How Deepening Understanding of the Other, Deepens Understanding of the Self
Developed and Facilitated by: Nader Shabahangi, PhD
Date: Saturday, 10/03/2020
Time: 10am-1pm; via Zoom
Cost: $35 General/Professional; $20 Student/Elder
* We understand that COVID-19 has created economic stress for many, so if you are experiencing economic hardship due to COVID-19, the requested fee for webinars in this series is $10 (though no one will be turned away due to lack of funds-please contact Michelle for assistance at events@ehinstitute.org).
Series Discount Available: Attend a workshop in this series and we will send you a code for $7.50 off your next series workshop registration.
How do we learn to live in these times? How do we prioritize in our life during such a period of upheaval? Our world is undergoing so much change on a daily basis, so many people on earth are suffering, live in poverty, are dying due to the effects of climate change, of hunger, of disease. Where do we turn for awareness so we can stop and think, perhaps avert the calamity, perhaps an extinction we are about to face? We need a different way of understanding ourselves. We need a different perception of how we can live together on this planet.
To find such a way, we turn to those who have always been – at least until recently – the shepherds of human civilizations: our wise elders and thinkers. To stop the destructive path of polarization, of us versus them, we shift into a fundamentally different attitude to life and living. This attitude follows ancient wisdom that knows that everything is connected and united. This wisdom emphasizes that as we do to our outer nature, we also do to our inner nature. It believes that if we do harm to what lives outside of us, we also harm what lives inside of us.
Old wisdom traditions, and now also Quantum Theories, point to the observer participating in the observed, being the observed. What disturbs me about others who have a different perspective from me thus also points to something inside me - else I could not 'see' it. This fundamental shift in attitude looks at all that manifests as being part of a whole. We cannot discard certain parts of life thinking we do not desire them, while we preference other parts as acceptable. We move beyond like and dislike, we move beyond good and evil. With such a change in attitude, we look differently at what disturbs, irritates, and angers us in others. Rather than thinking that the other is wrong, we look at the other as teacher. As Carl Jung pointed out, everything that irritates us can lead to a deeper self-understanding. The more we understand, the more we become truly who we are. We are proposing that it is in accepting our disturbances and irritations, we become whole. As whole beings, we can create an opportunity to live in harmony with each other and with mother Earth.
In this webinar, we will engage in concrete exercises that allow us to feel into the essence of the 'other's' position and viewpoint. This will allow us to not only 'see' the 'other' but also to deepen our own self-understanding. This way we can experience as much our unity as our differences. All is one; one is all.
Our Online Workshops Include Experiential Work!
The October 3rd workshop will be both didactic and experiential utilizing Zoom Meeting and Zoom Breakout Rooms.
This event is designed for both the general public and for licensed or pre-licensed professionals in the therapeutic fields, as well as master's and graduate students in therapeutic programs. Psychologists, MFTs, social workers, counselors, psychiatrists, nurse practitioners, doctors and interested persons are all encouraged to attend!
Requested Requirements
A Zoom Account with Zoom Desktop Client or Mobile App are needed. Due to the format of this particular event these are both needed to be assigned to a breakout room to engage in the experiential exercise.
Our Presenter
Nader R. Shabahangi, Ph.D., RCFE, received his doctorate from Stanford University and is a licensed psychotherapist. His multicultural background has made him an advocate for different marginalized groups of society throughout his adult life. In the 1980's he worked with abused children and teenagers and led anticipatory bereavement groups for Coming Home Hospice. In 1992 he founded the non-profit organization Pacific Institute with the purpose of training psychotherapists in a multicultural, humanistic approach to counseling and to provide affordable therapy services to the many diverse groups living in San Francisco.
In 1994, noticing the often inhumane treatment of the elderly living in institutions, he started to develop an innovative Gerontological Wellness Program in order to provide emotional support and mental health care services for the elderly. In 1997, together with his two brothers, Nader opened a residential care home for the elderly in San Francisco called Hayes Valley Care, where he could, along with the Pacific Institute Internship team, implement the Gerontological Wellness Program. He continues this work in both the Elder Ashram Community in Oakland, as well as leading workshops and training in eldership through the Eldership Academy.
