Judith Miller (USA)
Biography:
Judith Miller Ph.D., a professor of developmental psychology at Columbia University, has spent her life and career bridging the two worlds of mainstream psychology and Western spirituality. As part of her teaching responsibilities over the years, Judith has provided clinical supervision to hundreds of psychotherapists and graduate psychology students. She has consistently received the “Outstanding Teacher” award at Columbia in response to her course “Spiritual Development Across the Lifespan.”
In the last decade, Judith has conducted her own clinical research with several hundred psychotic individuals residing at public mental health residential facilities. Results have shown that patients dramatically improve when they are assisted in integrating the spiritual meaning of their hallucinations and delusions. These findings have enabled her to provide training to therapists employed at numerous community non-profit psychiatric facilities across the U.S.
More than twenty years ago, Judith began to have spontaneous mystical experiences that ultimately led to experiences of Christ Consciousness. There was nothing in her background that prepared her for these experiences: she was a traditionally trained psychologist working clinically with persons diagnosed psychotic and schizophrenic, an agnostic, and most significant: she was a Jew. A search for an explanation led to her discovery of the Western Mystical Path, and its successful application not only to her own process, but also to those of her clients. Since that time, she has been personally exploring and professionally investigating spiritual consciousness, as well as teaching and clinically working with many hundreds of people who travel a spiritual path. For the last eight years, she and Dr.Ingo Jahrsetz have been conducting Holotropic Breathwork retreats, working with children and grandchildren of Nazis, and Jews who continue to suffer guilt, shame, and rage some sixty years after the Holocaust of World War II.
Judith’s book Direct Connection: Transformation of Consciousness, which documents her own spiritual path of discovery, won a finalist award in the 2001 Independent Publisher Book Awards. Additionally, in the book Barefoot on Holy Ground: Twelve Lessons in Spiritual Craftsmanship, Judith was on a list of 12 modern-day “disciples” who exemplify the ripening of spiritual inquiry in the 21st century.
Workshop: A SPIRITUAL HOMECOMING THROUGH AUSCHWITZ
Judith Miller tells of an uncommon journey that led her to discover and ultimately come home to her Judeo-Christian spiritual roots. Her first trip to Auschwitz occurred on the day that the Berlin Wall came down. Her next trip years later, was with Ingo Jahrsetz and a group of twelve other Germans. Together, Ingo and Judith have been working since then to heal descendants of Nazis of the shame and guilt they have felt around the role their relatives and country played in the Holocaust some sixty years ago.
Those of us born into the Judeo-Christian tradition must face the dualities of good and evil, of light and darkness that live in the depths of our consciousness and in our cultural roots. We can only make contact with inner light after we face and go through our individual and collective shadow. Then and only then will we be able to forgive those who have hurt us, feel unconditional love for each other, and break down existing barriers that keeps us separated and in conflict with so many opposing groups today.
This presentation will focus on the relevance of Christ Consciousness for what is happening in the world today.