAS is held by Jaime Llinares."

7. EUROTAS Administrative Issues: Agenda for Hungary. There are two proposals to join the Board of EUROTAS.Are there any more? Names will be circulated in the next newsletter when it is confirmed that those proposed agree to stand! Mailing List. This is now constantly updated. Please send me any changes especially email addresses. I will circulate a list of Members and other useful European addresses shortly. Articles of Association and Constitution. There are some minor proposed changes, which tidy up some inconsistencies, and these too will be circulated after the Board has been consulted. We shall need to discuss research, subscriptions, Assisi and any other business. This is the second request for agenda items. I do sincerely hope we can pre-discuss as many issues as possible, so that the administration of EUROTAS can be kept to a minimum and be as seamless as possible!

8. Assisi Conference. Laura Boggio Gilot and her team continue to make progress. She has invited a number of EUROTAS friends to give workshops at Assisi. Please write to her with ideas for promoting the Assisi Conference and also if you wish to be considered for a workshop. We should support this seminal event as EUROTAS members and I look forward to seeing you there.

9. Russian Transpersonal News. Vladimir Maikov explains the two approaches. 1) Workshops of 1-6 days on introductions to transpersonal psychology and 2) an International Certificate of Transpersonal Psychology and Psychotherapy. Masters workshops on holotropic breathing, dreams, shamanism and meditation. The aim is to develop programmes, which will attract international as well as Russian transpersonal students. Vladimir has edited and published 46 books over the last five years from Grof to the Mindells to Tart, Wilber and Vaughan. There is a great deal of activity you can discover on http://www.df.ru/~maikov if you are on line and if not can you be please?

10. News Please. There are so many things happening across Europe of interest to us. We do not know about most of them and they do not know about us. Please let me know of anything to do with your Association or your personal work or interests which you would like to tell others to include in future newsletters. Please send a short précis of not more than six lines. It is better you tell us what you would like to say rather than our making the summary.

11. EUROTAS Directory. We could usefully develop a Directory of what we all do or would like to do and it would bring us contacts across Europe and the world. I will write to you later with a suggestion of how we might develop this.

Postscript. Jacek Majewski thanks Monique Tiberghien for her photograph of the EUROTAS River: " one can see the sign, but where’s the river? Let’s hope it’s there and we’re going to see it soon. " I think it must be just over the horizon. Many things are.

With love

As ever,

John

P.S. I sent some of you this Irish Blessing at Easter and hope you don’t mind its being added to the Newsletter. If you have too have a P.S. to suggest along similar lines that you would like to share, please let me have it to include in a future Newsletter.

Reflection: An Irish Blessing

May the blessing of light be with you - light outside and light within
May sunlight shine upon you and warm your heart 'til it glows like a great peat fire
so that the stranger may come and warm himself by it.
May a blessed light shine out of your two eyes like a candle set in two windows of a house,
bidding the wanderer to come in out of the storm.
May you ever give a kindly greeting to those whom you pass as you go along the roads.
May the blessing of rain - the sweet, soft rain - fall upon you
so that the little flowers may spring up to shed their sweetness in the air.
May the blessing of the earth - the good, rich earth - be with you.
May the earth be soft under you when you rest upon it, tired at the end of the day.
May earth rest easy over you when at last you lie under it.
May earth rest so lightly over you that your spirit may be out from under it quickly,
and up, and off, and on its way to God.

-- Traditional Irish Blessing