Table of content
Your Essence and Your Inner House
We had been meditating for an hour, sitting face to face in a lotus position on the floor. This was how we connected at the start of our friendship. The silence was intense that day, but there was no particular content in the field of consciousness. Just this inner space of being and a potent silence. Afterward we shared whatever impressions and insights had come up, trying to turn them into a deeper understanding. I remember this particular day vividly; it was at a time in my life when I was deeply engaged in reflecting on the difference between the individual Soul and the World Soul. It struck me as paradoxical that, from one perspective we can experience a profound oneness with the World Soul, the Soul of humanity, and yet from another we have our own individual purposes and responsibilities.
An intuition of clarity came to me that day that I could not fully grasp. When I started to reflect on my impressions an inner space opened up. The energy condensed into a soft field of love, it was like an ocean in its wideness and its substance was utter truth. There’s no other way to describe it: it was a being and I knew it was the Soul of humanity. An immediate sense of identity left me in no doubt that this was my utter essence. My friend agreed and confirmed that this ocean of love was the essence of humanity itself. I had never been so close to another person without it being “personal”. We were free of our personalities, yet strangely intimate. It was a love without need of confirmation or attachment because it had all it needed to be self-fulfilled. The love was the very air we breathed; we were WITHIN love, there was no need for any exchange. It was love without an object. “There are points of fire,” said my friend. “Yes,” I confirmed, “it’s a gigantic network of living points of fire. We are points of fire!” We were particle and field in love, an amazing thing to experience. “We all have a cosmic address, where we belong,” I said. In that very moment I recollected Ken Wilber’s remarks about our having a unique perspective in time and space according to our level of consciousness and our individual journey.
It was wondrous to occupy this field of love and explore the particle/field nature of our being. It was like a quantum consciousness let loose in a laboratory of the Soul. When we became particles, the energy condensed into a tight nucleus, intense, potent, alive and full of will. The field remained in the background, but the creative impulse was very much in the foreground. Through this point of fire, the very meaning of my life emerged. Despite the profound love that merged everything into a whole, I was still an “I”. I knew I was not another being; yet there was no sense of separation. My identity was no longer limited to my personal story; it was an impersonal experience beyond time and circumstances. It was pure identity without the masks personality wears. In this “I-am-ness” there was intention, power and a will to be. We understood then the unique role we all play in the cosmic drama performed in each moment.
I have spent hours in painful meditation, doing little else than observing the pain, accepting it, and surrendering. When we accept pain without identifying with it magic can happen.
The pain does not necessary lessen, but a space around it expands and is filled with the love and gentleness that can heal the wound causing the pain. Intense pain can overwhelm and blind us; it’s like being surrounded by a thick layer of fog, we feel ourselves pulled into the shadows of the past. Yet if our will-to-be is strong enough, it pushes us out of our comfort zones so we can realise new potentials, and here pain is inevitable. It is part of our evolution. Knowing this comforts the personality who brings new light into the world.
A psychological map is useful when we go through painful transformations. It gives us perspective and illuminates what
would otherwise be dark. We can say that it shows the sun that stands behind our fog of miseries.
Let me introduce a map1 which has helped me immensely on my own journey, especially with the many
energies that arise in meditation. We need to discriminate between these different energies so that we can master them. The map I am speaking of is Roberto Assagioli’s egg diagram (Figure 2), which illustrates the relationship between the observer, the will and the different psychological processes. Assagioli had deep insight into Eastern wisdom traditions and attained a high level of spiritual development himself. He wrote out of experience, not only from theory. The diagram presents the relationships between consciousness in-itself and its contents. Consciousness is light and illuminates everything in the inner world; through this we become aware of the contents of our inner world. The content consists of thoughts, images, sensations, desires and intuitions – different types of energies and habits that constitute our character. Through meditation we work with these energies as a creative observer. everything is energy and the egg diagram presents a multidimensional model of the human psyche depicting different levels of consciousness.
These levels of consciousness resemble the Great Chain of Being of traditional philosophy. In Assagioli’s model they represent the physical, emotional, mental, intuitive and transcendent levels of consciousness. Each level contains different energies and forms, which we experience as thinking, feeling, acting or intuition. (This model represents only a part of the psyche; much else resides out of sight, as I will touch on later2.)
Assagioli divided his egg diagram in four interconnected levels. We are aware of them according to our level of self-awareness and where our attention is at any moment.
The Basic Unconscious
The bottom section of the egg diagram (1) is called the lower unconscious. There are some concerns about using the term “lower”, so I’ve come to use “basic”. Our fundamental psychological processes are located here. According to Abraham Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs” (see Figure 3), here we are concerned with our survival, security and safety. When we are hungry or afraid, the basic unconscious is active. Here we find the roots of many traumas from our childhood or even past lives. They are re-activated by different circumstances and emerge as fears, inhibitions, phobias, compulsive desires and attachments. The reactions are very often difficult to understand from a rational point of view because their very nature is pre-rational.
The energies here are egocentric and ethnocentric. They represent desires, fantasies, and memories from birth to around the age of three; some memories can reach back to past lives. When the basic unconscious is healthy, we feel safe and have a good sense of self; we are playful and open, able to be in the world and enjoy sensual pleasures.
The Middle Unconscious
The middle section of the egg diagram represents the middle unconscious (2). The need for intimacy, self-esteem and recognition is located here. Here too we find the resources and qualities necessary for a creative personality, for self-actualisation and an independent life.
Here too are the desires, dreams and frustrations surrounding our ambitions, our love life and social world. Our struggle to develop the skills necessary to live a good and successful life takes place here.
This region relates to our self-image, our theories and worldviews. It is here that we form our roles in work, the family and our social circles, as well as our political and philosophical opinions. Mature emotional energies, expressed as care for others and the need for relationships based on shared values and interests, are also located here.
Personal traumas and difficulties experienced throughout our early years also affect this region, as do unresolved conflicts in the basic unconscious.
Here we try to reach a compromise between the needs of the outer world and those of the inner. We do this by balancing our conflicting energies through dialogue and reflections. The middle unconscious is accessible to the conscious mind, although many creative processes take place below the threshold of awareness.
The upper part of the middle unconscious holds holistic energies, and informs our ability to think abstractly and create visions of what we could be and offer to the world. We can call this the integral area because here we integrate different skills, talents and qualities. Through it we organise our thoughts, focus our energies, think holistically and handle complexities, displaying solid leadership skills. These are not necessarily spiritual qualities; we are still motivated by a need for self-expression. The energies are individualistic and ethnocentric. As with the basic unconscious, when the middle unconscious is healthy it allows us to be more or less functional human beings who are able to engage in life and relationships.
The Higher Unconscious or Superconscious
Next we have the superconscious or higher unconscious (3) where we find the higher needs, talents and qualities of the Soul, which is sometimes called the transpersonal Self. The content of the higher unconscious is of an altruistic, transpersonal nature, related to that which is universal; this is what Maslow is referring to when he speaks of the need for self-transcendence.
Transpersonal energies expand our awareness from the individual to the universal, and can often bring about supernatural experiences. One of my clients experienced the physical world dissolving into energies of love. She was floating in thin air, completely at peace. It lasted ten minutes and entirely changed her outlook on life. The experience I mentioned at the start of this chapter is a good example of contact with the superconscious. These energies connect us with a larger whole with which we feel at one. This can mean a sense of communion with humanity, nature or the cosmos.
Superconscious energies bring great insights to science, art or ethics. Our ideas about human rights and welfare also arise from these energies. And it is in the superconscious that we can experience a kind of group consciousness, or what we can call a “world-centric awareness”. We experience the world as a whole and understand the meaning of true brotherhood and sisterhood. We can accept the unacceptable and forgive the unforgivable. From here too emerge new creative forms.
A glimpse of the good, the true and the beautiful radiating from this realm of consciousness can change our life forever.
The Collective Unconscious
Outside the egg (4) we find the collective unconscious; it too reaches from a basic unconscious to a superconscious. This is the storehouse of humanity’s past, captured in myths, images and memories. These collective visions enter our personal sphere through dreams and imaginations, and they permeate our cultural world.
The collective unconscious connects us to our surroundings. When we practice Awareness Meditation we see that what we thought were our personal feelings of love, fear, excitement or depression may actually be other people’s feelings floating in a shared psychological world. We discover the “gates” where collective energies and corresponding subpersonalities (or archetypes) enter our personal world. We recognise that we receive and project energies whenever we direct our mind at an internal or external object (Figures 4+5).
A continuous exchange takes place between these four levels of consciousness. That is why the egg diagram is depicted as transparent.
It is also important to note that, at each level, material is unconscious to different degrees. For example, at each level there is material that is preconscious, meaning the material lies just below or above the threshold of awareness. As with a hard disk, the data stored here can be accessed anytime; the information lies ready to hand for whenever it is needed.
Then there is material that is unconscious because it may simply have been forgotten, rather than actively repressed.
And then, at each level, we find material that is deeply and truly unconscious. This might include material that we have not been able to contain or integrate and so it became repressed, which is often the case with material relating to intimacy, sex, aggression, power, love or even mystical experiences. The deep or higher unconscious also contains material that has never reached consciousness, such as the energies of the superconscious, with which we perhaps rarely make contact.
All of this unconscious material exists as creative potential that awaits realisation as part of our future self. We can also make the observation that the basic unconscious relates to the past, the middle unconscious to the present, and the superconscious to the future.
The Personal Self – a Centre of Pure Consciousness and Will
The bright centre of the egg (5) represents the personal self, which we can call “the observer”. This is the conscious subject at the centre of the personality, our source of self-awareness. Assagioli defines this as a centre of pure self-awareness and will. This centre radiates out into a shining sphere, which is the observer’s field of consciousness. Through this the energies of the unconscious enter our awareness, and here we think, feel and imagine. Another input into the personal self is intuition, coming from the transpersonal Self. The personal self interprets all of these energies, processing them through the seven psychological functions. It is then through acts of will that we decide what to do with this content and how to act on it. Although we are self-conscious, many of us are not self-aware. We identify with the content of consciousness – with what we think, feel or imagine – rather than with the who that is thinking, feeling or imagining (ie the observer). Freedom arises when we can distinguish between the observer and the observed. Such self-awareness is the aim of Awareness Meditation.
Yet the observer and the observed are linked. I am not separate from the content of my consciousness, yet I am different from it. To realise this difference is the first step in meditation. Achieving this, we can then establish a centre that is aware of the energies. Assagioli believed that what we identify with controls us, what we disidentify from, we can master. Dis-identifying helps us to step back and observe what is influencing us. When we feel a strong emotion, we say “I am angry” or “I am sad”, and so identify with it. If we say instead “a wave of anger came over me”, we are distinguishing between the anger and ourselves. From this vantage point, we can reflect upon, own and take responsibility for the feeling without being overly identified with it.
The personal self is a point of presence and clarity: when we know what we possess, and can apply ourselves creatively to how we live our lives, we become grounded and powerful.
The Subpersonalities: Our Different Inner Parts
Subpersonalities are found in the basic and middle unconscious (Figure 6). They are a key theme in Psychosynthesis and, as I came to realise, also in meditation. Anyone who meditates discovers the many “voices” within, our inner commentators. They appear, lurking behind undifferentiated energies of fear, anger, harmony, trust, and so on. Assagioli said our personality can be compared to an apartment building with many floors and rooms. On each floor are residents with different needs and desires. These are often expressed in our automatic responses to people and circumstances. Driven by repressed needs, emotions and thoughts, our subpersonalities inform our desires and fears, our likes and dislikes. Our inner residents do not get along; our inner child, teenager, critic and their neighbours are often in conflict.
The building therefore needs a manager, someone to harmonise and integrate the many subpersonalities around common goals and values. This is precisely the function of the personal self. The self is the proprietor of our inner house. He makes the rules and ensures that everyone follows them and co-operates. Our job is to become the master of our own inner house, through the integration of the personality – a process that Assagioli calls
“personal psychosynthesis”. Knowledge of the subpersonalities, together with the good, strong and skilful will, helps to achieve integration within the basic and middle unconscious parts of our self.
I vividly remember my first visualisation exercise as part of my Psychosynthesis training. It was a guided meditation which invited me to visit the basement of my inner house, where I immediately encountered a catholic priest. He had arranged for himself a cosy apartment full of books. He had retreated from the world and broken all connections to it; he was fulfilled with his books and his prayers.
An atmosphere of loneliness and asceticism surrounded him. I started a dialogue with this priest, and he told me he had created this retreat as a response to disappointment in his love life. The cosy retreat was his defence against pain and sorrows in his past. At one point during the visualisation, we were asked to find a hidden box with valuable content. When the priest opened the box, he discovered unopened letters from friends all over the world who missed him. A wave of love and appreciation hit him like a wall, and I burst into tears as the pain of isolation was released.
This insight opened a door into this aspect of my inner world, and the light of hope began to shine in my subconscious. The experience was like a dream marking the beginning of a long journey. In the years ahead, isolation, loneliness, retreat, despair and abdication were the very themes I would work with in psychotherapy. The box of unopened letters seemed to symbolise love and friendly relationships lying ahead.
A subpersonality is a living part of us, a truly living being. Each subpersonality has its own awareness, emotions and desires, which are expressed through actions. And as with other conscious beings, we can speak and collaborate with our subpersonalities.
They originate in the identifications we make throughout our lives, typically in connection with past or present social or familial roles. They appear when we adopt new roles in life, such as when we become parents or begin a new job. They relate to the developmental stages we pass through from infanthood to adulthood; they arise out of our identification as a child, father, mother, boss, lover. They can develop whenever we identify with a role we adopt, such as the clown, the sceptic, the romantic, and so on. For example, if we are bullied at school we can create a self-image of ourselves as a victim, and this becomes one of our subpersonalities. Each subpersonality is a character, a stable behavioural pattern, a habitual way of being.
Subpersonalities are trapped in the story relating to their role, stuck in the time the story and role were created. Through them our past lives on in the present.
We can become aware of our subpersonalities through visualisation exercises and through the recollection of our internalised images of who we are.
Psychosynthesis aims to deliberately develop our subpersonalities and harness their energies in positive ways. For example, new experiences can change or even dissolve the power of a subpersonality.I can remember when I first became a father. This was, of course, a new role to me, and I wanted to fulfil it based on my own values, and not those of my background. I asked myself: What is a father? It was not easy to see beyond the cultural expectations of fatherhood or beyond my experiences of my own father. Only after several years of working on my father subpersonality did I feel I was playing the role of a father authentically.
For several years I felt I played the role badly, and was wracked with guilt. A breakthrough came in therapy: I spoke with my inner father figure and reflected on his guilt and sense of inferiority. What ideals were behind my inner father figure’s role? Suddenly an image came into mind: it was a father from the 1960s, smoking a pipe. His children were helping him clean the car. Mom was in the kitchen and everyone was calm, the atmosphere peaceful and harmonious. The environment was well-structured, the roles fixed, and the values deeply materialistic.
A breakthrough came when I realised these were not my values. They were radically different from the kind of life I wanted. I realised I had unconsciously identified with something inauthentic, and this had caused problems because there was a gap between my conscious aims and the unconscious expectations held by my inner father figure. But having had this realisation I was then able to begin the process of replacing the subconscious ideas I had held about fatherhood since 1968 with the values I was committed to in 2003.
This example tells us much. Along with our own subpersonalities, we also internalise the most important figures in our lives. Father, mother, important friends and loved ones are key figures found in the object relations theory of psychoanalysis. Subpersonalities founded upon these key figures not only behave like our real mother and father, they believe this is who they are. Many of us as adults continue to hear a parent’s voice still chiding them after all these years, disapproving of some action. We are experiencing an internalised representation of our parents lives within us, influencing our actions for good and bad. Awareness of this psychodrama can help us as we try to respond to these inner figures – we can learn to deal with our parental subpersonalities, and others, treating them as real living psychic beings in our subconscious domain.
Many subpersonalities develop and become more healthy as we go through life and conquer new challenges, yet many remain stuck in the unconscious until we uncover them and begin the work of transformation.
To return to Assagioli’s metaphor, we can train the subpersonalities in the apartment building to move from floor to floor and room to room, changing their roles at any given time. In Chapter 8 I will look at how we can accomplish this.
There are still other kinds of subpersonalities, ones organised around what we can call archetypical roles. The archetypes of the collective unconscious can draw us into making powerful identifications; throughout history we have been drawn to figures that exemplify the hero, the warrior, the trickster, the preacher, the king, and so on. Many children today identify with Harry Potter – the Magician – and this allows them to express their own archetypal sense of magic and wonder. An archetypical subpersonality is by definition an identity formation based on a collective role model.
The last category of subpersonalities is the most controversial: those related to our past lives. These subpersonalities are prominent characters from earlier lifetimes that relate to the themes of this life.
The priest I met during my guided meditation is a good example of a subpersonality from a past life. I believe that in a past life I was Father Pierre, a Frenchman who retreated into a life of seclusion. This subpersonality of mine believed he was still living in 1850 and his habits and attitudes from that period influenced my personality. I do not doubt the existence of these subpersonalities – they appear with regularity in my therapeutic practice – but how to interpret them is another question. There is no proof of past lives, so clients will often choose to interpret such subpersonalities as archetypal figures expressing authentic psychological energies.
Subpersonalities appear in the basic and middle unconscious because here they find the mental, emotional and physical energies that give them form. By contrast, the energies found in the superconscious tend to be formless, more like light than anything else, so they are less likely to manifest as personalities.
The Soul and the Transpersonal Self
Where is the personal self’s source of consciousness? Assagioli called it the higher Self or the transpersonal Self (8). He may have felt his terms were more scientific, but I call it the Soul. The personal and transpersonal Self are the same Self, but at different levels of awareness. The personal self’s awareness is restricted by the mental field and the brain, which causes the illusion of separation so that our self-awareness becomes contracted around an individual core. The Soul is a centre of pure self-awareness and will in the superconscious. Here our identity and self-awareness expands to include all living beings. I call this self-awareness group consciousness or sacrificial consciousness.
I prefer to speak of the Soul because of its links to love. Many have experienced the Soul as a transcendent witness free of the dramas of the personality. The Soul is not an archetype or a concept but a living divine being. The Soul knows the meaning of our lives and our tasks in our current incarnation. The Soul is an expression of the universal Self, manifesting in a unique incarnation. The Soul is able to experience the full breadth of consciousness; our self-awareness can expand to include a deep connectedness with all living beings, a sense of being at one with world and humanity. Here our sense of identity expands far beyond our personality.
The Soul is in touch with the personal self by the bridge of consciousness (7), linking the two points of self-awareness. This is known as the silent path because the higher levels of consciousness are accessed through silent contemplation. I call it the Soul-self connection. We can say that the Soul’s consciousness descends from the top of the egg diagram through a pale reflection in the brain. This reflection is the observer, our point of pure self-awareness. It is a pale reflection until the spiritual process awakens the personal self to its higher divine counterpart. Then the Soul is able to manifest through the mind as well as the brain and the nervous system.
Assagioli’s egg diagram does not show the personal self located in the brain, but esoteric philosophy describes a secret physical centre between the pineal and pituitary glands. It calls this “the cave”. In the cave, Soul consciousness descends and reflects the light. Meditating in the cave can strengthen the bridge of consciousness, the Soul-self connection. The observer is not experienced as a point within the brain because we observe through the medium of the mind, and not the brain.
We can imagine the Soul as a radiant point of loving presence floating above the head. This spiritual being is often described in Eastern traditions as the “real man in the inner world”. The Soul reincarnates so to develop its capacity to manifest love-wisdom. The Soul’s purpose is to manifest the content of the superconscious through the personal self, using the resources found in the basic and middle unconscious. The personal self is the conductor, mediating between the Soul’s vision and the needs of the personality. When the Soul is able to express itself fully through the personality, the personal self and the Soul can be said to have become one. The result is an enlightened being, someone who identifies with humanity, and can truly love his neighbour as himself.
The consciousness of the Soul and the personal self does not differ in quality. Assagioli used a helpful analogy to describe this relationship: that of sunlight reflected in a mirror. The sunlight in the mirror has the same qualities as its source: it illuminates and gives warmth. If we see only the reflection, and not the source, we can say that the light in the mirror is an illusion. The same applies with the personal self and the Soul. Meditation enables the personal self to connect with the source of light. When we do this we come to understand that the difference between the reflection and its source is one of degree, concerning intensity of light.
The star at the top of the Egg symbolises what the East calls the “Jewel in the lotus”, the heart of the Soul. This is the Universal Presence in the Soul, the potential for cosmic consciousness. The Soul lives above the mental levels, a presence fully awake to the eternal Now; it leads a cosmic and earthly life. If the self is a 100W bulb radiating from its centre in the brain, the Soul is a perpetual nova radiating in eternity. Enlightenment happens when the lightbulb in the brain reflects its higher counterpart. When this happens, the creative energies in the superconscious radiate from the love, wisdom and power in the Soul. In a similar way, the personal self develops knowledge, desires and images in the basic and middle unconscious.
The Soul is also a centre of will, just like the personal self, but with a much greater scope. The Soul relates to the Spirit’s overall purpose, and has a unique task in the universe. Through the evolutionary process the Soul learns how to manifest its divine qualities in the world. This is how the will plays out in the life of the Soul.
The dynamic part of the Soul is fiery. We experience its will-to-be as the evolutionary impulse, urging consciousness through all levels. Yet the Soul is dual. There is the fiery will, but also a silent, static ground. Assagioli called the Soul the “immovable mover” pointing to the paradox at the heart of the Soul.
The fire is sacrificial because it sacrifices minor attachments in order to realise the ultimate attachment, which is oneness. The will does away with lesser forms. This destruction means letting go of old states of consciousness while surrendering to new ones arriving from transcendent worlds.
I have experienced the fiery nature of the Soul many times. At one stage in my life I needed to surrender to the heart of the Sun, the gigantic living being ensouling the physical sun. Meditating, I connected with an enormous fiery being. I felt I had become a reservoir of living fire, abundant life saturated with power, with the potential to create all there is. From this silent will, I was already all I could hope to become and much more. There was nothing to achieve, only eternal life and being. From this solar heart, fountains of living fire produce an abundant display of pure life force – an effortless radiation of being and becoming. It was a joyful, ecstatic supernatural volcano of creativity: dynamic, unstoppable and full of love. There was no doubt that this was my true face: living fire, indestructible, eternal essence.
The bridge of consciousness has a living dynamic counterpart called the sutratma, meaning the thread of life, which is anchored in the physical heart. Through this living essence, the Soul is reflected on the physical plane. Through the heart centre, in the middle of the chest, we have an intuitive sense of who we are and our unique evolutionary purpose in life. The heart centre is dynamic, producing the courage to be who we truly are. Through this fiery essence we develop dignity and self-worth as a divine being.
The Soul is dual. It has masculine and feminine poles, relating to what we might call the particle and wave nature of our being. The silent will of the Soul patiently but insistently pushes us beyond our comfort zones so we can better serve the divine. This is our inner King or Queen, which is felt as a longing for authenticity and power. The feminine pole seeks connection and communion with society, nature and the cosmos. It knows that, despite separation and conflict, we are one. The feminine represents the love that opens hearts through kindness and generosity. The Soul’s feminine side knows that the love in one heart is the same love residing in all hearts.
The Seven Evolutionary Stages
The self’s evolutionary journey begins at the bottom of the egg diagram and leads through the different levels of consciousness, as defined in Chapter 1. These seven evolutionary stages create seven types of awareness: body-awareness (instinctual-physical), sensitive-awareness (emotional), self-awareness (rational-mental), holistic-awareness (personality-Soul), group-awareness (intuitive-Soul), sacrificial-awareness (will-Soul), and unity-awareness (Spirit).
Figure 7 depicts the seven developmental stages and shows how they unfold. Not all human beings go through the upper stages; for most these stages are in potential rather than reality. We have been able to describe these stages by reflecting on the attainment of some of the most realised Souls in history. It is important to stress, once again, the non-linear way that many of these developments take place in life experience. An experience of
the heights of consciousness is often followed by an experience of its depths. After an experience of the heights, a process of purification will take place in the subconscious: we have to regress for the sake of progress because the counter pole of an experience will surface after the realisation. Similarly, whenever we act from the place of Soul, connecting with our power and integrity, we will bring out a sense of powerlessness and inadequacy from our basic unconscious. This is what we can call the law of polarity (Figure 8).
When we have reached the peaks, we must then descend, which means entering lower parts of the unconscious where we can then eliminate outmoded behaviour, such as attachments to early trauma which makes us reckless, greedy or reclusive. Our subpersonalities can learn to co-operate with the influx of superconscious energies, producing a spontaneous kindness and wisdom. This is hard work. Even with knowledge and skills at our disposal, it is a painful process. Meditation is of great help here.
The distance between what I teach and what I do can be great. Following a deep spiritual breakthrough it requires much heart to accept the immature behaviour I often witness in myself. Yet, as Ken Wilber says about spiritual realisation: “It hurts more but bothers you less.” He means that we become more sensitive to pain but also more impersonal.
When growth is healthy, we see an exchange of energies between the bottom and the top of the egg. Whenever we achieve a higher level of understanding, we also descend to do some work in the basement of our inner house. This brings about changes in our relationship to sex, money and power. As we open up to the Soul, our empathy with others strengthens, and it becomes impossible to be purposefully hurtful. Barriers dissolve and our sensitivity increases, challenging us to move beyond egocentric behaviour.
If the basic energies are excluded from our development, our shadow will appear in all types of compulsive behaviours, mostly related to money, power and sex. This is common in spiritual environments where the transcendent is idealised and the material demonised. Misuse of money, power and sex by gurus or teachers is often rationalised in order to protect the reputation of the cult. This attitude neglects the role of the subconscious, whose importance in this cannot be overemphasised. Understanding the subconscious influence on our behaviour is necessary if we are to ground our spiritual visions in everyday life.
Another way to illustrate the different levels of our inner house is with the concept of a “holarchy” (Figure 9). According to Arthur Koestler, a holarchy is a hierarchical structure uniting holons, which are themselves both parts and wholes. The body (1) is a whole in itself, but also a part of a larger holon, the emotional field (2). They both are part of the mind (3), which is a part of the personality (4), which is part of the Soul (5). The superconscious emerges from the Soul and the spiritual Self is the ground of it all. Spirit is the foundation of everything and can be experienced as a Creator or a universal field.
In a holarchy, one holon transcends but includes another. In life, the process is complex because of the conflicts we experience between our egoistic (self-assertive) and altruistic (self-transcending) impulses. Holarchies are a fact but their order and harmony must be realised by us as a collective.
Summary of terms
Let me conclude this chapter by clarifying the different, sometimes seemingly contradictory, concepts of self I have been discussing.
By the self I mean the personal self as a centre of pure self-awareness and
will. The self is not the thoughts, feelings, ideas, passions or sensations that
make up the content of consciousness, but is the consciousness that is aware of these contents.
Assagioli calls the “I” the personal self. I prefer to use “I” to mean the self as
it is identified with any particular stage in its development, what we can call the “stage-specific self”. The “I” represents the present prominent identification in an individual’s life. This identification could be emotional, mental, holistic or higher.
The Ego is usually a group of prominent subpersonalities, which offers a set of roles we can apply in our interaction with the world and is considered to be within normal behaviour. The ego can also be defined in a much broader sense as a contraction around self-centredness which separates us from our surroundings.
The Superego is a collection of subpersonalities that exerts a critical and a moralising influence. Its values are those of the cultural norms, what is considered good behaviour. It is motivated to maintain customs and ensure the safety of the individual within the family and society.
The Personality is the integrated, individualised expression of the talents and qualities of the basic and middle unconscious. They are united through the influence of self-awareness, the will and the mind.
The Soul, the higher Self and the transpersonal Self are all terms referring
to the unique individualised expression in time and space of the one Spirit.
The Jiva Atman in Hindu literature.
The Universal Self, the Universal Presence and Spirit are likewise different
names for the same reality.
In Chapter 1, I asked three questions; let’s see if we can answer them now.
Who meditates?
The self or the Soul according to the level of awareness defined by the
stage-specific self of a particular individual.
Why do we meditate?
In order to raise our level of awareness from the egocentric to the cosmocentric, with the aim of bettering the world.
What is spirituality?
It is the expansion of consciousness from the personal to the transpersonal
and beyond. It is the manifestation of our divine qualities through the body
and into the world.
Now with the help of this map, let’s navigate the seven rivers of life and see
what kinds of energies we must master in order to become whole.
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