Superego. This holds the voices of your parents, caretakers, teachers, and the larger culture. The superego was formed during the years 3 to 5. Its about learning the rules, how you are supposed to be, what it means to be good, what it means to be bad. Sometimes the voices are violent, sometimes they are simply felt as disapproval, shunning, and quietly shaming. The superego is passed down from one generation to the next. As long as you live within the confines of the superego you most likely won't hear it or feel its aggression. But if you make a mistake, if you say something wrong, if you behave badly it will jump all over you. You will feel anxious, ashamed, your mind will go into a spin, you will shut down, and perhaps even dissociate. The superego's job is to keep you small, to stop you from taking risks, from growing, from expanding, from being real and vulnerable. So when you embark on spiritual work-- to discover that you are divine presence, oneness, vastness, pristine openness, loving fierceness-- the superego will rise up to force you back into your familiar self. Often we feel the presence of the superego is a voice behind us, peering over our shoulders. Sometimes we experience as a blanket of dullness pressing down, or steel skull cap pushing down compressing us. It is important to recognize that the superego is not you, it is the internalized voices of those who parented us. And ultimately it is aggressive.
The ego. The superego sits on top of the ego. The ego is essentially what we could call the personality. It is how we know ourselves, it includes all the younger parts of us, that are completely connected to the superego. Much of the ego is unconscious. It is our identity, our character. And it is a natural, normal and important part of our development. We could say that the development of the ego is a stage in the development of the soul. The soul of the infant is open, transparent, vulnerable, easily disturbed by all the instinctual needs of the baby, and not aware of itself. The growing infant starts to develop a sense of self and other; it knows itself as a body; as not mother. Gradually through the first five or so years of life an ego is formed which allows the child to know itself and to know the world, the family. Toddler internalizes the parents deeply as a way to cope with the anxiety of being separate and alone. Later the superego forms so the young child knows right and wrong, good and bad, what gets punished, what gets rewarded. The ego is a remarkable accomplishment. By the time we emerge out of adolescence we can function more or less independently and can move out into the world. The ego continues to grow and mature. It learns skills, it learns about relationships, sex, intimacy. It is quite miraculous how we evolve from being an utterly helpless infant, to a distinct human ego.
In many spiritual traditions the ego is seen as the enemy and the purpose of the spiritual journey is to kill the ego. But the ego reacts instinctually and defensively to threats of annihilation. Even if it disappears for a period of time --caused by intense meditation, trauma, life threatening events, falling in love--it will reassert itself. It is more helpful to think of the ego as a necessary stage in the development of the soul. We need it to function. But there comes a point for some of us, often in midlife, when we feel a deep dissatisfaction with life, with our accomplishments, or lack of them, and some longing wakes up. The longing is for something more real, for more peace, for God, for true meaning. Sometimes we don't even know what we long for. And so the search begins. All of you have made this turn and begun this search. Otherwise you would not be reading this. We call this the spiritual journey. Very gradually the ego takes its place not as the master of the soul, but in the service of the evolving, living soul, in the service of the mystery of being. This is a gradual process and comes from love and understanding.
Soul. There are many definitions for the word soul. For our purposes it is the location of consciousness that is you. Most of us don't know the soul, we only know our ego. Through years of conditioning the soul has taken the shape of our personality, like a shell, and we have forgotten our open, transparent, liquid, clear nature as presence. The longing, the itch, the call, is the intuition, that I am more than my ego. We have all had moments in our lives-- peak experiences, or moments of stillness, peace, love-- when everything stopped. All the inner agitation ceased and something opened up. The soul in those moments knows itself as this presence, this alive, living awakeness. In the Sufi tradition there are 99 faces of God. Presence may have the taste of love, the smoothness of peace, the blackness of mystery, the bubbles of joy, the tenderness of compassion, the strength of a mountain, the power of pristine discrimination. When the soul opens and is free from the layers of conditioning we can know grace in its many flavors. So the soul when it is free from superego and the shell of ego is that which perceives, feels, knows our nature as the beloved, as the presence, as the presence of God. We cannot make the soul open. By seeing and understanding what keeps us tight, defended, asleep, distracted naturally opens us, relaxes us and we remember who we really are. And then the shell returns and the longing returns. And so we come back to this moment, to our embodied experience, to what is alive in the now. And we learn again and again what occludes, and we relax, we find a yes to the opening and then grace shows her preciousness.This journey back and forth between ego and presence takes time, patience, courage and love. And friends who share this same love.
Don't get hung up on the words. Let them point rather than pin anything down. This is about discovery.
Next Monday will be our last review/introductory session. Starting on October 8th we will close the group. If you wish to join us or know friends who might be interested this is the time to jump in.
I have posted this at: practicing-presence.blogspot.com
Love, Alison
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