The Superego: A Two-Edged Sword

Superego attacks of judgement, comparison and criticism are authoritarian power statements that are narrowly referenced, biased and predominantly false. These judgements are given to us to serve as frames of reference in determining the experience of our self identity. The intent is that we find this negative frame of reference to be painful and that we take action to change it.

The action initiated is supposed to be one that will please the superego, and cause it to withdraw its negative judgement. Hopefully, the superego will substitute a positive judgement that we can use as a frame of reference for identity in place of the painful negative one. In a nutshell, superego manipulates the perception of one's identity in order to have power to influence one's actions.

This raises some basic questions. Can one's identity really be known by others? Seen, valued, perceived, and discerned accurately? When judging others as superego, is it our right to say, "This is how you are", or is it more truthful to say, "This is how you appear to me"? Superego judgement of others always wounds them because it always places the power of self knowledge outside themselves.

Doesn't the one acting as judge also lose? They validate the process of superego identity judgements. Superegos are thus acknowledged as empowered to determine identity for others and are simultaneously acknowledged as having the power to assign our own identities. In this way the wound of superego always cuts both ways. Thus, it is true that we can't be free of superego's tyranny over ourselves unless we give up judging and criticising others. Having an active superego is like owning a temperamental and vicious dog. If it isn't kept busy and engaged stalking and biting others, it will turn and bite us.

For us to attack, judge and criticize others is tantamount to attacking ourselves. It may temporarily postpone our wounding, but makes it none the less a certainty. Superego is strengthened, emboldened, nourished and empowered every time we use it internally or externally.

Self-realization, the knowledge and experience of who we really are, is subverted, blocked and denied by superego. Every time the superego is exercised it increases the veil that blocks our awakening.

The Body is a Portal to Other Dimensions

We are multidimensional beings. As Presence, which is self-aware awareness, we can and do inhabit many realms of reality. In order for those dimensions to inform and orient our mind-body manifestation we must activate and unfold our innate powers to perceive, sense, discern, and understand the spectrum of our home dimensions. Since all dimensions are present at all levels, at all times, it is not a matter of moving from one to another in actual location. It seems to be a shift in the content of our sensing perceptions that moves us from dimension to dimension.

Is this shift a change in how the senses are used? Or, is it a shift in which sensing power is utilized? It's both, singly and in combination. Physical senses are necessary to monitor the body and it's environment and for keeping it safe. A portion of the mind is active in this process as well, working out the logistics of problem solving for survival. While these body-mind level processes are going on, attention can be in the dimension of Presence experiencing spontaneously arising Essential Qualities that are naturally appropriate to one's situation. This happens simultaneous to the body and mind doing their parts, when Essence is not blocked. So, the body is a portal to Essence, to Presence.

The powers of the body and the mind protect, nourish, and nurture the body so it can function unimpeded as a portal to Essential Qualities of Presence of Being. The Essential Qualities arise spontaneously in response to circumstances and dynamics of interaction of the body-mind in consciousness. This co-emergent interaction of body-mind and Essence activates senses and empowers intelligent capacities that enable one to experience the universe as a positivity that is loving and lovable without exception. A perfect holding of lightness and goodness.

Experiential knowledge of our physical - mental presence and our Essential Presence, co-emerging in a perfect loving universe opens the dimension of pure Awareness. Awareness has boundless perceptive capacity in all dimensions. Empowered Awareness holds the totality of what can be known and experienced, in perfect equanimity and ease.

In the flawless clarity of its unbounded expanse Awareness finds one unknown. One unknowable. The mystery of it's own origin. The Absolute. Drawn irresistibly, Awareness sheds awareness of itself, thus entering the portal to the Absolute. The infinitely mysterious source of all is, itself, utterly unknowable. As such, it enters all other dimensions, itself remaining implicit as potential; the context, never the content.

Why Life Always Feels the Same

Beginning at the inception of our concept forming mind Mom intervenes and constantly refocuses our attention.

Refocused attention evokes in us the experiences she wants.

Memory of those experiences create anticipation and expectation that they will occur in the future.

Anticipation and expectation focus our attention and evoke our perception of the experiences imagined. Experiences repeat.

Superego messages, judgements, beliefs, criticisms and comparisons continually refocus our attention thus reinforcing and habituating the experiences they predict.

Habits of attention, perception and experience are formed that create continuity and substance for the 'world' anticipated. It is thereby reified.

The universe that Mom focused our attention on, described ,and predicted, is now perceptually and experientially created and inhabited by us.

With some variation of content but not quality, it endlessly repeats. Over time, with repetition, it gets more and more 'real'.

Challenging Our Orientation to Pain

It seems obvious enough. Pain contracts. Pain stagnates. Pain constrains. Pain interrupts flow. Pain takes our power; it defeats us. Pain seems to make us helpless and dependent. It seems that pain takes our will, our strength, our value, and our power. It also seems to cut us off from other qualities of Presence such as appreciation, gratitude, joy, satisfaction, curiosity, contentment, acceptance, forgiveness, and understanding. In sum, pain seems to insist that we focus on pain in the absence of Presence and it's holding qualities of both integrity and bliss.

This seems odd, and very suspicious.One would think that a natural unfolding of events would lead automatically from pain to the arising of those universally possessed, latent but unexpressed, internal powers of Presence best suited for dealing with pain. Survival would be promoted. Why does this not happen? Why does the very opposite occur?

In people firmly committed to their ego self identities, arising Essential qualities of Presence in others near to them begins to evoke their own sense of Presence. But, the immediate focus is on the emptiness and deficiency of their ego state as they begin to move away from it and towards Presence. Thus, Presence in others will make them feel threatened and uncomfortable.

A young child in pain will naturally experience rising Presence in its supporting and holding aspects. This will initiate vague, but definite feelings of inadequacy and emptiness in the ego-identified parent, unable to recognize the child's Presence for what it is, or the estrangement from their own Presence of Being. As a result, without knowing why, the parent is offended and feels wounded by the appearance of their child's powers of Presence. Accordingly the parent both overtly and unconsciously discourages and prevents the arising of, and unfolding of, their child's intrinsic capacities and powers to deal with pain.

For the child, the relationship with the parent supercedes their natural innate relationship to pain and their powers of Presence. The parent's estrangement from their own powers of Presence then results in a serious distortion of the child's developing relationship with his pain, and his identity as Presence. All based on the discomfort exposed when holding powers of Presence threaten to reveal the emptiness of the ego personality.

The child then, with the parents guidance, learns to impede its natural flow, constrain its innate holding powers of Presence, and contract its consciousness around the presence of pain. The natural unfolding of intrinsic powers in the child is blocked. Flowing capacities of evoked powers are thwarted, their development stunted and their ability to provide inner holding for the child in pain, denied.

For this to happen, the hurting child must turn his focus to the pain and the object relationship with the parents, while denying his intrinsic wisdom. This model for experiencing and dealing with pain becomes habituated, internalized and reified. Decades later the dynamic is virtually the same in the adult.

In this framework of reference, pain is to be rejected, turned away from, and gotten rid of by whatever means possible. To go into it is to invite disempowerment, helplessness, and dependency. Pain is seen to take something precious from us. To accept it is unthinkable.

In truth, pain naturally evokes innate powers of Presence capable of deepening the capacity of the one hurting, often while soothing, comforting, and promoting healing.

Quality of life is diminished immensely when the tremendous significance of pain as empowering is lost. In its place, pain is mis-labeled and given significance as an agent of disempowerment. Each time we are hurt, physically or mentally, we activate this distorted framework of references giving orientation and meaning to our pain, our identities and our world. If pain did, in truth, disempower and cut us off from Presence, then we would live an inimical world. In this realm, where pain is ubiquitous, every pain turns us away from our inherent powers. Every pain denies our Essential Presence. Every pain tightens the grip of delusional conditioning on our experience of life.