Soul. Ego. Communal Paradox (Rohr, Chittister, Merton)

I write often that the ego and soul of a human being are sensors, of the full self. In weak terms, they are analogues of our five physical senses that inform us of how we do and can interact with the physical universe. These two transcendent sensors, to me, inform us of how we are and can be interacting with fuller truths that include the physical universe and our minds and hearts. The faculty of ego and the faculty of soul are quite plainly indispensable to being human, and like our mind and senses, can also inform us with their own genre of “knowing.” So I find them to be integral faculties for approaching the big questions of life.

The ego, in and of itself, is neither bad nor good. It is merely a sensor. It has no ability to act, only sense; its senses are merely expressed by the actions of a person. The senses which the ego detects are translated into motivators to be expressed by the human being.

The ego tells us that we are separate from every other agent and entity and being in creation. It informs us that our being is essential to the fabric of the universe. We are each unique, and we are each indispensable. And we need no more evidence for that than the very fact of our existence. The entire order of the universe, as grandiose as it sounds, is altered if a single one of us were not here. It is only an illusion of our mind that trivializes who we are to the fabric of existence. Our existential fear derives from that enormous truth – that we matter, and we are matter.

The soul is our sensor of connectedness within the fabric of existence. Like the ego, it too has a temporal dimension because it animates the matter of our body and mind, as our ground of being. Yet, its sensory capability extends mysteriously beyond the physical self – to any extent that there is such a thing – enabling the human being in whom the soul dwells mysteriously to transcend that very singular and material dwelling.

The soul of a human being has no will nor ability to extinguish the ego, but instead to animate it, informing the ego that its limitedness is OK, that this soul will always be tenderly conjoined to its ego, and that, therefore, judgmentalism is nothing for this ego to fear from its all-friendly soul. These senses of the soul endow the full human being with a very true freedom from judgment and shouldness.

No egoic mistake or flaw of a human being is beyond the full understanding of the person’s soul, for that soul is always there as witness, in being. It is never anxious to be larger or smaller as the ego is; it knows the nature of the ego and its dynamics of deflation and inflation, knows that is the ego’s nature, so expects nothing more of that ego and its role as sensor serving the full person; and so the very notion of judgment has no use in the soul’s knowledge paradigm. Neither judgment nor comparison are of any interest to the soul whatsoever.

The nature of ego is to sense separateness and motivate response. It is the nature of the soul merely to be and to love being. The soul gives us being, and therefore loves being. It has no use for black-and-white judgment, which seeks to increase or decrease being, which is senseless to the soul. It is the human being, the person, the mysterious mix of ego and soul, which grows or diminishes self awareness, and grows or diminishes in self awareness.

The soul knows its own nature, and knows the nature of the ego within the self. Both its way of knowing and its knowledge are full and complete because, paradoxically, it is boundless.

The soul is not conscience; it is boundlessly larger than conscience (which informs the ego when it oversteps or gets mixed up outside its nature).

The soul has no value for the notion of blame. It sees nature being natural. The human being does not “feel” alive without living dynamics sesnsed and fueled by ego – the transformations of consciousness about chaos and order, joy and suffering, or what it means to be a human being, and to be human. This demands no judgment whatsoever.

The soul is our sensor of connectedness and being and largeness, able to sense timelessness, yet vaguely, within the bounds of time.

These are my own constructs and language for wrestling with the truths inside of me, for glimpsing my full self – not my self in a moment, nor any idea or ideal or idol outside of moments. For seeing beyond my small self or false self. For sensing beyond my moment-self, alleviating the shame of my egoic mind because it is incapable of sensing beyond my moment-self.

These notions are mine, but I of course did not fabricate them out of nothing. I am influenced by many sources, including the notions that are part of this short article, that includes three writers:

https://cac.org/daily-meditations/the-communal-paradox-2022-07-05/

Neil D. 2022-07-05

Teachers prevent war. Their subjects go viral

TEACHERS:
If you’re normal, you are ready for the break you deserve.
But you aren’t normal.
Trained to teach, you have had to learn on the job how to be epidemiologists, nurses, substitute parents, counselors, janitors, lunch servers, and protectors of society’s most precious.
6 hours/day X 180 days X 15 students = >16,000 student hours of WHO you are, modeled to children.
You think your profession is to impart knowledge about subjects, yet you also impart knowledge about being a subject. How to be an agent in creation.
The overachievers have watched you not leave behind those less comfortable in a rigid and monolithic system.
The underachievers have learned from you that they too have dignity.
All this amidst the largest health tragedy in the human world’s history.
Like the wings of a single butterfly can cause a hurricane, these most precious subjects can multiply those 16,000 hours to spread lessons about living life abundantly, lovingly, with dignity, and spreading love and dignity like mysterious viruses.
Teachers…
YOU prevent deaths.
YOU prevent wars.
How *else* can THAT happen?

Thank you, teachers.

Neil D. 2022-06-01

Dark Night of the Soul (1.8) – Silence

Mirabai Starr’s preface to her contemporary translation of John of the Cross’ original Dark Night introduced my series. Richard Rohr quotes from the translation on the Silence that prevails as the two Nights unfold, in his article titled “Luminous darkness, deepening love”:

“…take a break from ideas and knowledge, to quit troubling herself about thinking and meditating… without agitation, without effort, without the desire to taste or feel him. These urges only disquiet and distract the soul from the peaceful quietude…” (https://cac.org/silence-2022-05-10/)

Easy to say, but nearly impossible amidst torment. I myself may have found my Silence came only after burning through and burning out all my other attempts at understanding:

I slid, unaware, into this paradigm of silence. But only after I burned through all the other apparent alternatives, paralyzed by major depression. Stumbling into nothing but paradoxes entwined in incessant ruminations cycling ceaselessly through my mind.

First, I read. Voraciously, looking for reasons this was being done to me, looking for answers about where I went so wrong, convinced that I did go wrong, and asking why. Why are they doing this? Why did I do this?

Some answers. Partial. None complete, but more enticement and teasing, with half answers, unsatisfying. Chased more. Surely some answer(s) would come.

Just frustration and deepening depression. So I tried all five of the different kinds of pills. I tried exercise, hobbies, new things. I tried old things, music, prayer, meditation, faith practices. I sought a therapy group, couldn’t find one, asked someone to form one. They did.

It didn’t heal me, but it kept me alive, out of hospitals and out of jail. Literally. It kept me going, so I could burn out all evident options. Until nothing was left but silence.

Nothing I could do. All my attempts to understand, to control: Fruitless. [Advent Prequel To Footprints https://feelwithneil.com/2019/12/16/advent-prequel-to-footprints/]
Silence.

What was happening to me?! I screamed. I sobbed. I writhed, curled up in bed. A lot.

I wrote. I wrote what seemed to be true, had stopped chasing, grasping for illusory explanations. Or any explanation at all. It seemed I was doing nothing. It seemed “it” was being done to me.
.
Neil D. 2022-05-13

Next>> Dark Night of the Soul (1.8.1) – Transcendence

Teacher’s Spree

I was reveling about humanity’s determination to put a person on the moon in a decade roiling with assasinations and crises in urban riots, far-off war, and civil rights, when I got this private message.

[Specifics changed for obvious reasons]

Many many months ago, a little boy was waiting in the car as his mother was inside, robbing a human being for $500.

Here’s what that little boy did today, in the words of his school teacher:

“…Absent for 3 weeks, we thought his dad packed up and went back to Missouri. He showed up today. Hair tossled, dirty clothes, looking tired… didn’t have his laptop or even a pencil…I gave him a hug and asked where he had been. He said they went back to St Louis to ‘get a car’ and then had to ‘wait for it to be ready’… At the end of the day, I told him how glad I was that he’s back. And he said, ‘I have something for you.’ He reached in his book bag and pulls out a wallet. He opens the wallet and pulls out a single piece of unwrapped candy. Possibly a Spree. Now this boy knew he had this candy in his wallet. It’s not like he had to look for it. He just spent three weeks traveling half way across the country and back. His mom is in prison. His dad is shacking up with a a known criminal… He didn’t have his laptop or pencil today but he had a piece of candy for his teacher. It might not be a trip to the moon. It might be harder than a trip to the moon.”

Teachers do God’s work, hugging God’s own. And sometimes a Spree is a pretty decent wage.

Neil D. 2022-04-21

Beware: Why popular therapy programs fall short

Popular therapy programs fail in the end; they start, but cannot finish. The truth is too dark for toxically positive self-improvement or healing recovery.

Why be wary of popular self-help books and recovery/therapy programs? Because they are popular! That means they appeal to mass markets, and what mass markets want is, fast and easy. Like a Big Mac and fries. That will satisfy hunger, but is it nourishing? Transformative?

Popular programs will satisfy your hunger. They supply a vocabulary to express what you may have previously had trouble recognizing / expressing. Words like “codependency, dysfunctional, narcissism, people-pleasing”…

This new vocabulary enables you to enter a game. The “name game.” Now you can put a specific name to how you have been victimized or manipulated, how your relationships have been dysfunctional, how you have been mistreated. And a good label for the people who have mistreated you. The name game.

The name game ALWAYS, by necessity, includes a second game. The Blame Game. But this is far less explicit in popular therapies. Why? Why does the Name Game of popular help resources dance around or altogether neglect the implied blame?

If the veiled Blame subgame of the popular Name Game were more explicit, those programs wouldn’t be so popular!

Talking about blame is a negative topic. And popular programs rely on toxic positivity. They cannot talk about any fixes that would be hard, or slow, or drawn out. And they can’t involve potentially negative topics like blame. Yet, popular programs are always incomplete when it comes to transformation. Popularity dictates avoidance of the dark or negative in the reader or participant. It’s too risky as a turn-off. Too hard.

Our culture conditions us to want the Big Mac as a fast fix to our desperate hunger. We dismiss our endurance capability for many, small healthy salads instead of a Big Mac, and salads rarely taste as good. So they don’t appeal to masses that are quite as massive. They can’t be quite as popular. They might include some dangerous elements of hypocrisy or shame, and those topics are too dark when what we want is an escape from suffering.

If we want to escape suffering, we want to avoid the smallest risk of encountering suffering, so we cannot *talk* about suffering (unless shallowly, as caused by someone else, and we are the victims). Too risky. The potential market might narrow.

The farthest they will dip into that direction is to elicit from you a confession that you are not perfect. That is usually as far as the masses are willing to go.

“I’m not perfect, but…” my victimizers are less perfect; I win. They’re bad; I’m less bad. In fact, I’m practically good. And as I practice more of my program’s programs – which I’ve already begun just by using their vocabulary and granting intellectual assent to their premises, which has practically fixed me already – I will be more and more good. I will be on an irreversible and infallible trajectory toward healthy healing and recovery. I will be fixed. And my victimizers will remain losers, while I win.

Cynical? Test it out with some brutal honesty.

Try it out with the prayers or affirmations that conclude each section of your favorite popular self-help resource. Prayers? Of course. We need God’s help for something we cannot achieve on our own. And, “I have God on my side, but my victimizers are judged negatively by God.”

“They are more broken or fallen than I am, so my sins will be fixed and redeemed – I know the vocabulary and exercises, and how to word the conclusion – but they’re going to hell.

“Ego” according to a non-affiliated psychospiritual source

Though I can’t explain entirely why, I’ve become fond of this non-affiliated psychospiritual writing duo. Here is their perspective on “ego.” I’ve become a bit obsessed with the differentiation between soul and ego, and myself describe the ego as our “sensor of separateness, uniqueness, individuality.” I’m pretty convinced that life’s purpose ( esp. therapy’s) is balance between our sensors of separateness and our sensors of connectedness (the latter is my simplification of “soul.”). If this interests you, this article is a good starting place. https://lonerwolf.com/what-is-the-ego/ I’d be very intrigued to hear any of your perspectives.