Trust and the Super Ego
Tanmayo Lana Lawson.
Presented at International Kinesiology Conference, Kirchzarten, Germany 2003
We are all familiar with the inner judge or that part of our psychic structure which Freud called the super-ego. The term super-ego clearly identifies this aspect of ego behaviour as the super structure. The one that ‘knows all’ the one who guides, protects, advises. This ‘inner godlike voice’ sounds so rational and reasonable. It has been there for as long as we have had language. Indeed since our cognitive faculties came on-line this voice has slowly and surely been integrated so deeply into our neural net that we think it is who we are!! The super critic/the judge always puts its-self higher than you. It is the only one who really knows what is good for you.
What is the Judge
· The judge is the force that constantly evaluates and assesses your worth as a human being and thus limits your capacity to be fully alive in the present moment.
· The judge’s voice guides your life, consciously and unconsciously, through opinions. advice, warnings, suggestions, beliefs, evaluations and admonishments about all aspects of your behaviour and your inner life.
· The judge’s function is to maintain the status quo in two ways: it keeps you away from what it considers to be dangerous or unmanageable parts of yourself. And it directs you toward whatever ideals it feels will make you an acceptable, successful person. Self-judgement is based on the accumulation of all the knowledge you believe you need to be successful.
· Comparison is a very close cousin of self –judgement. It is useful for improving many aspects of our world. However, comparison becomes self-destructive behaviour when it becomes constant self- assessment relative to the behaviour and appearance of others at the expense of aligning with the truth of your own experience.
· The judge overrides your inherent intelligence and your direct response to life by super imposing its beliefs about what is meaningful and real. Its standards are learned from others and they run counter to what you yourself want, feel, or know to be true.
· One of the greatest dangers of becoming aware of self –judgement and its negative effects is that awareness will become the basis of more self-judgement.
· Positive judgement can expose the unconscious acceptance of inner devaluation, but it can never root out the original conviction of your own lack of worth.
· Judgement, comparison, and self blame can be transformed only by coming to determined by your past experience and beliefs.
· Once you know deep inside you, with direct and felt sense, that you have inherent value and are fully acceptable to yourself, then you will begin to free yourself from the need for positive judgement and approval, from others or from your own judge. ‘Soul without Shame’ Byron Brown.
The judge is a false prophet. As a child much of the job description of the judge was to protect and prevent the child from hurt, pain and harm. As we grow older the judge like outmoded software has been allowed free run of the hard drive. It has become a virus that corrupts our aliveness. Constantly reaffirming it’s own boundaries. It keeps us bound within its contained super structure so that we do not venture beyond its control.
The most well known aspect of the super–ego is the voice or voices of the inner judge. This inner critic, that is in constant commentary of the moment. It is either slaying you, quietly bringing you into line with considered coercion or idealising you and filling you up with grandiosity only to slay you again in the next moment.
This structure leads to the rise of indecision and self- rejection in the adult. A constant analysis of ‘how am I doing?’ ‘Was that the best strategy?’ A feeling, that leads to a sense of constant lack that cannot be filled up. No amount of approval can fill the hole that is left from the squashing of true nature and the loss of basic trust.
The Anti-Libidinal-Ego is formulated pre-cognitively.
A baby, charges and discharges energy as a natural regulation. In its early stages the young infant is in a symbiotic relationship with the Mother. Studies in the 20th century found that babies who were only given shelter and food had a much lower life expectancy than children with inferior nutritional support but superior touch and care.
Babies’ turn to the mother to feel loved and held. Not only held physically but also emotionally and spiritually. They are in need of the contact of being, which, reassures them and they are able to trust in a world of loving-kindness.
The infant turns towards the Mother to meet all of it’s life needs. Libido is the energy of life. This is an instinctual biological drive. Life seeking life. The child feels the lack of presence in the Mother and feels the loss of full-fill-ment of its emotional and psychic needs.
Loss of contact with true essence leads to a lack of trust and separation.
As the infant feels the absence of Mother, Mother is perceived as withholding and rejecting. Depriving the infant of gratification. A tension arises in the nervous system and over time the child does not allow itself to fully charge or discharge. The baby starts to contract instead of relax. The system is blocking the life force and setting up a layer of tension to block out the pain of not being received. Instead the child begins to respond/react from the layers of the contraction. Cutting off the libidinal drive and settling into a pattern for survival instead of aliveness.
As the young soul becomes cognitive the language of the parents is now ingested and layered on top of this earlier energetic psychic structure. The baby is now reacting from imposed structures instead of from the source of its natural intelligence. The basic trust in its own libido is compromised. The child now uses it’s intelligence to not want.
The third aspect of this super structure is frozen-ness. The system can neither charge nor discharge. Fight or flee. So it locks down. Becomes immobilised in the face of a shock or trauma that is too great for this small soul to understand. In this lock down we now have a rigidity, which is blocking feeling and sensation.
The child has learned to repress its feelings, needs and wants. Instead this little soul has created a defence mechanism to protect itself. This protection although ingenious, comes at the great cost of alive-ness. Each repression, each contraction and lock down blocks the life force. Shuts out the alive-ness of being. Cuts itself off from its full force of life and the instinctive libidinal drive. These cuts register deeply in the energetic structure in the biology itself and can be strongly seen and felt in the field of the subtle bodies and the chakras.
By the time the child has passed through childhood, the Oedipal stages and puberty the concrete beliefs are set. Not only as ideas but also as real contactable energy in the bodies. As desires and drives erupt in the adult the wanting is controlled.
The judge now rules the castle and all experiences are at the mercy of its manipulation.
These contractions, repressions and denials, cut the child off from its essential self. And from the foundation of basic trust. The absence of trust keeps this soul locked in the loops of attack and counter attack from the super-ego. The super-ego only operates in polarities. It cannot experience Union or the absence of duality. Its control is maintained by distrust. This soul now does not trust its intrinsic nature. All wants and needs and desires are shamed, rationalised and justified instead of experienced.
The judge has created an image that matches its idealisation of the world. Any deviation from this image is quickly squashed. Being has now become identified and looks again for reassurance from this inner regulating mechanism of the false prophet.
What is trust?
Trust like all qualities of being must be experienced. It is a deep inner arising of a quality that allows us to know that we are loved and held. The child wished to be loved and held by the Mother. Wished and longed for what it perceived as the Mothers promise of full-fill-ment The Mother is God to this small being who is utterly dependent on her for basic survival, love and acceptance. It seems to the child that she is so delightful, juicy and full of promise, yet again and again the child feels unloved and experiences the absence of acceptance. Each time the baby feels that the Mother is not really present the child feels the loss of contact and the separation from basic trust.
There is no point to hope, as again and again you will have to suffer the pain of being rejected, unloved, and denied. Better not to have any desire, than desire that cannot be full-filled.
The super-ego trusts only distrust. Shaming all that is not rational and cannot be polarised. Yet, even as bleak as this picture sounds being is always pushing to be recognised and brought into the light. Seeing the darkness of our distrust we begin to experience the pain that blocks our aliveness. Much of what we experience is body based and pre-cognitive. To work sensitively and in silence with these layers allows them to work to the surface of our conscious awareness.
Given a sensitive caring environment trust can flow.
Allowing ourselves to experience our distrust we begin to unravel the lies of the false prophet. To sense and feel where they are locked into our body and thereby begin a conscious process of relaxation.
The super–ego will of course want to be in charge of this also. It is good to remember that the super-ego has been to all the workshops and done all the defusions and had the corrections. It knows immediately how to compensate for our changes. How to undermine our new values.
Only by relaxing into our true nature, by releasing ourselves from the pressure of efforting can we find the ground of basic trust. It is only in our contact with our own being that we can then find contact with the outer world. As we become more sensitive to our own inner landscape and enter into intimacy with our own nature, intimacy and communion may be shared with the world.
Letting go of our efforting, which is a form of distrust. The opportunity for effortless awareness and right action can arise. Doing without doing.
For trust to arise there needs to be some way to contact being.
Facial Harmony invites relaxation that goes way beyond a feel good experience.
Peace, Love and silence are found in the contact with true nature. The silence from where all being arises. Facial Harmony permeates through the layers of defences. The sensitivity of the touch gives rise to a holding environment that the child and the nervous system have been seeking. In the light of the presence flowing through the practitioners hands deep relaxation occurs which gives rise to trust.
Trust of feeling loved of being held of hearing the sounds of silence inside yourself. A trust that is abiding even in the midst of conflict. A trust that arises from the soul and supports the whole of the life journey to its full-fill-ment rather than for its survival.
In this space of quietness a new day is born as you are released from the constructs of energetic tension. The layers of defence begin to dissolve. And the true nature of the soul is gradually allowed expression.
Bibliography.
Oral Tradition.
Diamond Logos Teachings. Faisal Muqaddam
Seekers After Truth School; Dr Claudio Naranjo
Osho. Discourses.
Books.
Diamond Heart Series A H Almaas.
Facets of Unity A H Almaas.
Soul without Shame
Byron Brown.
Character Neurosis; Dr Claudio Naranjo