Fear and Primordial Trust

Monika Renz is a psychotherapist, music therapist, and spiritual caregiver. She leads the psycho-oncology unit at a clinic of oncology/hematology, Cantonal Hospital of St. Gallen, Switzerland. She is the author of several books and her research focuses on dying, spirituality, forgiveness and fear.

"Monika Renz’s work is at the forefront of those thinkers who are outlining a new concept of humankind, a concept that is based on movement and on a connection with the cosmos while accounting for what makes us special as human beings. Her inspiration and certainty are rooted in a field that might be said to constitute "pure," unmistakable movement: music. Music can be grasped, yet not touched. Music, moreover, is perhaps the most recognized reality, which, although it is related to material structures, is not itself material. Experiences of music and music therapy form the basis for Dr Renz’s search for a new concept of the human being, a concept of our becoming, suffering, and healing. This basis has rested on experiences of music since antiquity. It is also highly relevant for our eventful times, which are characterized by upheaval and by a departure to both a new unity of the world and the associated dimension of our responsibility as humans and that of society."Prof. Dr. med. Heinz Stefan Herzka, Zurich"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," Franklin D. Roosevelt observed in his inaugural speech as the 32nd President of the United States of America in 1933 in the midst of the Great Depression. What Roosevelt articulated as a political issue is also a fateful theme of being in the world, as Monika Renz impressively explains in her latest book Fear and Primordial Trust. Her approach, which is grounded in developmental psychology and in spirituality, assumes that a state exists before and beyond fear. She understands this condition as being connected with the One, the Whole — in religious terms, with God. And yet, she is not concerned with dogmatic reflection, but with experience, which each of us can make. Starting from being contained in the Whole, human development leads to limitations and separateness of our every-day consiousness, in which we live because we are an "I." In addition to primordial trust, in which we originate, we experience primordial fear already at an early age in becoming an ego. We take this fear with us, along with its problematic consequences, as we move through life, bearing our load. Yet development leads, if permitted, to maturation processes beyond life-determining fear, in perfect agreement with Richard Rohr’s words: "It is not necessary to be perfect but to be connected." By this, he means being connected to our roots in the Whole, in God. Dr Renz illustrates her reflections with examples and experiences from day-to-day hospital life. This book is a must-read for anyone seeking to better understand the phenomenon of fear."Prof. Dr. theol. Paul M. Zulehner, Vienna‘A hugely significant contribution to our understanding of psychospiritual development in terms of the dynamics of fear and trust and the process of maturation through suffering and ultimately the dying process. Just as the ego unfolds and differentiates itself from the nondual ground or whole, so we have an inherent longing to reunite with and refold into this same Divine Unity - an illuminating read at many levels.'David Lorimer, Programme Director, Editor, Paradigm Explorer

• AcknowledgmentsTable of contentsList of figures and tablesIntroductionChapter 1 1.1 Humankind, an Explosive Concept1.2 Non-Dual Existence: Participating in the Whole1.3 Ego-bound Existence: Facing the World as Who We Are1.4 … and in between Lies a Formative Transition1.5. Liminal Sphere and Liminal Experiences1.6. We are Beings of Longing: Thinking in Terms of Psychic Layers1.7. Music and Music Therapy: Approaching the Deepest Psychic Layers1.8. Mirjam: "I don’t want to live—I don’t want to die—I want to be in paradise"1.9. "Participation in the Whole" and a Model of Conscious Realization (Overview 1)Chapter 2Our Beginning: Non-Dual, Unitary Reality (A Completely Different Way of Being)2.1. "Your core has existed since time immemorial"2.2. Everything is Inside and Accepted Unconditionally2.3. Original Wholeness: Primordial Order Instead of ChaosChapter 3On the Threshold (Stage A of Conscious Development during Transition)3.1. Initiating the Dynamics3.2. Vanishing Non-Duality3.3. Mr Fehr : «I looked across the threshold—and many of my fears have since gone"3.4. Psychic Images and Symbols of Non-Dualism, its Disappearance and the Dynamics of Roundness3.5. Images of God for Non-Dualism and the Dynamics of Roundness3.6. Experiences of Music on the Threshold: Beyond Time and Individuality3.7. Primordial Trust, Primordial Intuitions of Happiness3.8. We are Born with the Gifts of Wholeness3.9. Bettina (1): Breaking through into Confidence3.10 We do not Always Manage to Bidding Farewell to Non-DualismChapter 4Wholesome Containment (Stage B of Conscious Development in Transition)4.1. Oscillating between the Two Modes of Being4.2. Primordial Shelteredness: Where Dependence on the Environment is not yet felt4.3. Experiencing Wholesome Containment through Music4.4. Older than all Power Problems: Wholeness as Nurturing Motherly Envelopment 4.5. The Masculine within the Feminine: A Pictorial Analogy4.6. Goddess and Son, Grandmother and Undefiled Devil4.7. Announcing Sheltered Containment: Images of God4.8. Primordial Trust, the Early Form of Being Loved, and Psychic Images/Symbols4.9. Dying and Becoming: Deliverance from Evil by Returning to Good Motherliness4.10. Bettina (2): "I am lying on the Great Mother’s Love"4.11. "Called into Life"Chapter 5Ambivalent Containment (Stage C of Conscious Development during Transition)5.1. Unpleasantness versus Pleasantness5.2. How old is Fear?5.3. "Falling into "Unshelteredness" and the First Sense of Threat: The Two Faces of Primordial Fear5.4. Awakening Under the Sign of Curiosity or Fear?5.5. The Ambivalent Whole and The Overshadowed Feminine5.6. The Endangered Ego and Masculinity: Threatened Self-Esteem5.7. Atmosphere and "Music" Trigger Fear5.8. Experiences of Music: Fullness of Sound, Absence of Sound, Chaos5.9. What does Earliest Distress Feel like?5.10. Understanding the Phenomenon of Primordial Fear5.11. Inner Images and Symbols of Primordial Fear5.12. Later-Recurring Primordial Fear: Experiences and Victims of Violence5.13. Realistic Ambivalence versus Internalized Evil5.14. The Fascination of Power and Violence and its Opposite: Shame5.15. Primary Sense of Guilt and Guilt as a Coping Pattern5.16. Images of God: The Primordial Fear of God as Culture-Specific Imprinting5.17. From Paradise to Fall: A Myth or More?5.18. First Splittings: Inner Images and Symbols5.19. Bettina (3): The fire in the Dragon’s Mouth and its Impressive EyesChapter 6Entering the Ego: Primordial Trust and Primordial Fear Move into the Background (Level D of Conscious Development During Transition)6.1. The Ego Emerges: From the Whole to the Concrete6.2. Ego-formation between Detachment and Rapprochement6.3. Music-based Experience of Entering the Ego: Rhythm and Melody6.4. Childhood between Two Worlds6.5. Childhood between Two Fears6.6. The Birth of Culture6.7. Trust or Fear: Coping Patterns6.8. Inner Images for Entering the Ego; Symbols of the Primordial Force of Emergence6.9. The Symbol of the Snake6.10. Witch and Devil: Inner Images of the Cursed Primordial Forces in the Background6.11. Images of God from Coming into the Ego: On this Side of Frightening Numinosity6.12. The Individual Remains Fatefully Connected to the Whole6.13. Abraham: Becoming an Ego against a Life-Affirming BackgroundChapter 7Post-transition: The Ego and the Unconscious in the Dual World7.1. Ego and Distress-ego: Perspective, Music, Symbols7.2. Being our Own Lord and Master—Alienation7.3. Types of Fear7.4. Progressive and Regressive Forces7.5. Coping Patterns become Normal7.6. The Whole: A God who either Leads us to Self-Responsibility or is Dead—Images of God7.7. The Atmospherically Overshadowed7.8. The Topography of the Unconscious—Psychic Layers7.9. Working with the Model: Therapists, Pastors, Doctors, Nurses7.10. Coping Patterns as an Impasse7.11. Behind all Taboos Lies a Central Taboo: The Whole and its ImmediacyChapter 8From Becoming an Ego to Becoming Whole (Selectively Integrating the Wholly Other into this World)8.1. The Suffering Ego Once Again Turns to the Whole8.2. Primordial Fear is Relativized: The New Connection to the Whole8.3. Conscious Realization as Process: Finding Words and Speech via Music, Symptom, and Symbol8.4. Images of God in Suffering: The Missing, Afflicting, and Approaching God8.5. The Virgin: A Symbol of Openness toward the Whole8.6. Symbolic Announcements of the Future8.7. Experiencing Music under the Sign of Integration8.8. New Spirit in Old Reality: In the Aftermath of Near-Death, Illness, or Liminal Experience8.9. The Question of Meaning: Development in Wholeness?Chapter 9The Question about the Goal9.1. The Future—Beyond Fear9.2. The Non-Dual and Personal God: A New Spirituality9.3. Covenant and Relatedness—Symbols9.4. Eschatological Dreams