God as Spiritual Superego

Dear Friends,

During our last session together we focused on the spiritual superego and the images we carry of god. The spiritual superego takes precious spiritual teachings and turns them into standards of perfection. The superego uses the teachings to threaten us, damn us, punish with images of hell and perfection. Many religions do the same. They are not interested in expansion, growth and least of all freedom. So what began as teachings about love, about freedom, about spaciousness, peace become instruments of control and abuse. To make matters worse when we are very young we see our parents as huge, mighty and god-like. And we are utterly dependent. So our parents become the first images of God. Punishing, loving if we are good, repressive, controlling, fearful, powerful. We unconsciously project those images onto God, onto the divine, onto the Truth. The spiritual superego will rise up when we start to practice, when we long for more depth, inner freedom and more expansion. Well into adulthood the superego keeps us believing deeply that we are small children, incapable and powerless to grow. 

So we explored our individual images of God. Maybe loving, maybe condemning, maybe frightening, maybe out there and distant, maybe the sin counter, maybe we killed off god a long time ago. We then  explored how these images affect our practice of presence and our longing for spiritual depth. 

So I encourage you to look into your images of divinity, of god, whatever your religious or spiritual background. These beliefs and images are deeply imbedded in our cultural genes. We are meeting in a church, there are religious images around us. How do they affect you? Do you have to close down a bit to keep the pain that religions have inflicted on us and on humanity. Or do they open you up?

And despite all of this we are seem to drawn to together, in search of something mysterious. Longing for presence, for god, for truth.

And perhaps you already know or are discovering that path to spiritual practice is not easy. We get so few glimpses of presence. The ego, the superego seem so persistent that it is very easy to loose heart. A dear friend said to me years ago it takes a lifetime to make a Christian, a Buddhist, a Jew, a Muslim, a spiritual Being. It is a journey that if you are called to it-- and not everyone is, and that is quite fine-- will ask of you a growing commitment.We discover that when we give up, we believe have failed there is something like an inner flame or an inner gyroscope that will gently pick us up and set us back on the path. This return to the path, to this moment, to our practice is so gentle and forgiving. Unlike the superego which condemns us, the return is really the loving hand of self remembering. It is a  uiet yes. And it is a yes to this mystery of our deepest nature, which with time will slowly reveal itself to us. 

Before our session on Monday I stumbled on this quote from Thomas Merton, a Trappist Monk. I hesitated sending it along to you because it arises out of Christianity and I know that for some of you this is not your path, or your religious tradition. But it  is such a compelling "image" of God. And all week it bubbles up. So I am sending it out to you. In the place of the word God you can use words like  Mystery, Divine, Essence, the Absolute. He talks about absolute poverty, being a monk that meant both outer poverty and inner poverty. If the word is confusing and conjures up the superego, you can use something like, absolute silence, or absolute, stillness.

"At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin or illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God written in us. . . . It is like a pure diamond blazing with the invisible light of heaven." (A Merton Reader, p. 346).