Over the course of 5+ decades, I have had to learn the hard way to stand with the Truth. I’m not 100%, but I’m making progress.
Some of the longest walks in my life were short in distance, but long in challenge and difficulty as I turned toward the Truth and walked away from saving face or self-image. I remember clearly one of the most difficult walks of this nature I made. I was in my late-twenties. That walk has supported me more than I can ever say in turning toward the Truth.
Our idealized self-image is just that an image and our dear friend, the superego, uses that very effectively to constantly harangue us, or more likely – beat the shit out of us.
When we get comfortable with losing face – letting go of the prized self-image, our hearts and minds can soar to new heights.
As this image reflects, when the self-image falls, the temple of wisdom is revealed.
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16 responses to “Truth vs. Saving Face”
What Truth Requires
Truth has a thousand countenances. Sometimes she’s a tough broad partial to black leather, a sleeping infant, two sparrow nipping at a black hawk’s wing in mid air, a pair of lenseless wireframes hanging nearly invisible on sagebrush but for a white blossom unexpectedly in the brushy gray, a fuzzy dog with poop on its butt sitting on your big toe, a dead moose splayed on the side of the road, an excavation hole so deep in your psyche there’s no place for all the dirt and rubble so it melts out your eyes. On occasion she might arouse your heart’s sweetness but she’s just as capable of leaving you bruised and taking you to your most desperate thoughts at the heart of which is a needle through your kidney leaving you crippled on your path. She can be a cruel bitch. Others will wonder why you would want to keep that kind of company, then they’ll wonder if they want to keep yours. So don’t expect companionship. And by the way, Truth doesn’t date. With Truth it’s not love at first sight—it’s marriage; a steadfast, committed, eternal flame.
–Halbert
Today I found your blog and I think it is great. I will read every single post. For now one thing struck me in special way and it made me feel pressed to send you this email.
…you seem not to distinguish between self-image and self-ideal.
Would you be willing to clarify why is that?
Maybe when we find out we are not this self-ideal, we find out that it only covered the painful self-image that is underneath?
And if this is true, maybe this is why it is so difficult to finally “get comfortable losing face” ?
Hmmm. what is your opinion?
Hi Maciek
I think self-image is all of what we normally take to be us and also many more subtle components – body, history, thoughts, feelings – general sense of who we are – all of it is the self-image.
Self-ideal would be ideas of how we should be, what would make us better, how we would prefer to be or be seen. Superego will be at play here.
It’s the judgmental component that carries all the pain & shame. I could want to be an accomplished musician – nothing wrong with that. But my superego could kick the shit out of me every time I miss a note.
Saving face usually involves elements of shame and exposure. Most always – there is a set of eyes looking at you. Good to explore – who’s eyes. Only on the surface will they appear to be yours, deeper down, they are always someone else – near and dear – Mom? Dad?
Thank you for your prompt reply…
I have a question; is the ego ideal something that we always want to achieve?
Is this possible that this is something that I not only want to achieve but also I think I am already this – what is this – self-ideal or self-image?
Does this mean that I am grandiose or narcissistic?
It seems to me that I understood the whole history about my personality, why I am what I am… But it is not enough to change anything…
To see this is not enough, I am unable to drop this self ideal, to acknowledge that it is not really me, that I made the whole story up to cover up what I feel deep inside.
What I mean is that I always thought that it is enough to see who I take myself to be and this is enough…
But now it seems that this is an easy part..one is to see who I take myself to be. And the other is to acknowledge that I do not have to be this, that this have only a defensive function.
Does this make any sense to you?
The ego ideal is, in part, what the ego does under the influence of the enlightenment drive and the superego. The ego believes it can create the real, which it cannot. Reality is what it is, the ego mind is threatened by the real because it will dissolve the structures and identity that are built upon self & object representations. Freud said the ego is basically a defensive mechanism that arises in an attempt to deal with and survive our environment.
Sit down and think/feel what/where it is that you think/feel you need to be/become to be complete, whole, happy, content, a better person, etc. 99.99999% of this will be your ego ideal. The reality is that we are disconnected from what is real and the ego cannot do anything about the situation – except experience the affect of the separation. This is not easy – involves moving into the pain and suffering and eventually the dissolution of the ego – annihilation.
Self-image is mostly who/what we experience ourselves to be. In my experience, most people spend quite a bit of time thinking they know what their soul or real self is when it is only another self-image they are dealing with.
I am confused about one thing regarding superego. It is easily distinguish superego when it is violent, rejecting and aggressive.
And how about self-inquiry in order to improve myself? Does this come from loving place within me or is this still superego?
I always thought it is very good thing and it serves me good purpose. And probably it is, but…
The problem is that I can’t stop it. I know that some people do inquiry let say two hours every Sunday. I do it constantly – sometimes out of curiosity, sometimes I just cant help it. It lasts constantly.
If overdo this, my head gets clogged, it is too much intellectual and generally I feel the same as after superego attacks.
It made me curious what you wrote; “what the ego does under the influence of the enlightenment drive”
It is hard to believe it is the superego because it is not that much aggressive or violent. it is as if someone was motivating me to improve myself. However, if I sincerely ask myself why I do it, the only answer is “you can’t settle with what you are now, you must do something about it, if you work hard enough, understand everything about your family history and personality patterns you will finally get rid of your deficiencies”
So it stinks like superego, does not it?
It does not remind me my mother – my mother is this voice that is more aggressive. This self-improvement, spiritual superego is rather part of me that can’t stand feeling deficient. It is saying “you are not this” or rather “do not accept this, do something about it”
But I cant stop it. I believe in its attitude – i really HAVE TO do something about my incompleteness. It is not anything wrong in this “superego”, except that effort does not work very well.
So what can I do about it?
1) I can’t stop it
2) It serves me no good purpose, sometimes I want just to relax and accept myself a bit, even with this deficiency
Do you have any idea how to work on this?
And one remark that might be helpful is that this deficiency is anxieties around what is probably called in Diamond Approach the Will’s hole.
“I am unable to function in the world. I do not have this capacity. The others have it but I do not.”
The superego’s activity is always around judgment and comparison. The soul just wants to know the truth for the sake of the truth. The motivation for evolving is not based on an ideal or to become better according to some standard.
What happens if you just pay attention to the dynamism, sit with it, let it evolve – and let go of the content of the mind and the need to know?
First thing is that I probably do not have enough trust to let it just happen. I felt the same way as when I learned to ride a bike without hands on the steering wheel. I can let it happen but no longer than few seconds. Then I engage back in this process of mini-control of my experience. It is a bit scary and full of doubt: “How will I be able to take any action in this state of no control?”
The second thing was that I had experience of falling that I had troubles accepting. It was scary thing because I was getting stronger. And my whole personality is build about NOT being strong. I am always identified with this loving, caring, supportive, submissive and nice boy and things like strength, autonomy, success terrify me because I cannot be both – loving and strong at the same time. To allow this strength means that I drop this “loving” identification, which I do not want to. My mother did not like me insisting on having my own will and being free to be, because she took this as a rejection of her, as if I hated her. I do not want her to think I hate her. it is because although I put great effort NOT to admit this, I do love her and I can sacrifice everything, even my own autonomy and dignity to maintain this good relationship with her. I do not want to give up her, her good qualities. I want her to know I love her, I am on her side.
The third thing was that I had experience of being tired. It was something like “OK, I do not even know what is supposed to happen, I am tired of all this business, I give up because it is hopeless”. It was quite pleasant because it was peaceful, however I could not let it happen longer because after this my attempts to control stroke back with double intensity.
Maciek – So the plot thickens. More elements in the mix.
You are bringing in the whole question of identity and the elements of history, conditioning, beliefs, etc.
Who/What am I taking myself to be? What my judgments and comparisons are around that may show me some of the superego’s activity. How I think I need to be or how I want to be will give me some of the ego-ideal.
As we lean more toward human and spiritual development, our superego can become quite “spiritualized.” Sounds like you are ripe for personal work.
Are you working with a Diamond Approach teacher? Some of what you bring to light will require bodywork to deal with the resistance and beliefs.
Our need for control is quite a challenge isn’t it?
Today I understood very important thing regarding my self-image and self-ideal. Namely that I do not see the world objectively.
It seems that I had to project out my own suffering very early in my life.
And I just lived my life with seeing others suffer a lot, while the objective situation was that it was me who suffered. And my whole personality is built as a way to relieve others pain: of being not included, seen and welcomed.
It is just fascinating thing to find out however I am not sure how to proceed. How to work on projection. The world seems to be really upside down from this perspective. People feels my pain and therefore I have an illusion that I can influence their moods by being seen/not being seen. It is like I switch that I can turn on and off.
I feel that this is the reason of my further difficulties with anger repression, will sacrifying and hurt.
I do not know what I wanted to say in this comment really, just wanted to share and find out if it make sense? Do people in DA recognize such pattern in their work? How do we work on projection? How can I made myself understand that it is not them who suffer but me? Because now I know only mentaly – subcionsiouslly I still act out on this.
PS: yeah, I do work with DA teacher
M. – Truth be told, we all suffer. Separation from true nature is the original pain – at least psychologically, emotionally and spiritually. Don’t you think?
I think they say that splitting is the first defense and then projection – right? First thing is get rid of the superego so we can experience our experience without judgment.
Next is to just be with our experience as it unfolds. No need to change (reject) anything. Things may seem upside down, so how is it to live from there?
Curiosity is a great thing. Makes the pain secondary to the truth. You are asking good questions, what happens if you hang out with not knowing and let the revelations come to you?
Yeah, I do my best to get rid of my superego and to be curious about my present experience. But sometimes too imany things seem to pop-up at one time and frequently I find myself walking within the same territory.
I guess I need to inquiry whats difficult in state of not-knowing and just observe as I reject myself by trying to put effort in improving myself. Because it is soo difficult just to hang out with not knowing – my whole body screams “you certainly cant settle at what you are now”. It is not even superego, it is something extremely sublte. Today I read about negative mergng and I guess it is might be connected to this.
And indeed when I am writing this I start to realy that I always cling back to this suffering. That this painful stuff does serve me kind of service. In my mind- it is impossible to lose my deficencies for some reason.
I would like to get into details, I will do it on my own, I guess I just wanted to share that I find very very fidduclt just to hang out with not-knowing and not to force insights by myself.
M – it is my observation that we all develop a range of tension or an energetic range of experience in the body and psyche that we prefer – our normal state. Challenging this range is difficult and scary at times. We can feel like we are going to disintegrate, dissolve, go crazy, etc. Indeed we are – at least the structures that we believe are us.
Increasing one’s range of tolerance by observing and “being with” is a large part of the work – as is working with the superego to get it out of your experience so you can actually have your experience. Another big part of the work is not “acting out” – being able to feel and be with the depth of our experience without engaging in inappropriate, self-sabotaging, or destructive behavior.
Why do you need to change? Who changes? In fact, how do you change what needs to be changed?
Let me get back to this topic, John. I have done the practices you suggested – on motivations for improving myself and on need to change.
I came to conlusion that my spiritual efforts are based on a need to get rid of my deficencies. But when I examined what are this deficencies I found out that mostly they are reactions to what I perceive as a hostile enviroment.
In my eyes, the world is a place that lacks hospitality, than rejects my actions and puts me down.
In order to protect myself, I isolate myself, stay in the background and I am never seen. My superego does a great job in checking I am close to the ideal of someone who is “nobody special” , “not important” and “unseen”
This inquiry leads me to tremendous helplesness. Because it seems that solution is not changing myself. The world itself would have to change (or my peception of it of course), which is impossible.
I just miss some hospitality, some support, some companionship that would welcome and see positevely my actions. In moments like this I envy people that believe in God – they know their helplesness and suffering could be seen and related to…
Continuing this inqury, I realize that this lack of trust comes from my mother’s attitude toward my needs.
Who I take myself to be is mainly the result of her attitude to my needs. As if in my mind “my needs” were equal to “me”.
This is very interesting…
M – I can certainly relate to some of what you say from my history. You are correct – the solution is not in changing yourself, but in discovering the truth of you, which means confronting these deep-seated ideas you have of who/what you are. The deficiency and helplessness are indications that you are moving in the right direction – but, they need to be held in proper perspective. Otherwise we stay stuck in the identification with them – which can lead to some very difficult and painful times.