If you can’t keep a secret, don’t read this material. It is for you and it is no one else’s business. The journey of self-discovery and self-mastery is the path of self-knowledge. I want you to understand where I am coming from and where we are going in this virtual adventure. An advanced teacher ought to be able to state what they believe in one sentence. The above sentence is the formula for the therapy that I practice and teach. If you understand and practice what this sentence means, you will realize your wholeness and contentment. You may have symptoms of some kind, which to you may seem irrational, frightening, irritating, disabling or unfair, but you will realize that they are the doorway to your health and to your innermost treasures and unlimited potentials. You will realize your sanity, power, kindness and success as you understand, experience and practice the meaning of this simple but profound formula. This formula represents a paradoxical shock therapy, a radical application of the secret knowledge of the ages, designed to shock us out of the hypnotic, hidden, negative, belief systems which control and hamper our communication, our relationships, our health and our finances. If you write this off as blasphemy or grandiosity, you may continue to live with superiority/inferiority opposites. This formula has no opposite because it is true of everyone. This entire book challenges us to wrestle with the meaning of this one simple formula.

Spiritual Psychotherapy assumes that you are infinite Imagination. Infinite imagination is another word for spirit, soul or consciousness. You have thoughts, you have feelings, you have physical sensations, but you are infinite imagination; you are a powerful spiritual being, a divine co-creator with God. Everything that you see, feel, taste, smell and hear is a finite product of infinite imagination. Imagination is the subject/cause; our experiences are the finite object/effect, result or product of imagination. Everything that you see and experience is the product of imagination. You may have forgotten that imagination is the most powerful force in the universe, and that it is what you are. Infinity-forgetting and identity-confusion is what creates finite symptoms. Symptoms and their accompanying pain are messengers of mis-used imagination and forgetful identity ignorance.

Rumi

I could try to tease you along to a conclusion, but I will begin with my conclusion so that you can argue more deliberately and consciously with yourself as you read along. My major hypothesis is that our symptoms and pains are the chief doorway through which we are invited to penetrate the ignorance, inhibitions and fears which block out the awareness of our infinite imagination, our potentiality, and our return to reality. My second hypothesis and conclusion is that our symptoms are transformed through shocking realizations about the world and about our infinite nature such as "It’s All God," or "Your worst pain is your best healing" or "I am an Infinite Being in a finite body." Then what? You "chop wood and carry water" with grace and gratitude. You love all that is.

Infinity Theory is a non-theory theory which is activated by the process of paradoxical shock therapy. This bio-psycho-spiritual process is a direct awakening experience to our infinite/finite nature. Our biological/psychological/social symptoms and problems are signals of, and doors to, our infinite imagination and potentiality. Our suffering is due to the unconscious mis-use of infinite imagination. Responsibility for this mis-use offers us the power of transforming the symptom into its true meaning. Paradox is the shocking nature of reality: "God became finite that we might become infinite" is the most crucial paradox.

In a time when there is much talk about a theory of everything, I bring my own background of Christianity and transpersonal psychology into a focus here about the paradoxical nature of context. Whether you call Infinity Theory a cosmology, a philosophy, or a paradigm, context is important. Context is all of the operating assumptions and imbedded paradoxical realities within which our perception and behavior occur. Context is another word for ontology, epistemology, or axioms. Context is the lawful framework within which knowledge and experience occur. Context is the setting and the rules of the game. Context is the stage on which this drama unfolds. Context is deceiving due to the paradox of language itself. The speaker and the listener are one, but at the same time, two. This paradoxical awareness is what awakens and frees us.

I have boldly stated the context for Paradoxical Shock Therapy in these words:

The unholy trinity of mis-beliefs (the belief in separation, the belief in lack and the belief in entrapment) are a simplification of the irrational beliefs posited by other researchers and systems. These beliefs seem "rational" to the mind and are therefore more subtle to confront and transcend, and cannot be transformed without paradoxical shocking awareness. Since the human imagination is infinite, and since God is both immanent to and transcendent of human belief systems, we are shocked into the realization that all of our symptomatic suffering is a gift designed for our awakening. "Adversity is an introduction to ourselves," said one of the newscasters during the recent terrorist experience in New York and Washington.

Infinity Theory takes the position that our symptoms and stresses are due to a psychic barrier of ignorance and misjudgments (beliefs) that we have created around our assumed finite self-identity The condition behind these symptoms cannot be satisfactorily diagnosed or treated without a deepening awareness and experience of our infinite imagination and potentiality.

The term "symptoms" as used in this book means that the ignorance of infinity is being signaled in the information system of the body/mind/soul/spirit of the individual, couple, family, group, nation and society. Symptom Decoding and Transformation does not mean that a person should not consider the use of appropriate finite means to address immediate practical ways to deal with the physical manifestation of the inner condition. However, since the symptom was created by the infinite imagination, it will find another voice and another channel to signal the essential discrepancy between the Real and the false. If we only treat the symptom, and not its infinite cause, it will tend to be persistent or to return in another often more dramatic form. If you have a broken leg, you get it fixed, but you also look for any hidden message that you may be attracting some kind of accident-proneness and a demand for self-analysis and self-awareness. You are more than just a body-mind, you are consciousness itself. Consciousness itself always finds ways to signal itself to the body and the mind through what we call symptoms.

Consciousness flows like a river between the two banks of desire for pleasure and the resistance to pain. All behavior is driven by that unconscious flow until we awaken to the infinite context and meaning of that flow. Painful symptoms are the chief way in which this opportunity for awakening occurs.