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About Matthew Stelzner
I grew up in suburban central New York, in a very secular family, the son of a Neuroscientist. I did not have a very religious upbringing, and by the time I went to college I was, at best, agnostic. I applied and was accepted to Colgate University as a Biology major, but by the end of my four years there, had converted to being a Religion major. What happened during those four years was complex, but the key thing was that I had several powerful spiritual experiences, and I awakened to a new view of the cosmos and my place in it. This personal spiritual awakening presented some major problems, however, for although my experiences were profound, they were happening in a context of a secular family, a secular society, and a disenchanted cultural cosmology.
Eleven years ago, in the fall of 1993, I was at a personal low point, a dark night of the soul. I felt completely lost, adrift at sea. I had recently completed college, but I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. It was in this darkness that I found a book by Stanislav Grof entitled “The Holotropic Mind.” It was in this book that I first read the term “Transpersonal Psychology,” and this was the first time I had read of a field of study where modern western science was coming together with spirituality and religion. This was the solution to my inner split: a field of study that emerged out of western scientific culture, but honored and integrated all forms of mystical awareness.
I immediately began to do some research to find a graduate school where Transpersonal Psychology was being taught. I applied to several, but was ultimately accepted to, and decided to attend, California Institute of Integral Studies. I enrolled in their Integral Counseling Psychology MA program, not really sure if I wanted to be a therapist, but very happy to be taking classes at an Institute that honored all of the parts of my being. I was not really aware that Stan Grof was teaching at CIIS when I enrolled, but I was delighted to be able to take a class he was offering my second semester there. The course was titled “Psyche and Cosmos,” and was being cotaught with Richard Tarnas. This was a course that explored the intersection between Transpersonal Psychology and Western Archetypal Astrology.
I had been a little curious about astrology prior to this class, but I certainly didn’t have a passion for it. I was mainly interested in having the experience of Grof’s teaching, but by the end of the first day of class I knew that I had found much more than I had bargained for. Here were two grounded brilliant men speaking with confidence and clarity about the art of astrology. They were sharing extremely compelling evidence that astrology not only worked, but worked with a degree of precision and artistic regularity beyond anything I could have ever imagined. I had the sense that the class marked a historic event: the first time in centuries that astrology was being taught with seriousness and sophistication in an accredited graduate institution. I still feel that it was an incredible flooding of grace for me to have participated in this course, and I will be forever grateful to the forces at work that guided me there in January of 1995.
I was particularly struck by the power of Rick Tarnas’ teaching. He had a way of organizing and presenting the evidence for astrology that was simple and clear. He obviously was a major innovator in the field, and had devoted over 20 years to a deep personal engagement with the techniques and practice of astrology. Like other great innovators, he had studied the basics of the field and then had made them his own. Tarnas had a way of seeing through the complexities of astrology and was able to focus in on the most compelling and clear evidence for its validity.
It was immediately clear to me that astrology was going to be a major part of my life, and I began to passionately explore it. I took every astrology class that Tarnas offered and also studied with other astrologers. I read every astrology text I was drawn to, and listened to tapes of many famous astrologers. But in the end, I returned to the simple clarity of Tarnas’ approach. My experience with many other astrologers was that they were teaching in an overly complex way. Tarnas kept it simple; through his background in archetypal psychology, he saw archetypes first, and symbols second. He saw astrology as primarily about the cultivation of one’s “archetypal eye” and not about the mastery of obtuse medieval astrological techniques. He saw astrology as a process of “learning to honor the gods,” and had moved beyond a “human-centered” astrology to a fully Transpersonal astrology. Instead of teaching astrology primarily as a tool for understanding human beings, Tarnas taught astrology more as a devotional spiritual practice, where one strives to understand the nature and will of the divine, and through this understanding better participate in the cocreative dance of the cosmos.
During that first class with Grof and Tarnas I first heard about the technique Stan and Christina Grof developed called Holotropic Breathwork. A deep breathing technique which is combined with powerful evocative music and focused bodywork, Holotropic Breathwork is a practice designed to cultivate non-ordinary states of consciousness in participants. Each person will have a different experience of the breathwork: some people have powerful somatic experiences, others have powerful experiences related to their biographies, some have experiences related to birth, and still others have one of the many spiritual experiences cataloged by the field of Transpersonal Psychology.
When Stan described the breathwork I was immediately attracted to experiencing it, and I was able to attend my first workshop within that year. My first experience was extremely profound (a description of this experience can be found on this site), and like with my experience of the astrology class, I immediately knew that Holotropic Breathwork would be a major part of my life. I was able to attend several more workshops, and ultimately enrolled in Grof’s training program for facilitators in the spring of 1996.
And thus I found both of my great passions in one very special year. Since that year I have been extremely fortunate to be able to pursue these two passions to a degree beyond anything that I might have dreamed possible. I started to do astrological consultations professionally in February 1997, and was certified a facilitator of the breathwork in May of 1998. In August of 1998 my two passions came together in a wonderful way, as I was able to attend a Grof training module in the role of resident astrologer, and was able to give readings to participants in the breathwork training.
Since 1998 I have been an Integral member of the Grof Training staff, working both as an astrologer and a trainer. I am very grateful not only to Stan Grof for allowing me to be a part of the training, but also especially grateful to my good friends Tav and Cary Sparks, who are currently running the training, and who have nurtured and encouraged me in this role. In 2001 I was invited to teach a six-day Grof Training module in Australia which I called “The Power of Archetype.” This module explored the ways astrology can be seen as a spiritual discipline, and also explored the ways astrology and breathwork support and amplify each other. I have been fortunate to teach this module two more times, once in Argentina, and more recently here in the United States. I love teaching, and have found that I have grown most, as both an astrologer and a facilitator of the breathwork, through my teaching.
Since 1998 I have also been pursuing a PhD at CIIS in the Philosophy Cosmology and Consciousness (PCC) program. I have been fortunate to continue to study closely with Rick Tarnas, and I will be writing a dissertation under his guidance. My intended dissertation topic is an exploration of the evolution of astrology in the 20th century. I will look at how astrology’s development paralleled the development of the field of western psychology, with astrology first integrating the work of Freud, and then later Jung, the Humanistic and Existential psychology movements, and now with the work of Grof, Tarnas, and others, fully integrating the field of Transpersonal Psychology. I am currently in that dreaded category “A.B.D.,” “All But Dissertation,” but I hope with the publication of Tarnas’ astrological opus “Cosmos and Psyche” next year, that I will be inspired to push on through to graduation.
I feel that the development of this website marks an important moment in my career. It is my hope that this site will be a creative outlet, and that I will be inspired to write essays exploring this very exciting interface between astrology and Transpersonal Psychology.
© 2003
Matthew Stelzner. All rights reserved.
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