Psychology Intro

Institutions, like psychology, that grew out of P-B are by definition dysfunctional and are often formidable barriers to our experience of Simple Reality. In other words, we cannot build a wholesome worldview, a healthy identity and create sustainable behaviors with the same blueprint that we used to create the current human condition. The institutional building blocks of such a structure are inherently unstable always tending toward collapse.

What about those practicing psychoanalysts or therapists who work in the institution of psychology who purport to help a suffering humanity? Are they a help or a hindrance? Rollo May in describing the role of the therapist describes what that role should be but often isn’t. “…it is not the therapist’s function to ‘cure’ the patients’ neurotic symptoms, though this is the motive for which most people come for therapy. Indeed, the fact that this is their motive reflects their problem. Therapy is concerned [or should be] with something more fundamental—namely, helping the person experience his existence—and any cure of symptoms which will last must be a by-product of that.”  May is right on target since we define the present moment as an “experience” of reality. Unfortunately, the context of P-B does not support either the patient or the therapist in that goal.

What is the context in which patients think they exist which as we know also determines their identity? “It is their way, as well taught citizens of the twentieth century Western culture,” says May, “to avoid confronting their  own existence, their method of repressing ontological awareness.”  The entire false self survival strategy has the effect of repressing awareness by distracting the individual from reality (his suffering) and encourages his identifying with his body, mind and emotions. The whole purpose of P-B is to support the denial of and escape from reality.

Repressing suffering, of course, does not remove it but allows the patient to pretend that it doesn’t exist—the grand illusion of P-B. “In this respect,”  observes May, “psychotherapists become the agents of the culture whose  particular task is to adjust people to it; psychotherapy becomes an expression  of the fragmentation of the period rather than an enterprise for overcoming  it.”  The goal, then, of any process to increase “mental health” would have to be transcendence.

It is the intellect allied with the false self that falls prey to the belief that our existential anxiety can be controlled through analysis and understanding. Remember that one of the false self energy centers is called “power and control.” Addiction counselor Dr. Philip Kavanaugh has experienced this dilemma in his practice as a psychiatrist.  “The need to know, to understand, is the cornerstone of analytical psychiatry. The traditional theory of psychoanalysis holds that we can liberate ourselves from fear and conflict through understanding the unconscious motives behind them. This has not proven to be true in practice, however. For years I challenged other psychiatrists who supported this belief. It was not until rather late in my life, after I had accepted my own addictive need for control, that I recognized what really happens, how this form of psychiatry reinforces the addiction to control and is a “drug” in itself.”

In my view, for psychotherapy to be successful, it must begin within the context of P-A. In other words, the Three Great Questions must be consciously answered and internalized or “felt” before the healing process can be started.   Otherwise, the self-destructive conditioning of the false self survival strategy will block any profound progress. The illusion of P-B will overwhelm any attempt on the part of the client, and for that matter the therapist, to experience reality. Both will remain unconscious and fail in their attempt to awaken.

This may be what Rollo May was describing when he said “First the ‘I am’ experience is not in itself the solution to a person’s problems; it is rather the precondition for their solution. …In the broadest sense, the achieving of the sense of being is a goal of all therapy, but in the more precise sense it is a relation to oneself and one’s world, an experience of one’s own existence (including one’s own identity), which is a prerequisite for the working through of specific problems.”   “An experience of one’s own existence” is at the heart of Rollo May’s existential psychology.  It is possible that what I call being in the  present moment, is what he calls the “I am” experience.

I am equating Rollo May’s term “being” with “presence.”  In his own words “…being is a category which cannot be reduced to introjections of social and ethical norms. It is, to use Nietzsche’s phrase, ‘beyond good and evil.’…Indeed, compulsive and rigid moralism arises in given persons precisely as the result of a lack of a sense of being [presence].”

The ability to be in the Now and have an experience of Simple Reality is not the
culmination of years of striving to awaken or the end of a period of an evolution of consciousness but rather the transcending of all processes.  Remember, Nisargadatta’s “do nothing.” Again, Rollo May. That is to say, it is an error to define the emergence of awareness of one’s own being as one phase of the ‘development of the ego.’ … The ego…is ‘derived from the Id by modifications imposed on it from the external world’ and is ‘representative of the external world [P-B]. …the ego enlarged its originally buffeted and frail realm chiefly by its negative defensive functions [false self survival strategy]… The ego is a reflection of the outside world; the sense of being rooted in one’s own experience of existence, and if it is a mirroring of, a reflection of, the outside world, it is then precisely not one’s own sense of existence. It is precisely, then, an illusion, emptiness, nothingness—P-B. Hence, the importance of not identifying with the ego or the mind, body or emotions is at the heart of the process of transformation, transcendence and, of course, a healthy psyche.

If I were writing essays about buying and selling real estate, the theme would be location, location, location. Since I am writing about increasing human consciousness, the theme is awareness, awareness, awareness. Stanislov Grof has spent his professional life studying human consciousness and has reached a conclusion that supports the thesis of this Simple Reality worldview. He observed that: “The main obstacle we face as a species is found in the present evolutionary level of our consciousness.”  Until we develop a deeper awareness of where we are, who we are and why we came to be here then we are missing the whole point of the experience itself. We will come to the end of our lives singing the sleepwalker’s lament: “Is that all there is? Is that all there is?” We will feel empty and we will feel a sense of missed opportunity. Suppose that I am correct in assuming that most American are living such a life, a life not in  harmony with their deepest aspirations and out of harmony with their true  identity. We would expect a kind of madness to ensue. We live today immersed in that madness.

We are not at the mercy of either “nature” or “nurture.” Rather than being “programmed” by our genes, our lives are controlled by our reactions to perceptions of life experiences! Here is where P-A is critically important  because our perceptions are also related to what we expect to perceive. The  context that we believe we are contained in has a profound effect on what we  will experience. It is important that our story about who and where we are is as close to Simple Reality as we can make it. The current dominant worldview  which we can call scientific materialism varies substantially from what a fully  conscious person perceives.

What could be called the psychology of energy, the use of the Point of Power Practice, directly impacts subconscious programming rather than trying to  manipulate genetics, physiology, and behavior. This new understanding will also help to recognize the power that fundamental perceptions have on programming the subconscious mind. Since much of human behavior today is  influenced by elements beyond the awareness of most individuals, we have very  little understanding of why we human beings behave the way we do. Adding the insights of “energy psychology” to an awareness of the influences of the  shadow, the collective unconscious, the false-self survival strategy and the  personal unconscious will transform our ability to understand and address the  causes of human dysfunction and suffering. We can then begin the process of  profound change, the process of the paradigm shift, the process that will  preclude any need for an institution called psychology.

_____________________________________________________