Spiritual Sexual Shamanic Podcast · International School of Temple Arts

What is the Dark... Really?: Laura Deva

·52 min·3 clips

Laura says preparing to die means remembering your formlessness before physical death.

1. Spiritual Sexual Shamanic Podcast episode 'What is the Dark... Really?: Laura Deva' centers on Laura Deva's explanation of the dark, the void, and non-dual awareness. 2. Simon Marvell hosts Laura Deva, an ISTA faculty member and psychologist in Geneva, and her role matters because she speaks from both clinical work and non-dual teaching. 3. The episode asks what 'the dark' means when people use it as a spiritual term, and Laura's answer is that it points to oneness, not simple darkness. 4. Laura separates personality, soul, and the monad, saying personality lives in psychology and 'my story' while soul work opens archetypal patterns. 5. She says people in her office often cry after five minutes because they are ashamed of stories they have never told anyone. 6. Laura describes transpersonal psychology as the moment when a person realizes 'my story' is universal rather than private. 7. She links that shift to early development, saying a baby begins without borders, then learns individuation, boundaries, and needs. 8. Laura says the ego is not a problem to eliminate, because 'primary narcissism' helps a person wake, shower, eat, and survive. 9. She contrasts healthy individuation with psychosis, saying psychotic patients she saw in a psychiatric hospital lacked a sense of boundary. 10. Laura calls the monad, the dark, and the void interchangeable terms for the source from which all things are born and to which all things return. 11. She describes the dark room retreat as a place where eyes open or closed feel the same after several days. 12. Laura says her body started to feel more sensuous in the dark room because the brain appeared to intensify sensation when visual reference disappeared. 13. She recounts a vision of purple forms, a dark ocean, black icebergs, and a woven fabric moving toward the gaze of consciousness. 14. Laura uses that image to explain why presence can remain unshaken while forms and emotions move around it. 15. She says the dark can mean many things, so Janine Marie uses the term 'primordial dark' to avoid confusion with light-versus-shadow language. 16. Laura distinguishes the primordial dark from evil or satanism, saying shadow is not automatically malicious and density is not the same as bad intent. 17. Simon asks whether this can be felt rather than merely understood, and Laura says it feels like the self disappears. 18. Laura says the non-dual state can be terrifying for people who fear losing control, but it can also feel like a homecoming for people who long to disappear from the world. 19. The conversation is conversational and reflective, with Simon asking clarifying questions and Laura answering through metaphor, clinical examples, and personal retreat experience. 20. Listeners drawn to non-duality, tantra, and contemplative practice may want this episode, while listeners wanting a simple psychological explanation may skip it.

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