A person who believes that only selfishness motivates human actions and who disbelieves in or minimizes selfless acts or disinterested points of view.
One of a sect of Greek philosophers, 4th century b.c., who advocated the doctrines that virtue is the only good, that the essence of virtue is self-control, and that surrender to any external influence is beneath human dignity.
The Cynics were an influential group of philosophers from the ancient school of Cynicism. Their philosophy was that the purpose of life was to live a life of Virtue in agreement with Nature. This meant rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, health, and fame, and by living a life free from all possessions. As reasoning creatures, people could gain happiness by rigorous training and by living in a way which was natural for humans. They believed that the world belonged equally to everyone, and that suffering was caused by false judgments of what was valuable and by the worthless customs and conventions which surrounded society. – Wikipedia
Doubt seems habitual. Most habitual doubting is conditioned negation, a lazy ego’s way to successful pessimism. Suspicious minds, scarcity thinking, self-centeredness and survival seem to walk hand in had with doubt.
When in doubt, doubt yourself. What’s that doubt all about? What’s at the root of doubt?
Doubting wholeheartedly means questioning the very premise of doubt, not the content – what we doubt, but the activity – why we doubt. Wholehearted doubting is a trip into a real wormhole.
Years ago, when I started this journey of exploration into “what is the nature of me,” I had a period of interest in dreams. Many teachers encourage us to explore our dreams. I had very little interest in dream interpretation, still do – though the occasional insight is of interest.
Lucid Dreaming
What I was mostly curious about in those days was lucid dreaming as I had heard that “waking up” in a dream could be used as a doorway into out-of-the-body travel. Over the years, I have become quite the lucid dreamer. Often when I sleep, I continue to be aware. I work with that awareness similar to the way I worked with lucid dreaming – waking up within the medium of experience.
Working with the Affective Content of Dreams
Over the last ten years my interest in dreams is more focused on the affective quality present in the dream. I have found this to be quite useful in helping me move through various levels of identity and object relations. If the self in a dream is an extension or construction of the waking me, then it seems fair to assume that I am somehow dragging my historic content into the dream in some fashion.
Last night was a good example of how i work with dreams these days.
Dreams of Humiliation
I was at an event with a large group Diamond Approach students. I recognized many of these people from my waking life. A new book was out, that contained a specific paragraph about me. In reading the paragraph, I experienced a very deep and searing sense of humiliation.
I went to a twenty-year friend of mine to ask why she had allowed this to be printed. She told me she had nothing to do with it. As I walked away, I fell to the floor, began sobbing and shaking uncontrollably.
At this point I awakened – 3:50am. The sense of humiliation was flooding my psyche and body. I explored it a bit and became aware of the judgmental part of the experience. The superego was having a field day kicking my butt.
I find shame and humiliation some of the most difficult work. The power of the inner critic attacks is severe. Becoming lost or trapped in the identity of the humiliated one seems easy when confronted with such powerful forces.
Inner Critic / Superego Judgments
We will never win a battle or an argument with the superego/inner critic. What’s needed is disengage from the attack so we can explore our experience. Having worked with the superego and identifications for over twenty years, I often work with the attack by just agreeing with superego and then go about looking into my experience.
The interesting thing about shame and humiliation is the raw, searing quality of exposure present. There is such a pure sense of being stripped naked and exposed to harsh elements. I worked with these elements for a couple of hours – in and out of sleep.
The Relative is a Bridge to the Real
In exploring the actual phenomenological experience of humiliation, I found the elements of exposure and nakedness were really openness, space and transparency. When the identity of the humiliated self or even a historical self is allowed be challenged, it will often dissolve. What is left is the experience of our experience.
The qualities of openness, space and transparency are aspects of our true nature.
Opening my eyes to the world at 7:10am – a glorious day was blooming!
The challenge of writing this seems immense, beyond my ability to put it into a coherent stream of thought. I am motivated/inspired to write and wonder, why? What sparked this impulse?
It is autumn. Leaves are turning brilliant. Beauty is everywhere, always. Today, yellow, gold, red and orange blend with the shades of green she has worn for many months now. Is it the change of seasons that rekindles the journey into the heart of darkness?
Perhaps it is the fear, panic and depression that is gripping many. Unemployment, investment losses and economic woe beset us from all sides. Is the ubiquitous cynicism getting to me?
No matter, the dismal, dark shades of despondency and hopelessness are arising and my soul is afire, blazing with love and beauty.
How is this possible?
Whatever Happened to the Cynic?
Where did the cynic go? I’ve been cynical for as long as I can remember. I recall an exploration into my cynic. It was maybe 8 years ago. That rascal lived in a world view that had an atmosphere like 18th century London – skies dark, gray and sooty. A haggard and hackneyed self suffering the dismal and dreary.
Don’t get me wrong, this view was not conscious 24/7. But it was there, in the velvet underground of my unconscious sapping energy and blurring my vision. Without even knowing it, the quality of my life was being diminished.
Today, I notice the cynic is like leaded glass. I can see the light coming through and it is the light that I resonate with not the opacity.
That Pain is Our Best Friend
My best friend was beautiful. When we met, the connection was deep and immediate. The type of experience that gives the notion of reincarnation a strong foundation to stand on. The freedom in the friendship was beyond our combined imaginations. Acceptance and appreciation were in every interaction and the quiet delight in our friendship only grew though we lived thousands of miles apart.
Her experience with ovarian cancer, was challenging and life-enhancing. Though her body withered and suffered both she and her body became more and more radiant and translucent. When she died, all hell broke loose in me.
Oh, that pain. I believe it takes us all by surprise – our capacity to feel pain and loss. There were many, many moments of remembering and love and appreciation AND then the pain, a grief and grieving to a depth of self unknown to me. I came to understand that the depth of pain spoke to the depth of the love.
I became curious about that pain, about why it seemed to be easier to stay with the pain than the love. I came to see that my self, who I knew myself to be historically, could stay intact with the pain. I could suffer with the pain.I could lament, and mourn, feel loss and devastation – the ruin of my heart. But, the love, when freed from the constraints of a remembering mind was of a whole different dimension.
With the love, I glowed. And the glow became a radiance. And soon I was not there, there was only radiance and radiance is more of what I really am than this person writing these words, the mind that knows the words, or the body that can be seen and felt. Love will disappear us and though that sounds lovely, it is anything but to a self that wants to survive, choose and control.
The Curious Experience of Self-hate
Before discovering the cynic or the transformational power of pain, there was the death wish. Times were were not bad, there was no time. There was just the endless pit of shit that I seemed to have gotten myself into and the hopelessness of life ever being anything else but a pile of shit. Of course, this was because I was seeing and experiencing myself as a pile of shit.
Self-hatred is a very powerful force. Rarely do we allow ourselves to explore self-hatred and understandably so. Without proper support and guidance we might act out the self-hatred and damage or kill the object of that hatred – ourselves.
It was a curious experience for me to be shaving one morning and have a suicidal thought pass through my mind. I grew up in a family that had a lot of judgment around suicide. In fact, there was a lot of judgment around a lot of things and very little curiosity about anything real. We preferred the known to the not-known. It feels more secure to believe we know. Sadly, most of what is known and taught is limited, distorted and disorganized safely within the comfortable, familiar realm of ignorance.
That suicidal thought captured my imagination. I began to dwell on it. And soon, I discovered myself going into the heart of darkness – not a very safe place for someone in such a vulnerable state with a lot of self-hatred running amok.
I was having a very interesting experience. In a way, I was two people. One of me was a curious observer, a me that really wanted to know more about these powerful dark forces assailing the other me. The other me, was the part that identified with the self-hate messages. I really am a pile of shit. I’m bad. I’m evil. I fall far below worthless on the human scale of value.
Having been so defended against my feelings for so long, it’s not surprising that I soon found myself like Marlow winding down a river into the heart of terror. The stream of self-hatred seem to flow like a river following the force of gravity and the contours of the earth as it makes it way inexorably to the ocean which annihilates it through absorption.
That was where that part of me knew it was heading – gravity and contour – flowing to self-destruction. The part of me observing all of this understood how people can get lost in this river of self-hate and pulled/flow into annihilation.
What happens if I feel the self-hatred fully and don’t act out the self-destructiveness inherent in it? A person with some humility and common sense would have help and support for this process. I really am blessed to be able to report back to you.
We live in a world of incredible beauty and potential. Mostly when we experience joy, happiness, love, majesty, and the wonderful – we associate it with something external – some event, some happening, some action or choice. This is not what is really going on.
This is one of reality’s most open secrets. What is happening is much simpler, but even more mysterious. What is real exists to be known. Life reveals. It’s not our experience that matters, but the experience of our experience.
There’s no doubt that Sigmund Freud has made a huge contribution to the evolution and well being of mankind. Freud’s insight into human nature and his exploration of the human psyche laid the groundwork for most western psychological theory and understanding in the world today.
From Object Relations Theory to Depth Psychology and Self Psychology to Transpersonal Psychology, Freud’s influence is seen throughout them all. Margaret Mahler, Heinz Kohut, D.W. Winnicott and every other pioneer of human psychology owe a debt to Freud.
But, the question remains – how neurotic was Sigmund Freud? I don’t believe there are very many people on the planet free of some degree of neurosis. Many of Freud’s theories and postulates have come under scrutiny and challenge. This is normal for those pushing the envelope of human understanding and Freud was certainly pushing the envelope in his day.
Freud and Groucho Marx would have been a great YouTube video. A 4 minute dialogue on cigars could have been one of the great viral videos of all time.
When it comes to our personal growth and unfoldment, keeping an open mind about our possible blind spots is an invaluable asset. Using our friends to identify these doorways into deeper self-knowledge is great blessing – something Freud seems to have had a problem with.
Aggression, fast sleek cars, machismo, steely eyes – 007 is back.
James Bond – Quantum of Solace – and it has me wondering about penis size, phallic identification, self-esteem and homophobia – given that Prop 8 passed in California.
Oh, I left out football or sports in general. What is it with guys, aggression and penis size. The term “penis envy,” as Freud envisioned it relates to the female of the species unconsciously longing for one of her own.
I don’t think Freud ever hung out (no pun intended) in a locker room or worked with a bunch of blue collar studs where the penis jokes and references are part of the daily trash talk.
I’m planning on seeing 007 in action this Friday, I like Daniel Craig as James Bond – even better than Sean Connery. I didn’t think anyone would replace Sean Connery in my mind as 007, but Craig’s edgier, more explosive Bond seems to have that extra dose of testosterone needed to tip the scales.
I like what Ken Wilbur says about testosterone – I don’t mean to be crude, but it appears that testosterone basically has two, and only two major drives: fuck it or kill it.
Some will say lack of self-worth; others projection; others self-hate.
Self-rejection is a function of the mind
The mind is the gate that opens or closes, thereby allowing or preventing direct experience. Any action of the mind that blocks direct experience is self-rejecting; conversely, any action of the mind that allows direct experience is self-accepting. – John Ruskan
Any serious exploration of self-rejection needs to include:
An exploration into the “self” being rejected as well as an open-ended inquiry into the whole notion of self.
An exploration into the ego’s fundamental dynamic of rejection. Rejection is at the core of all ego activity.
Every internal action involves some kind of rejection of our present state, our actual reality. And there is a deeper consequence to this attitude of rejection: By rejecting what is so for us in the present moment, we are rejecting ourselves. – A.H. Almaas
When in Doubt, Doubt Wholeheartedly
How Neurotic was Sigmund Freud?
Is a Big Penis Really Necessary?
I don’t think Freud ever hung out (no pun intended) in a locker room or worked with a bunch of blue collar studs where the penis jokes and references are part of the daily trash talk.
What’s the