Open-Secrets

Category: Perceptions

  • Introjection – Psychological Introjection

    introjectionIntrojection is a psychological process where the subject replicates in itself behaviors, attributes or other fragments of the surrounding world, especially of other subjects.

    In this case the subject is you – me – us – we. Well, anyway – it’s anyone who has been born of human beings and raised by human beings in some kind of human environment or family situation – on earth – as far as we know.

    Introjection is universal to ego structure though most psychological theory might not see it as ubiquitous as it is. Also, many might not see introjection functioning as a defense mechanism all of the time.

    Psychologist and others who study the mind might see introjection as a natural, necessary part of ego structure. And it is – BUT – like all ego structure – it’s phase specific and it remains operative in our psyches because life-long ego structure is a result of arrested development – arrested development from the perspective of the unfoldment of the soul.

    Looking at introjection in simplistic object relations terms – we take in images or impressions of an other (mom – dad) to become like them. We take on characteristics of our parents and others through modeling to achieve some sense of harmony with our environment.

    A necessary step in the psychological development of a human being. But all of this incorporated mental content can be dissolved as it is not necessary for identity. The difficulty lies in the fact that we have become so identified with the content, we lose touch with the medium that the content exists within – the soul or the field of being.

    Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose… Kris Kristofferson, Me and Bobby McGee

    Ain’t it the truth – when the content is gone – there is pure simple being without the past and awesome, vast freedom that we recognize as part of what we are.

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    Image by Alan Babbit

  • Human Maturity – Ego Immaturity

    Human_maturityUsually when we think of maturity, we think of growing up – becoming an adult. But, how many adults do we know that seem incapable of growing up?

    The whole topic is an open invitation for the superego to have a field day.

    When discussing human maturity it seems the first logical step is to discriminate what we mean by human maturity. Here we are not talking so much about the maturation of the body, the emotions or the mind – though the maturation of these human aspects are part of the process.

    Ego maturity is more centrally involved, but ego maturity needs to be free of the constraints of parental and social standards. Real human maturity is not dependent on the superego or the personal “conscience” based on superego dictates.

    Arrested development is a manifestation of ego immaturity. The psycho-dynamics of arrested development need to be addressed and the energies trapped within freed for the soul to move toward real human maturity.

    Human maturity, as we are using it here, could be referred to as the “ripening of the soul.” Here human maturity is seen as the soul and the human being integrating and embodying not only the maturation of the body, mind and emotions, but also waking up to the underlying nature of reality.

    Human maturity is then seen as a movement deeper into true nature or as an unfolding of the soul.

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  • Ego Defenses

    Ego defensesWhat are some ego defenses?

    This is not your ordinary Freudian list of ego defenses. Freud’s list of ego defenses looks something like this:

    • Denial, Repression, and Suppression
    • Displacement and Sublimation
    • Projection and Intellectualization
    • Rationalization
    • Regression
    • Reaction Formation

    The difference in these two lists of ego defenses is that one concerns itself with the ego’s defense against anxiety seeking equilibrium for an ego sense of self, while the other list is more oriented around the ego defending itself from the intrusion of Being.

    Rare is the teacher that can take a student beyond the anxiety and terror of ego dissolution and into the emptiness that offers the opportunity for one’s true nature to arise.

    Just this past week, while attending some advanced training on narcissism, I got wondering about pain (emotional and psychological). Why do we avoid it? Exactly what is psychological and emotional pain?

    It’s said that all emotional and psychological pain is caused by separation from Being.

    It all boils down to – Who are you taking yourself to be?

     

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  • Psychological Splitting

    SplittingThe good, the bad and the ugly. I never thought that Eli Wallach was that ugly, but whatever.

    I seem to be more sensitive recently to how much splitting or polarity exists in the world. Good vs, Bad or Good vs. Evil seem to be at the forefront of things. I’m sure this is related to the presidential race and the never-ending, moronic, self-defeating partisan politics that we, in the U.S., are burdened with these days.

    And though political rivals like James Caraville, Bill First and others seem to be able to sit down together to sell Coca Cola when it comes to working together to resolve some of the country’s and world’s problems – the abyss between two sides each seeing themselves as right (so to speak) once again rears it’s ugly head.

    This whole good/bad thing begins in infancy as a psychological process known as splitting.

    At the beginning, in childhood, there is a relationship between the child and the mother, the parents, the environment. When the relationship is difficult or painful, the child deals with it by splitting the difficult from the easy, the love from the hatred. But to do that, you have to do it with your mind, because it is not real. You have to split your perception. You have to split your mind. You have to believe something that is not there. That is the beginning of mental structure. You have to split the reality into this and that, split mother into good mother and bad mother. Well, your mother is never all good or all bad. She is a mixture. So if you split her into good mother and bad mother, and you have to remember this and that, you are creating something in your mind that is not really there. In time, that becomes the mental relationship that you re-enact in your life relationships. So there is the idealized mother, there is a frustrating mother, and there is the attacking mother. And your relationships with those three parts are what become re-enacted in your life as mental relationships. – A.H. Almaas on Psychological Splitting

    This is not something we can blame on improper parenting, it is one of the fundamental dynamics that gets laid down in the brain that forms the rudimentary basis for discrimination, linear thinking and self-reflection. The problems associated with splitting arise as a result of arrested development – the maturation and evolution of the person and the mind stop at a level that continue to rely on “half-baked” goods.

    Maturing to the point where we can see people and situations in their entirety – the good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful – is a sign of real progress. It probably won’t help to sell Coke, but it could result in the ability and capacity for more people to work together for something other than profit.

     

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  • Lighting Up the Now

    If we experience ourselves in our true self-existing condition, we will see that what we actually are is a being of light.

    LightSo says A.H. Almaas in his new book – The Unfolding Now. Chapter 13 of the new book is titled – Lighting Up the Now – and is available as a free download here.

    We are beings of light in the fluid state—completely frictionless, completely luminous, totally radiant and free. Now, everybody knows that because light has no mass and no weight, gravity does not affect it. So, in our True Nature, we have no heaviness, no thickness, no weight. We are substantial only in the sense that fluid light has a fullness, a bodyness to it. But that fullness, that substantiality, is completely light and smooth. That is the nature of awareness. And because it is light, it doesn’t help us see—it is what sees, it is what perceives. Thus light, awareness, consciousness, perception, sensitivity are all the same thing.

    In this chapter, Almaas asks the reader not to believe, but to imagine – open the mind to the implications of our true nature being light.

    What are the implications of this for understanding what it means to be ourselves? If we apply it to our internal life, we can see that the more we are present and the more fully we are experiencing and being our essential presence, the more we will experience things slowing down. This seems to be a law of time—not that linear time is being altered, but more time becomes experientially “available” to us. Thus, the slowing down of our experience of time will place us more and more in the present. The more we are the presence, the more we are in the present. So, the slowness of time has a lot to do with being in the present.

  • Spiritual Light

    Spiritual-lightSpiritual Light, the Light of God, Universal Light – on the spiritual path, search or journey, we hear many things about spiritual light.

    It seems that light is part of the fundamental nature of the manifested. Some paths say sound (OM). You could argue both in the form of vibration arise simultaneously as the first arising out of the Absolute or Non-Being.

    In his new book – The Unfolding Now, A.H. Almaas has a chapter titled – Lighting Up the Now (free download). This chapter explores some of the ramifications of light as our basic nature.

    From the Big Bang to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, Almaas asks us to consider the implications of being a Being of Light. What does that mean in terms of time? What about the body?

    Spiritual light isn’t something we go from here to there to find. Spiritual light is what is actually here appearing to our senses as material form.

    Jill Bolte Taylor discovered this when she had her stroke.

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