Open-Secrets

Category: Questions

  • Fantasy vs. Imagination

    My friend Gordon, co-author of Your Soul’s Compass, was attending a workshop with Hameed Ali (A.H. Almaas) recently. According to Gordon, people were using the the words “fantasy” and “imagination” interchangeably.

    I commented that in fact these were opposite concepts. “Fantasy” is a mental construct–a substitute for reality. Imagination, on the other hand, is an intensification of reality. It is depth perception, the percieving of the divine arising from the absolute that is your lover and also you in this holy instant, seeing the world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wildflower as William Blake did, perceiving the fertile realm of concrete potentiality that lies beneath the surface reality in which we find ourselves embedded. Hameed agreed with me that in fact imagination is indeed a different faculty from the one used for fantasizing.

    Your Soul’s Compass deals with how we can intentionally engage spiritual imagination–what Ibn Arabi called “the creativity of the heart”–to open us to a more harmonious and intimate dance with ultimate reality as the realm of our own and the world’s unfolding possibility.

    How do you see fantasy vs. imagination?

     

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  • Ego Functions

    Ego_functionsIs your ego functioning? What are ego’s functions? Do they serve you or entrap you?

    The granddaddy of psychology, Sigmund Freud, said the ego functioned to manage the instincts and defenses against them.

    According to Carl Jung, the four ways of interpreting reality are the four ego-functions – Sensation, Thinking, Feeling, and Intuition. These consist of two diametrically-opposed pairs. Thinking is the opposite of Feeling, and Sensation the opposite of Intuition.

    Sounds like the foundation of the Meyers-Briggs test. Are you more thinking or feeling? More sensate or intuitive?

    Heinz Hartmann has a few more ego functions up his sleeve – synthesis, integration, regulation, organization, anticipation, tension, decision making, delay, drive taming, identification, intelligence, intention, judgment, language, memory, motility, neutralization, object comprehension, object relations, perception, productivity, reality testing, self-preservation, speech, symbolization, thinking, defense and volition.

    The deeper our knowledge and wisdom of psychology goes, the more we learn about ego, ego structure and ego function, but the question remains for those on the spiritual path – what is being served, defended against or ignored?

     

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  • 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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  • 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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