Tag: space

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.

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

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.

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.

September 27
Object Relations: Trauma & Healing
Healing is a deep-rooted longing

Understanding healing is important. When it comes to psychological, emotional, and trauma healing, the self is the barrier to healing.

Fundamental questions are:
- Who is it that needs healing?
- What is healing?
Healing: the process of making or becoming sound or healthy again.

The etymology of heal is literally “to make whole”

Etymology of integrate “make whole,” from integer “whole, complete,” figuratively, “untainted, upright,” literally “untouched”

We tend to think the wounding will be healed, the little one, me, will be healed, but that is impossible because the wounding is part of object relation, part of the identity with the whole unit.

The more intense the affect in an object relation, the more difficult it is to work through. Early trauma is some of the most difficult for this reason because the trauma keeps retraumatizing us, turning the bonding agent into superglue.

When we’ve been abused, traumatized, or wounded deeply, there is a deep longing to be healed. Healing will eventually lead us to the point where we must face the ultimate challenge of healing.

Let’s use this again to help illustrate the situation more clearly:

For the wounding to heal, for the scab to disappear, the whole unit, who you take yourself to be has to disappear. For complete healing, the wounded one has to dissolve. You, as the self, can’t and won’t be around for total healing – it’s not possible, that subjectivity disappears.

As long as you’re there, the identification with the history remains intact which means the existential wounding is still there because the very existence of the object relation cannot be separated from the affect, the wounding.

This can be challenging to understand – yes, we’ve been abused, that history will not change, it happened.

The pain and suffering we carry is body/mind memory being held in dynamic stasis via identification. As long as we hold onto the wounded one, we will not be healed.

What’s in the Way of Healing?
- Identification (the self, the inner child)
- Fear, Pain & Suffering
- Misunderstanding
Inner is Outer

One of the big misunderstandings in healing and spiritual work involves the concept of inner. When we begin to “work on ourselves,” our attention is directed inward – into the body, into the psyche.

This is appropriate, useful and of great value, but, at some point, we become aware that this “inner” is outer, too. It is easy to be aware of the object relations, you/other dynamic, at play in most inner work.

There is an observer, usually with the self inserted in it, observing and exploring the wounding, pain, trauma, suffering, healing process, etc.

What is the inner of the observer? The comparative mind can’t answer this. There is no comparison. We can articulate the effects and affects of awareness and knowing, the “inner of the inner,” but these are not it.

We can’t get there because we are there – we are the thereness, the isness, the inner of the inner. The isness has no head, no eyes to turn around and look at itself. If we attempt to do this, we’ll just twist our head off!

AND, since that isness is everywhere, there is no “where” to turn around to.

BUT, allowing the conundrum of this into awareness produces a very useful affect and a very useful effect.
- Affect = frustration
- Effect = sensitivity
The usefulness of sensitivity is self-evident.

Why is frustration useful?

Because it exposes the futility of ego activity. It challenges one of the main foundation footings of the self. One of the biggest jokes in this whole situation, when seen from the other side is – the self is a masochist. Its whole existence is, literally, self-torture.

I know, where’s the joke? It’s all so serious, really – it is. It is extremely painful – to the self – a nonexistent entity, but all of this still affects the heart/body/mind/soul – a tortured psyche.

Hanging on to pain and suffering is the way the self perpetuates self. All of that pleasure seeking of the self is the suffering! You need to get deep into the weeds with the support of sensitivity and frustration.

It’s possible that you’re frustrated or reactive in just reading this. Halleluja! You’re on your way! Be open, be sensitive to the frustration.

Frustration is nothing more than resisting the rivet-popping process that shakes the whole structure of self apart. Using your sensitivity, it’s easy to experience the resistance, the glue, the rivets, the knots holding it all together. And the futility of not being able to do anything about it.

Why resist
The unraveling
Of the great ruin
Your life
Has made of you?
God has sent His
Wrecking-crew of angels
To renovate
The dog house you call home
Into an exquisite palace
Crystal fountains
Jeweled domes
Diamond spires
Walls of Divine transparency
Why resist?
This Architect’s plan
Always includes
The razing of
Existing structures (jh)

Trauma – For those working with trauma and, for the most part, all of us, this is not something to rush into. First we need to develop resiliency and consciously work to expand our range of energetic tolerance through a titration process.

Resiliency

It’s a little mind-boggling that we first need a strong enough, secure enough ego-self before it can successfully collapse. But, how can it collapse if it’s not first constructed? And, the construction is very much needed for the evolution of the soul.

Some people’s structures simply collapse, and depending on their uniqueness, they may awaken and remain awakened or the experience can be more problematic because a tug-of-war develops between the self and reality.

I want to emphasize this point again:

In my opinion, the notion of a true or real self is an invaluable gift to the ego-self. The ego-self is a camouflage magician when it comes to hiding in plain sight as a real self. The concept of a real self is a gift that keeps on giving right up to the body’s last breath.

Forget about a real self, that motivation is not needed. To the best of my recollection, with very few exceptions, every mention of a real self I’ve heard is coming from an ego-self.

Hanging on to that concept does more harm than good. It contributes more to suffering than to the process of awakening.

This is where working with object relations serves us.

Working with object relations is like having mini-collapses, a little piece of the structure falls apart and the structure readjusts itself to compensate. This process includes experience of not-knowing, space and disorientation.

But, as all of that happens, surprisingly, you don’t die, you don’t lose your mind, at least not permanently, and in the emptiness — awareness (what you really are).

Working with object relations builds resilience in the psyche, experientially educates us as to what we are and what we’re not – all of which leads to more trust and capacity to allow true nature to have its way with us.

UNDERSTANDING THE REALITY OF THE THEORY OF HOLES EVENTUALLY BRINGS US TO THIS RECOGNITION:

What is pain?

Really. Have you ever given this question serious time and attention? I’m talking about a year, maybe two or more. We’re talking about emotional and psychological pain not the sore thumb from being hit with a hammer.

Eventually, working with issues, whether traumatic or not, lead us to recognizing that the inner child and the self cannot be separated from the wounding. The wounding is part and parcel of the identification. It is the dissolution of these structures that is the healing.

Working with the inner child may, at first, feel like an integration – and this is useful, but in the end it is the dissolution of the mental images that frees what’s frozen, returning us to wholeness – untaintedness.

I’m not a trauma expert and I’m not giving advice on how to work with trauma. I’m simply pointing to where work on trauma and all other psychodynamic issues lead us.

Knowing this can help support our unfoldment toward wholeness. It certainly assists with disidentification.

The trauma work I’m familiar with incorporates several elements of essential work:
- Presence – I notice more and more therapeutic approaches emphasize the importance of presence at the outset of working with clients. Some of these processes and techniques lack potency due to a lack of understanding of the essential nature of individual consciousness and presence.
- Space – Space is crucial to the process of disidentification and the detachment needed to support healing and wholeness. Many therapists see space as a result of effective process, but they miss the more complete understanding that space is not only a result, but the dynamism that dissolves inner structures.
- Compassion – All inner work is challenging, sometimes painfully so. Children hold themselves responsible for all the crap that happened to them. Two very, very big challenges for most of us:
  - Returning to innocence
  - Experiencing that others actually care about us
- Love/The Stupa – Love melts boundaries. Love is the essential quality that relaxes the ego for dissolution to happen. Love is what flows into the nervous system thawing the frozenness, melting the tenacity.
More than anything else, self-love is allowing love to have its way with you. Sounds easy. It’s a bitch for many of us! The conviction of our unworthiness and our misplaced accountability are two of the most formidable defenses of the ego. Remember, the superego’s genesis is love, but with time and frustration this turns into self-hatred.

The melting of the lies, the rending of these most-dear beliefs lead to what is referred to as “the ruin of the heart.” Oh, the anguish! The ocean of tears!

The rebirth of ecstasy!

Up Next

Moving from States to Stations
September 10
Dream Work – Humiliation Dream

Working with Dreams to Free the Soul

Dream Interpretation vs. Dream Work

Years ago, when I started this journey of exploration into “what is the nature of me,” I had a period of interest in dreams. Many teachers encourage us to explore our dreams. I had very little interest in dream interpretation, still do – though the occasional insight is of interest.

Lucid Dreaming

What I was mostly curious about in those days was lucid dreaming as I had heard that “waking up” in a dream could be used as a doorway into out-of-the-body travel. Over the years, I have become quite the lucid dreamer. Often when I sleep, I continue to be aware. I work with that awareness similar to the way I worked with lucid dreaming – waking up within the medium of experience.

Working with the Affective Content of Dreams

Over the last ten years my interest in dreams is more focused on the affective quality present in the dream. I have found this to be quite useful in helping me move through various levels of identity and object relations. If the self in a dream is an extension or construction of the waking me, then it seems fair to assume that I am somehow dragging my historic content into the dream in some fashion.

Last night was a good example of how i work with dreams these days.

Dreams of Humiliation

I was at an event with a large group Diamond Approach students. I recognized many of these people from my waking life. A new book was out, that contained a specific paragraph about me. In reading the paragraph, I experienced a very deep and searing sense of humiliation.

I went to a twenty-year friend of mine to ask why she had allowed this to be printed. She told me she had nothing to do with it. As I walked away, I fell to the floor, began sobbing and shaking uncontrollably.

At this point I awakened – 3:50am. The sense of humiliation was flooding my psyche and body. I explored it a bit and became aware of the judgmental part of the experience. The superego was having a field day kicking my butt.

I find shame and humiliation some of the most difficult work. The power of the inner critic attacks is severe. Becoming lost or trapped in the identity of the humiliated one seems easy when confronted with such powerful forces.

Inner Critic / Superego Judgments

We will never win a battle or an argument with the superego/inner critic. What’s needed is disengage from the attack so we can explore our experience. Having worked with the superego and identifications for over twenty years, I often work with the attack by just agreeing with superego and then go about looking into my experience.

The interesting thing about shame and humiliation is the raw, searing quality of exposure present. There is such a pure sense of being stripped naked and exposed to harsh elements. I worked with these elements for a couple of hours – in and out of sleep.

The Relative is a Bridge to the Real

In exploring the actual phenomenological experience of humiliation, I found the elements of exposure and nakedness were really openness, space and transparency. When the identity of the humiliated self or even a historical self is allowed be challenged, it will often dissolve. What is left is the experience of our experience.

The qualities of openness, space and transparency are aspects of our true nature.

Opening my eyes to the world at 7:10am – a glorious day was blooming!

Links of Interest

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Items of Interest

November 16
Einstein & Buddha

If at first the idea is not absurd , then there is no hope for it.

The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the power of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms-this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the rank of devoutly religious men. – Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein did not know how to tie his shoelaces.

Image by Jess Artem

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August 28
The Psychodamic Power of Space (Emptiness)

I want my space. You’re in my space. I’m spaced out, you’re spacey. And while I’m at it – give me some space. It appears space is important to us.

In the West, the notion of personal space is important to people. The space we live in, the space around our body and our psychological space are some of the spaces that concern us.

The Buddhist see space (emptiness) as the nature of reality. The average Joe on the street of Mayberry, USA probably doesn’t give too much thought to his body, the street he is walking on, the city he lives in and the planet he lives on as fundamentally being space or emptiness.

Then again, many Buddhists and other spiritual seekers and practitioners may not have an articulated understanding of the psychodynamic power of space and how it affects ego structure.

In his book, The Void – Inner Spaciousness and Ego Structure, A.H. Almaas articulates a very precise understanding of the nature of space (emptiness), its relationship to ego structure, and the function of space for transformation of the soul.

Without the functioning of space, real change and transformation is not possible. The accepted understanding of change involves the application of effort and concepts in a particular direction to produce a desired result. This is not transformation, but more reworking the surface of things.

Space removes the effort, erases the concepts and establishes an orientation to complete openness and allowing. This is the ground for transformation – no concepts, no ideas, no preferences, no positions, no self-image – anything and everything is possible.

Next time you hear the word space – ask yourself – What is this person really saying? If I want my space, what’s that really mean?
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Items of Interest

August 3
âkâsha – mahâkâsha

According to ancient Indian tradition the universe reveals itself in two fundamental properties: as motion, and as that in which motion takes place, namely space. This space is called âkâsha (Tibetan: nam-mkhah) and is that through which things step into visible appearance, i.e., through which they possess extension or corporeality. As that which comprises all things, âkâsha corresponds to the three-dimensional space of our sense-perception, and in this it is called mahâkâsha. The nature of âkâsha, however, does not exhaust itself in this three-dimensionality; it comprises all possibilities of movement, not only the physical, but also the spiritual ones: it comprises infinite dimensions.

Image by Seth Garland

July 14