Tag Archives: superego

Chuck’s Place: Here Comes The Judge

Sigmund Freud called the judge the Superego. For Freud, the superego is an amalgam of the significant authority figures in our early life—taken in, internalized as an active life force inside the psyche of every human being. The superego becomes the architect and active judging force that structures our experiences of right and wrong, good and bad. This judging function has its origins outside the human psyche—it is a Not I—yet, it is taken in and experienced as a formidable character, incessantly controlling and shaping the I of everyday life.

The Shamans of Ancient Mexico saw the Mind itself as the judge, an internalized entity of extraneous origin. Like Freud’s superego, those shamans see the mind as largely shaped by the socialization each human being undergoes from the moment of entry into this world.

Socialization formats perception into a uniform interpretation system. The mind shapes reality. The mind tells us what is real and dismisses, as fanciful illusion or imagination, all experience that does not fit its precepts. The mind acts quickly to reshape and dismiss any perception that defies its definitions of real and possible. In fact, the mind acts so rapidly to forget irrational experience that we are left helpless in its wake. How quickly we forget the experience of the dream upon awakening.

How dare you enter here!

The mind is actually a massive gargoyle that guards, through terror, the entry to the library of true knowing and seeing. Let he and she that transgress beyond its menacing countenance be forewarned: You are on your own! When you suspend the judge, you enter the theatre of the truly real. For the ancient shamans, the theatre of the real is interconnected energy as it flows in the universe.

I stepped out of my office on Tuesday night and into a dream. Almost immediately, a gargoyle appeared out of nowhere and embraced me, seeking my attention. I was caught off-guard by an onslaught of unrelenting intensity; the gargoyle in my face momentarily distracting me. The clock was ticking. I was aware, in some vague, deep place that I was on a mission. I had to gather my energy and maintain my focus. I stepped beyond the gargoyle.

For ten years now, I have not been able to fully recapitulate all that I experienced at the moment of Jeanne’s death. Others have dreamed that dream and reported it to me to jostle my awakening, but thus far my memory of that magical moment remains quite edited. On Tuesday night, I made the decision to go to the hospital to be with Jan. I made the decision to fully show up for death, the most meaningful encounter in life—to see what happens.

I exit the highway at the wrong Rinaldi Blvd. and enter the twilight zone. It’s dark, one way streets to nowhere appear. I’m caught in a maze with no reentry to the highway. I feel the clock ticking. I steady myself, drive the wrong way down a one-way street onto other streets that seem to lead back the way I’d come. Suddenly, I’m in the heart of Poughkeepsie and a sign appears: Rt. 9 South. Okay, let’s do it again!

This time, I exit properly and trace my way to the parking garage at the hospital. I’m met by a powerful river of cars and humanity moving in the opposite direction. I’m swimming upstream, against the current. Visiting hours are over. Will getting in pose a problem?

I enter a dimly lit, quiet lobby and proceed to the desk. Immediately a commotion breaks the silence. Gargoyle #2 is raging. His face is elongated, distorted, his eyes bulging. He cursingly demands drugs for his girlfriend, in pain, “improperly treated in Emergency!” he screamingly exclaims. The security guards and welcoming woman are pensive, seeking clarity, seeking to restore calm, unsure of his next move, seeking to avoid an explosion of lethality.

I remain completely calm. I give him no energy, simply stand quietly, awaiting my turn. Eventually, others engage the gargoyle and the shaken clerk at the desk informs me that, although visiting hours are over, she’s sure I can go up for a few minutes. A phone call is made; a pass issued.

As I get off the elevator, the sign for room 350 points to the left. I walk into a quiet dark area—Orthopedics. Something is not right.

I return to the elevator. The sign now points in the opposite direction. Though I now walk right past the room and must retrace my steps, I finally arrive.

Jan sees me. She is aglow, staring at me as if she has never seen me before.

“Oh my God! Look at you! You’re so young!”

I look back at her and think, “Her energy is amazing!”

We adjust our chairs and calmly await the miraculous. No words are needed.

I carefully listen to the breathing: I know how that works. My attention keeps being drawn to the feet: waving, jostling energy. Each time it happens, my mind wakes up and examines: “No. No movement, no activity,” it states. My perception is cursorily dismissed; my dream forgotten. But, it keeps happening! And each time the alerted mind steps in, reexamines and reaffirms its precepts: “This can’t be happening! Look again, there is no activity, only complete stillness, as expected.”

Soon enough, the final breath comes. Jan and I sit in total calmness, immediately recapitulating our shared experience of the energy body as it exited. The miraculous had occurred!

Carlos Castaneda once wrote that when he finally was able to see energy, he was amazed at the realization that we see energy all the time as it flows in the universe. But then—here comes the judge! And we remember only what it tells us “really” happened, as it rationally dismisses the magic of the real dream.

The mind persists in a steady effort to restore order, dismissing and forgetting what we really see all the time. It’s only through persistent recapitulation that we are able to change the mind, or, in reality, relativize its dominance.

The dream continues,
Chuck

See also Jan’s blog: A Clandestine Meeting, published earlier this week.

#689 Chuck’s Place: The Ego Ideal & The Veil of Self-importance

Over one hundred years ago, Sigmund Freud introduced the concept of the superego, an internalized component of the human personality, the product of socialization, which both judges and tells us what we ought to be. This what-we-ought-to-be component has become known as the ego ideal, the ideal image of the self that we expect ourselves to become. Our ego ideal dictates our notion of success: what our bodies should look like, what our skills and abilities should be, how others should view us, what level of education we should have, what kinds of relationships we should be in, how many worldly goods we should accumulate, how well we should be able to meditate, etc.

How well we do at actualizing our ego ideal becomes the basis of our sense of self-worth. Our judgment of personal success or failure rides upon how well our actual life “measures up” to our idealized expectation. If we are “on course” we “feel good.” If we don’t “measure up” we may judge ourselves to be “failures,” sentencing ourselves to an emotional state of deflation, experienced as depression. Alternatively, we might inflate our ego, assuming the persona, or mask, of our ego ideal. In fact, our ego might be capable of truly convincing itself and others that this is, indeed, its true identity. This might result in grandiosity, or attempting deeds way beyond one’s true ability. This is when we can expect dreams warning us of falling off a steep precipice or being in a plane crash, etc., all signs of the dangers of inflation.

In the psychiatric diagnostic world this dilemma of ego inflation and deflation, with its possible swings, is described in variations of bipolar disorder. Psychoanalytic resolution of the ego/ego ideal relationship ultimately rests upon an acceptance of ourselves as we truly are, for what we are truly capable of, which may only in part, or not at all, reflect the internalized ego ideal. Successful treatment would result in a more realistic modification of the ego ideal to fit the ego’s true capacities. Nonetheless, even with this modified self-judgment we continue to live in an internalized paradigm fixated on self.

The seers of ancient Mexico would definitely concur with Freud about the profound impact of socialization upon our perception and interpretation of ourselves and our world. For these seers, our awareness is staunchly fixated upon the self, causing all our available energy to be monopolized by self-importance, whether it be in the form of self-worth, self-esteem, or self-pity. For these seers this fixation of awareness on the self creates veils, which narrow our ability to perceive and experience all there is to see, for instance, a world of energy, the true nature of reality. For these seers, most human beings live and die in a world of self-obsession that shuts us out from reaching our true potential. That potential is not measured as some form of a socialized ego ideal. That potential is simply the freedom to perceive, unencumbered by the self, which spends all its energy worrying about how well it is doing, or what it is entitled to.

These seers discovered that the number one key to unlocking the true potential of the self, to discover total freedom, is to embrace an enduring practice of suspending judgment. This orientation asks that we seek always to know the truth, without any consideration of the value of the self for its performance. For instance, if I made a decision, took an action, that resulted in an undesired outcome, my goal would be to examine the full truth of that process with a detached curiosity and quest for understanding. I might discover that I had forgotten some important detail or acted hastily, causing the “failure.” However, the “failure” would not extend to myself as some kind of measure of my worth or as something for me to feel bad about. This does not negate the absolute examination of my level of competence and how that might inform me in future actions, but it, in no way, is attached to my value or level of self-importance.

For these seers this is the critical point: to avoid constructing a definition of self based on competence and performance. These seers indeed seek to be impeccable in all of their actions; however, they attach no significance in terms of self-worth to the outcome of those actions other than knowing the truth of them. They seek to totally eradicate the self; the self too is a veil blocking total freedom. To eradicate the self, from the seers’ point of view, means freeing the self of the encumbrance of self-importance, becoming a being free to perceive what is. In this manner they accrue valuable energy for expanded perception, rather than spend it on the construction of the self, with its all-consuming self-importance. In the process of constantly shooing away self-importance, we are in fact working on the ego, which becomes a tool to actualize our true potential. This is one reason why the seers place so much value on the petty tyrants in our lives. Petty tyrants are beings who challenge our attachment to our self-importance to the max, and offer us the opportunity to arrive at the ability to laugh at ourselves, rather than get caught in the clutches of victimhood or the fixation of self-pity.

For the seers of ancient Mexico, if we never “achieve” anything in this world other than the ability to suspend judgment, we have indeed achieved the most important thing there is to achieve in this world. Suspending judgement allows us to break the fixation of self-importance, dismantling Freud’s ego ideal, which opens the gateway to expanded knowing and infinite possibility.

If you wish to correspond, please feel free to post a comment below.

Until we meet again,
Chuck