Open-Secrets

Month: March 2008

  • Inner Terrorist

    Are you being abused and violated by an Inner Terrorist?

    Inner_terroristTerrorism is a hot topic these days. I am constantly reminded as I walk through this world how many people live in fear. It is fairly common, or so it seems, that many people don’t know their neighbors – and don’t want to.

    Many people seem afraid to address a stranger. I guess that’s symptomatic of all the fear, suspicion, and violence running amok these days, but – holy moly – I see people avoiding contact due to habit and fear, not common sense.

    The inner terrorist is much more threatening than all of the external forces. It operates 24/7 and is one of the main factors in perpetuating the fear and suspicion.

    Dealing with the inner terrorist

    How can we effectively neutralize our tendency to undermine ourselves?

    A.H. Almaas observes that:

    As we have seen, the main reason we engage in meddling, resistance, and defense is that we’re afraid that if we’re vulnerable, if we’re open, if we allow ourselves to just simply be where we are, we will not be safe. Many people these days blame their insecurity on terrorism in the world. But the actual lack of safety is more a result of the terrorism that is inside your mind—the internal saboteurs. Our primary fear is that if we are open and let ourselves be where we are, we’re going to be belittled. We’re going to be rejected. We’re going to be humiliated. We’re going to be attacked. We’re going to be judged. We’re going to be criticized. We’re going to be shamed. We’re going to be made to feel guilty.

    We’re afraid that other people will do these things to us and sometimes that actually happens. But more often, we do these things to ourselves. Have you ever said to yourself, “If I really let myself be vulnerable, I feel so delicate, sweet, and innocent. If people notice that, they will judge me as good for nothing”? Or maybe you’ve thought, “If I feel that sweet innocence, I’m going to get embarrassed. I’m going to be humiliated. It means I’m not strong. Somebody is going to reject me or shame me.” These worries are usually a projection onto other people of our own inner terrorist that’s scaring us.

    All of these projections are examples of the obstacle of aggression. We normally think that aggression is about people killing or hurting other people. But for people who are on the inner journey, that’s only a very small part of it. The primary form of aggression for those on the path is their aggression toward themselves. We don’t allow ourselves to be open and vulnerable, to be where we are, because whatever we find as primary in that experience of vulnerability is often connected to a feeling of deficiency, and we might attack the hell out of ourselves for it: “You’re no good. You’re not enough. You’ll never amount to anything.”

    Right away, we become afraid that somebody is going to think those things about us. But why do you always believe that no matter what, somebody’s going to think you’re not good enough? Why can’t you imagine that they might think something else? Is it likely that everyone on Earth is thinking the same thought—that you’re not good enough? Why doesn’t it occur to you that some of them will just think you’re weird? And that others will think you’re naive? No, you believe they will all think you’re not good enough.

    Obviously, the common factor among all these people is that you are projecting onto them. This is one way that we avoid facing the primary component that is arising in our own experience. We rationalize, defend ourselves, justify ourselves. But to whom are we justifying ourselves? Why do we need to blame anybody? We simply are not comfortable about where we are, but we don’t want to feel that, so we make others responsible for our discomfort by projecting onto them our own reaction. Our focus is outward on them instead of inward on what’s true about ourselves.

    What we’re seeing here is the activity of what we call the superego. The superego is a specialized part of our ego structure that has the job of making sure we live up to the standards we learned as children to survive in our families and communities. It does this by various means, including judging, criticizing, advising, warning, encouraging, threatening, and punishing ourselves in reaction to our thoughts, feelings, and actions. The superego is one way that aggression toward ourselves manifests, and it becomes a big obstacle to finding where we are and just being there. It is a major barrier to being ourselves, to being real.

     

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  • Your Soul’s Compass

    Your_souls_compassMy buddy, Gordon Dveirin, and Joan Borysenko have a new book out – Your Soul’s Compass which examines the question: What is Spiritual Guidance?

    Many people feel guided. Some talk of angels, other spirits, some the heart and others their gut. This book examines spiritual guidance from the seekers perspective offering insight from some of today’s most recognized spiritual explorers and from wisdom of the ages.

    Your Soul’s Compass is for those seeking a deeper sense of authenticity – living from a real place; being true to what connects us all; integrating one’s doing with one’s being.

    By the time you’re finished with this book you will feel a compassionate kindness for the world and a calm acceptance of who you are. – From an Amazon Review

    Order Your Soul’s Compass

     

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  • Survival Instincts

    Survival_instinctSurvival Instincts and Survival of the Fittest cannot excuse character and personality distortions. Greed and competitiveness are not survival instincts. The survival instinct, as I understand it, arises out of the brain stem, the reptilian brain.

    Modern Humans Retain Caveman’s Survival Instincts – Like hunter-gatherers in the jungle, modern humans are still experts at spotting predators and prey, despite the developed world’s safe suburbs and indoor lifestyle, a new study suggests.

    If we took the survival instinct down to its roots, we would probably call it something simple like the life force. It is the force that underlies all life, not so much survival but the creative force. What is that mysterious force that keeps asserting life?

    The instinct to survive is a myth. It is however an instinct that humans can invent and practice if they like. What annoys me is when they try to use it to explain various animal behaviors, or their own selfish behavior, thereby displaying their ignorance of the wildness and the real natural world. The reason animals want to live is not to survive, but to have more fulfillment (fun). The ‘survival instinct’ appears to have originated from human misconceptions about evolution, where they think that the prime motivation of evolution is to produce ‘survivors’ and offspring. They forgot that the real goal of evolution is to contribute to the wildness! – Dr. Beetle

    What’s driving your instinct to survive?

     

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  • Ego Identity

    Ego_identityIdentity – Ego Identitiy – True Identity

    What’s the deal with identity anyway. I remember my parents challenging me with – who do you think you are? At the time I was just a kid – I didn’t have a clue who I was and they didn’t seem to be helping me found out much either.

    What I felt in response to that question was judged and in trouble.

    In simplest terms ego identity is defined as – the sense of oneself as a distinct continuous entity.

    For Erik Erikson, identity is what maintains in the individual inner solidarity with the ideals and aspirations of social groups. The ego has a general balancing function: It puts things in perspective and prepares them in view of possible action. The strength of the ego, as Erikson conceived it, explains the difference between the feeling of being whole and the feeling of being fragmented. In the best of cases, it enables the individual to understand that the feeling of being at one with oneself comes through growth and development.

    A psychological inquiry into identity will lead to discussions of self-representations, self-images, and ideals. These are some of the components of ego structure that help to form a sense of identity in the mind patterned on the past.

    A spiritual teacher or guide might ask – what was there before ego identity?

    Does that survive ego death?

     

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  • Inner Journey

    Inner_journeyGoogling – Inner Journey – I see in the search results many people offering inner journey newsletters and inner journey workshops, but in the descriptions, I see very little that may define what the inner journey is.

    I guess we assume that everyone knows what the inner journey is.

    For the (inner) journey is essentially a journey home, to our original primordial ground and source. To be at home is to be whole, contented, and at peace, for no reason but that we are abiding in our true nature. – A.H. Almaas

    Inner Journey is, in a way, a strange description because, according to most that make the journey – when you get to where you’re going, there is no inner or outer and you never really went anywhere.

    Alice: I was just wondering if you could help me find my way.
    Cheshire Cat: Well that depends on where you want to get to.
    Alice: Oh, it really doesn’t matter, as long as…
    Cheshire Cat: Then it really doesn’t matter which way you go.

     

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  • Narcissistic Injury

    NarcissismNarcissistic injury is one of those loaded psychological terms. In fact, all things narcissistic seem to be. I think that is because the word narcissism or narcissistic is generally used to describe pathology and not the over-arching reality that everyone with an ego (everyone) is a narcissist.

    Narcissistic defenses are present to some degree in all people, but are especially pervasive in narcissists. These defenses are used to protect the narcissist from experiencing the feelings of the narcissistic injury. – StudyWorld

    Ego identity, the false self, or whatever you want to call it, is fundamentally a case of mistaken identity. The “I” or “me” involved in this case of mistaken identity is self-centered and self-promotional.

    Narcissists cannot love others because they don’t love their TRUE self. They “love” a fiction – the FALSE SELF. They are full of feelings of inferiority and self-loathing and they are very sadistic and self-punishing when they incur a narcissistic injury (when they “fail”). You can’t love others if you do not love yourself. Moreover, narcissists do not understand what it means to be human (i.e., they lack empathy). To them other people are bi-dimensional, cartoon, cardboard cutouts, or, at most, an audience. Others are FUNCTIONS, INSTRUMENTS, EXTENSIONS. They, therefore, cannot be loved for what THEY ARE but only for WHAT THEY PROVIDE. This is no real love. Sam Vaknin

    Narcissistic injury can be understood at a more macro level to be the wounding that occurs from not being seen or not being heard. Narcissistic injury, when experienced at its root, is the most painful wound in the soul – the wound of disconnection from True Nature.

    The narcissist says, “I exist.” A narcissistic injury is you showing him that he does not exist in your life. Kicking him in the teeth and telling him he is a jerk is not a narcisstic injury– because he must therefore exist.

     

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