What we profess to know is usually a rationalization of what has impelled or directed us from within. Traditionally, meditative and shemanic practices were used to shake-up the everyday modes of consciousness, to get a glimpse of alternatives. In this century, Jungian deep psychoanalysis attempts to expose the archetypes, and more recently psychosynthesis has been developed along similar lines. Rebirthing and primal techniques are intense ways of regressing into the heart of infant emotional trauma, to lay bare the connections with current behaviour. Gurdjieff techniques attempt to expose patterned ways of being and doing and so 'shock' you into awakening.
Many mind tools help to obtain a new state of consciousness.
The problem with some of these approaches is that although they stimulate a change of consciousness, they can leave the participant in a limbo, stuck in unresolved earlier experiences or crashing from a high point back to lower than they started, with the frustration of not being able to obtain that point so easily again. Transformational psychology approaches this task from a present time point of view and examines objectively the content of one's belief system of assumptions, evaluations and decisions carried over to the present, to release those that are irrational, inappropriate, or simply acquired and not your own. It no longer has the 'hooks' into the present that were provided by the various imprinted considerations, that have now been exposed and released. This is a relatively painless and safe procedure, that can be self-administered. Future articles will introduce some of these methods and for those who want to really dig in, there are courses described on my Tools for Transformation web site.