psychological concepts and the understanding of self

Self is created through thinking and self reflection, a quality humans have developed. Being a construct of mind, the self is fragile and can be at times easily manipulated. To try and break free of this manipulation causes self to turn on self. There's no way around facing this gun fight at high noon.

The mind heads for judgment as its first course of action. The social app Facebook is pernicious in this regard because immediately you have to make judgment decisions on what is presented to you as you scroll through the posts. Humans crave acceptance from others so psychologically you present a snapshot of your life, thoughts, beliefs, or interests and then you wait to see if it gains approval from others who hold this power over you. It's a strange gambit but it could pay off in rewards. If you accumulate likes and followers then you achieve to a degree fame. Then you build off that fame with your ego temporarily feeling satisfaction in achieving this notoriety. Social media is a bit of a catch 22 in that it is a great way to stay connected and a big part of life is connecting with others. The way past this judgment is positivity and to like and encourage.

I am desire, I am Love, I am my feelings, passions, dislikes, and likes based on awareness. Psychologically it is called the Id. My sense of self, identity, and the suppression and control of my base needs and desires is mediated through Ego. Ego is formed by an interaction with others and culture who want you to fit into society's box. From this develops the Superego which judges, rewards, punishes, and controls the ego like a puppet. And it can be malicious. The ego is kept in line via shame and rewards meanwhile the id is buried, though feelings always surface. The feedback loop between ego and superego suppresses the id. I was confused all my life because I thought my impulses were causing havoc but here's the thing: I was trying to break free of the puppet master by getting rid of my ego so when I did that the superego just made the goal of a higher self the next egoic achievement. You see this outcome in many others. They want to become ultra spiritual but it is still just the ego now moved up to a higher place. I wanted to get one up on everyone and I was going to do it by becoming enlightened! The Goddess at one point had told me there are many layers to the deception and when I did the whole spiritual trip in the end she just laughed at me and said it is all about Love. Nothing else matters. So conceptually shedding the ego and superego reveals who you are, pure conscious awareness, as far as I can tell. There's no higher self and no lower self. Just me, warts and all. I want pleasure, I want Love, I'll act and react when challenged. I will accept.

So what about this id? Psychological concepts were a product of the 19th and 20th centuries but there is a treasure trove of deep work into the psyche that we now call mythology and largely dismiss. The masters we have voluminous records of were the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Hindus. All great societies of the past we can learn from and a great overview of this can be gleaned from Joseph Campbell's book The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

I will touch on one of these great gods of the past which has been calling to me and that I have done some work on over the past little while. It comes from a question of what gives the energetic wave that enlivens us the impetus to rise, fall, and repeat? It is desire. The feminine encapsulates desire and the masculine is enlivened to come forth through want. Within the masculine is a transformer that absorbs this power and lights up desire. The ancient Greeks called him Dionysos.

The ever coming one of indestructible life. He appears, and then goes away to eventually return again. In our modern culture he has been reduced to the Greek god of wine and licentious behaviour. Fair enough I suppose because he epitomizes the lust for life. Dionysos is the elixir that powers up and makes the world go round and round. He is our base desires; the id.

Dionysos is born under the cover of darkness, forever coming forth after being torn apart; this alluding to patriarchal societies that are always suppressing Dionysos. Greek reason rose on the back of Apollo after the influence of Dionysos was repressed. The major Greek mysteries conducted at Eleusis and Delphi both contained elements of the mystery of Dionysos. In Roman society, Dionysos was allowed out once a year during the Bacchanalia as the people shed their pent up frustrations and inhibitions. Dionysos ultimately represents a return to the left hand path of the feminine. To sensuality. To transgressing society's morals and repression. He appears androgynous, he cross dresses, he encourages drink and drugs, and flaunts his sex appeal. If you want to find him in modern times look towards good old rock 'n roll. Watch this performance by Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin and you'll get the idea. Sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll baby! is this guy. It symbolizes a society out of control, freeing itself of the shackles of good taste and modesty, and perhaps that what we need before we destroy ourselves. Our world is a locked down patriarchy, dominated by the rigours of science and reason which exacerbate our destructive tendencies in a quest to control everything instead of letting things be, enjoying ourselves, and loving one another. It's this orgy of Love Dionysos ever returns to remind us of because he's indestructible. Until given his proper place and an equality with Apollo in order to find that critical balance, the outburst of Dionysian lust will forever trouble and harangue Apollo and the edifice he has built.

The cross dressing, transgendered, and somewhat effeminate Dionysos is needed in order to bring balance into the masculine sphere. It's a reminder to embrace the feminine into our life to counteract the rigid and destructive side of Apollo. In Pre-Columbian South America mesa rituals there were a class of Andean shamans called quariwarmi who ritually cross dressed in order to mediate the feminine and masculine to a wholeness and balance in the centre. It is a concept called in the Quechua language tinkuy and it is what the quariwarmi shamans were trying to achieve. Tinkuy is the joining together of complementary opposites through ritual mediation. It's all about bringing everything into the centre, the in between space, to find balance. This place was called the 'chaupi' and the central axis in this common territory was called the 'chhimi' which means the heart. These were societies that still retained an innocence, a respect for the feminine, and valued a holistic way of life. They remained largely untouched by the purview of hyper masculinity until the Spanish arrived. In Ancient Greece the collapse of the Bronze Age spelt the beginning of the end for the ideal of balance. Apollo slew the dragon and took over the oracle at Delphi, and the Hellenistic world that came out of this usurpation is a bedrock our western civilization rests on. At the same time the matriarchal Cretan society vanished and Greece transformed itself into a bastion of reason and logic epitomized by Apollo. They tried to retain a balance, but ultimately as their treatment of women showed, it failed.

i am

The sun as the avatar of the right-hand path is so bright that it is blinding. When you engage the right-hand path of ego self, and this is not a condemnation of that path, you shine very brightly and from this you are unable to see and connect to the left-hand path which is a holistic path that reveals we are all connected as one. Following the right-hand path is a necessary part of the journey, in fact follow it all the way to the end and get right into it. Celebrate the self and pay attention to how we all act out of self-interest; it's quite necessary for individual survival. And when you've exhausted yourself on that path, you are much older and wiser, and you can then start to grasp the left-hand path where you find the moon and wisdom and incorporate this modality of the greater good into how you conduct your life.

I have sat with the ego self for a few years now trying to find the underlying cause of this self. In this case when you get into these spiritual questions and engage all the different beliefs and teachings of the ages, you gravitate towards the Hindu and Buddhist traditions because they teach the ego self is transitory and is a delusion. I became trapped by this thinking and subsequently tried to free myself from ego, spent some time battling with myself but didn't really get anywhere. It was last fall when I realized the quest to become enlightened, to free self from ego, to climb that mountain of spiritual achievement, was in fact just another game and trap of the ego. So, I just let it go and came down the mountain back to a more balanced way of thinking.

I have stressed that the root of one's beliefs must be experiential and not one in someone else's. It's a mind trap to get stuck in this mindset. I don't care how venerated some spiritual system is, you should question it, and find your own answers. Well at least that's how I function and would need to do before accepting anything at face value. So last fall when I went through the Huachuma Mesadas at SpiritQuest, altering my consciousness in order to access the wisdom of the ages, I was inundated with the simple answer that Love is everything. That is the only enlightenment, spiritual truth, or mysterious knowledge you really need to know. I was taught we are made of Love, and existence is one big training ground for us to learn to make that Love shine. I was taught our very core is Love, we are to Love, and to this fount of Love we will return. Until we learn to live a life immersed in this Love, we will repeat the curriculum until we “get it.” It was a simple message. This teaching, however, hinted at the continuance of self upon physical expiration and conflicted with what I had accepted as transitory. To be clear I am not referring to personality or the character we have built in this instance but the underlying energy that is the base for our perceived solo identity. A simple message threw my complex understanding of the mysteries of life into disarray! Now I must change my beliefs and rewrite my understanding of self. It's funny how we tend to resist challenges to established beliefs like the ego self hates being told it was wrong. You see the delicious irony here, right? My ego self was pissed off that they were built upon a slice of the vibratory foundation of Love as opposed to being a peculiarity of consciousness.

One of the first things the Great Goddess taught me when I drank Ayahuasca and sat in communion with her, was that all is vibration. That teaching is something I go back to quite often as it has solved a great deal of the mysteries that have vexed me. In learning of the survival of some form of self upon physical death I eventually went back to vibration and realized my manifestation of this self is a vibration that is coming forth periodically and then returning to the fount in order to recharge the energy that will propel it upon another journey. The master vibration is a vibration of Love; it's the eternal song. It is where we all come from. We are energetic patterns that have as their origin this Love vibration. We are the junior partner in the manifestation of the universe. We are the music coming forth from the eternal song. We are all important; we are all Loved; and we are welcomed home when we are ready to come home. We left because we wanted to make our own way, just like the rebellious teenager, and shine our light so brightly on our own. After doing that, we gain wisdom, regain our sight, and acquire great clarity to see the way back to where we came from. It's the left-hand path back to mama. It's time to go back home.

merry go round

Being unable to recall who you are is the necessary condition that is making this go round a game worth playing. Everything is new again. Because of this amnesia, we can look back into the past through historical records and try and and get an understanding of what has happened before we arrived on the scene and also project into the future what may happen. When our physical bodies perish and localized consciousness is freed and returns to source, I get this feeling we unlock the secret and access all events and knowledge. Imagine the surprise as you realize that consciousness is a singularity and you were there in Egypt during its dynastic ascendancy and you were present at the end of the Bronze Age when the mysterious Sea People destroyed civilization after civilization. You were present when the Roman senate conspired against Julius Caesar and after the French Revolution when Napoleon marched through Europe. And now I live in the age of technology thinking I only came into being in 1967. We die but then reappear somewhere else, each vibration coming forth once again after gathering up energy plus momentum and returning for the next journey.

You were everyone who ever was, is present now, and will be in the future. You are it, playing many roles to keep this great game going, and within this game are traps and dead ends to trip you up and trip you they will. Everytime you hurt someone you are hurting yourself. Everytime you love someone you are loving yourself. What do you want to do?

Intellectually I can figure out all the mysteries. Then they will drive me crazy because I know the answers and I can't put them into practice. Do you really want to know the answer? Are you sure? What is going to happen when you fail at embodying the simple answer and truth that was revealed to you? I didn't think that through.

Last time I was in Peru my friend don Howard said to me you have the answer, now you have to put it into practice. It takes courage. It's the only way to live.

Tell me it is worth another try. We've got to Love one another. Light of the world shine on me, Love is the answer. 

material things and cosmic gamblers

If you have a boat that over the years you have maintained by replacing all its parts is it still the same boat? If your body completely regenerates itself over the course of seven years are you still the same person? The answer is found in the objectification of everything which we by default participate in. You are a happening; a continuous flow of energy, ever transforming, until this meat body expires and a new vehicle is engaged. What is meant then by your heart? Your soul? Well, what does your heart do? It beats out a rhythm and that signature music is as close as you can come to defining you. Intuitively, we choose to define someone's essence by how good their heart is. Don't be afraid of intuition; the language we choose for ethereal meanings contains within it hidden gems derived from this innate knowledge.

When we objectify we want to possess. Is desire the result of all this objectification? A woman wants to embody desire and being an object of desire is necessary for her to feel complete. There is a feeling of a magic spell being involved in all of this in that feminine energy assumes a form that energizes masculine consciousness to pursue this object of his desire. Being powered up, he then notices he is aware and from this point he brings the world into being. 

Your vibration on a march towards physical expiration slows to a state of near latency and from this condition we can reconnect to the master frequency, which is total conscious awareness of everything. Some call it higher consciousness. This awareness is in contrast to the individuated local consciousness to which we currently subscribe. Eventually, we may once again desire to head off into the paradigm of self. Roll the dice and once more play the game.