Tag: self

Ego Hair Extensions

Is Your Alter Ego Craving Hair Extensions?

When you wake up from one of those good hair nights, do you want to run for the scissors or the salon to build on your wild look with ego hair extensions?

Body art, tattoos, metal bits, body sculpting, cosmetic surgery, liposuction, spray tanning, eyebrow threading, hair extensions… the choices seem endless these days for creating a body image to reflect who we are, want to be or think we are. Which seems to connect to the age-old quest to know – Who am I?

In the lexicon of spirituality, self-image is usually associated with ego identity. An alter ego is a different ego identity from our normal one or sense of self… a rock star, a past life, an abandoned child – who knows? Alter egos can be anything – a wish for another theater of being?

I had no idea of the extent of the evolution of hair extensions and the contribution they are making to the world of fashion and glamor. Basic hair extension types remind me of enneagram types.

According to Alter Ego Hair Design – Hair extensions are pre-tipped strands of hair that are attached to small sections of your own natural hair near the root. Length, volume or both is now safe and comfortable to achieve, so you can stop dreaming about the hairstyle of your dreams!

Hair extensions can enable you to transform the appearance of fine, lifeless or short hair into thick, long, beautiful looking hair. Using human hair extensions, you can literally change your hair in an afternoon. Don’t wait another day to experience the excitement of what hair extensions can do for you! Whether you just need volume or you want super long locks, it’s the hair you’ve always dreamed of, made real!

The quest, the seeking, the endless search for meaning and self-worth continue – as does the desire to find the right image to reflect the self – ego, alter ego, or other.

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July 9
The New Spiritual Path for the Age

Neuroscience Will be the Basis for the Next Spiritual Path

My interest in the interface between neuroscience and consciousness continues – as does my reading of The Ego Tunnel. My meditations are taking an interesting turn as well under the influence of this interest.

My 27-year interest in the Diamond Approach is fueled, in part, by seeing it as a “teaching appropriate for our times.” The Diamond Approach incorporates modern psychological knowledge and understanding into a new spiritual teaching paradigm.

As I observe the influence of my recent readings on my meditations, thought processes, matrix of attention and index of curiosity, I have little doubt that within my lifetime, I will see a new spiritual path emerge that draws heavily on the insights and knowledge afforded us by those pioneering the field of neuroscience.

The beginnings of this can already be seen in books like Mindsight, where Dr. Dan Siegel is applying understandings of awareness, attention, and mindfulness to his psychological work with clients. Of course, spiritual teachers have understood much of this for millennia. However, spiritual knowledge and insight evolve as consciousness evolves.

Over the entire course of time, spiritual paths have arisen to meet the present-day needs of people’s consciousness and capacity for understanding. Deeper understanding of neuron firing, neural resonance, and brain synchronicity will lead to specific techniques and technologies to influence an individual’s state of consciousness or even deliberately induce a transcendent state of consciousness.

Neuroscience is taking a look from a unique lens at the fundamental spiritual question – Who am I?

I don’t think any amount or degree of technology will remove or reduce some of the basic barriers and hurdles to enlightenment, namely the challenge of embodiment and integration of the nondual as well as the clarification of the personality & ego structure into a transparent vehicle for consciousness. As I learned early in life – spiritual experiences are a dime a dozen, but real change is as rare as a selfless politician.

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June 24
ING Challenges Reification Through Dialectic Inquiry

Dialect Inquire Reveals Everything is LivING

Last week, I was engaging in some open-ended dialectic inquiry with a friend when she looked at a table and said tabling? We were discussing how everything in existence has dynamism and she through the ING on table to express that dynamism of the table. (more…)

February 6
The Recycled Self

Egoic Self is a Recycled Self

Yesterday, in his afternoon talk at the Ridhwan School’s summer retreat, A.H. Almaas referred to the recycled self. This is our normal sense of self – a false identity based on self-images and history. This self is engaged in constant ego activity which includes mental, emotional and physical patterns of rehashing the past.

All of this activity is a result in a belief that effort will get us where we want to be – and while that may be true when it comes to walking across the street, it is not true when it comes to satisfying urge or longing for peace, authenticity, happiness, love and other more fundamental human and spiritual quests.

The recycled self stands in shard contrast to what Almaas refers to as “runaway realization” – where True Nature spontaneously moves from moment to moment revealing deeper dimensions and understanding with no effort, hope, longing or past.

The Ridhwan School’s annual summer retreat’s focus this year is – The Fulcrum.

August 17
Loss of Self vs. Self is Lost

Loss of Self – What does it mean? What is lost? Is the experience similar to being lost?

Buddhism and other non-dual teachings say there is no self to lose. Others say the self is an ontolgical reality that has various levels or degrees of manifestation including those bound and confined within the world of object relations and conceptualization.

Many are seeking the True Self. Do they want to lose the False Self and find some notion of a new and improved self? I think this sense of wanting to find or be a true self is an inherent dynamic within the soul for authenticity, to be what one really is.

It’s the concept of that “one,” the individual consciousness, that is in question here. The biggest misunderstanding, as I see it, is conceptualizing or reifying the notion of a true self according to one’s current belief structure.

The challenge of “spiritual experience” is that it is mostly co-opted by the ego mind. Experience gets categorized and filed according to the past, the familiar and the comfortable.

Loss of Self at the ego level is mostly terrifying as the mind interprets this as actual death or going insane or some other existential disaster.

In fact, the experience of loss of self is liberating if one is able to relax into the experience. This involves letting go of the compulsion of staying one step ahead of one’s experience.

Free-falling into experience as it unfolds without the immediate need to control or understand is challenging. What seems to help facilitate the process is a sense of loving curiosity that is more centered in the heart than the head.

Looking at the world today, I can only see loss of a few zillion selfs as a positive thing. Indeed, the world might improve overnight if we forget the past and let the self go.

Does loss of self mean loss of identity, loss of control, loss if the individual? What are your thoughts – experiences?

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June 8
Disidentification

I came across this post while looking into disidentification. The post, in part, has an exercise in disidentification. There are a lot of “I” statements in the exercise and then this paragraph:

Through the process of disidentification you become more and more your own manager. You find yourself becoming more free from concerns about the expectations or judgments of other people. The self is the inner director.

There is little in this exercise, as I see it, that involves disidentification. In fact, just the opposite it increases identification with an idealized self.

Disidentification is a natural result of open-ended inquiry into the nature of the self. Who am I? What am I? Exploring my beliefs, attitudes and convictions is part of the process of disidentification.

The process of disidentification often begins with a situation in which we are totally charged, reactive and identified with some self-image from the past. These processes are psychodynamic slices of a larger overall process for the seeker of true nature.

This manager and director of the self mentioned above is the central identification. The deeper implications of disidentification are clearly seen in the Buddha’s questioning of the existence of self.

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April 10