Post-traditional meditation training & spiritual practices for the twenty-first century
What is Sourcing?
Sourcing is a set of interactive methods that work with the inner space of meditation, somatic awareness, and experiential knowledge of saṃskāras. Put very simply, saṃskāras are 'latent impressions' left behind in the mind by our actions and experiences. The more emotionally intense the experience, the stronger the saṃskāra. As latent impressions they lie beneath the surface of the ordinary mind, conditioning our thoughts, beliefs, emotions and reactions, and thereby how we perceive ourselves and the world. The practice engages a process of sourcing that gently uncovers the saṃskāric roots of conditioning.
Rather than a form of passively received healing, direct manipulation of energy, or some kind of positive affirmation, in Sourcing it is when the client is able to see and feel for themselves, that blockages are released and newfound emotional clarity arises. Indeed, Sourcing itself is not a technique, but the innate power of consciousness to know itself. Working at a subtle level, Sourcing can lead to transpersonal openings of unprecedented dimension and facilitate deep realignments of energy on the level of subtle bodies. More than just therapy, it is a yogic tool of vision for self-knowledge and spiritual transformation.
Who is Sourcing for?
Sourcing was initially developed as complimentary method to meditation; a way to apply yogic vision to help meditators with their practice, but has since evolved into a fully-fledged form of therapy in its own right. As such, it requires no prior experience in meditation and is open to anyone. It has been practiced all over the world to help people from all walks of life:
• release emotional conditioning
• overcome anxiety
• resolve relationship issues
• heal addiction
• deal with bereavement
• change unhealthy patterns of behaviour
• clear energetic blockages
• find new meaning and purpose in life
• experience transpersonal opening
Sourcing & Meditation
Although the role of saṃskāras in meditation practice is central to yogic psychology, knowledge of them is yet curiously absent from almost all modern discourse around mindfulness and meditation. Divorced from the originating context within which contemplative practices have been developed, modern mindfulness emphasises many of the benefits of meditation, but is often ill-equipped to cope with the kinds of emotional charges that can, and inevitably will arise when saṃskāras are triggered. Much undue confusion and suffering is caused, simply from the lack of context and vision for understanding what is really happening.
Conversely, there are many people for whom meditation practice becomes stagnant. Despite consistent effort they feel unable to break through, or feel as though they cannot help but get derailed by the mind or other forms of agitation. Some people might say that meditation does not work for them (not true). Such blockages can be sourced to a saṃskāra. One may talk about their issues, understand the symptoms and attempt to fix them, but the saṃskāra lies beyond the ordinary level of mind, remaining unseen and unaddressed.
While the problems of life remain the same, as modern people living in the modern epoch, we live with levels of mental complication and neurosis that were simply not the case in ages past. Furthermore, it is far less possible let alone appropriate, to emulate many of the traditional means deployed by teachers of the past to deconstruct conditioning and release unhelpful blockages. Like, for instance, the iconic example of Marpa, the Tibetan master who famously put Milarepa through many inordinate trials, to deconstruct his mental obstructions and ready him for the spiritual fruitions of practice and initiation.
We need other ways to help let go and heal unseen blockages. It is for just this reason that the methods of Sourcing have been developed.
More than Therapy
saṃskārasākṣātkaraṇāt pūrvajāti jñānam
"By direct perception of the impressions (saṃskāras), knowledge of previous births (arises)."
— Pātañjalayogaśāstra 3.18
Having practiced countless sessions of Sourcing as facilitator and receiver over many years, both among fellow students and with clients, one of the more remarkable and consistently recurrent findings when sourcing saṃskāras, is that people commonly re-experience powerful episodes that cannot be attributed to this life, but former ones. As an experiential process, it occurs regardless of what one may believe about past lives. One is therefore free to make up their own mind about explaining it. Contrary to what one might think, however, such experiences are not vague or dream-like, or presented images requiring 'interpretation', but sensorially acute and emotionally detailed; accompanied by the sense of being in a different body, different surrounds, and a different time. The point, of course, is not to prove anything, but to experience here and now the release of deeply hidden emotional charges which can lead to profound spiritual realisation; shifts that are truly life changing. Such transpersonal openings are uniquely enlightening, because one experiences in themselves direct recognition of a level of being that is intimately familiar, yet spans across lifetimes and personalities.