Speaking of Avatar^®: In Dialogue with Ancient Spiritual Traditions

In 1990, I became involved with a modern mind technology by the name of "Avatar". Harry Palmer, (MA, educational psychology), the originator, began training people using the Avatar techniques in 1987. Since that time over 50,000 students from 55 countries around the world have taken the course. It's been translated into 14 languages. Avatar's worldwide popularity is one testimony to the notion that the course has a significant message for anyone interested in spiritual emergence and human evolution, regardless of cultural heritage. People are often drawn to the training intuitively-- it has the feel of what we are longing for, reaching out for, in order to fully embody the creativity and lightness we, as humans, have at our core.

Certainly, Avatar is the most exciting and gentle combination of ancient philosophy and Western science I know about. The training takes about 90 hours. It is usually given during 9 consecutive days. Like many Eastern techniques of yoga and meditation, the Avatar techniques take people into a direct and deeply centered experience of themselves as Source, at one with all that is, profoundly compassionate and powerfully creative. The techniques include work with oneself alone, one-to-one with a facilitator, and in dyads with fellow students. The focus of the training is to use the experience of oneself as Source to manage your thoughts-- vitalizing thoughts which open you to the experiences you want in life and detaching yourself from beliefs which lead to experiences you prefer not to have.

Comparing Avatar to Eastern Traditions

Results of Avatar Training

On a down to earth level, as well as the spiritual gains, students use their new facility to be at Source to heal themselves of disease (e.g. environmental illness, cancer, ulcers, etc.); to accelerate healing of burns, sprains, viruses; to go beyond compulsive behaviors (over-eating, gambling, smoking, etc.); to release themselves from obsessions (fantasies, too much thinking, too much feeling, etc.); and facilitate well-being and abundance. Graduates of the course also like to use their creative abilities in serving others. It is possible to create for someone else - better health, better relationships, better financial status, more personal power. Some Avatar graduates are developing ways to work with mass consciousness toward the goal of empowerment for all people, all species, including our dear Earth.

As we know from Eastern esoteric writing, the freer we are from attachments and identities the more power we have in effecting positive change in our environment, locally and globally. Avatar is a powerful tool toward that end.

My Story

Purification sweatlodges kept me strong during the writing of my dissertation and publishing two books, A Sourcebook for Helping People in Spiritual Emergency (1988) and The Call of Spiritual Emergency (1990). Following the Lakota tradition, I would pray to Grandmother, the Earth, and Grandfather, the Creator, as well as the four directions. As I became more attuned to this path, I came to realize that in a certain sense each one of us is Grandmother and Grandfather. Each person, in truth, is a part of these vast energies and can approach life from that identity as Sustainer of all things or Creator of all things. In the purification lodge, barely dressed, sitting on the earth, surrendered to the heat, watching the rocks in the dark, it was easy to feel myself as an extension of Grandmother, the earth herself. The next step was to realize that I was also the Creator. Avatar offered this opportunity.

After I finished the first Avatar training I used my new skills in belief management to move more dynamically toward what I wanted: health, increased flexibility, smooth relationships, peacefulness, joy, a transparency of self unlimited by any particular identity, an increased facility as a psychotherapist, parent, and friend.

Formerly, except for brief periods of time which I called "Grace", meditation had never given me full self-confidence in this kind of creative skill. Meditation, purification rituals, prayer had guided me toward the creative possiblity but I found myself always returning for guidance to a better "teacher." I had gotten stuck in putting Source outside myself on a guru, a spiritual teacher, a symbol of God, even a psychotherapist.

The only thing that had come close to the tools of Avatar in belief management was practicing affirmations religiously. But, the tools I was given to use with affirmations never took care of the subconscious negative desires which fit, hand in glove, with my positive statements and undermined the power of the affirmations. Avatar tools take care of all of it.

Did it stick? After I left the workshop high, was I still able to create what I wanted? Yes. Six years later I can say I have created a life which is my dream life. I know I am making a worthwhile contribution to others. I can reach a sense of profound peacefulness when I want to and I have contributed to others being more at peace with themselves and others. My intuitive skills are quite well integrated with my thinking, planning and organizing skills. Action is balanced with reflection and quiet.

My experience is that Avatar is the end of being stuck on looking for Source outside yourself. It's the end of victim, of feeling helplessly at the effect of someone or something. It's the end of duality. You realize you are one with the creative force, the Creator. You realize you create an openness to some experiences and a resistance to others from your beliefs. You are responsible for your life. You no longer blame anyone, including yourself. You choose to consciously manage your beliefs, opening to having what you want. The walls come tumbling down, often in a torrent of giggles, and you find yourself dallying in One Mind, the place where we are all One.

Either/Or or Both/And

It's not that Avatar is guaranteed to satisfy all your spiritual longings. Avatar imparts skills for you to satisfy spiritual longings. And, as all the traditions (Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Native American, Muslim) say it, ultimately, YOU are the one that does it.

After Avatar you may decide to continue on in your spiritual community of choice. I did. Why? Because I like being with those people once or twice a week. It feels good. Why do I continue going to sweatlodges? It's a time I can hear myself very clearly so I know what I want to create. I like being with the people, too. Now I participate from a new motivation. I do not have the sense of neediness that comes from feeling victim to life or the desire to please an outer authority. I simply like the feeling of being part of the greater community.

In the Name of God

It is this feeling, referred to in the Vedas thousands of years ago, which satisfies spiritual longing. It is the living truth inside all religions. It can be found between the lines and symbol systems in all of the scriptures of all major religions. Avatar brings us back to this essence without creating a symbol system which can stand in place of the living feeling.

How often we get caught up in membership, dues, obligatory exercises, symbols, names, and beliefs and lose the feeling of the essence. To what result?

Allow me to quote Palmer,

"Beliefs have been enthroned. In the name of "he who holds the true belief," man has invented a catalog of brutalities and cruelties that tax the imagination: social ostracism, slavery, genocide, world war....Beliefs about country, God and economic security have provided, and continue to provide, the justification for co-operative self-destruction that has finally brought mankind to the brink of ecological suicide."

Certainly, it is time for each of us to manage our sacred beliefs and return to Source, the feeling of the essence and the power to create. This looks to me like one way to end our suffering and our seeking and deliver us to the peace we long for in our world.

Emma Bragdon, Ph.D. has been facilitating Avatar ® internationally since 1990.

She can be contacted through her home office in Vermont: 1-802-457-4915 or by email: ebragdon@aol.com