Open-Secrets

Month: March 2009

  • Missing My Pocket Parents

    Critical Bitching from Pocket Parents

    pocket_parent_criticYears ago, when visiting friends in Boston, I wandered into a toy store and found a set of “pocket parents.” Each pocket parent was about the size of a pack of cigarettes and came with five buttons, but no battery.

    With the battery installed, I could push a button on “Mom” and hear “You’ll put your eye out with that!” in a screeching voice reminiscent of George Castanza’s mother. Or I could pull out “Dad” and hear “I’ll give you something to cry about!”

    Each parent had four bitches most of us heard thousands of times in childhood. If  I really wanted a blast from the past, I could push the 5th button and get a litany of reprimands.

    I purchased those pocket parents to use as teaching aids in some of the work I do with the superego. A little levity can go a long way in making a point while keeping things from becoming too heavy and depressing – an easy rut to fall into when working with the inner critic.

    A quick search on Google failed to lead me to replacements for my vanished pocket parents – I think they missed the move to California from Utah a couple of years ago.

    If you happen to locate a set of pocket parents, let me know – I’d love another set.

    Disengaging from the superego is some of the most beneficial work we can do. How’s your superego work going?

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  • Survivor: Berkeley California

    Survival Instinct Explored in Berkeley, CA

    survival_instinctThis past weekend, I attended A.H. Almaas’ winter retreat in Berkeley. The retreat focused on the survival instinct and most agreed it was a timely presentation.

    Two years ago we worked on the social instinct and last year we explored the sexual instinct. Almass explores the instinctual drives in relationship to the Enlightenment Drive – the dynamic quality of the soul that impels it toward awareness of its true nature and freedom from limitation and the past.

    The way we’re approaching the question of instincts and their drives is not a question of being free from them, it is a question of freeing them to be what they can be, and evolve and develop in a way that can become part of our realization, support for our realization. – A.H. Almaas

    Almaas sees nothing wrong with the survival drive or the other instinctual drives. They are natural components of animal existence and evolution. The challenge for human beings, who have the capacity to muck up the natural functioning of the drives, is how to help the drive do its job most effectively.

    Our capacity for reflective consciousness brings with it the capacity for projection and distortion of  what is really happening. The past gets projected onto the present situation and, the drive which can’t tell the difference between what is real and what is imagined, kicks into gear with its fight or flight response.

    The current economic situation is raising a lot of safety and security concerns in people. Recessions, property, money and wealth are really not the types of dangers our instinctual drives evolved to engage. We’re hardwired to respond to actual immediate physical threat, not the imagined consequences of Bernie Madoff ripping us off or the consequences of job loss or a dwindling 401K.

    We have become so identified with our possessions, that we connect them very strongly to our survival. Survival now has a strong connection to money – and it’s partly true, but mostly not. A downgrade in lifestyle or having to eat beans instead of beef is not about survival. It’s about comfort, preference and self-image. The self-image is what becomes threatened – and – since the hard wiring can’t tell the difference between the body and the self-image, fear, anxiety, worry and even terror result.

    The direct connection to money is something we all need to explore – what it is, what does it stand for, what it means personally, how to work with it and relate to it.  This holds true for all of our possessions. This type of exploration will help to reveal the distortions that are interfering with the free functioning of the drives and thus the potential of the consciousness aligning them with the drive for enlightenment.

    A very interesting three days.

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  • Eckhart Tolle and PBS

    PBS Disappoints with Their Choice of Eckhart Tolle Experts

    Last night, by accident, I caught PBS’s segment with Eckhart Tolle. It was delightful, as always, to watch Tolle and listen to his simple and profound wisdom. Tolle is such a wonderful example of a real human being.

    In my opinion, PBS really dropped the ball with their choice of experts to comment on Tolle’s work. Dr. Betty Sue Flowers demonstrated quite clearly that she has little more than a conceptual understanding of Tolle’s work. This is the continuation of an age-old delimma – intellectuals interpreting and commenting on the mystical.

    Though Dr. Flowers is obviously sincere in her appreciation of Tolle and his work, her explanation of Tolle’s work and his experience reveals her understanding to not be based on experiential knowledge – and that is the rub with intellectuals. Her explanation of Tolle’s transformative experience totally missed the heart of his experience – that his understanding was not the result of conceptual conclusion, but a revelation from being in the NOW.

    Though, I found their commentary lacking, PBS did a fine job on selcting content. The segments of Tolle were excellent. It’s wonderful to see PBS broadcasting material like this. All-in-All I’d give the show 4 out of 5 stars if I was a rating kind of guy.

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