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The Theoretical Basis of Seemorg Matrix
Asha Clinton, MSW, PhD
Any new modality builds on aspects of preceding ones, and Seemorg Matrix Work
is no exception. Both theoretically and methodologically, Seemorg's foundation
is an amalgam of approaches from eastern spirituality, western psychology, and
psychoneuroimmunology. Seemorg draws its conception of the nature of the human
being from diverse but connected sources: Hinduism, Buddhism, Sufism, analytical
psychology, and chaos theory. The universe itself is understood as the Divine
totality; human beings, microcosms to that infinite macrocosm, are both parts
of the universe and, in some ways, infinitesimal replications of it
(Gleick 1988; Prahbhavananda and Isherwood 1991; Easwaran 2000; Khan 1982).
At the center of the human being is the self, as Jung called it, or the
center as it is called in Seemorg Matrix Work. This is the spark of Divine
essence that is the core of every human being, the atman, the part that is
capable of offering the peace, ecstasy, wisdom, guidance, and moral compass
that every human being requires (Edinger 1991).
The center exists in part within the collective and in part within the personal
unconscious (Jung 1960; Singer 1971). In the collective unconscious it consists of
many archetypes that are all capable of entering the personal unconscious and acting
there (Jung 1966; Stevens 2003). Though Jung called them archetypes, many religious
traditions have called them deities of various kinds (Bible 2001; Staff of Barnes and
Noble (Eds.) 2002; Yusuf and Ali 1999; Mascaro 1976; Prahbhavananda and Isherwood 1991;
De La Torre 2004; Peel 2000; Hind 2004). Plato called them forms (Ostenfeld 1982), and
Sufis, for example, include among them the wazaif or ninety-nine divine qualities
(Bayrak 1985) as well as the masters, saints, and prophets (Bakhtiar 1997). They are,
in fact, represented in various ways in all cultural, spiritual, and religious
traditions, where they are variously called ancestors, first people, gods, or the like.
In Western psychotherapies archetypes have often been conceptualized without their
transpersonal aspect and have been named objects (Lewis and Singer 1982) or introjects
(Goldstein 1996) and perhaps, more recently, alters (Brenner 2001). Their nature, power,
and behavior are conceptualized in somewhat different but overlapping ways in each of
these traditions. In Seemorg Matrix Work, the way an archetype behaves in an individual
is understood to be dependent only in part on its collective inherited qualities. An
individual's life experiences, opportunities, and role models are understood to sculpt
the many possible expressions of an archetype's qualities into a particular and
idiosyncratic range of manifestation. This is because collective and introjected
materials fuse to form the particular version of an archetype that lives within an
individual's personal unconscious.
As in the Jungian tradition, the center is simultaneously present within the
collective and personal unconscious. The unconscious lies within the conscious, which
itself lies within the body (Edinger 1991). As recent research in psychoneuroimmunology
so clearly indicates, this human system is one whose parts are so interconnected and
mutually permeable that what affects one part affects all the others (Oschman 2000, 2003).
This is true for body, psyche, and spirit.
A second, smaller sphere of power and activity-- the ego-- inhabits a portion of both the
conscious and the body. The ego, defined in terms of both Eastern and Western conceptions,
is the conscious ruler and doer of the psyche (Gaynor and Fodor 2003). In that ego wounding
hinders the ego's ability to lead and do in accordance with the behests of the center
(Edinger 1991), Seemorg practitioners conceptualize the ego as simultaneously necessary for
the optimal functioning of the individual, and often traumatically damaged. Ego damage can
present as an inability to carry out ego functions (Von der Kolk, Cook, Spinazzola, and
ord 2005), a lack of appropriate connection with the center (Khan 1982; Almaas 2004;
Edinger 1991), or an inability to accept and carry out the center's requests, which are more
valuable than its own preferences.
Seemorg bases the Clinton-LeShan model, the cornerstone of Seemorg treatment methodology,
on the Freudian notion of the primacy of early experience (Nagera, Eissler, Freud, Hartman,
and Kris (Eds.) 1966). Seemorg practitioners understand early experience to include not only
childhood, but also the historical experience of the client's culture, lineage and, where
appropriate, past lives. Where childhood is concerned, Seemorg focuses particularly on the
vicissitudes of symbiosis (Mahler and Furer 1993; Mahler, Pine, and Bergman 2000; Little
1981) and attachment (Bowlby 1989; Cassidy and Shaver (Eds.) 2002) that have
been analyzed by the object relations school. Equally important, from the Seemorg perspective,
is that school's conception of the damaged or wounded object (Buckley 1986), which strongly
undergirds the Seemorg treatment of archetypes and alters.
Cognitive therapy contributes to Seemorg its focus on the importance of transforming
negative cognitions (Beck 1993; Beck 1995; Leahy 2003). Although, in Seemorg Matrix Work,
we conceptualize negative cognitions as aftereffects of trauma, we recognize that such cognitive
aftereffects alone can distort a life, and utilize the Seemorg Core Belief Protocol in order to
transform them. In this protocol, we first move the electromagnetic energy that comprises the
negative belief out of the body, and then, again using energy movement, instill a realistic,
positive belief in its place.
Behaviorism, in its emphasis on the possibility of extinguishing conditioned responses
(Skinner 1976; Watson 1997), has played an important role in the development of Seemorg Matrix
Work. Some post-traumatic behaviors become conditioned responses, which do not always dissipate
in response to treatment with Seemorg trauma protocols. Sometimes they require extinction by the
Conditioned Response Extinguisher Protocol. This protocol utilizes the frequent repetition of an
extinguishing phrase coupled with the movement of energy through the chakras and chakric canals
to do its work.
Communication through symbols and metaphors brings all parts of the human system together.
The unconscious communicates messages primarily as symbols or metaphors, e.g., as dream images
(Jung 1990), symptoms (Simmons 1966; Giannini 1978), or stories (Von Franz 1996, 1997), though
the success of muscle testing demonstrates that the unconscious understands both metaphoric and
literal statements. It is the conscious mind's ability to learn to decode unconscious metaphor
that allows full two-way communication and, potentially, cooperation and healing (Siegelman 1993).
The metaphoric analysis of unconscious communication through dreams and symptoms is, therefore,
an essential part of Seemorg diagnosis and treatment.
The nervous system, peptide-receptor system, and immune system form a complex communication
network that also brings all aspects of the human being together, rendering body, psyche, and
spirit mutually permeable (Sompayrac 2002). The nervous system constantly sends and receives
information to and from every part of the system; the glands constantly produce hormones that
move information to particular body sites; the meridian and chakra systems move electromagnetic
energy throughout the body; other sites produce immune system parts such as T-Cells that travel
where they are needed (Pert 1997). All of these systems function in response to the physical,
spiritual, and psychological occurrences, both internal and external, that impact the individual
(Oschman 2000). Indeed, Candace Pert makes an excellent case for the idea that peptides are
"molecules of emotion" in the sense that they transmit what we experience as emotion from particular
parts of the spirit, psyche, or body to other parts (Pert 1997). The immune, neurological,
electromagnetic, and peptide-receptor systems of the body are intricate communication systems that
transmit intellectual, emotional, intuitive, and sensate information everywhere and on every level
(Oschman 2000). This accounts in part for trauma's broad effect on parts of the human system that
seem at first glance totally removed from the site or content of a particular traumatic occurrence.
Healing also occurs throughout the human system through the movement of energy in, through, and
out of it (Oschman 2003). The memories, cognitions, emotions, sensations, and intuitions human beings
experience are themselves made of energy (Summers-Effler 2004; Oschman 2005). This accounts for the
usefulness of power therapies such as EMDR (Shapiro and Forrest 1998; Parnell 1997), TFT (Callahan
and Callahan 2000), TAT (Fleming 1999), BSFF (Nims and Sotkin 2003), and EDxTM (Gallo 2000), all
forerunners of Seemorg Matrix Work. When a Seemorg therapist asks her client to move his hands slowly
down the chakras while he repeats a brief phrase that describes the trauma under treatment, the
placement of the client's hands forms a circuit of electromagnetic energy that moves the traumatic
emotions, sensations, and cognitions that are the post-traumatic effects of that trauma out of the
chakras and the areas they govern, down the chakric canals, and out of the root chakra and the chakras
in soles of the feet. Seemorg Matrix Work utilizes the chakra system to remove blocked traumatic energy
because of the gentleness and lack of retraumatization that this method confers. Moreover, the chakras
are very powerful energy centers that exist on all levels of the human system-- as nerve ganglia on the
biological level (Judith 1995), as energy centers governing various aspects of the psyche psychologically
(Judith 2004), and as spiritual centers that govern various aspects of the spirit (Johari 2000). This
makes them appropriate foci for the removal of post-traumatic energy and symptomatology.
References
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