Swedenborg & IFS with Bob Falconer, Chelsea Odhner, and Jonathan Rose
Swedenborg & IFS with Bob Falconer, Chelsea Odhner, and Jonathan Rose
In this conversation, John Clarke brings together a panel of colleagues and co-authors to dive into their new book, “Opening the Inner World”. Together, they explore where Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy meets the spiritual insights of Emanuel Swedenborg. The panel shares their own journeys, the transformative impact of IFS, and how Swedenborg’s teachings on the inner self and divine inflow can deepen our understanding of trauma and healing. They also discuss the nature of consciousness, the power of inner dialogue, and the role of spirit in our lives- highlighting how self-awareness and a connection to the divine can open the door to profound healing and growth.
🌿 Key takeaways:
Uncover how blending IFS and Swedenborg’s teachings can open new pathways to deep emotional and spiritual healing.
See trauma through a new lens by understanding it as part of a larger spiritual experience, not just a psychological wound.
Experience a fresh perspective on how your spiritual and physical selves are constantly interacting and shaping your life.
Recognize how the illusion of separation keeps us stuck — and how reconnecting with your true self (and helping your clients do the same) brings lasting change.
📕Order your copy of “Opening the Inner World”
Stay in touch with our guests below:
🗣️ Chelsea Rose Odhner
A lifelong student of Swedenborg’s teachings, Chelsea Rose Odhner has extensive professional experience synthesizing Swedenborg’s teachings into content for a global audience. Combined with her work as a bodyworker, and an IFS practitioner and coach, Chelsea adds a unique and informed perspective to integrating IFS therapy with the system of the spiritual world that Swedenborg describes.
🗣️ Robert Falconer
A dedicated therapist and teacher of the IFS model, Robert Falconer has contributed significantly to the field through his research and writings. His work focuses on how our minds are not just multiple, but also porous. He brings this lens to IFS, especially in the context of trauma and spiritual experiences.
🗣️Jonathan Rose
A scholar of Emanuel Swedenborg and Neo-Latin translator, Jonathan Rose has published extensively on Swedenborg’s theological and philosophical ideas. He serves as the Series Editor for the New Century Edition of Emanuel Swedenborg’s Theological Works. His expertise brings a deep spiritual dimension to the book, offering readers insights into concepts in Swedenborg’s spirituality that resonate with IFS.
@chelsea.odhner
@locusofhealing
https://robertfalconer.us/
@swedenborgfoundation
https://swedenborg.com/
🧰 Resources & Offerings
🔓 FREE IFS Resource Library: Download here
🧾 Jane Practice Software: 1-month grace period with code JOHN or visit meet.jane.app/john-clarke-ambassador
🌱 Grounding Well: Get 10% off with code GWJOHNCLARKE – Visit Grounding Well
🧘♂️ Dharma Dr.: 10% off with code JOHN – Visit Dharma Dr.
🌐 Connect with John: www.johnclarketherapy.com
🔗 Follow John Clark
Instagram: @johnclarktherapy
TikTok: @johnclarktherapy
YouTube: @johnclarktherapy
Apply to work 1:1: JohnClarkTherapy.com
Transcript
John Clarke (00:33)
All right, excited to welcome my panel of guests for today. I've got all three authors of the up and coming book, Opening the Inner World, Spiritual Healing, Internal Family Systems, and Emanuel Swedenborg. This is written by Chelsea Rose Odiner, Robert Falconer, and Jonathan S. Rose. So I've got the three of you here today. I've got the book that I've been really enjoying. Thanks for the advanced copy, by the way. And yeah, rather than me, reading the short bios, I'd love to just hear from each of you about who you are and how you got here. So maybe Jonathan, we'll start with you and then Chelsea, then Bob.
Chelsea Rose Odhner (01:08)
Sounds good.
Jonathan Rose (01:09)
Okay, I'm Jonathan Rose. I'm the series editor of a new translation of Immanuel Swedenborg's theological works, which were based on his spiritual experiences. And so he has a lot of interesting things to say about our inner world, because he says that our inner world is the same as that world that he explored. And so it's been fascinating to be in this conversation with Bob and Chelsea about.
how these things interact. My expertise is in Swedenborg. The other two have more experience in therapy and IFS and so on. So it's be a fun conversation.
Chelsea Rose Odhner (01:40)
Yeah, thanks. Yep, I'm Chelsea and I have a Swedenborg background, was raised in a community of Swedenborgians and ended up actually sort of, you know, moving away from Swedenborg for a time and really exploring, I was really interested in interfaith, you know, like different religions of the world and cultures and got really interested in yoga and
and even like the sacred texts of yoga. And then actually it was with the new century edition that I, the translation is really just so accessible compared to what translations were available previously. So you could like read a sentence two times and not know, not really get a sense of what was being said. And then reading it in the new century edition translation was like, whoa, you know, there's these cool ideas coming to my mind.
And when I reconnected with Swedenborg that way, was like, I found it most interesting and applicable to my own psyche, to my own sort of sense of what's going on in my mind, what are the levels of my mind, how are these levels interacting with each other, things like that. And so then fast forward a number of years when IFS came into my life and...
in my own healing journey, internal family systems was transformative, but also it felt so intuitive for me from my Swedenborg background. Like I couldn't help, I just had so many light bulbs going off inside of like, wow, here's this psychotherapeutic approach that sort of adds dimension to your inner experience. And it's not just sort of a two dimensional thing inside or something when you close your eyes and
Chelsea Rose Odhner (03:09)
And so I was professionally inspired to pursue IFS as well as personally. So I'm actually now an IFS level one trained coach and I'm actually a body worker as well, a licensed massage therapist. So that's the short version for me. Thanks.
John Clarke (03:25)
Right.
Bob, you're a three time guest now, not that it's a competition, but if it were, you're winning. So the audience knows you, but let's see what Bob says, because you just never know.
Bob Falconer (03:36)
I hope that being a three-time guest doesn't mean three strikes and you're out.
Chelsea Rose Odhner (03:40)
Thanks.
John Clarke (03:40)
Not necessarily.
I haven't decided though. I do make the rules and change them often. So.
Bob Falconer (03:41)
Okay, I'm a long time IFS therapist, teacher, writer, train people internationally, have been on staff of over 20 of the official trainings, helped Dick in many, trainings, all sorts of stuff like that. And I focused on severe trauma, big T trauma, because that was my own background for much of my early career.
IFS is the most respectful and potent tool for dealing with that kind of stuff. And then over the past 10, 15 years now, I've been focusing on the more overtly spiritual aspects of IFS, which unattached burdens guides the things inside of us that are not from our own personal lifetime history. And this has gotten me in trouble because it's kind of weird and...
You weren't supposed to talk about it. But I saw some people where it was undeniable and super important and I was not gonna ignore it. So that's where I've been focusing. And I wrote a book, The Others Within Us about this area. And we've talked about that before, John. And so Swedenborg was very...
He very much is in the same realm of things inside our minds that are not part of us. And so I felt an immediate resonance. And I did start studying him quite a few years ago. And there are a couple other therapists who have used him, especially in working with psychosis. Let's see, what else do I want to say? I want to say I went into this.
Chelsea asked me, would I come do this? And I said, well, let's have a dialogue. And she said, let's get Jonathan here. And when I found out he had a PhD in Latin, I thought, dear, this guy might be a little dry, let's say. But I was so wrong. We'd all get excited, you know, and we'd all be going, ooh, ooh, ooh, but that means, you know, and so delightful. And my hope.
Bob Falconer (05:40)
or the book, which Chelsea did all the editing of our conversations, was that we could just get that excitement through to people. Because I deeply believe that education is not filling a bucket, it's starting a fire. And it definitely, between the three of us, when we were having these long conversations, we got some pretty good fires going.
Chelsea Rose Odhner (05:54)
Ooh, love that.
John Clarke (06:03)
Yeah, you did.
I want to talk about first of all, format of the book, Near and Dear to My Heart. The format almost reminded me of a podcast because these are like conversations that you all had and back and forth and a lot of collaboration kind of in the moment and this overlap between Swedenborg, IFS, spirituality.
So I guess, first of all, how did you all come to this format? And second of all, guess, why should we be talking about these three things altogether?
Chelsea Rose Odhner (07:05)
Ooh, good question. Well, I'll respond to the first part of that question, at least to get us started. It was, well, like Bob just mentioned, he posed the idea to me, or I had said, Bob, Bob, I want to write a book on IFS in Swedenborg. There's just so many overlaps. Like Bob mentioned of it being of other psychotherapists, and one of which is Wilson van Dusen, another is Jerry Marzinski, who
use this within the context of psychosis and schizophrenia. as Bob said of the respect that IFS brings to the inner world, I see that as connected with Swedenborg where it's like, you're willing to sort of lend some respect to what you're finding inside a person's experience rather than just sort of dismissing it as nothing but hallucinations or something.
And anyway, and finding that there's an effective way to help people when you take that perspective and approach. Anyway, so that was jumping ahead a little bit, Bob recommended the conversation style to record content that way. And I had the option early on to say, well, I could take these conversations and then edit it into just what you would expect in a book of like...
one voice, just sort of didactic, you know, lecture or something like that. But I really felt that it was important to keep our voices, our individual voices, and sort of for two reasons. One, so that any reader doesn't just feel like, all right, somebody's just giving me more knowledge, so I know this stuff. It's more like an invitation into the conversation. And so it's really like putting...
In the same way that IFS puts agency in the client, it's putting agency in the reader really to be like, we're not experts, we're just really excited. Like Bob said, we've got a lot of ⁓ passion about this material, even if we have a lot of years in it collectively. And then also that I was excited because I had both the IFS and the Swedenborg background in myself, but I knew Jonathan.
Bob Falconer (08:47)
Thank you.
Chelsea Rose Odhner (09:02)
was heavy on the Swedenborg, had mostly only heard of IFS and didn't really know what it was or anything about the model in particular. And Bob was dominant with IFS and had explored, had studied Swedenborg some, but had never had the opportunity to pick the brain of a Latin translator. And so I was excited to bring these two rivers together and capture them sort of meeting each other.
Chelsea Rose Odhner (09:26)
for the first time and to retain that in the published book itself. Because I think you can, there's just something fun about that. Because almost to convey the experience that I got to have as a Swedenborg person learning IFS and sort of having all these light bulbs going off, it's like wanting to open up that opportunity for people who read the book. Yeah, so.
John Clarke (09:27)
Yeah, that's great. Yeah. And the book, you can really kind of feel the discovery happening in the moment again, much like podcasts unfolding as it goes. Jonathan, something I took from the book is it's probably not easy to summarize Swedenborg's work at all. So even asking this question is feels a little dumb to me, but if you had to, like for instance, on a podcast,
Bob Falconer (10:09)
You ⁓
John Clarke (10:10)
with a
Jonathan Rose (10:10)
You
John Clarke (10:10)
therapist like
me who hadn't heard of Swedenborg. What should we know about him and his work or even your favorite aspects of his work?
Jonathan Rose (10:17)
Yes, an important thing to know about Swedenborg is that he his sort of first life, if you will, until it was in his early 50s, was largely as a scientist of various different kinds of things. had he was interested in anatomy, astronomy, engineering. He was on the board of minds for Sweden. And and and then.
when he started having spiritual experiences, which developed first in his dreams and then came into his day to day life of this awareness, like the veil got very thin for him, you might say. He kept, I picture him still in his lab coat with his clipboard, kind of studying this and looking at it experientially at his own experience of what am I feeling in my body while I'm having these experiences.
what connects with what part of me and even frankly experimenting sometimes. Okay, you bring this spirit close and my toothache gets worse and then you make it go away and the toothache gets better and and so the result is a kind of spirituality that is very science friendly, you know, because of the way that it originated and he was
not a professional theologian or explainer of the Bible. You know, he sort of came through the back door spiritual experience into those areas. so I think there's something delightful about about all that. he he both has a very kind of Christian cast to what he says. But it's quite different than the Christian. There's a lot of sort of yes, that he says.
You know, that's true, but it depends on how you hold it. and and also somehow had such a kind of valuing of all the world religions in a way that was not at all popular then. That said, there's a reason for all these different ways of looking at things. They all have a value they can contribute and even went so far as to say that the kind of
conversion rate, meaning like the success percentage in terms of going to heaven was higher in other religious traditions than in Christianity and ends up sort of casting more shade on his the Lutheranism he grew up in or the European mindset as opposed to other parts of the world. So he's a very interesting read. I guess I'll stop there, but it gives you a little little thumbnail.
Chelsea Rose Odhner (12:34)
And maybe worth noting that he's, he's, he lived in the 1700s. So that he's talking about that time period as well. Yes. He didn't actually have a lab coat.
Jonathan Rose (12:39)
Yes, exactly. The Enlightenment. That is worth noting. This wasn't in
John Clarke (12:41)
I'd say it's worth noting for sure.
Jonathan Rose (12:46)
the 1950s. No, this was a while ago.
John Clarke (12:47)
I guess if there's one question that I'm after with my work and this show and everything I do is, first of all, what is trauma and how do we heal from it? The question really is what is healing? And so I guess putting that back on you all, what can we learn about healing from Swedenborg's work and the intersection between Swedenborg and IFS?
Bob?
Bob Falconer (13:12)
Okay, the first thing, I had been studying Swedenborg on my own for five, seven years with a Swedenborgian minister out here, the Reverend Rachel Rivers. fascinating subject, but the old edition was almost impossible to read, very difficult. So meeting Jonathan and Chelsea was like a student's dream.
because we'd be talking about something, and then before our next conversation, Jonathan would send 20, 30, 40, 50 pages of quotes of what Swedenborg said about what we've been talking about. It's like having the living encyclopedia of Swedenborg to pull it all together. So that was absolutely delightful. I think one of the major, major, major things
that Swedenborg brings and IFS does too. The psyche is autonomous. We hear voices in there that we don't control. And this includes parts and other things. Swedenborg using the language of his time talked about demons and angels. And you dialogue with them. You interact with them. You don't have this. You know, when I was being trained, we were told it was malpractice.
If you would dialogue or encourage a psychotic patient to interact with the voices they heard, you could lose your license for doing that. So the idea that you can do this and it helps the person is really revolutionary. So it's nice to see that somebody had this idea over 250 years ago and was working on it. There's so much more, I think, that Swedenborg brings us that's
that's really wonderful. Most of all, I don't know, all, Jonathan, Chelsea can say, our ideas come from outside of us. They are offered us from both sides, from demon and angels to use language. And they only become ours when we adopt them and act on them and bring them into, I think the Swedenborgian term is the proprium. So it's a...
It's a model which brilliantly recognizes the autonomy of the larger mind while preserving free will in a meaningful way. And that's a hard thing to do. One other thing I'll say, and then I'll shut up. can see Jonathan's eager to say something. So you were starting to get excited again, John. One of the ideas I truly love about Swedenborg is he said, basically there are no locked gates on hell.
Jonathan Rose (15:21)
Yeah, that's right.
Bob Falconer (15:38)
When you die, your spirit goes towards whatever it truly loved. And if you loved fighting and competition, you go to a realm of fighting and competition. If you love knowledge, you know. So somehow that idea is immensely pleasing to me. And it also got me questioning, what do I most truly love if I put the hallmark cards away and get really serious about what motivates my behavior? What do I truly love?
And that's not an easy question.
Jonathan Rose (16:06)
And the mental image that's coming to mind is a portion of the book where we talked about Noah's Ark of all things. And Swedenborg takes an interesting kind of read of this. talks about something that absolutely did not happen in the story, which is the idea that there was this tide. And he says this this flooding, which
Obviously from a scientific standpoint, he was aware is absolutely impossible, you know, for the mountains to be buried 15 feet deep all over the whole planet and all that didn't happen. But what did happen, he says, and what's more important to know about how valuable would it be to know that there was a I don't know. But the fact that there was a flood in the human psyche that's absolutely overwhelming and that what he describes is that there was a boat that was sort of
covered with with pitch and tar. But over time, the pitch and tar dissolves and bit by bit, things leak in. And so I think about trauma in connection with that, where we talked a little bit in those sessions about how. You've just got to do something with it, you know, I mean, you're you're five years old or something. This is happening to you. You got to just OK, we'll we'll stick some under the dresser here and we'll stick some in the basement and some in the attic and
And we'll split it all up because it'll be less harmful if we do it that way. And then gradually over time, as you get resources to be able to deal with it, then it starts to re-intrude, you know, or something. But there's a healing process that wants to happen. And another important thing that we talked about in the book was that there's such a beautiful teaching that there's a part in every single human being that's absolutely
Unstainable, know, cannot be compromised in any way. And that's a resource for healing. And it does align to my mind with this idea of self with a capital S that its relationship to these it can kind of manage this healing process of pulling this part in and dealing with that part and hearing what they have to say.
Chelsea Rose Odhner (18:06)
And can I tack onto that some reflections? Yeah, the I'm also sitting here like, yes. The you saying the healing process, Jonathan, that's what was coming to my mind was like, I'd say what what when you bring IFS and Swedenborg together. And one of the things I think Swedenborg really brings to IFS is just that that there is this healing journey going on.
John Clarke (18:08)
You may.
Chelsea Rose Odhner (18:27)
that there is this healing process. It's not just sort of happening in a randomly accidentally starting to happen in a void, you know, like there's a larger context going on and it's this, the spiritual world. And even a term we use that we talk about in the book is Swedenborg writes about like divine providence. I think that IFS is almost getting there because it's
The way it describes self is like you're at the doorstep of this, like, well, whatever self is, it's taking care of us actually, even when we forget, like this whole lot of our parts forgetting or taking on burdens or being, you know, just being overwhelmed by trauma and everything that it's like, there's actually a design, there's a system to not only be healing your own trauma, but like,
the previous generations aren't forgotten. There's no actual forgetting and there's a journey that we can be going on. And so, one of the things Swedenborg says about that is, I guess it's just to say when Swedenborg makes some claim like that, it's not just like a nice idea that feels good. He's got these like details.
of, and this is how the process works, or like it's that when we say love and wisdom, those aren't just these nice abstract ideas. It's what he calls spiritual substance. And it's the stuff of the divine itself or of self, you know, with like the eight C's and they are active, you know, agents, if you will, like there's a
there's this activity to the way spiritual substance behaves and the way it interacts with what has been burdened in our system so that we get to kind of, in the book we bring up even fermentation as not only a metaphor but an actual picture of this process that we go through that is sort of by design and gives you this larger context for making sense of.
what can just feel, you know, just like completely senseless suffering that we all experience in life.
John Clarke (20:32)
A big part of how we frame IFS is around what is self and what are parts. How would we define those in Swedenborg terms?
Chelsea Rose Odhner (20:42)
Yeah, well, maybe I'll just try to start us off in the simplest way. then, Jonathan and Bob can add to it. is Swedenborg describes our inner system as having levels. And the most simple way to think about those levels is to the inner self and the outer self. And then there's some deeper, or other, other ways that you can sort of frame it, but that's sort of the most basic and
And when, as I've explored IFS and Swedenborg, I think you can pretty much parallel the inner self with self and then the outer self with all of our parts. And the interesting thing that Swedenborg says about IFS that's a little bit more nuanced that I think helps by adding in this middle layer almost between the self and parts is
that your inner self can either be opened to what Swedenborg says is an inflow of the divine, or it can be closed off to it. And that's part of the process that we go through in our lives is this willingness to open up our inner self or not be closed off from this inflow of those like transcendent divine qualities. Yeah.
John Clarke (21:44)
I actually wanted to ask you about that, Chelsea. I had written some notes about this from the book. When you talk about, yeah, sensing the inflow of self, and then the book says, the goal in Swedenborg's terms is to align your lower self with the divine inflow. So this is what you're talking about here.
Chelsea Rose Odhner (22:01)
Yeah, so your lower and higher self is also like your inner self and your outer self. So outer and lower. that is, and so that's what I see happening in IFS is you have self and you have our parts that are opening up to self. yeah, so I'm interested in what Jonathan and Bob have to say.
Jonathan Rose (22:19)
Yeah, the thought that pops to mind is that the when Jesus in the New Testament washes the disciples feet, he says that's the only part that needs washing in a fair, you know. And so that idea that the outside gets messier than than the rest of us. And so part of how Swedenborg describes the process.
I would think of it as the healing process. He doesn't use that exact term. He terms it more in terms of so the language of rebirth and that kind of thing. But that it's the inner self that gets gets fixed up first. And then that causes actually some strife with the outer self, which is out of alignment with this kind of new inner module in there. And and then over time, when that when that
there'll be a battle. And he says in some people or at some times the outer self will win. It's just like, no, I don't want, you know, I don't want to go there. I'm not interested. But if the outer self cooperates with the inner self, then it comes into this state of peace. And as you say, I like the way you put that word. It's it's coming all the way through your being. Now there's a greater alignment in yourself.
And he also says specifically, which is one real point of contact that made the conversation easier in this book, that that Swedenborg says that he's he almost despairs of having anybody believe him. But he says. Not only are groups of people human in some sense, they occupy the same sort of framework as the ones, the brains and ones, the, you know, arms or the hands of an organization, what have you.
But if you went down to the individual thoughts and feelings that occur within people, each of them is in a complete human form. And that correlates with what Bob and others have found where there's an autonomy in there. And just, I love how IFS will just ask managers, could you give us a half an hour? It's kind of amazing. And then, sure, whatever. And you'll get an answer.
Jonathan Rose (24:12)
So and Swedenborg says, I just union rules require me to say it. I don't expect anybody to get it. But there is, you know, this is how it this is how it is. And then amazing to have I.F.S. through a very pragmatic process of not coming in with a head full of theory, just asking people what's going on and realizing, some of this is wiser or more compassionate and curious and knowledgeable than other, you know.
parts and so on that I think this is the self. And I like the way that Swedenborg, although it was experiential for him as well, it still sort of supplies a theory that goes with this practice of IFS that I think there's an interesting kind of insight that can come out of that.
Bob Falconer (24:52)
I want to say something about that because I think it's really important. I think IFS and Swedenborg approach the same terrain from opposite directions. Swedenborg is coming from a spiritual, Christian, God, angel, demon realm. And IFS is coming from this grim, Western materialist realm where you can't talk about that kind of stuff. And I think Dick intentionally dumbed down self.
to make it sound less spiritual so that it would have a chance of being accepted in Western academia. So, you know, they're coming from very different places and they meet in the center and a lot of, one in several of these passages that Jonathan brought, Swedenborg saying, well, people are a household. How much closer to an inner family can you get? And he describes the different stories in the building.
John Clarke (25:40)
Yeah, that's pretty uncanny. Yeah.
Jonathan Rose (25:44)
Yeah, even using language of manager talking about parts. He talks about parts, doesn't he? Yeah.
Chelsea Rose Odhner (25:51)
Yeah, it's really, it's, yeah.
Bob Falconer (25:51)
I want to say one other thing about definitions of trauma. I've been collecting them. there are a lot. And they're very different. Separation from our higher self, H.H. Almas, exposure to human malevolence, Jordan Peterson, not having anyone to talk about it with, Bonnie Badnock, many. betrayal.
Human betrayal is the heart of trauma. Jennifer Fried. There whole complex theories built up around every one of these. But all of them have some form of separation involved. Some form of separation and splitting. And I think that overarching metaphor permeates Swedenborg and IFS.
John Clarke (26:29)
Yeah. Bob, I wanted to stay on you for another minute here, which is in this section where you all talk about the section is called the realness of our imagination. And you all are talking about kind of when we go inside, the name of the show going inside, where do we go? We're in this kind of liminal state. It's in between, you know, sleep and awake.
This thing that makes the IFS very different is not only do we have parts, we can talk to them and my gosh, they talk back. And if you just wait until you get an answer, they might talk back. And I find for clients, that's when the work really takes off. If I can help them have a moment like that, where it becomes a two-way street all of a sudden, even though they might've known they have this loud perfectionist on their shoulder their whole life and they've just tried to ignore it or tell it to shut up or whatever, but IFS makes it this two-way street.
Yeah, in this realm of going inside, what do you all think it means to go inside and in the realm of Swedenborg's ideas about consciousness, like where are we going when we go inside and talk to parts?
Bob Falconer (27:26)
Okay, Dick says there are two worlds, inner world, outer world. I think that's sort of an acceptable first order of magnitude generalization. And he also talked about the laws of inner physics, which I don't think he developed anywhere near far enough. I'm working on a whole nother. And Swedenborg's all about the laws of inner physics, to put it in IFS language. Another person who was a big Swedenborg fan, Henri Corbin,
wrote about this a lot in terms of Sufi mysticism. And they have this whole realm, Corbin called it the imaginal realm, the traditional Sufis called it beyond Mount Qaf. And Mount Qaf was one of the four mountains that held up the sky. You go past there and you're into the inner world. The laws of physics are totally different. One of the points
Jonathan Rose (28:10)
you
Bob Falconer (28:14)
I don't know if Corban makes this, but it's the way I read Corban and other people have said this. It's not original with me. Imagination, the images we see in our inner world are actually a perceptual system like sight or hearing. They're the perceptual system we need to orient to these non-physical realities. And if we can start treating them that way, it really changes stuff.
and it makes transformation and healing very, very possible and very immediate.
Chelsea Rose Odhner (28:45)
Wow, yeah. Do you want to go next, Jonathan? ⁓
Jonathan Rose (28:46)
Yeah, I like that.
Sure.
Swedenborg says that, as a number of other traditions do, too, that we are really spirits who are wearing the flesh, that that are what we truly are is our thoughts and feelings that that whole sort of realm of of the cognitive and the affective and that
that world really is what he calls the spiritual world. And we have senses in that world. They're usually except for people whose veil is very thin. And it's interesting the correlation of trauma with thin veils sometimes like that someplace that some people go with the trauma that this what you're what you're perceiving is using spiritual senses.
Jonathan Rose (29:26)
The in the Bible in first Corinthians 15, it talks about we have a spiritual body. There's a spiritual body in the natural body in Swedenborg echoes that language that there's a spiritual body that is in the complete human form, has has senses, has all the apparatus. We're just usually under normal circumstances, not aware of it because our physical senses are so loud. So it's only in the hypnagogic state or some kind of semi altered state, like going through an IFS session that you start to perceive. and obviously, you know, the IFS sessions that I've done as a client, just eyes are closed. You know, there's not much sensory input happening. and and then you start to perceive these things. And I think it is the two things, I guess, just it is so amazing that the parts will talk to you.
Jonathan Rose (30:14)
It is so and surprise you and say things you didn't or they will just be things you absolutely didn't expect. I had no idea who was in there, what was going on. And then also that just even one session can have this lasting change. That's what makes it different to me than, you know, just going on a flight of fancy or having a little imagination fun or something that something really happens when you get when when the these guys who have been running everything.
say to the child, OK, we'll let you come on. Then something changes after that. so I think Swedenborg would say that we are stepping into sort of an outer realm of that spiritual, you know, that we can that we live in anyway and that we experience in our dreams. And when we first wake up, we're just going to sleep, meditation and so on. But it's a kind of active way of going in there, doing things.
Chelsea Rose Odhner (31:04)
Yeah, and I think it's interesting to reflect on what it's like in a session and like with Bob's work of, know, within IFS, you can know whether a part is a part of your system or you ask it and it's not a part of your system or it's a guide or it's something else that is in relationship with your system somehow. And then that can sort of be explored. Because as I was hearing you guys all share, I think...
I really think that when you're in self, when parts of unblended, so you're in this inner world, which it's not always immediately visual, but I think it often does take on some visual capacity sometimes. Sometimes it's all somatic, but when you're responding to your system from self, I understand that the seat that you're in is that of your inner self, and your inner self is now relating to your parts. And so that's the...
the actor, your eyes, you like you're seeing yourself hugging a part or something. What I think, so I mentioned that spiritual substance earlier because the way things appear in the spiritual world, Swedenborg says, is it all is made up of spiritual substance. And so what a thing is reflects its quality as to love and wisdom or how closed off it is to love.
Chelsea Rose Odhner (32:17)
and wisdom. And so this is always just remarkable to me in an IFS session where like we find these exiles in dark basements, in bottomless pits, in caves, in, you know, it's, and then where they want to go when the parts get to choose, they get to be in a bright sunny room or they get to be playing with games that they love. The, what Swedenborg brings is that like there's
there's a reason, know, like to be in the dark is to be in this inner realm, in this, the imaginal realm is to know, there's not love here or there's some confusion going on. So you can work with your inner system that way to even like invite light in or, know, it's like, I don't want to speak to, you know,
almost like confidently about any of it, because I think there's so much to be explored and I don't think I know all that's there, but just to sort of piece these things together from Swedenborg and IFS, the word Swedenborg uses for all of that is he says these things correspond. you heat and light corresponds to love and wisdom, but there's a quality of like, well, is it a sort of a...
You you get to understand the motivation inside of things through reflecting on them this way. So I've always been amazed with working with my own parts, how their circumstances, even when they appear, you know, what burdens look like are just very meaningful and it's just amazing stuff.
John Clarke (33:28)
We've got just a few minutes left. Five, 10 minutes left. Again, aligning with kind of what we do in the show or just myself coming from a clinical background. When we think about psychology, it's what is a thought? What is a feeling? Why do we do the things we do? At some point in the book, you all talk about Swedenborg's idea that basically everything is spirit moving through you.
I grew up in the South going to church. And so if someone were to say like the spirit moved me or the spirit moved me to call or to go volunteer or whatever, that'd be really ordinary thing to say. In Swedenborg's terms, spirit is like everything that is moving you. You all talk about even having like a craving, you know, that that's actually spirit moving through you. So Jonathan, can you expand on that a little bit? And Bob, maybe you can help us tie it together as well in terms of.
Again, how we help people with these ideas.
Jonathan Rose (34:32)
Yes, yeah, that that that whole idea. And it's it's interesting because it is sort of a nuanced way that Swedenborg presents it in the sense that he says that absolutely all feelings and thoughts flow in. actually does some of his scientific experiments where they shut off certain feelings or certain thoughts and then people will slump as if dead or they pass out or whatever. And and so it all flows in. And yet people would.
criticize that concept by saying, well, we don't all have the same thoughts. You know, even a little two or three year old will say something you never heard anybody say before. They'll say, you lost my temper. Well, that's a use of language. You know, that's not a thought that anybody had before. And exactly those terms. Well, Swedenborg says that if we are a receiving vessel and every vessel is a different shape and has different experiences, different memories, the memory is a very big thing to Swedenborg.
something that differentiates us from each other, even siblings in the same family, have different memories that make you different. And so what flows in flows in according to your your nature. And so that's why one person has a different set of thoughts than another. But I think it's very helpful to it was one of the hardest things for Swedenborg to really grapple with early on that a.
that there were these other beings outside himself who could tell exactly what he was thinking and feeling when he was in his own private space. He actually felt quite disgruntled for a while because like there's zero mental privacy, know, zero, like anything he thinks, you know, everybody knows like there's no privacy. But then he started to realize that he was it. He actually felt more alive when he realized that this is flowing in.
And that one of the great, what he calls falsities, you one of the great sort of missed impressions is that we're just autonomous, cut off beings with no connection to each other, no connection to any other realm. And that what's happening in our headspace is just entirely our own creation, which doesn't explain why people beat themselves up so much. You know, why do so many of your thoughts be critical? What's to be gained from that?
but understanding that it flows in, then you have a choice about, I'm going to listen to this, I'm going to say no to that and push back a little bit or develop a different relationship.
John Clarke (36:43)
That's Bob, what are we missing here as we prepare to wrap up?
Bob Falconer (36:45)
OK, because I have something completely out of left field as usual. One of the things that I think is underappreciated in IFS, and it's an overarching metaphor or method, is constraint release.
Bob Falconer (37:08)
IFS is not about going to the gym and building muscle. It's about getting stuff out of the way and dropping burdens and self is there undamaged no matter what. you know, very important and to me immensely counterintuitive and originally very distasteful idea. I wanted to go to the gym and.
John Clarke (37:27)
Yeah, most of my clients want to do that too. Trust me. They think I'm going to I'm here to help them do that.
Bob Falconer (37:30)
Yeah, it's weird.
Swedenborg has a beautiful metaphor for this about contact with the divine, which would be self. And I've adopted it to my own. So I've made it. This is Swedenborg and Bob together. But Swedenborg, yeah, this is Swedenborg. Spirit is not some exotic bird of paradise. You have to go halfway around the planet to meet. No, no, no, no.
Chelsea Rose Odhner (37:46)
Swedenpop.
Bob Falconer (37:58)
We don't have to explore a jungle. She is right here. And she so much wants us to see her that she is brushing our eyelids with her wingtips.
Jonathan Rose (38:08)
That's close to a direct quote. I mean, there was a little Bob in there, but that's very Swedenborg. Yeah.
Bob Falconer (38:15)
Yeah, I loved that guy when I read that quote.
Jonathan Rose (38:18)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's a powerful one. Just willing wanting to be seen and wanting to be.
Chelsea Rose Odhner (38:18)
Mmm. I love that.
John Clarke (38:20)
It's... Well, you know, as we sit down to help clients, it's such a profound message to let them know you already have everything you need inside you. And I'm here to just help you access that, that is already within as a profoundly as Bob's a respectful way to see a person and especially being a therapist with some power just by being a therapist and everything that people thought therapy was for.
Chelsea Rose Odhner (38:33)
Yes. Yes.
John Clarke (38:46)
many years, it's becoming something else. I think we're long overdue for that. yeah, Chelsea, did you have another thought before we wrap up here?
Chelsea Rose Odhner (38:54)
Sure, yeah, just to that point, I think one of the most powerful things that we have when you bring Swedenborg and IFS together is, and we talk about it in the book, is the power and persistence, you might say, of our choice, of our freedom to choose that and be in relationship, be in a different kind of a relationship with the beliefs or feeling, you know, these feeling states inside of us or the beliefs that we've taken in. There's no... there's no expiration date on us choosing to be in a new relationship with what we've always believed about ourselves or what has always been true. that opens up, I think that this concept that from spirit, there's, and this word you'll hear in the book a lot is inflow, where it's like, there's a divine inflow, which is that,
you know, the pure substance itself of love and wisdom unfiltered directly into the unique vessel that you are. And then a spiritual inflow that is all the other spirits that we all are, you know, everybody else's thoughts and feelings and sort of adjacent ideas flowing into us and then into each of our parts. And each of us and our parts get to have a choice over, do I want this or do I want to?
you know, if you're not this solid encased thing, but it's porous like Bob talks about, then you get to choose what you put out on the curb or what you bring in, you know, and you get to be empowered in that. And that's always the case in our systems. And so that, Bob, you put your finger on it when you said like the thing that all of this trauma has in common is separation,
a word that Swedenborg uses to even describe separation is that it's the appearance of things, that the appearance, we can fall for it and that our outer self does fall for the appearance of separation or falls for the appearance that, I am bad and wrong, or I am, I really should never affirm or reveal this part of myself, or I really should never, these appearances that we take in from the world.
We believe them, but then that it's sorting through that and actually, you know, awakening to the reality of the inner self, of self, that process of opening up to that, that's the healing journey as I understand it.
John Clarke (41:12)
Great. Opening the inner world is out May 22nd. So for folks listening or watching, be sure to grab that. We'll put links in the description. You can also pre-order if you would like, including on Amazon, correct? We'll be sure to put links to that in the description. So yeah, it's been a treat for me to have three guests. It's actually less work for me. I kind of like it.
John Clarke (41:32)
Pretty fun.
John Clarke (41:34)
Thank you all so much for doing this and for sharing, yeah, everything that you've had to share today and bringing Swedenborg's work into our IFS world here. It's a really neat crossover and I can see why it's a needed crossover. So thanks for the work.
Jonathan Rose (41:55)
Thanks very much, John, and thanks for what you do. This is great.
John Clarke (41:58)
My pleasure. All right. Thank you all for being here.