Hi, Matthew here, based in Inland Empire, San Bernadino County area of SoCal. For me personally, I have considered this a course I require for basic information to be incorporated into my recreational trauma therapy for others. Backstory: I'm an Army combat veteran who took reintegration extremely hard from my soul wounding in the military and hit the low point of my life once back in civilian society where emphasis on the individual takes precedence over community and communal values. A lack of a way to continue my hero's journey, as told in Joseph Campbell's monomyth of the warrior's path toward end as a warrior elder (shaman). I ended up pulling myself out of the dark somehow without help that seems too unreal to me still. Afterward, it took me years to recover at which I went to college, became a firefighter, lived and traveled all over with vanlife roadtrips while working. I have acquired extensive knowledge and experiences in life as a result of my willingness to force change in myself as catalyzed by a longing for meaning after my many brushes with death. After spending most of my life distrusting people and avoiding them I realized I wanted to help those with trauma. This began with physically changing lives in emergency incidents, traumatic events, and now is at a point where I am ready for doing it mentally and spiritually. My goal is to do accomplish this using a multifaceted curriculum and approach of many information sources including mysticism. In order for a higher level to be achieved to my knowledge, shadow work must be reintegrated, the neurotic ego harnessed, and higher Self realized on the way towards enlightenment. However, this means to shed the energy of neurotic ego states of shame, guilt, apathy, fear, desire, anger, and pride. And then to replace them with courage, neutrality, willingness, acceptance, reason, unconditional love, joy, and peace. As such, even if one is in tune with instincts, healthy emotions, higher order reason/intuition, there is still required a high degree of spirituality to act as the glue that binds them to a higher purpose. That purpose is what I seek in expanding my spiritual nature. The tentative curriculum I am working on to provide tools for people to build resilience in themselves and others around them by elevating consciousness is still subject to the work of these classes. It includes a consilience of material from many seasonal recreational sports/hobbies, survival skills, natural sciences, bio sciences, psychology/human behavior, philosophies, religions, mythology, literature, art, and warrior, leadership, and communal values that have existed in the human collective consciousness for millenia. If any of this interests any of you in addition to what we are learning in this curriculum you can let me know because I am interested in networking what I have learned and others have learned in their life experiences and acquired knowledge. However, I have gone through the change of entirely eliminating my social media connections and restricting my phone use. Because of this I prefer meeting in person rather than having digital conversations, although COVID is preventing that right now. I don't know where everyone lives but telephone conference discussions on something like zoom would be more feasible. But the online forums could work too although I don't want to be tied to it too much, please keep in mind I prefer organic communication. Thanks if you read all that, I tried to make that brief while elaborating enough.
