Resources you might not have thought you had…
As you read this website my guess is you are looking for ‘help’ :>). My suggestion is that the way forward to some answers for yourself is Not to find: “Someone Else’s Truth” – it’s to find your truth. Given that confusion seems to be a basic element of earth life (!), some gurus etc. would have you buy their ‘instruction manual’… Problem is, none of those are infallible – and even a perfect one wouldhave to be ‘applied’.
I’ve mentioned Roberto Assagioli and Psychosynthesis both here and on other pages, but on this page I’m going to use his framework as a way of introducing you to the best resources (ultimately) for you to rely upon: Yours! Those resources are there within you – in what I can whimsically term your DEIOS: which stands for your Detched Enthusiastically Initiating & Oserving Self ;>} ! In more simple terms, we can also call it the Higher Self.
Consider: If you feel controlled by others, confused by your compulsions or addictions, if you feel anxious or depressed you may want a simple, quick solution Right Away! It might seem the best way to resolve this is to be given The Answer by some wise person like a therapist! Unfortunately, that’s not ultimately/necessarily a good idea – at least from what I’ve experienced and seen others experience! There may be some exceptions: for instance if I really find little hope for a relationship after meeting a couple and they ask me what I feel – I will let them know that’s how it seems to me… I add the emphasis because I do not have other people’s truth, in saying that I’m just speaking of what I can see, there may be some other factor that I don’t know about. Also if someone feels completely overwhelmed, I may offer what way it seems, again, to me that this or that might help – but even then the goal also needs to be to help you back into being in charge of your life. I have given an overview of one formulation of how you can try ‘working’ with your ‘selves’ and their addictions, angers, depressions, anxieties and so forth on another page on sub- personalities here. It is not an ‘answer’ but a method for you to apply. Being a psychotherapist is about being a stand-in for your Higher Self – but Only a stand-in – all along through therapy we should also be ‘getting out of the way’…
Another way to put this is to say that my role as a therapist is to assist you to find the solutions and expansions that feel ‘tailor made’ for your situation – meaning you’ve tapped the part of you that says: “Yes, that fits for me.” or : “Aha, that makes sense!” That approach aims to puts you in charge – not me. You don’t need another parent – that is not what or ‘who’ a psychotherapist should be, IMHO.
But all of this brings us to a significant question: From Where in You is it that you’ll be obtaining that feeling, that sense of a start at a workable answer or of finding a perspective to use as you move forward? Where are your Workable Resources anyway? (Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Milton Erickson and similar practitioners call this Accessing your Resources…)
This way of looking at these issues brings us to Dr. Roberto Assagioli and his pivotal viewpoint that spiritual development works alongside (even within) what seems to be ‘merely’ personal development (This is similar to many others, including Carl Jung.) His formulation is that we have a need for two ‘dimensions’ of development: a ‘horizontal’ style of personal or social ‘integration’ (a cohering of the splintered sub-personalities into a more ‘whole happy wise person’) as well as a ‘vertical’ style spiritual ‘alignment’ with the expansive Self. This is illustrated in his ‘egg’ diagram below. Some of my poetry below on this page tries to get at that >:)
Ultimately, even with the most abusive or insensitive of parents, circumstances etc. you can work at least towards growing beyond your sense of brokenness. That is possible because of the Resources of that expanded Self – what is often called the Higher Self and which I whimsically term the DEIOS (the Detached Enthusiastically Initiating & Observing Self). This core self is what supports us – and I do not mean in some simplistic ‘religious’ style of form either. That spiritual self is there underneath/within our more clear, balanced choices. Before we ‘contact that’ we feel we are ‘only’ a body, feelings and a mind. Consequently, it’s as if we’re not allowing ourselves access to that resource… This happens to millions/billions of us, I believe, because we have been convinced somehow that we don’t ‘have’ That or that It does not exist. This is in stark contrast to Eastern wisdom which has long said: “That Art Thou”.
Once we have accessed this part of ourselves, however, it can make even more of a difference. In the last few decades this idea and/or reality has been claimed as not having to exist only within a Religious framework. There is even evidence in quantum physics terms for “it’s” existence. If you google Higher Self, you’ll see how widely referenced this now is: it is the expansive aspect of who we are.
In this diagram to the right, our personal development is the reflecting, shifting and changing work that I depict on the sub- personalities page. It occurs as a juggling between areas 2, 4 and 5: the Middle Unconscious, Consciousness and the Self or sense of “I”.
I see Autopilot and it’s sub-personalities as being within that Conscious Self but with connections up, out or down to areas in the higher, middle or lower unconscious.
Spiritual development is the harmonizing that needs to occur between the field of consciousness and the lower and higher areas of the unconscious, creating a Whole Entity.
Some more Poetic Ways of putting all this:
Each Instant of your life you choose what way to try and honor the ‘aspect of self’ you currently see yourself as ‘being‘: + , — or neutral.
Part Selves (sub-personalities) always have a ‘partial’ (Autopilot) agenda, however, both in energy and stillness. Through their ‘conditioned choices’, as that automated part, you learned to push, avoid, numb or rescue ‘you’/your world from ‘there‘, rather than from your Source…
Self Everywhere is a paradox, you see, having an energetic fragment of the ever moving Light – yet also an ultimate Still Space within… Each part self thus has its own unhappy, fragmented versions of these – an aggressive energy or ‘pushiness’ (Spirit’s Energy), along with the counterpoint: a comparable stubborn passivity coming from the Stillness. We call these the Tyrant and Victim aspects of self…
Having Partial understanding (some sense that they’re not whole, not ‘perfect‘) these aspects of your Autopilot then try and pushily resolve the discrepancy through such hopeless answers as hating, fearing or indulging self! Caught by these active or passive aspects we seek answers in neutrality: being aloof, numb or The Rescuer…
To Experience starting to love these parts, dare to believe they each have their own real fragment of Truth (yet, crucially, they do each only have part of it…) Sometimes that truth is in their emptiness, other times it’s in their energy (or else in the witnessing neutrality).
Listen Through fear to what this “you” or that “you” have to say.
B e s t F o l l o w y o u r m i d d l e. I f t h a t ' s n o t i m m e d i a t e l y a v a i l a b l e, l i s t e n t o y o u r h e a r t. I f a l l e l s e f a i l s , u s e y o u r h e a d .
Moving / Meditating Your body usually means you’ve chosen a direction and are in motion in some dimension of your world. Comparably, you’re probably (!) familiar with knowing how your heart “moves” in the “dimensions” of feeling. Movements in your mind are different again and take place in another “framing” of who you are.
You Thus know and rely intimately on these and many other types of motion daily. Movement is one of the Universes’ Necessities of Life. Your body energy centers (chakras), move your present form in various ways (and vice versa). However… are you paying attention / energy to the most crucial of movements: the enigmatic shifts of Spirit? The Energy or the Stillness you can experience here (or anywhere else…) is profound…
Therefore Given its’ basis in static fear, a need to Not Move, your “Autopilot” self, the conditioned, overly narrowly focused part of you, will attempt to subvert or negate any movements to or in a sensed “higher order of life”. This is also why meditation feels easy yet impossible…
KnowNow, then, as you read this – as a couple or seemingly alone: on each and every Page of this book you have an open invitation, an offer for you as Spirit to move, to stop or to shift yourself in this new, inclusive manner…
It Spirit’s motion is a Not-Doing, it’s Being. In stopping your other “doings” you come to know about this. Here / Now, we can bring Spirit to these moments… Breathe…
R e a l K n o w i n g e x i s t s a s a p a r a d o x i c a l d u a l i t y o f d o i n g a n d b e i n g . . . S e e i n g O u t w a r d s a n d F e e l i n g I n w a r d : S i m u l t a n e o u s l y l y .
AutopilotAssumptions / programs (the scripts and roles we enact) are pervasive and far, far more comprehensive than you ordinarily would recognize. Part of why you may start to feel angry, depressed, overwhelmed and / or despairing, then, is from catching a glimpse of the large span of the areas of your life involved. You can feel victimized by these automated aspects of yourself…. Deep in who you’ve basically “thought yourself to be” these scripts can make you feel defeated / de-energized. The good news is that those “programs” underestimate your worth and power enormously!
ControllingThe underlying sense of desperation of the Autopilot is your major dilemma… This is because you think you recognize your limits in those of the Autopilot!! You therefore despair of meaning or continuity…
TheIrony here, of course, is that it’s the programs themselves which have actually attempted to include ways to “fix” all this! In the rush to heal the mess involved, though, the Autopilot continues what it only knows: dictating what way Peace should arrive. That means you look for how Love / Intent seemed to “flow” in the past, however, and that is no longer pertinent to this now…
SelfAffirmations in the NOW of the Love We Are will thus always be inherently Revolutionary as well as Evolutionary…
R e m e m b e r i n g t h a t E x p a n d i n g S e l f i s f a r m o r e i m p o r t a n t t h a n j u s t t h e s e l f ' s b i o g r a p h i c d e t a i l s . . .