When we identify with the “victim”, the “striver” or other typical character traits, we reduce our personal freedom and the possibility of becoming whole people. This excellent article describes the path to personal freedom through case stories.
By Betsie Carter-Haar, translated by Annabritt Jakielski
This article was first published in Synthesis Journal Volume 2, pp. 56-91
Lisa is a woman in her mid-30s who is healthy, outgoing, loving and creative. She is married with children, has written two books and is working on a third. Her own paintings hang on the walls of her home, and although there is always life around her, she is calm, happy and rarely loses her sense of humor.
She hasn’t always been like this. When I first met her, she was depressed and withdrawn. The change over the past six years has been remarkable, even though it has been gradual. I asked her to describe this process of change as she experienced it.
I know that the change in me has been going on for years before it really hit home, but there was a certain moment—a defining moment—when something happened inside me. I saw something about myself that I truly understood, and from then on I had a hold on something I could never lose. Nothing was the same again.
My relationship with my husband was really bad. He wasn’t a particularly nice man and had his problems. He was embarrassed and ashamed of me and always put me down. My father had also been unusually critical of me when I was growing up, and I think I tried to compensate for never having his love and approval by winning Ralph’s instead. As the years went by, I felt more and more uncomfortable, inadequate, and wrong. It really hurt me—I was suffering so much during those years. I needed to numb myself so I wouldn’t feel the pain and so I could function.
Yet I kept sinking deeper into the pain and depression. One day I started thinking about suicide. It shocked me – like an electric shock. I remember almost jumping back from myself and thinking, “Oh my God, what am I doing? Where am I?” It was as if a veil had been torn from my eyes. I was thinking clearly and felt like I was waking up from a dream. Then I had a sudden, very powerful realization: “I don’t have to feel this way. I can choose not to feel this way!” That was it. That was the moment.
I realized that the problem wasn’t Ralph or my father or any other person who was causing me all this pain. I allowed it to be there and played along and played the role of “victim” to perfection. I understood that I was this “victim.”
In that moment, I realized that I was not a victim—it was just a role , and I could choose to play a different role if I wanted to . I understood that I—in my real self—was different deep down, disidentified with all my roles and my traits and everything I owned. It was as if I was left without everything I thought was “me.” This is how I had imagined death would be, and yet—here I was, more alive and awake than I had ever been in my life. I don’t quite know how to describe it. I was just “me,” real, whole, present .
That’s how all these changes began. Now I had a deep sense of being whole and okay, and even when it hurt and I felt confused, I knew that I am not these feelings – I am me!
Of course, I still have to work on remembering that I’m not a subjugated, criticized victim from time to time. It’s not always easy. Sometimes I get caught up in it, but each time it’s faster and faster to get out of it. Since I’ve started working on it, I’ve discovered a lot of good things about myself, and it’s exciting to live and be me.
Experiences like Lisa’s, experiences of freedom or disidentification from a specific, limiting consciousness, are not uncommon. Yet they often go unnoticed. Many people have similar experiences, although they are usually less dramatic, and many miss the chance to apply them and translate them into lasting changes in their lives in the same way that Lisa did.
Furthermore, when these experiences are not understood, they can be disturbing. When we are completely and completely identified with something, we think, feel, and act in accordance with it. For example, we believe that we are “rational,” or that we are a “victim,” or that we are strong, and we begin to feel that we are this rather than anything else . The prospect of letting go of that with which we are so strongly identified can then feel frightening and even unthinkable. We feel as if it is our very selves that we are about to lose.
Our sense of self, our sense of self, our personal identity, is probably the most precious thing we have. That is why we often fight against ourselves and against our urge to grow to keep this sense of self intact, even if it is limiting because of something we identify with.
If someone had told Lisa a few years ago that she was not really a victim, but had identified with a role she was playing, she would have felt very threatened. Her identification with being a victim was so complete and total that she could not see beyond it. She was so identified with being a victim. She relates to people, to situations, to objects as a victim. She thought and felt as a victim. You could say that in all practical matters she was a victim – subjugated, unfairly hurt, persecuted. Even her posture reflected this. Her identity was also self-reinforcing: because she looked and acted like a victim, people tended to treat her accordingly. This reinforced her self-image, so that the situation remained as it was.
Her perception of other people and her environment was also limited by her identification. She looked at the world through her “victim glasses,” and everything she picked up there went through this victim filter. So the experiences around her were distorted and misinterpreted to fit her identity as a victim, thereby reinforcing that identity. Because Lisa’s perception of the environment was distorted by her self-image, so were her reactions. She was not reacting to what was actually happening, but to the victim’s perception of it.
Although Lisa’s situation was very extreme, it is applicable to most people. We often identify with something and tend to react based on our own filtered perception, rather than on what is actually happening. We can become aware of our identifications. The more we are aware of what we identify with, the clearer our perception of the world becomes. Awareness of an identification is the first step to becoming free from its limitations and distortions . With this awareness, we can learn to consciously choose and, based on our needs, identify ourselves—or disidentify ourselves—from the many internal and external elements and qualities that surround the ego or personal self. This is the basis for real freedom and for the realization of our true identity.
Various identifications
Identification with a variety of elements occurs in everyone. It is a natural psychological process. According to Jung, some basic instinct or complex of ideas will inevitably concentrate the greatest amount of psychic energy and thus squeeze the ego into its service. (Although Jung’s use of the term “ego” here is synonymous with “I” as used in psychosynthesis, this is not the case in most psychological systems. It is an inadequate understanding of the concept of identification that is the cause of most of the confusion surrounding these terms, as few Western psychological thinkers have seen through the identifications of the ego at the very center of the ego.
We therefore often find that the term “ego” or “self” is used to indicate a number of theoretical constructs to which are attached certain characteristics, needs and qualities that actually belong to the personality, which is organized around the Self. Sometimes the word “self” is even used to refer to the specific personality element with which we identify ourselves. Usually the ego is drawn into this energy focus so powerfully that it identifies with it….” In other words, we experience a variety of pulls in our consciousness, originating from many different sources. In general, as long as we are not aware of our identifications, we tend to identify with whatever exerts the greatest “pull” on our consciousness : whatever we perceive as most interesting, most important, and most central. This can be whatever makes us feel more alive, more ourselves—whatever best allows our energy to flow, or whatever fulfills our strongest desire, or urge.
Since these identifications usually occur on an unconscious level, we can identify with something that – if we looked at it objectively – we would know is not really us. For example, I know a man in his late 40s who almost seems to be his car. It is a very expensive foreign model, and he spends most of his free time with it. He talks to it, tunes it, waxes it and polishes it. Then he drives it around town and shows it off.
One Sunday afternoon he came out of a friend’s house and found his parked car scratched on the front bumper. He became very agitated and felt bad about driving all that day. He only recovered when he was able to take his car to the repair shop the next day. When the muffler started making too much noise at one point, he was injured. He was ashamed, felt awkward and unpresentable. He felt that “he couldn’t go out like this” and that he wasn’t “presenting himself properly”. He took side streets to avoid being seen and took a taxi when he was going to a cocktail party. If something is wrong with the car, something is wrong with him . If someone praises the car, he feels praised. He is not quite clear where the car’s limits end and his own begins. (A conscious experience of changed boundaries as a result of a new identification is described in the article “Fat Me and Thin Me.” He once expressed, half-humorously, that “if something happened to his car, he thought he would be thrown into a deep identity crisis.”)
Similarly, housewives may become identified with their homes, collectors with their collections, artists with their artwork, etc. Such identifications with material things often masquerade as “self-expression.” True self-expression is, of course, valuable. But when we invest much of ourselves in objects, when we feel threatened in any way if we lose them or if they change, something other than self-expression is at stake. When we have a disproportionate amount of ourselves invested in an object, we are likely to identify with it. Our boundaries may have begun to include that object. Instead of expressing ourselves, we begin to express it — we become slaves to that object with which we identify.
In addition to identifying with a material object, we can identify ourselves with the groups we belong to – whether these are cultural, racial, religious, ideological or political. We continuously identify with our function in life and career, such as being a parent, a doctor, a son or an accountant, etc.
Lisa gave us an example of a more subtle form of identification. For Lisa was identified with a developed, powerful and very strong subpersonality . (A full description of subpersonalities including techniques for working with them is the central topic of the Workbook in Synthesis I – see Psychosynthesis exercises). She was completely identified with this subpersonality to the exclusion of everything else. Like Lisa, people can be “trapped” in such identification with a particular subpersonality. Depending on which subpersonality it is, they may feel dissatisfied and offended, as Lisa was, or they may be relatively satisfied and free from conflict, although to a lesser extent than would be possible for them.
Other people alternate between identifying with a number of sub-personalities. We have all experienced how, for example, we are “different” when we are with our children than when we are with our parents, or how we found ourselves in a stressful situation where we “were not ourselves”. When people change identification in this way, they often do so in a way that responds to the needs of the situation they find themselves in . They allow themselves – although they are mostly unaware of it – to be drawn into the sub-personality that is most “suitable” and that best acts “as expected of them”. They feel increasingly trapped, powerless and controlled by the expectations of their environment and the demands of their personality, caught in ambivalence, confusion; a conflict that exists between their many sub-personalities. (See the article “Sub-personalities and Psychotherapy” ). So the very act of changing identification can be as limiting as a single identification – until we learn to consciously choose and change identification .
The identification process
We have seen that identification takes place as a largely unconscious response to a variety of needs and urges, and that identification with only one aspect of our personality is limiting and possibly distorting. Identification can therefore be a source of difficulty, but depending on the circumstances there can also be a useful aspect associated with it.
Because identification is limiting, it is also specialized . It can therefore help us to remain focused in a particular direction, sharpening our awareness and effectiveness. When we identify with a part of ourselves, we are able to fully experience it without being distracted. We feel the way the subpersonality feels and see it the way the subpersonality sees it, since it represents a specific, specialized state of consciousness. Our outlook on life changes, as do our understandings and emotions. Our energy flows through this subpersonality and “feeds” it and makes it participate. It is in this way that specific aspects of ourselves – often without our realizing it – arise and develop, just as the imagination of an artist subpersonality does, or the decision-making ability of a manager subpersonality.
Through concrete identifications we can develop and refine a quality or attitude; we can learn when a particular behavior or response is beneficial and when it is inappropriate. Each of our identifications therefore represents an opportunity to learn and grow . In fact, much of our early learning and growth takes place primarily through an unconscious process of successive identifications . For many people, this unconscious or unintentional response remains the core of their growth throughout their lives.
As long as this process takes place on an unconscious level, there is a major disadvantage associated with it. While the development of a new quality can complement the qualities we already have, thus leading to a more rounded, more inclusive and effective personality, it can be overdone if we allow ourselves to be trapped for too long by a particular identification. This can skew personal development, create conflict and imbalance, and block other important and useful qualities. Depending on the circumstances and duration of our identifications, they can be beneficial or harmful, either promoting or limiting our growth. Or, more precisely, our identifications at different times can either help us or limit our personal growth in different ways and to different degrees.
For example, being identified with the “Conscientious Employee” subpersonality can help a person develop competence and effectiveness, but it can also prevent that person from developing a playful and humorous attitude, compassion and sensitivity towards their fellow human beings, or the feeling and ability to relax when necessary. On the other hand, being identified with something that can even be as painful and limiting as the Victim can ultimately lead to positive results – such as greater understanding and compassion for the suffering of others. We must therefore learn to first become aware of our identifications and then to choose, consciously and in the moment, which identification we believe is most in line with our purpose and thus most useful for our growth. When we have achieved what we can achieve through a particular identification, it is time to move on: we must free ourselves from it in order to continue our growth. Otherwise, our identification can become too limiting and control us, thus limiting our further growth.
To free oneself from an identification is not to write it off or reject it. When we disidentify from something that we have fully experienced and mastered, it can become a very effective tool in our consciousness, expression and actions, always at our disposal when we need it.
What we have said so far points to three stages of growing awareness and ability to relate to the aspects and elements associated with our personality.
In the first stage, the identification process takes place on an unconscious level and largely outside of our control. We identify with a personality element (such as an emotion, a sub-personality, or a role), and this identification will shift based on the pressures and needs associated with internal and external circumstances, much more than we want or intend.
When we become aware of our identifications, we enter the second stage. We can now consciously choose to shift identification from one personality element to another. As we have seen, this ability gives us greater opportunity for self-expression and a more balanced development.
There is, however, a third possible stage. Lisa alludes to this stage when she speaks of her experience of a gradually growing “sense of wholeness.” We do not always have to identify with a subpersonality or personality element. On the contrary, as we will later experience, we can learn to disidentify from all of these and instead identify with the I, the personal self, the core of our true identity and consciousness. We now have an even greater range of expression at our disposal: we can choose when it is appropriate to identify with a personality element and when we wish to identify with the I. As the I, we not only have the experience of personal identity and individuality, but we can also be very objectively aware of our psychological life and our interaction in the world and consequently choose our actions and development in the most effective way.
In reality—as is usually the case in psychological processes—these three stages are not separated in time. For example, we can learn to disidentify from the personality elements while gradually identifying with the self. Growth in one area fosters further growth in other areas. The following story about Mike can illustrate the growth in these three stages in more detail through Mike’s growing understanding of the identification process. Mike had identified with a dominant subpersonality, the “Striver,” for most of his life. He was the only child of elderly parents who had high expectations of him. High achievement was presented to him as necessary to gain his parents’ love and acceptance, and his childhood was marked by his efforts to win their approval. He got good grades in school and was an honorable Boy Scout. As a young businessman, by the age of 7 he was good at earning money from a lemonade stand and a newspaper route, and later shoveling snow and taking on yard work. His parents’ attitude was that his efforts were good – but “could be better”. They promised him their recognition for his future achievements and thus became the carrot in front of his nose that drove him forward. Mike’s role as an aspirant was therefore cemented early in life.
In his youth, Mike aspired to a high grade point average and athletic prowess, which his peers considered the criteria for success. He achieved both, and finished high school as the valedictorian. He continued his pursuits in college, and although he gradually achieved the goals he set, they seemed to lose meaning to him as he reached them. He never felt satisfied. Eventually, this sense of dissatisfaction and constant striving led to serious health problems (a severe case of peptic ulcer).
Fortunately, there was also an advantage to it. Since he was little, Mike’s encouragement to strive had stimulated the differentiation and development of many useful qualities, traits, and abilities. He learned what it meant to be reliable and dependent, how to get out of bed on winter mornings, how to deal with money, how to take initiative, etc. He used his intellect and willpower and learned early about choices and values. He learned how to hone and direct his energy, make decisions and carry them out, and he enjoyed the respect and trust of many people.
Early in life, the striving drive became his pivot, the partial unifying center around which many of the important elements of Mike’s personality were centered, developed, and integrated. The striving subpersonality had seen the light of day. Eventually, it developed into a complex psychological structure that included a large number of personality elements and systems.
Although the Striver had helped Mike develop many valuable and useful skills that he might not otherwise have learned, we have already seen that Mike was in the grip of this subpersonality. He could not control the Striver. On the contrary, it was the Striver who controlled Mike and limited him.
Where were Mike’s emotions, for example? Where was his sensitivity and kindness? Humor existed in him only as cynicism, and he ignored his higher values. His imagination and intuition were stunted, and his inner life was all barren. Mike knew little about beauty, love, serenity, or peace.
By the time he was in his mid-20s, Mike’s identification with the Aspirant began to limit him. He stopped developing and stagnated. He was unaware at the time of this gradually increasing crystallization and did not understand the anxiety and rage he was beginning to experience. He had reached the limits of the Aspirant, which instead of being a source of growth, had become a trap.
The core of the Pursuer was—as is the case with all of our subpersonalities—a drive, an urge, or a need. Mike was aware of this urge, but he considered it an inherent trait and an unchangeable part of his nature. He was not in any way unhappy with this trait, because as the Pursuer he felt in control, capable, and had a strong sense of identity.
Behind the Strive sub-personality, which pushed for recognition, lay a deeper and more basic need that Mike had lost touch with. It was the need for acceptance and recognition – a crucially important need that had not been adequately met when he was a child.
Long before the Strive subpersonality was formed, this need controlled Mike’s life. It had itself become the core of an even earlier subpersonality with which Mike had identified. This subpersonality Mike later called in therapy “The Rejected Child.” As the Rejected Child, Mike had tried in countless ways to be accepted and to gain love, attention, and recognition by being good, helpful, manipulative, pretending to be sick or in need of help, and striving for various achievements. As a result of his family environment and his own specific talents, the Strive was the most effective way to achieve acceptance. Striving therefore became his habitual behavior. It was in this way that Mike’s striving drive ended up forming the core of the Strive.
After the Striver emerged, it became Mike’s primary expression in the world, his main sub-personality. Mike identified more and more with it. The previous sub-personality, the Rejected Child, soon faded into the background, as its qualities, and especially the need for acceptance, were quite incompatible with the Striver’s strong, self-sufficient style.
From then on, Mike never felt that his efforts were sufficient, even though he received great recognition for his efforts. The reason was that he received recognition when he was identified with the Striver, who could not accept the recognition. Ironically, the Striver had originally arisen to satisfy his need for acceptance and recognition, but now this basic need disturbed him by actually preventing this satisfaction. The Striver subpersonality was organized and unified around the urge to strive, and its very identity depended on his striving. Its deepest fear, therefore, was that if it ever achieved the fundamental purpose of its striving—to make Mike feel accepted and recognized—its very existence would be threatened. (If the goal had actually been achieved, the Striver would neither have disappeared nor been destroyed. Mike would simply have disidentified from it. To the Striver’s limited consciousness, this would have been tantamount to death.) When the Striver spoke in the voice of Mike’s parents, it could say, “You can do better.” In this way, it negated any recognition from his surroundings and any lasting satisfaction from having achieved a goal – and thus forced Mike to immediately turn his attention to the next goal to be achieved. It became impossible for Mike to feel anything but a constant sense of dissatisfaction when he was identified with the Striver. Not only did the Striver cut himself off from recognition, but – what was even more important – it also prevented any recognition from reaching the Rejected Child, who was now in a worse situation than before the Striver came into being. Not only did the Rejected Child feel rejected by his surroundings, but he was also rejected by the Striver.
This created a double bind for Mike: He couldn’t stop, but he couldn’t win either. The only way he knew to gain recognition was through striving, but the more he strove, the more distant and empty recognition became. What Mike really needed was to accept the Rejected Child within himself, whether it experienced success or failure, and independent of any achievement.
Even though his personal growth had largely stopped by the time he was in his 20s, and even though he suffered from fear, Mike continued his pursuit. Or rather, the Pursuer had made Mike skillfully continue forward. When Mike was in his early 20s, he was a very promising junior executive at a large company—with a stomach ulcer that refused to heal. He fiercely resisted slowing down, feeling that if he relaxed his demands on himself, he would collapse. His rejection of any recognition, combined with the constant fear of a lack of intrinsic worth, completely ate away at his achievements.
Mike had not been sufficiently aware of the deep conflicts he was harboring – even though he experienced the pain that resulted. The situation had become critical. If he had continued in the same way, he would probably have inflicted a serious crisis on himself – a major identity crisis, which would probably have had serious physical side effects.
Integration
Instead, Mike decided to seek help. Through therapy, he learned to disidentify. Gradually, he was able to disidentify from the Striver and uncover and temporarily identify with the Rejected Child. He became aware of a deep pain, sadness, and anger at having felt rejected and was then able to express these feelings in the therapeutic space. He was also able to acknowledge his need for acceptance and understand what had happened to him. At the therapist’s urging, he began to practice self-identification. In doing so, he also disidentifies from the Rejected Child. Like Lisa, he began to have a sense of his personal existence, unencumbered by any activity, any need, and any identification. As he put it at the beginning of this process of discovery: “I was just myself, a human being, Mike.” In this way, he gradually freed himself from his overwhelming need for acceptance from others and realized that although it was an important and fundamental part of his personality, he was not. Of course, it still needed to be satisfied, and he was now better able to do so. So Mike himself learned to give the Rejected Child within him the full and unconditional acceptance that it needed and had been unable to experience in the world.
As Mike became increasingly able to control his own growth process, his deep need for acceptance was satisfied, and the Child began to grow and develop. Its later character traits and qualities blossomed, and it became an adult sub-personality that was the equal of the Aspirant—creative, easygoing, playful, and with a great deal of compassion, affection, and warmth towards other people. Mike called it “Mature Mike.”
Mike realized that it was important not only to express the newly acquired qualities of Mature Mike, but also to combine them with those of the Aspirant by uniting the two subpersonalities. This would give him much greater personality integration. He wanted his life to reflect and promote this synthetic process. At this point, he began to feel that his job was holding him back and was no longer fulfilling. After considering the matter for several months, he left the company and went back to school. His goal was now a doctorate in education, and he based his studies on the considerable talents of the Aspirant, while teaching in a creative environment where Mature Mike had many opportunities to express himself. This process of fusion is still taking place. Recently, he expressed that his long-term goal is to contribute to the renewal and improvement of the educational system.
Through Mike’s experience we have seen the process by which we can move forward towards a more inclusive state by freeing ourselves from limiting identifications. However, this experience also points to an internal mechanism that sets aside experiences and aspects that are not compatible with such limiting identifications. We can call this process denial .
Denial
When we are strongly identified with something, such as a super-personality, most of our energy flows through it. Our energy is also filtered through this sub-personality. In other words, we only allow the energy that is compatible with the basic energy of the sub-personality we identify with to come into expression. This means that whatever we identify with controls any acceptance or rejection we experience. For example, let’s imagine a businessman who identifies with a Loser sub-personality – one that has served as the unifying center for negative experiences and feelings of inadequacy, etc. Let’s imagine that something positive happens to this businessman – his boss congratulates him on a project he has just completed. Does he listen to the boss and believe him? No. He either distorts the experience (“The boss was sarcastic”) or dismisses it (“The boss was just trying to boost my morale”). Or he immediately forgets that it even took place and suppresses it from his consciousness.
A positive experience is simply not acceptable to the Loser because its qualities are different from and out of step with his self-image. But it goes further: A positive experience is actually threatening. What if he wasn’t really a Loser? Who would he be? As we saw earlier, this fear of losing identity, of a deep inner void or emptiness—if we do not understand it properly—can be too overwhelming to face. In such a situation, it often seems less painful to us to have a negative self-image than to have none at all. So, just as in the case of the man who identified with his Loser, we can shut out positive experiences from our consciousness and deny them, thereby distorting or repressing them. More precisely, the energy content of a positive experience is of an opposite quality to the energy that constitutes the core of the Loser subpersonality. If the experiences were accepted by the Loser, the incoming energy would neutralize a corresponding amount of energy in the core of the sub-personality, thereby reducing its intensity. This would be experienced by the Loser as diminished self-esteem and as something that directly threatened its identity and existence – and therefore unacceptable.
When energy that is contrary to the dominant sub-personality develops in us and is then repressed, where does it go? What happened to Mike’s emotions, humor, and intuition in the beginning? What became of Lisa’s inner strength, self-confidence, and ability to take care of herself? These qualities, and many others, were denied because they were incompatible with the qualities of our identifications—the Striver, the Victim, etc. By denied, we mean unconsciously repressed, consciously repressed, ignored, or otherwise disregarded. To the extent that we deny, we suppress the development and integration of the personality.
We can’t really get rid of parts of ourselves. No matter how much we suppress or block them, they don’t go away; they stay with us on some level. Their energy accumulates in the unconscious and is expressed in various ways – often in a veiled way – through dreams, symbolic expressions, sudden urges and desires, various neurotic expressions, etc. As Abraham Maslow writes, and as Freud formulated it, “the parts of ourselves that we reject or repress …. do not cease to exist. They do not die, but are pushed down into the unconscious. The effects of the repressed parts of our human nature tend to remain unnoticed by ourselves or to be experienced as if they were not part of us, ie “I don’t know what made me do such and such”, “I don’t know what came over me”. (A. Maslow: The Farther Reaches of Human Nature , Viking Press, NY 1971, p. 158).
As time goes on, it becomes more and more energy-consuming to keep denying. Eventually it becomes a vicious cycle: the more we experience problems from unwanted parts of ourselves, the more forcefully we will deny them, and the more forcefully we deny them, the more trouble they will cause us.
Often these denied qualities and experiences will fuel a sub-personality that is opposite to the dominant one – or, if we don’t have one, they will create one. As this opposite sub-personality grows and develops, it will gain access to greater and greater energy. Eventually, conflict will arise with the dominant sub-personality. Usually, the conflict will initially be unconscious, and the new sub-personality will express itself in an indirect way – perhaps even somatically, as was the case with Mike.
Such a contradictory sub-personality is not an obstacle and is not undesirable, nor should it be avoided – although it may initially seem so. Because it is contradictory, it is also complementary , and through it we gain access to a wide range of valuable qualities that we did not previously have access to.
In other words, the repressed feelings, thoughts, desires, and experiences that constitute such a subpersonality are not necessarily harmful or “bad.” On the contrary, many of these repressed ideas or urges can fuel growth, altruism, and sublime qualities. Maslow, in his theory of our defense against our own growth, describes “our unconscious fear and hatred of the true, the good, and the beautiful,” which he calls the “Jonas complex” (ibid.). Frank Haronian, in his article “Repression of the Sublime,” discusses the tendency to suppress the goodness, nobility, and beauty of human nature as well as the sexual and aggressive drives. Therefore, we usually repress the content of consciousness not for its content in itself, but because the content—whatever it is—is incompatible with our (often unconscious) sense of who we are. As we have seen, our sense of who we are is determined by what we identify with at the given moment.
Redemption
When we identify with something that has become limiting for us, how do we find our own way to free ourselves from this identification? Mike’s identification with the Striver only broke down after the inner conflicts and tensions caused great pain, fear, and even ulcers. It was only after considerable pain that Lisa spontaneously “resigned” from her identification, experienced her “I,” and became aware of the Victim.
People often maintain an identification until it becomes too difficult, too painful, or impossible to live up to. A permanent identification with any function, subpersonality, or other personality element will sooner or later collapse due to the simple process of life and time. Eventually it will become impossible to maintain, and that person’s life situation may become vulnerable. He or she may experience a sense of loss, purposelessness, and desperation, just as a student may experience after graduating, a businessman upon retirement, or a spouse whose partner is growing beyond the point where he or she was when they married.
The same crisis can also arise in people whose identifications become too limiting as a result of inner growth, even though their outer life situation remains the same. We have seen examples of this in Mike and Lisa.
Although this crisis is quite common, we rarely understand its true nature. Many go through the process blind and powerless, even though with a clearer understanding they could handle it in a less painful way and even use it as a source of growth. A crisis is a message that says: “Let’s get going! You are identifying with something that has now become too small for you”. The first step to overcoming a crisis is therefore to start by searching for limiting identifications that we need to let go of. In this way, the crisis suddenly becomes an opportunity rather than an obstacle. This crucial insight points us in the direction of the solution and shows us the way to reach it with greater efficiency and in a more effortless way.
Yet disidentification does not have to occur through a crisis. It can be achieved through a conscious, planned act of will. Nor do we need to fear that disidentification will lead to a crisis. If we become aware in time of the need to free ourselves from an identification, the process can proceed calmly, smoothly and painlessly and will bring us an increased sense of harmony and freedom.
However, discovering our limiting identifications can be difficult because we often do not realize that we are identifying with anything. An exploration of the personality can shed light on many of our identifications. Another – and similar – approach is to disidentify ourselves broadly from the three main aspects of the personality: the body, the emotions and the mind. While identifications with things, roles or even sub-personalities are often not difficult to acknowledge and relate to, identification with a fundamental personality function such as the mind or emotions is deeper and can therefore be more difficult to define. It is often expressed through identifications with one or more corresponding sub-personalities, for example those that are primarily intellectual or emotional in nature. Examples of these could be “The Scientist” or “The Fearful Child”). This will eventually free us from our concrete identifications and give us the freedom to identify with our true “self”.
The recognition of an identification is only the first step. We can recognize an identification, but not the need to free ourselves from it. For example, we can identify with a strong and developed sub-personality that helps us to be very purposeful, focused and effective in a particular context. In relation to others and ourselves, we can appear very “centered”, realized and integrated. We do not seem to harbor conflict, but appear calm and strong. We are centered, but only around a partially unifying center. As we have seen, such a center is partial because only those parts of the personality that are compatible and in accordance with the basic quality of that center can be integrated around it.
If Mike, after freeing himself from the Striver, had not continued to identify with his “I,” he might instead have been drawn into a permanent identification with Mature Mike and thus ended up being limited again. He would then have again taken on what he had previously repressed as the Striver and developed entirely new sides of his personality – and that would have been good and valuable for a time. But again, as Mature Mike, he would have repressed the Striver and all that it stood for. He would have repressed many sides of himself that were capable, competent and effective. By accepting instead that he contained both the Striver and the Mature Mike, and that he contained many qualities that were not mutually contradictory, but on the contrary, complemented each other, he avoided a new future crisis. This was not only preventive, but also constructive and integrative. He laid the foundation for a more highly developed sub-personality that would include both the Striver and the Mature Mike.
Disidentification
What did Mike do to create all this? First of all, he practiced deliberate disidentification. Disidentification is an experience that most people have had at some point; it is an experiential fact that we all probably remember or can observe in our own lives. Who has not experienced being alone in a thunderstorm and feeling afraid, and then experiencing how the fear “disappeared” and was replaced by courage when one of our children came to us for comfort? Our identification shifted from the fearful child within us to the protective parent. Or we may have experienced talking to another person and felt that we are—and in fact always have been—confident and confident. Then we may talk to another person and experience that we feel—and in fact always have been—inadequate and unsure of ourselves. Here again, our identification shifted between two parts of the personality.
We are therefore all familiar with disidentification, although many of us have never thought of it as a conscious act and as something we can consciously decide to do. As we have seen earlier, many people – and probably most people – unconsciously shift identification in this way, where it seems to simply happen by itself. They go through the day shifting from one identification to another in response to external conditions and internal processes like a boat on a stormy sea. They have no control over these shifts and are often not even aware of them. They can learn to be so; they can train themselves to choose to consciously manage their identification.
A person who has – and uses – this ability to control, increasingly takes responsibility for himself in his actions, words, thoughts and feelings. Such a person will truly begin to live in accordance with his values. Thus, choosing our identification is an expression of an act of will , just like deciding where we will look, what we will listen to, or what we will think about. We can choose to make this choice, or we can let our consciousness – and thus our self – flit around based on what it is attracted to. In principle, this choice is extremely simple, although in practice we are limited by how developed and strong our will is, and our ability to use it. (As we have said before, all content in consciousness—everything we are aware of—exerts a pull, a “magnetic attraction.” We tend to identify with that which exerts the strongest pull on us. To prevent this automatic identification from taking place, we need to use our will to neutralize this pull. Let us imagine that a certain sub-personality exerts the strongest pull. If our will is strong enough—stronger than the sub-personality—we can use it directly and thus free ourselves from the sub-personality’s influence and remain identified with the ego or choose any other identification.
If our will is not strong enough, we can still disidentify ourselves by using the substitution technique . (This technique is described in Roberto Assagioli’s book “The Psychology of Will” (Kentaur Forlag 2005). In other words, we choose another sub-personality that has a relatively strong pull and is more in line with our needs than the first sub-personality. We then use our will to identify with it. This is possible, provided that the pull from this second sub-personality and the strength of our will together are stronger than the pull from the first sub-personality. It is this combined strength that makes the shift of identification between our superior sub-personalities easier than identifying with the ego.)
Whereas the core of a subpersonality is an urge, a desire, or a drive that has a certain quality or color, the ego—which is the core of the entire personality—is a spark of pure being without qualities in the ordinary sense. Although this spark has no qualities, it has functions, and its two main functions are consciousness and will . Through self-identification —or identification with the ego—we gain a great freedom to use consciousness and will—or rather, we acknowledge anew that we are in fact our consciousness and will. When we use consciousness while remaining identified with the ego, we take the attitude of the observer . Similarly, we take the attitude of the conductor when we use our will.
The Observer and the Conductor are not sub-personalities, and as such they are not colored, but untouched . They are limited in their scope, but in their pure form are neither biased nor distorted. They represent attitudes we adopt or functions we employ when we identify with the self. Therefore, they can be distinguished from sub-personalities such as the Dictator or the Critic, which may at first be confused with them. As the Observer, we are disidentified from all the elements of the personality and simply observe them. From this position, we are able to see our self and our surroundings objectively, without distortions or “colored glasses.” It is from this stable point that we can observe ourselves without self-criticism, with full acceptance and clear understanding. As the Conductor, we can – drawing on our awareness as the Observer – use our will to express ourselves in accordance with our values and our purpose, and in an effective way to harmonize and unite the many elements of the personality into a coherent whole.
It was as an observer that Mike became aware that the Striver was only a partial personality and not his true Self. It was also as the conductor that he was later able to bring the Striver and Mature Mike together as parts of a greater whole.
The following story about “Jane” is a good illustration of a person who disidentifies from personality elements and acts as both observer and director at the same time.
Jane, a middle-aged woman and mother who recently returned to college to pursue a master’s degree in Art History, shares the results of her use of the Identification Exercise:
Let me tell you about an experience I had that perhaps best illustrates how I use disidentification. I had been practicing the exercise for a few months, although at first I didn’t really understand it. When this incident occurred, I finally felt like I knew what it was about.
It was a warm summer night, and I was checking in at the airport for one of the cheap midnight flights to New York, where I was making a stopover before my long-awaited charter flight to Europe. I had arranged my entire summer vacation, so I had three weeks to visit museums and cathedrals.
There was only one airport official at the counter and a long line ahead of me. Time was running out, and the airport official was tired and irritable. When I got to the counter, he told me that the airline had no information about my reservation and that the plane was full. He had already had to turn away several passengers.
He told me there were no more flights to New York until the next morning. I checked those connections, but they would arrive too late. All those months of anticipation, saving money, planning the vacation, and paying charter fees, seemed to have been wasted. The fate of the entire trip seemed to hang with this irritable airport official.
I have many sub-personalities, and they had quite conflicting ideas about how I should react. The strongest sub-personality at this point was “Queen Jane,” who would very authoritatively demand her rights and tell the airport official her unassailable opinion. The second strongest is “Baby Jane,” who is a helpless little girl who manipulates through nervous weakness.
When I felt the familiar pull of these sub-personalities, I tried to disidentify myself from them as much as I could and instead took on the role of observer. From there, I took stock of the situation and imagined the consequences of letting one or the other of these sub-personalities manifest. As an observer, I could also pay attention to the most important aspect of the whole situation: how did I get to New York on time?
I knew that Queen Jane would probably just irritate the airport official further, who would probably not be interested in helping me at all. He might even overlook possible alternatives just to get rid of me. Baby Jane might work, but I wasn’t sure. The airport official was so grumpy that he might as well be repulsed by such helplessness, and there might have been so much of that kind of thing in his experience dealing with people that he could probably see through it. Even if it worked, I would just be creating “negative vibes” and being manipulative, and I didn’t want that. In the past, I would automatically become Queen Jane first, and if that didn’t work, I would resort to Baby Jane. It would all have happened subconsciously, and I used to think that it was “just me” and that I was simply reacting to the situation. These sub-personalities used to control me so completely that I didn’t even recognize that I was being controlled.
I therefore decided to steer away from an emotional appeal, as the airport official seemed so identified with himself and his negative emotions. Instead, I decided to appeal to the best in him in as objective a way as possible.
I quietly told the airport official that I was upset and angry. That trip to Europe had been planned for many months, and if I didn’t catch my charter flight, I wouldn’t be leaving at all. I had made the reservations for this flight to New York a very long time ago, and perhaps my reservation had been lost in the months since I made my reservation. I realized that he wasn’t personally responsible, but the trip really meant a lot to me, and I would be very grateful for any alternative the official could come up with.
While listening to me, the official had spontaneously disidentified himself a little from his grumpiness. He was still irritated, of course, but he was now in touch with another part of himself, which was the reasonable and benevolent one, and to which I appealed. Now he and I are cooperating on a common goal. In the end, he managed to redirect me via Chicago, in time for me to reach my connection.
This experience taught me something important. When I disidentified from the sub-personalities that were panicking, I was able to slow down and gain perspective. I saw that I had two choices: to vent my frustration and wounded vanity to the airport official, or to complain about my way to New York. It probably wouldn’t have worked if I had waited for my feelings, and it wouldn’t have been fair. I feel really good about the way I handled the situation.
Jane’s story illustrates how effective and practical disidentification can be. It also illustrates the valuable ability to disidentify ourselves from emotions and moods such as hurt, frustration, or impatience and to consciously identify with the observer. This can be refreshing and enable us to keep a clear perspective. It can also enhance our creativity. “Shelley,” a science researcher in her mid-30s, writes: I think I have disidentified most of my life. It has become automatic, like focusing my eyes. When I experience confusion, difficulty, or hurt, or when I have analyzed a problem in many ways, I step back and from this quiet place I begin to be able to see what is going on. I gain access to a deeper and broader awareness, and a different kind of creativity or problem-solving ability now becomes available. Afterwards, I experience both serenity and a sense of energy.
Many people use the same approach as Jane and Shelley. They have learned to disidentify from difficult or confusing subpersonalities and instead identify with the observer and then, as the conductor, to act in the most appropriate way. They can shift identification and consciously allow different subpersonalities to come into expression. They know how to step back from painful, destructive, or overwhelming moods and emotions so that other, more positive states become available. They have gained a sense of perspective and can act in the most effective and rewarding way. This is possible because identification with the self leads to freedom. It gives us the freedom in the given moment to choose to identify fully with any part of ourselves—a feeling or a habit pattern or a subpersonality—and to involve ourselves in it and experience it in a deeper way. Or, on the other hand, it gives us the freedom to observe and act while remaining completely disidentified with it—or to choose a degree of identification somewhere in between these two extremes.
The I does not repress
Sometimes people resist the idea of disidentifying from the self because they fear that the richness of life will fade and be lost through such disidentification. They fear that feelings—both the strong and the subtle, such as passion and aesthetic pleasure—will be replaced by a dry and impersonal attitude; that spontaneity and cheerfulness, harmless antics and enjoyment will disappear. The loss of these, however, would be a sign of a repressive, critical sub-personality. The inner self is never moralistic and therefore does not repress. As observer it accepts, and as director it regulates, transforms and harmonizes.
It is important that the ego is not confused with any kind of repressive function. As the ego, we are able to accept ourselves with all our faults and limitations, all our negative and immature sub-personalities. (Accepting our limitations does not mean accepting the status quo. On the contrary, acknowledging and accepting what we contain is a necessary prerequisite for changing it. Acceptance as a stage in personality development is presented in the article “Sub-personalities and Psychotherapy”) The following account from “Ron”, who has taken the final exam in Eastern Philosophy, illustrates the difference between the activity of the ego and a critical, repressive sub-personality.
For many years I believed that I was centered when I was able to achieve a spiritual, fluid, idealistic state of consciousness. I thought I had identified with my personal self and even my Transpersonal Self. When I was in this state, I experienced a divide between my ordinary, everyday self and this higher self. I was very critical of what I perceived as my shortcomings in achieving enlightenment. For example, I did not meditate regularly or follow a clean diet. In fact—and you are probably laughing at this—I really loved hot chocolate. I had to be very hard on myself not to “fall in the water” and eat it. When I did fall in the water and eat it, I would scold myself for it for weeks afterwards.
The first time I did the Identification Exercise, it surprised me. I came quite quickly to what I perceived as my “center” and then found that I could even disidentify from it as well. What I had thought was my center turned out to be a spiritually oriented sub-personality . For the first time in my life, I saw this sub-personality relatively clearly.
Now I often use the disidentification exercise, especially when I find that the spiritual sub-personality is telling me that I should live up to its demands. I disidentify from it, and for me this means a realization that I can choose to listen to it or not. That I am free to choose and not necessarily struck by lightning or denied grace if I decide not to listen to what it says at that moment. So now I eat the warm chocolate cake – and I don’t just eat it, I enjoy it – even though I don’t crave it in the same way anymore. My “center” used to tell me that I was too dependent on that cake. Now I know that I was too dependent on my “center”. In any case, all this has resulted in a decrease in anxiety and the beginning of a more clear-sighted and, I think, more genuine spiritual life.
Often, as in Ron’s case, we discover that once we take on the role of observer, many of the tendencies we had considered undesirable are actually quite harmless or even valuable, and we are free to let them express themselves. What about impulses that are truly harmful, dangerous, or otherwise inappropriate? As the observer, we accept them as we would accept any other element of ourselves. Of course, this does not mean that we necessarily act on them.
We know that strong urges and emotions that we perceive as potentially harmful and destructive (eg, rage) are often repressed or repressed. As we have seen, repressed urges do not disappear but remain active in the subconscious, where they become the cause of difficulties. Sooner or later they emerge in a half-disguised form and are expressed either directly or bodily, generally creating conflict, discomfort, and pain. There is a widespread belief that the only other alternative to repression is to “act out these split-off elements.” It is true that acting out something in the first place can provide considerable relief, especially if the repression is deep and severe. However, it is rarely sufficient to solve the problem and may be unnecessary. When we act out an emotion or urge, we usually identify with it. We are then dominated and controlled by this identification, giving it new energy as we let go of the old. It becomes quite difficult, if not impossible, to work through the problem completely. Rather than either blocking the energy in an inappropriate feeling or acting it out, we can, from the ego’s point of view, regulate and direct this energy to a more appropriate purpose and in this way utilize it, while transforming and gradually refining it. The transformation of energies is an important technique that has a number of applications – another powerful tool that comes to our disposal through disidentification and self-identification. (Roberto Assagioli has extensively described the principles and technique of transforming psychological energies in Psychosynthesis – A Collection of Basic Writings, Forlaget Levende Visdom 2005).
The ego as the unifying center of personality
As we learn to identify more and more with the ego and to act as the observer and the controller, we become increasingly able to coordinate and integrate our sub-personalities. We can use the clarity of our consciousness and our will to effectively harmonize the many elements of the personality into a unified whole: the integrated personality . The ego thus has a synthesizing effect on the personality and becomes the unifying center: the focal point around which a new, inclusive synthesis is created. This process is not simply about the formation of a “bigger and better” sub-personality, but is a crucial step forward in personal development. It is a process of a higher order because the ego has a different nature from the partially unifying centers that form the core of each of our sub-personalities.
Let us consider this from an energy point of view. We have seen that the impulse or drive of the sub-personality, which is the core of it, has a definite quality or “color”. It will therefore attract and act as a unifying center for everything that is compatible with this quality, but repel everything that is not. For example, the striver will attract industry, strength, efficiency, and repel sensitivity, compassion, etc. The ego, on the other hand, does not have a definite quality: its “color” can be compared to white light, which contains all colors and is the synthesis of all colors. It can therefore act as a unifying center for the whole personality. There are no parts of the personality that are incompatible with the ego. The ego is not the personality, but transcends it, just as it transcends the limitations of all the different qualities. All personality elements, all functions, and all qualities can thus be integrated around the ego. When we are able to identify with the self, we can express ourselves through a personality that consists of many interconnected elements, and any inner feeling of limitation and division will increasingly be replaced by variety, fullness, and wholeness.
It would be unrealistic, however, to expect that identification with the ego will bring about “immediate integration” of the personality, or even “immediate harmony” between all the conflicting parts of us. No elements of the personality are truly incompatible with the ego. Yet one personality element may well be incompatible with another or with that part of the personality which is already integrated around the ego. We have seen this incompatibility between two personality elements in Mike’s case, where the Rejected Child was initially incompatible with the Striver. From the ego’s point of view, however, we can understand the reasons for such incompatibility in ourselves; see what changes are necessary to remedy these; and then direct our inner processes towards a fruitful solution. The actual integration of the specific element will only be possible after the necessary changes have taken place.
In many cases this will require relatively little time and energy. Occasionally it may require a great deal of work and time before a particular element can find its place in the integrated personality. We may need to transform that element so that it can fit into the existing personality pattern. (This is the essence of coordination . See “Subpersonalities and Psychotherapy”), or we may have to wait until the personality itself has been transformed and is thus ready for it—until other necessary elements have been added and are themselves sufficiently integrated. We see, therefore, that personality integration—like any other form of synthesis—takes place according to a specific pattern and in a specific order. The necessary elements must therefore be assembled according to a specific order or “plan” that is unique to the individual. ( Note to professionals: This explains why unusually high client resistance is sometimes best handled by the therapist “waiting and seeing” rather than trying to create a breakthrough experience. Resistance of this nature may be an indication that things are not yet “ripe” in the given area, and the best course of action is for the therapist to allow the client’s life experience and own higher nature to advance the process at its own pace and trust that the opportunity for a solution will arise at the right time. in the meantime, the therapist can be just as effective in assisting the client in their growth in other, more accessible areas.)
In general, therefore, the fundamental division between “directive” and “non-directive” forms of guidance can be bridged by an approach that is directive but follows the direction of growth, patterns, and integration created through the influence of the client’s own higher nature. As we increasingly understand that this higher nature is the real factor—the overarching player—in growth and integration, it will become increasingly clear that the most effective guidance is given by being attentive to the natural growth process and the higher impulses of the person and by fostering this process and cooperating with these impulses rather than by trying to impose an external model of what that person should become.
The experience of identity
When we identify with the self and adopt an observer attitude, we can achieve a very beneficial awareness of the personality. By adopting a controlling attitude, we are able to harmonize our personality. What is even more important, however, is that the self is self-aware: it can “observe itself.” We can then recognize our true personal identity—our individuality.
This experience of identity is not cognitive in the sense of grasping a concept or understanding a principle. It is an immediate, direct, supra-rational understanding (knowledge). The nature of the self cannot be fully described, but must be experienced. Sri Aurobindo: “There is something beyond that we can know, and it is when the knower of this (the self in its observer role) turns away from himself to know himself in it, …. that true knowledge arises, the true knowledge of this, and not least of the knower.”
(In the following, T = the therapist, and N = Natalie)
T: Close your eyes…. and relax…. take a few deep breaths…. (pause)…. what are you aware of now, Natalie?
N: I am aware of my whole body, especially my back and my breathing. I am aware of my feet and how they feel…. my legs…. all parts of my body that are in contact with the chair. I am aware of my face and a tension around my eyes. I am aware of my hands.
T: OK. Now focus on this whole consciousness… (pause)… now tell me: who is it that is conscious?
N: The middle of the head.
T: Tell me more about it.
N: It’s a big room. I think it’s empty (laughs).
T: Can you tell me more about that room?
N: Yes…it’s white. The main thing is that it looks empty.
T: OK. Who is aware of that space?
N: The part that has awareness of everything.
T: How is that part?
N: I don’t know. Not like anything else.
T: How do you know it’s there?
N: When I am conscious, there is always something that is the same. It is this something that perceives, that knows.
T: And who is that?
N: (pause) …. Wow, (laughs) – I can’t say that.
T: But you are aware of it….can you get in touch with it now?
N: Yes…. I like the idea of accepting that it’s there. It’s hard for me to understand. Intellectually, it’s hard for me to believe.
T: What the mind says is important, but right now it is getting in the way of your awareness. Let’s come back to that later. Now just go back to your awareness of the one who experiences everything.
N: (pause) …. yes ….
T: Who is conscious?
N: I…. I can’t describe it…. it’s simply consciousness…. it’s…. it’s me! I am it! I am conscious.
T: Stay with this awareness…. Have you experienced it before?
N: Yes, it feels familiar. But I didn’t know it was me… and that I could evoke it.
T: You can always come back to it.
N: Yes, and I will. I need to remember to come back to that… (pause)… it was a beautiful experience.
The process of “turning inward” that Aurobindo describes can be clearly recognized in Natalie’s experience. She experiences it in two stages. The first is to adopt the attitude of an observer. A simple way to begin is to objectively observe what we are aware of at the given moment. (Observing what we are aware of is different from “thinking about it” – although it may include observing our thoughts). It is useful to try this with our eyes open and closed to see what is easiest for us. We then ask ourselves, “Who is observing?” and, avoiding all intellectual thought but focusing instead on the direct experience, we can become aware of being the observer. We can then distinguish the observer from the content of consciousness , the “knower” from the “known”.
Sometimes it may take several steps to do this. In Natalie’s experience, the first “observer” was the “center of the head.” But it was the observer of this “observer” who turned out to be the actual self. We can think of this sequence of observers as steps in moving “up” along the river of consciousness towards its source. When we finally reach the source—the self—the second phase of the process takes place. This is the reorientation of our consciousness towards its source; it is consciousness returning to itself and becoming Self-conscious. It is when consciousness is mirrored back to its source—and thus becomes true self- consciousness—that we can finally recognize our true individuality—”It is me”…. I am that…. I am conscious”—and become one with it.
This fundamental reorientation of our consciousness becomes quite natural and extremely simple – as soon as we realize how we do it and practice it. Some people have gradually figured out on their own how to achieve it. Others are able to do it, but don’t do it because they don’t know that it can be practiced, or don’t realize the importance of doing it. Others – perhaps the majority – can learn it after some training with appropriate exercises. In fact, learning how to identify with the self often turns out to be more elusive than difficult. In other words, for many people it is a question of understanding what to do, rather than developing the ability to do it. It is true that focusing our consciousness towards the self requires concentration – an act of will – and if our will is not strong enough, we must develop it. (Roberto Assagioli’s The Psychology of Will (Kentaur Forlag) gives a wide range of techniques and exercises for developing will.) For many people, the will is already capable of performing the action, and all that is lacking is knowing how to use it. This is because from birth we are forced to remove consciousness from our center and instead direct it towards the contents of consciousness – internal as well as external – and we have become so accustomed to this that we accept it as the only possible state of consciousness. (With a few exceptions, this is actually the state of consciousness that we are capable of until we become young. When we are about 15-16 years old, Self-identification gradually becomes possible and can be practiced with benefit. Until then, children and young people can learn to consciously switch identification between their sub-personalities and other personality elements.) However, in order to experience the “I”, we must reverse direction. It is therefore not surprising that this reorientation may initially seem strange and even unnatural, and that we may not quite know how to proceed. Using the metaphor of the river of consciousness, when we begin the journey towards its source, we do so while looking back. We look down the river while paddling upstream. We perceive our movement as away from where we are, away from the familiar, and do not yet see where we are really going.
This is usually because we do not know what the source is – our “I”, how to recognize it, in which direction to seek it, or even sometimes that it exists at all. This is understandable. Because the I is transcendent in relation to the personality, it cannot be described fully or precisely enough. It can therefore only be known when it is experienced. This is why, for example, reading about it is no substitute for actively and persistently seeking to reach it through the methods described here. (The author uses here and below the term “I” as what is usually called the Higher Self or the Self with a capital S – Ed. Note)
The I and what lies beyond it
If, in our journey towards the self, we try to imagine it, we are led astray. Yet enough can be said about the self, and how people have experienced it, to help us recognize what it is not . With this knowledge, we are able to step back from everything else that is not the self and thus proceed towards it; “backwards,” so to speak. Eventually, when we come back to the self through this process, we will be able to recognize it for what it truly is.
One of the first things people say about their experience of the self is that it is permanent and unchanging. Natalie said, “When I am conscious, there is always something that is the same. It is this something that perceives, that knows.” This is in sharp contrast to the constant change and fluidity of the elements of consciousness and to the content of consciousness. While the life of the personality—the myriad of thoughts, feelings, and sensations—continues, the self is unchanging: it is experienced as “a stable point,” as “everything is there,” “unchanging,” “permanent.” (Although the experience of the self may change in intensity from time to time —from very strong to very vague—this is a change in our consciousness; not of the self itself.) Some people have been able to identify with the self simply by being asked to “be aware of that in them that is always unchanging.” In the words of Clark Moustakas: “The individual self or being is the true center of reality, which remains unchanged through all changes or states of the personality.” (C. Moustakas, The Self , Harper & Row, NY, 1956, p. 272). The self is like the hinge on a door: the door remains open and closes or swings back and forth, while the hinge remains stable—and at the same time it sustains the door itself.
There is another aspect of the experience of the self that many people find remarkable. The self is self-conscious, aware of itself, and in this consciousness there is no duality . In normal consciousness we are conscious of something that is not us. In other words, there are three elements in normal consciousness: the one who is conscious; the object or content of consciousness; and consciousness itself, which is the bridge between these two. In the experiment of pure self-consciousness there is no object or content. There is no observer-object duality. There is only undifferentiated consciousness— consciousness that is not limited by the awareness of feelings, sensations, processes, patterns, or qualities of any kind. People who have therefore fully identified with the self often try to describe its nature through the use of a paradox: “empty yet full,” “nothing, and yet everything,” “a moment, but eternity.”
Perhaps one of the most beautiful descriptions of both the permanent nature and the transcendence of duality that characterizes the self is that which TS Eliot describes in his poem: “Burnt Norton”:
In the silent center of the pulsating world. Neither manifested nor unmanifested;
Neither from nor towards; in the quiet point the dance takes place;
But neither stillness nor movement. And don’t call it immutability;
Where past and future meet. Neither movement away from nor towards;
Neither rise nor fall. Except for the point, the still point;
There would be no dancing, and only the dancing is.
(TS Eliot: Four Quartets , Faber & Faber, London, 1972, pp. 15-16).
The first experience of the self may come as an intense flash that lasts only a moment, or it may be a slow change, so gradual that we do not recognize it for a long time. Occasionally it comes as a spontaneous realization, as in Lisa’s case. This often happens when a deep and long-standing identification is suddenly released.
However, we do not have to wait for a spontaneous experience. Many people have discovered the self through conscious introspection or by using appropriate self-development techniques. The identification exercise is a modern presentation of a technique that has proven useful throughout the ages.
The discovery of the self, and even a brief moment of identification with it, can have a profound effect. In the realization that we are the “permanent core of inner reality,” lies our true humanity, our sense of identity, our individuality, our power to master our lives. When we are identified with the self, we are no longer in the flow of emotions or thoughts, nor in the loud clamor of the subpersonalities. The sense of inner conflict and division ceases. Feelings and moods that many have had to learn to live with, such as guilt, fear, or a semi-conscious anxiety, dissolve in the same way that the fearful figures in a wax museum lose their power when the light is turned on—as we recognize that we have been seeing things out of proportion.
In this way, the self becomes a source of perspective, of peace, of absolute security—the foundation beneath our lives that cannot be shaken. A writer tells of his experience during the Los Angeles earthquake a few years ago, which illustrates this in a very literal way. All his life he had had difficulty trusting people and his surroundings. Yet he had experienced a certain foundation in the earth itself that he could trust. He always trusted that the earth was there beneath him—reliably solid, real, and secure. He was on the sixth floor of a large hotel in the center of Los Angeles on the morning of the earthquake, and was shaken to his core when he experienced that not even the earth was “real and secure.” What could he trust? Was there nothing he could trust? That experience led to a major crisis. A year and a half later, while meditating, he experienced “that there is something in me that is untouchable, that cannot be harmed, and that cannot be destroyed. There is no precise way to describe this experience, because it was at the same time soundless and contained all sound. It can be described – albeit imperfectly – as an experience of infinite calm, combined with a comprehensive, dynamic force. It was thus associated with a strong dynamic that existed side by side with a perfect calm. I seek a language that lies beyond the precision of language. It was the experience of the absolute being of everything. It was this realization of my own absolute being in everything else. And on a deeper level a trust eternal being”.
In this experience he reached the self and went beyond it. Identification with the self is not the final goal: like any other culmination, it is only the beginning. It is like waking up from a dream and opening our eyes for the first time. With open eyes we see the world in a new and clearer light and can begin to live our lives accordingly.
Ultimately, this fuller life, lived as the I, leads to a greater culmination: the experience of the Transpersonal Self . Roberto Assagioli refers to “… the direct awareness of the Self, which culminates in the union of the personal self’s consciousness or “I” with the Transpersonal Self”. (Roberto Assagioli: The Psychology of Will, (Kentaur Forlag 2005). The Transpersonal Self can be reached through the I, as the I is in reality a projection, a spark, an inherent part of the Transpersonal Self. That is as much of the Transpersonal Self as we are capable of experiencing at any given time.
Reaching out to the self gives us a sense of our true identity, uniqueness, and individuality . As we reach out to the Transpersonal Self, we experience universality —and yet the sense of “I-ness”—of identity and individuality—expands. Eventually, individuality and universality unite into a true experience of Being .
Although consciously maintaining such a state is a very, very distant goal for most people, a first glimpse of the Transpersonal Self – as seen in “Burnt Norton” and even more clearly in the author’s experience of the earthquake – can sometimes arise spontaneously through certain forms of meditation and especially as a result of practicing self-identification.
The experience of the self – whether we are talking about the personal or the transpersonal – has often been compared to returning to our true home. It is, as Assagioli has put it, a joyful experience: “… the realization of the self, or more precisely of being a self … gives a feeling of freedom, of power, of mastery, which is thoroughly joyful” (ibid, p. 201).
Such a realization may be permanent or only momentary, but the certainty of it always remains with us at some level. In daily life we may be drawn away from it and may even “forget” that it exists; but if we sit down and recall the experience and even recreate it, we will find it within us, fresh, real. How often do we remember to do so?
Therefore, the practice of self-identification is of the greatest value. Through practice, we learn to disidentify ourselves from consciousness and more and more identify with our true nature. It is a gradual and sometimes slow process. Yet it is through this gradually growing self-identification that we can fully and completely realize ourselves in our daily lives.
Here again we find a paradox. It is only by recognizing our unique individuality that we can begin to take our place as a fully functioning and effective part of the greater whole – be it in the family, in the group, in society, in the nation, or in the larger life and destiny of the world.
Betsie Carter-Haar has degrees in humanities, education, and psychology. She completed didactic psychosynthesis training with Roberto Assagioli in Italy and at the Psychosynthesis Institute in San Francisco. She has been a faculty member of the undergraduate program in clinical psychology at Lone Mountain College, San Francisco, and co-director of the Ford-Esalen Reading Project in Confluent Education. She is a former co-editor of SYNTHESIS.
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Also read the article Psychosynthesis an Integral Psychology and the biography of Roberto Assagioli
Read the introductory article about integral meditation
