Practicing presence and the superego

Dear Friends, we tackled the superego, the inner critic, the voice of judgement head on last time. Unless we face this demon we will be shackled by our history. Especially if we undertake spiritual work, which by definition will take you beyond the comfort zone of your ego self. And the superego is designed to keep you inside that zone, by whatever means at its disposal. This can be violent inner attacks-- statements like 'you idiot', "you fuck up', 'you never do anything right' to outright verbal abuse. Or it can keep you in line by telling to "watch you, you know that nothing you do ever works", by endless self doubt. Or it can praise you for being such a good person. Or it may be silent because you are implicitly conforming to its standards and expectations. As you begin to recognize this voice you will feel its impact in the  body: anxiety, heart racing panic, dread, contraction, numbing out, cutting off, collapse, obsessive thinking. The superego does not know you as an adult soul; it sees you as a five year old, or even younger.

So when you start to meditate and introduce the practice presence into your life, you are inviting the divine, the living waters, the life force, spaciousness to enter. And this will expand you beyond your familiar sense of self. So guess who shows up. Yes, the superego. So I encourage you to keep a log of the superego attacks this week, and maybe for a long time!! So by seeing  the superego you are waking up to your conditioning and this awakening which brings you closer to the freedom of presence that you long for. This is a practice and not an easy one.

These are the questions we focused on last time:

 Tell me a way the superego impacts you?

Tell me why you believe the voice of the superego?

Explore what you are discovering about the superego and its impact on your openness to presence.

Next Monday we will focus on how we engage the superego and how the superego becomes God. This is vital to understand if we are to enter the presence of oneness. 

The music from last time: Arvo Part. Fur Alina: 1 and Spiegel im Spiegel:2

Chopin. Impromptus Op.90 D.899, no.3 in  flat

Calling all Angels Jane Sidberry and K.D Lang

I keep these emails and old ones at: http://practicing-presence.blogspot.com/

Fall is here. Hoping to see you on Monday. Alison