Open-Secrets

Category: Psychodynamics

  • Ennui, Boredom, and the Resistance to Stillness

    Ennui, Boredom, and the Resistance to Stillness

    The Restless Self

    The human mind craves activity. Even in moments of tranquility, the “ego need” for stimulation cannot rest. It thrives on constant mental activity—thoughts, emotions, or sensations. When stimulation fades, a feeling of emptiness emerges—lethargy, boredom, and apathy.

    Boredom, often dismissed as trivial, reveals a more profound truth about the ego’s need for psychic activity. It isn’t just a momentary lapse of engagement but a reflection of how deeply the ego fears stillness. As Hameed Ali (A. H. Almaas) writes in The Unfolding Now, boredom can be a gateway to recognizing this emptiness, a void the ego works tirelessly to fill. However, instead of allowing this emptiness to be, the ego agitates, searching for anything to maintain its identity.

    Boredom is the universe whispering, ‘Stop thrashing, and you’ll see the goldfish in the mud.’
    Alan Watt

    The experience of boredom can be unsettling because it unearths a sense of meaninglessness. The ego perceives this as a threat—a crack in the carefully constructed self. But this very crack holds a profound opportunity. The more we allow the discomfort of boredom to surface, the more we expose the undercurrent of ego activity: the desire for something, the avoidance of emptiness, the rejection of the present moment. Boredom, then, becomes a mirror of the ego’s perpetual dissatisfaction.

    Almaas describes this ego activity as a form of resistance. The ego resists peace, stillness, and quiet because those states dissolve its foundation.

    In The Pearl Beyond Price, he discusses how this activity is driven by hope and desire—seeking pleasure and avoiding pain, constantly rejecting the present. This dynamic is a direct obstacle to Being, the ego’s desperate clinging to what is known and controlled.

    The ego is like a hyperactive puppy chasing its tail—dizzying itself into believing it’s going somewhere.
    Eckhart Tolle

    Without constant mental or emotional movement, the ego feels as though it ceases to exist. The irony is that the stillness the ego fears—when fully surrendered to—reveals our True Nature, a state beyond the limitations of the self. Yet, the ego fights to keep the wheel turning, afraid of the annihilation that comes with deep peace. Almaas highlights this dynamic clearly, explaining how the ego relies on its psychic activity to perpetuate itself, while peace, silence, and stillness are experienced as threats, the beginnings of its dissolution.

    Ennui and the Human Condition

    When we experience boredom, apathy, or lethargy, we touch the deeper layers of the ego’s resistance. Boredom is not merely a lack of entertainment; it’s the ego’s cry for something to do and attach to. In this sense, boredom is a form of existential restlessness. The ego needs activity to feel alive, but the deeper truth is that this activity only prolongs its suffering.

    In Facets of Unity, Almaas discusses how this resistance manifests as a disconnection from Being, leading to apathy or resignation. The ego, unable to recognize the beauty of stillness, seeks out distractions. The soul, trapped in this cycle, experiences life as “drab, gray, cold” because it is cut off from the warmth and aliveness of true consciousness. This is the nature of egoic life—mechanical, superficial, always searching for stimulation to avoid the more profound truth.

    The Trap of Psychic Activity

    The Trap of Psychic Activity

    The ego’s reliance on psychic activity is a defense mechanism against stillness, a way to keep its identity intact. As Almaas points out in The Inner Journey Home, this constant motion—thoughts, emotions, or actions—creates a false sense of self. We identify with this activity, believing it to be who we are. But this identification only traps us further in the cycle of suffering. The more we cling to the activity, the more we are disconnected from Essence’s straightforward, still presence.

    Psychic activity is like a carnival ride—the lights and noise feel important until you realize you’re just spinning in circles.
    Jiddu Krishnamurti

    To truly encounter our Essence, we must recognize the ego’s need for activity and surrender it. This isn’t an act of willpower or effort but a relinquishing of the need to control. Almaas writes, “The soul needs to recognize that she actually can do nothing here; she needs to forget about trying to release herself.” In surrendering to the present moment, without the ego’s interference, we rest in Being.

    The Dissolution of the Ego in Stillness

    The Dissolution of the Ego in Stillness

    Ennui, boredom, and apathy are not merely uncomfortable states to be avoided. They are invitations to see the ego’s deeper workings—its need for constant activity and its fear of stillness. The ego’s dissolution begins when we stop resisting these states and instead allow them to be. In doing so, we open ourselves to the deeper reality of our True Nature, a state of peace, stillness, and quiet that the ego cannot comprehend but longs to return to.

    In the stillness, the ego dissolves, and we find the aliveness that has always been there—an aliveness not dependent on external activity but on the essence of Being.

  • How Object Relations Benefit Us

    How Object Relations Benefit Us

    Soul Space Service

    Object relations help us develop the capacity to relate and function in the world. Ego development is necessary for the evolution of the individual consciousness. Ego identity and ego activity are a pain in the butt when a person’s development reaches a point where they know there must be something deeper, more real, more authentic.

    Few people trip into the light fantastic without first experiencing a lot of frustration, heartache and expenditure of energy. The ego eventually wears itself out and down.

    As wonderful as the mind is, it simply can’t imagine anything beyond its boundaries and limitations. Let’s explore a few ways to increase our potential possibilities for getting blinded by the light.

    We started this series of posts using a tangled ball of yarn/string to illustrate a perspective of psychic structure.

    psychic structure

    Another way of seeing this is like one of these: a mandala.

    soul mandala

    From the perspective of the soul, not identified with the self, the mess of string/yarn appears as an intricate patterning, a unique expression of the individual consciousness.

    As mentioned earlier, the tangled ball of string and knots is permeated by exponentially more space than string. As we all know, at the atomic level, it’s more than 99% space.

    So, imagine being able to perceive from the atomic level. From within the ball of string, you can move your attention, your viewpoint anywhere. As the string, your threads of experience, are perceived in all that space, they present various patterns, mandalas.

    Same threads/strings, different perspective. Soul and space, how can we invite them into the foreground of our experience.

    A tip for recognizing the soul

    If you have ever had the experience, knowing something, but the mind could not picture it accurately, have you wondered how you know the image offered up is inaccurate? It’s similar to having a word “on the tip of your tongue.”

    This can happen a lot with lucid dreams or meditative states. You’ve experience something vividly, but you can’t get the image of it exactly right in your mind and you “know” that’s not it when the mind offers up various interpretations. How do you know? How are you certain that’s not it?

    The first time this happened to me it was with color. I had been in the realm of the nonconceptual where a particular color infused and dominated the experience. In this world, my mind could not recreate that color (our eyes perceive less than a millionth of the electromagnetic spectrum).

    It was like my mind was the paint center at Home Depot, trying this combination, and that combination, and that combination… over and over to be met with – that’s not it. That’s not it was certainty, I knew that wasn’t the color.

    How? How did I know that? Because the color was still a form in my soul and I could feel it, could sense it and it was obvious that what the mind was trying to create was not it.

    If/when you have similar experiences, pay attention to “that’s not it.” Pay attention to the certainty, that you know. Sense into that. Let go of trying to get the picture, it may be impossible because what’s in the soul is beyond this dimension.

    In doing this, you will recognize, develop and nurture knowing the soul as the medium of experience it is.

    A tip for nurturing awareness of space

    Our minds are prone to paying attention to forms, to objects – that person, that car, that tree… We rarely pay attention to or give priority to the space all these objects are held in and surrounded by.

    Start doing that, pay attention to space.

    I noticed that certain states of perception, like perceiving space, were similar in feel to peripheral vision. This made sense to me as looking directly at space or focusing on it simply turned it into another object. Try this for a month:

    Sit in a chair and look straight ahead. With your right arm bent ninety degrees and your palm flat, move your arm to the right, while still looking forward, until your hand disappears. Back it up until you can hold it in your vision without moving your head or eyes. Do the same for the left side.

    object relations space

    Now, position both hands in that way. While looking forward, work with your vision until you can stay looking forward and keep both hands in view.

    You want the arms lower than the ones in the illustration, the hands at eye level. Arms straight out, bent ninety degrees at elbow.

    What you’re working toward is being able to maintain about a 180-degree field of vision without focus on an object and without effort or eye strain or movement. You are simply gazing forward without focus on objects.

    meditation exercise on space

    As you get more accomplished at this, you want to start shifting some of your attention from the visual field to the felt-sense of the experience – inviting in the perception of inner space. Spend five minutes twice a day doing this and then get back to me with comments.

    Allowing Service to Lead the Way

    There are many words and books written, as well as videos these days about selflessness, unconditional love, detachment, the true self, self-love, and other “spiritual” concepts.

    The self loves to hide in these selfless concepts – in plain sight.

    When one gains some experiential understanding of the self and separateness, one usually experiences a subtle shift in orientation to the subject/object world. 

    It’s not something you can do, nor something you can learn. Shift Happens.

    Exploring service and the notion of serving or being of service is of great value in untangling our ball of knots.

    Service is the royal-road home and the final job description for the soul. When you arrive home, when the soul is no longer occluded, she finds herself in the company of Friends, the servants of the truth.

  • Object Relations: The Power Behind the Throne

    Object Relations: The Power Behind the Throne

    What makes object relations so sticky?

    In our exploration of object relations, we’ve determined that the “bonding agent” is the key to freeing us from being trapped in the past with these psychodynamic building blocks. On the surface, the bonding agent is experienced as affect which the comparative mind uses to define the object relation and its parts – I’m little, weak, unlovable… The other is big, strong, source of love…

    Additionally, the mind uses the affect as its primary label for organizing object relations.

    “Peeling” the object relationships off our consciousness can feel like pulling Velcro apart or separating something glued with contact cement. The glue stretches, like taffy. not wanting to release. Let me know if you’ve experienced something like this.

    But, there are forces and dynamics at play here much deeper than emotional affect. Understanding these forces will take our work with object relations beyond the self into the realm of Being – the power behind the throne of the self.

    Libidinal Energy

    Libido is a term used in psychoanalytic theory to describe the energy created by the survival and sexual instincts. According to Sigmund Freud, the libido is part of the id and is the driving force of all behavior.

    “Libidinal energy” is that which propels an “object instinct” like sexual desire. To Freud “attachments of affection” are “libidinal ties.

    Instincts or drives—innate and biological urge that seeks satisfaction in objects. 

    Do you see? Objects, objects, objects.

    Our biological nature is deeper than our psychological nature. Our capacity for the psychological evolved out of the biological matrix.

    The animal we are has objective drives and needs. The psychological self has objective needs and imagined needs.

    As part of the survival drive, many species developed a biological imprinting process between mother and offspring. For human beings, this process has evolved psychologically and emotionally into the attachment process.

    Imprinting and attachment deepen psychologically through cathexis: an investment of energy into an object or an idea and/or the concentration of mental energy on one particular person, idea, or object.

    object relation illustratin

    So, returning to our illustration of an object relation, we have this dynamic:

    • Something in the present triggers an object relation – bringing the past into the present via the comparative mind process.
    • The object relation has an affect associated with it and an investment of libidinal energy contained in it.
    • Reacting to and acting from the object relation loops the affect and invests more libidinal energy into it.
    libido libidinal energy

    Let’s see if we can provide examples to help you recognize and feel into cathexis and libidinal energy. We’ll provide an example for each drive:

    Survival Drive

    Imagine you’re famished – “I’m starving.” You’re stuck in traffic and you start imaging that perfect meal that will “hit the spot.” You’re thinking and daydreaming and imagining the experience of eating that food and the satisfaction that will come from it. You’re salivating and your stomach starts growling – because your mind doesn’t know the difference between imagining and reality.

    In this moment, as you play around with this, especially the imagining, the anticipation of chewing and relishing the flavors and textures of the food – can you sense the investment of energy taking place? Are you aware of the psychological and biological energies being invested?

    Sexual Drive

    Anyone who has ever masturbated using fantasy, should be able to recognize libidinal investment right away. Whether you’re just in your mind, looking at a photo or a video, it’s pretty easy to feel the energetic investment into the idea of the other, the interaction and the satisfaction resulting.

    Social Drive

    Ever been in love? Ever daydream, long for, or imagine all the possibilities with your beloved?

    This should be another “no-brainer” for feeling the energy you are investing into an idea of an other and a possibility. The idea is not only the time, place and interaction – your beloved is also an idea in your mind. You can spend hours and hours – no work at all – daydreaming energy into that object relation. For the most part we call this being in a “relationship,” and we are. It’s just deeper and more complex than we realize because it’s based more on ideas, mental images, than a real person.

    Life: Real or Imagined?

    We usually don’t spend a lot of time thinking about this type of thing. In fact, we consider it as how life is – and it is for 99.9% of the people, but you’re screwed up. You know there is something deeper, something more real than living in the world of imaginings and ideas.

    You’re living the curse of those being called home – seeking the real.

    I AM THAT self

    It All Comes Down to Identity

    What you’re taking yourself to be is an amalgamation, a mosaic of of memories with a familiar feeling tone permeating it all that you string together and refer to as “I,” “me.”

    It’s time to bust this whole operatic performance wide-open, revealing exactly how you’ve been investing in the wrong “this is me” plan. It’s time to change brokers.

    Object relations theorists and depth-psychologists pretty much agree that the self develops from cathexis to the body, and investing libidinal and psychic energy into objects – ideas of things; concepts, mental representations.

    The investment of energy is not only into the object, but also into the idea of you, the idea of the other and the idea of what the relationship between the parts is.

    BUT, here’s an important question

    What’s the original source of that energy? Libidinal energy comes from the body. Where’s the energy coming from that cathects us to the body?

    Well, it’s not energy at all, it’s presence, Being.

    With the formation of the body, the soul, the individual consciousness enters into a feedback loop with the body. Awareness and consciousness are extending and expressing themselves into and via the body/mind while the body/mind is sending, so to speak, impressions of experience nanosecond by nanosecond into the matrix of consciousness.

    We often hear the phrase – the soul is very sensitive and impressionable – that experience of and from the body/mind, impresses itself upon the soul and the soul takes that shape and then identifies with it. It’s easy to mistake this for some kind of embossing process, but this is not a situation of something outside of the soul impressing itself upon the soul.

    No, this is a wholly internal, so to speak, process within the soul, the medium of experience. The body/mind, thoughts, feelings, sensations – everything – are forms arising within the soul. The soul, the forms and the everything are Being, Beingness, “isness,” presence.

    The soul is not pumping isness into the forms, the forms are of isness, too. Isness, presence is the nature of it all. The soul, being of isness itself, is, at a very subtle, non-thinking, nonreflective level aware of – all is presence is not the way to describe this because there is nothing other than presence, so there is nothing available to make “all” relevant.

    What happens is more like the constant stream of impressions coming from the body/mind (forms within forms), so to speak, start dominating the field of experience. They become foreground, while the more subtle sense of isness fades into the background. It’s the same way body/mind blanks out constant white-noise – the white-noise here being the more subtle sense of presence.

    The basic, fundamental ingredient of libidinal energy, emotional energy and everything else is isness, presence. So, we can say that cathexis is the investment (recognition) of isness, presence in the form and that where things go off the rails is within the construct of duality, subject/object experience.

    We’ve simply lost presence from the foreground of experience – which is a fairly easy situation to remedy.

    where's the isness?

    Forget about Enlightenment! Let go of Awakening! Stop seeking I AM THAT!

    The main barrier, the densest, most subtle veil is “I.” Relating to THAT or enlightenment or awakening, or presence from I, the fly in the ointment, really mucks things up. So, let it go!

    Yeah, yeah, yeah – easy for me to say. Actually easy for us all.

    Where’s the beef!

    Perhaps you remember that Wendy’s commercial from 1984: Where’s the beef?

    It’s that simple – where’s the isness? Where’s the isness in present experience? Where’s the isness in body/mind experience right now? Here’s a clue – it doesn’t involve a location as it’s everywhere.

    Where’s the isness in any object relation or mental process that’s foreground.? They, too, are isness, presence.

    You have to relax looking from the self, from self-referencing – from the body/mind because its job is to interpret all perception in reference to body/mind to navigate this dimension of reality.

    Here’s a tip – allow space, spaciousness, openness. Everything is obvious in space and that’s what this site is about – Exploring the Obvious.

    Next Up:

    How Object Relations Benefit Us

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