Table of Contents (this page)
- Introduction. (2.1)
- Man is “made in the image of God”. (2A)
- Soul & Spirit & Body & Mind. (2B)
- Introduction. (2.2)
- What is soul and what is spirit? (2.3)
- Spirit properties. (2.4)
- Soul properties. (2.5)
- Memories and emotions and the soul. (2.6)
- What about the body? (2.7)
- What about the mind? (2.8)
- Mind and spirit are both ‘mental’. (2.9)
- Recognizing concepts that come from spirit. (2.10)
- Our body with its soul wants to be. (2.11)
- Conscious and un-conscious. (2C)
- Merge. (2D)
- The dualities. (2E)
- Filters. (2F)
- Emotions. (2G)
- TISP. (2H)
- Definition and use. (2.33)
- Giving TISP to ‘the other’. (2.34)
- Serve. (2.35)
- ‘Till and Keep’. (2.36)
- Love as a part of the greater energy. (2.37)
- God is mind exploring energy, (as are we). (2.38)
- Creativity. Fulfillment and TSE. (2.39)
- Plain old ‘self-expression’. (2.43)
- What happens when our mind is disconnected from the body? (2.44)
- Conclusion for Chapter 2. (2.45)
- In Sum for Chapters 1 and 2. (2.46)
Chapter 2 has 8 sections,
MAN IS MADE IN THE IMAGE OF GOD. (2A)
SOUL & SPIRIT & BODY & MIND. (2B)
CONSCIOUS & UNCONSCIOUS. (2C)
MERGE. (2D)
THE DUALITIES. (2E)
FILTERS. (2F)
EMOTIONS. (2G)
TISP. (2H)
Introduction. (2.1)
You as reader are a separate single human being who is a part of an enormous whole which we really cannot encompass, and are not meant to; it’s a Bigness or Largeness.
This Largeness has an energy and some sort of design or control that we don’t really comprehend. We call it God, the Universe, Life, and we can also use the term Nature which does not have to be limited to just our planet Earth. (On the other hand, is Nature on Earth going to be eternal, considering what we are doing to it?)
What are You as this Spark or Part with a Mind?
We ‘come in’, as in, born on Earth, with some built-in features.
- We are Made in the Image of God
- We have a Psyche/Mind of a particular composition and structure.
- We have filters.
- We have emotions.
- We have a very large mostly unknown potential.
We also ‘come in’ with…
- A pack of expectations and assumptions from our previous lives.
- A ‘larger design’ for our lives including Contracts, which we’ve chosen while off-earth, which we forget about when we are born.
These points are dealt with over the following topics and chapters. The first 4 points are discussed in chapter 2, while the following 3 points are discussed in chapter 3.
Man is “made in the image of God”. (2A)
The difference between man and all (?) other forms on Earth is that we have an internal awareness; which is another difficult concept to define.
It is not ‘I think therefore I am’, it is ‘I am aware that I am thinking, therefore I am’ because we can think about our thinking. This self-awareness is of key importance. We have an awareness of our external world (Life ‘out there’) and we also have an awareness of our internal world (our self ‘in here’). They are two different things, and we know that. We can shift our attention from one to the other, although we can’t really attend to both at once, although we may try.
Our inner awareness is our own Mind which can perceive things for itself. It is entirely individual with its own point of view. We think of it as ‘myself’.
Within the internal world of our mind are…
Things we are conscious of, which is what we present to the outer world; our ‘outer self’,
And things we are Unconscious of, which are actually completely unknown to this ‘outer self’ of ours, living deep within as an ‘inner self’. These ‘inner and outer selves’ are split in that the conscious does not know the unconscious (by definition). See also below, 2C.
God is ‘built’/made in the same way, but the difference between human beings and God is that God does know Her Inner Self, and therefore it is not unconscious. She has worked out how to learn about Her Inner Self and goes on learning because She loves doing so and Creates Life with it and explores it because it is enormous and there’s always more.
God does not need an external world because God is in everything. All Life as we know it is God’s manifestation of/from Her Inner Self. Her manifestation of Her Inner Self is Her Real-ization of Her Inner Self. She is making it Real, as in, giving it Life. We are part of Her ‘Real-izing’ of Her Self.
But we are unconscious of our inner self, and the only way, short of having nothing around us, which is what God had to contend with, is to have an external world ‘out there’ to show us who is ‘in here’ for our own self-awareness. God has worked out that Energy mirrors all Life, as in, it was always behaving as a Mirror to Her, and She learned to use this property to help Her to Create Life, which She loves doing.
To repeat, Energy, which is all Life ‘out there’ to us, is mirroring our unconscious back to us, all the time, and does the same for God. Hence, Her design for us is to provide us with Life so that we can use it as a Mirror. Life is serving us as a mirror for us to look into if we want to. She understands that Her human creations need an external world in order to find out about their own internal world, and that it is extremely difficult to do it any other way. God is making it much easier for us than it was for Her. We need these conditions of our lives on Earth to find and understand our own energy/power/affect for ourselves, as well as how to use that energy/power/affect. The implication here is that the more we know and understand our inner selves, the more we are able to come into a unity of our own between our inner and our outer selves. Hence the primary instruction of ‘Know Thyself’.
Another point I wish to make here is that our internal world and our external world are as large as each other, and they affect each other each way. We think that the world affects us, and it does, but we are generally unaware that we are affecting our world.
Our minds are built like God’s; they have to be.
The big risk of man being made in the image of God is that man will start thinking that he is actually a god, which is an inflation (which see below). This is a real problem for us humans that is cured by time sooner or later.
Soul & Spirit & Body & Mind. (2B)
Introduction. (2.2)
There is a lot of talk about being made up of the trio of Body, Mind and Spirit, but some people use the terms Body, Mind and Soul, as in, Spirit and Soul are treated as almost synonymous in our society. So, the question is, Are they the same or two different things? If we have no definitions of these or don’t even consider them as different, we don’t know what is being talked about in any previous or current teachings and are unable to communicate clearly with others and build on our experiences. Without definitions, everyone ends up reinventing the wheel over and over; not to mention total confusion in trying to work out what anyone else is trying to say.
- NB. In this discussion I consider the spirit to be a part of each person. I am not and will not be using the term ‘Spirit’ in the larger sense as ‘spiritual’ people like to do when referring to God or the Universe. To reinforce this, I will sometimes use spirit and soul without the upper-case ‘S’, but once again, we probably need better names/labels for these things in the first place.
What is soul and what is spirit? (2.3)
Well, in the absence of any agreement whatsoever in trying to define these terms, I will try my own, and the best way I can think of is through internal description, as in, how it feels.
I would define spirit as the part of us that can ‘jump’; and soul as the part of us that feels like a ‘lump’. The spirit part of us has the imaginative, abstract qualities and the soul has the emotional qualities.
If we define spirit as unlimited in Space and soul as unlimited in Time, then when Time and Space come together, we manifest as a single human being within a single time-frame, as in, now. But within this single human being are the two parts of spirit plus soul, and for most of us they are split/separate. Not to mention, what about the Body and the Mind? Does that mean that there are 4 ‘departments’ or ‘sections’?
I’ll deal with the properties of the spirit and the soul first. What are the differences between them?
Spirit properties. (2.4)
This is the part of us that can ‘jump’. It has unlimited space to move and roam. It lives in the mind and appears to us to be synonymous with it. It is our imagination. It can ‘see’ the bigger picture, abstraction (or chunking up) and meaning, as in, the ‘why’. It does have access to all the knowledge/concepts held in space, although that knowledge can be theory rather than actuality and is not necessarily congruent with reality on Earth.
Its characteristics are (in point form) ….
- It is singular; there is no ‘other’. Free; singular and unattached; it doesn’t need anyone else. Detached; minimal to no emotions. It can’t attach, and there is not much ability to feel or sense others. Doesn’t understand emotions, basically. Spirit does not deal with ‘the other’.
- It feels Trapped in the Body. It feels trapped by the body and thinks it doesn’t need it. It doesn’t understand the body’s abilities, especially that of sensing the external world. It is prone to treat the body as if it is a car/machine/robot/mechanical device for carting it around and doing what it wants. Spirit generally ignores what the body senses because it doesn’t ‘make sense’ to spirit’s accepted concepts or ways of ‘knowing’.
- It can access all ‘knowing/knowledge’ ‘out there’. It thinks it has all the answers; for itself and everyone else. (If we think we have all the answers, how do we ask any questions?) Doesn’t listen to others. Doesn’t understand the difference between theory and practice. Has the Theory – hence channeling it always ‘sounds’ good. [However, that person may not have been able to live it.]
- It is impatient (and lazy); used to ‘no time at all’. Wants everything now, because it can conceive/imagine things instantly. But also, ‘there is all the time in the world’, so no hurry, as far as it’s concerned, in what it wants to do next.
- It has no memory because there is no experience of time. Memories belong in time, but spirit does not experience any time, hence, no memories.
But above all….
- It doesn’t have to do anything. It is essentially lazy. It’s not used to it, so it can take a while to think about it when alive, if it does. As spirit, it doesn’t have a body, and is not actually alive, even if it thinks so mentally.
Soul properties. (2.5)
This is the part of us that feels like ‘a lump’. It resides in the body and feels completely synonymous with it. (The western world has a long history of referring to bodies as ‘souls’.) It is our memories and emotions; see below.
Its characteristics are….
- It has unlimited time. The memory of an event with a strong emotional response sends us back in time, but bits of memory can get stuck and break away, as in, our memory can become fractured and that particular memory will repeat over and over in time like a stuck vinyl record forever. It doesn’t move and it doesn’t change. The soul is earth-bound because it is unlimited in time, and time is only experienced on earth; hence ‘lump’.
- It carries our history. We need memories for our resources, our ability to develop/build on our skills, relate to others (try talking to someone who has lost their short-term memory), and remembering/storing information for when it’s relevant next time, and to review our past and/or how we have got to where we are.
- It has attachments. To things and places as well as people, especially in the external world, and they are not always appropriate. Attachments are made because of our emotions. Our emotions are the source of our greatest sadness and our greatest joy, and of course, love, and really, our search for love and for life are our alpha and omega, and come from the soul.
- Our emotions are our rudders. They are how we work out what’s important to us and what we value, and point us in the direction of wanting more of what we like, and set us heading in that direction.
Memories and emotions and the soul. (2.6)
The problem of the soul.
The soul is inextricably entwined with the body. The soul has ‘attachments’ to others and things and places. It’s the body that feels the emotions, and our emotions are our rudders. They are how, or really why, we make the choices that we make, and our choices are affected by our memories.
The problem here is that these emotions can be from past lives as well as this life. We are not a ‘tabula rasa’. So, not only does society ignore emotions from this life as irrelevant, the concept of having emotions and issues from past lives is just even more irrelevant and to be ignored, and yet to do so leaves us without any ‘handle’ on what is actually happening within us at a very deep level in the unconscious.
A very mild example would be someone who is afraid of the water and can’t learn to swim, with no logical reason why – they just are. Yet for them even a minimal realization that they may have drowned in a previous life can be sufficient to change their decisions in this life and view swimming in a different manner. And really, that’s all that is required; a change of mind and a fear has gone. Simple, but we don’t believe it, so it doesn’t exist, and yet, that person knows that something in their life is different. They are no longer blocked from the pleasure and social context of swimming.
A not so mild example would be that of a destitute father going out during winter to find food for his starving family and getting caught in a snowstorm and dying of cold. He has not been able to return, and some/all of his family may die of cold and/or starvation. The father may decide he is no good as a father; the mother may decide that others cannot be relied upon, and the children may decide that parents don’t look after you, or fathers abandon you or that life’s too hard, and so on and so on. These are the decisions that get carried with us into the next life, (because there is a big emotional ‘bang’ or ‘affect’ attached to these decisions; the family members died thinking these things) and however useless or not these decisions may be, they hang around like bad smells and affect our next lives because Life reflects our unconscious back to us, and these decisions stay sitting there in our unconscious until we decide something else.
We have already had a range of lives and experiences which have led us to make such decisions about the things that have happened to us. They are part of the soul which holds our memories (because of Time). This is not absolutely all our memories; we retain those with strong emotional charge attached to them, whether positive or negative. (However, we don’t usually complain about the positive ones.)
The union of the soul with the spirit within the body (ie, we’re alive) brings these memories into the unconscious part of the mind, and it is the body that generates and feels the emotions.
But, some of these memories have such a strong negative emotional charge (as in, they are so painful) that they split off from the main ‘body’ of the soul and get stuck in the time that they occurred, and in this time they just play over and over (which is what ‘stuck in time’ means), and start feeling like one’s worst nightmares; in fact, like hell, so we bury/repress them as much as we possibly can. We get stuck in fear.
If we have any of these ‘lost’ bits, they will ‘pinch’ energy from now (the present), because they are awful and we want them to stay repressed, and it takes energy to repress them. If there are more than a few, (and many people have them), then there can be many bits up and down the time-line through our previous lives, and the owner may feel fragile or very easily shattered, and won’t know what’s going on. That person just feels ‘out of control’ and generally fairly anxious about being in situations in this current life that trigger off these memories. But really, if you feel shattered easily, you may well have ‘bits of you’ somewhere else in time.
In fact, these bits/parts can be remembered and retrieved back into the present, at which time the owner may feel as though they have found some part/member of themselves back and feel internally stronger or more resilient. Hence re-membered. (The Egyptian story of Osiris is referring to this ‘dismemberment’ including how much searching ‘all over’ is required to find them.)
However, this process of re-member-ing actually requires the overview or the ‘bigger picture’ that the spirit is able to bring in. The soul tends to get stuck in the detail of what happened, and needs the spirit to provide the bigger picture of the why it happened, within the context of what else was happening at the time, to find its meaning for us.
Thus, we need both spirit and soul working together to resolve the problems of these negative emotions, and thus able to bring the contents of the unconscious into the conscious. In so doing, we feel stronger or more integrated for it.
What about the body? (2.7)
- The body is actually an animal. (We just don’t like remembering this bit.)
- It is our vehicle in this Life. But it is not just a machine/robot to cart the spirit around and do what it says.
- It houses the mind, along with the spirit and the soul.
- It is made of earth/dust and will return to this. We like to forget this bit too. We have to maintain it if we want to stay alive. This involves effort.
- It is our manifesting device; we can’t do things or make things or much else without it. It’s the part that ‘has and can mould the clay’ if we want to make things,
- It is our energy exploring device; it’s how we get to experience things.
- It is our energy sensing device, (all senses; (not just VAKOG) plus all the energy vibrations available to us; not just measurable ones either). We must understand that we are an animal and part of Nature and have access to the same range of subtle energies that surround all life. We cannot perceive/register/sense or ‘pick up’ these ‘vibes’ of Life without a body. People have enormous variation in their sensitivity to these energies, which is something we discount, generally because we are unable to measure these things. (The sooner we get rid of ‘if it’s not empirical, it doesn’t exist’, the better.) Don’t forget we can pick up others’ emanations as well; they are ‘vibes’ too.
- It is our energy transmitting device; our own energy basically, as in, our own unique vibration (’Ident’). This energy that we are transmitting is the energy of our Unconscious; our Inner Self. We tend to think it’s our outer self or persona or image that we’re transmitting, and that we can use our will to force this, but it takes energy to maintain this image if it is not aligned with the unconscious, which is usually the case.
- It is how we make our communication and connection to others including being the way/means by which God/Nature/Life can communicate with us.
The body is the ‘practice’, ie, the actuality, and we hold the memories of the differences (our collisions) between theory and practice.
In our current society we are more familiar with spirit. We really devalue the body and the emotions, mainly through being taught to ignore it, and in so doing we have lost the soul. There is an awful lot of New Age stuff about our being a ‘spiritual person having an earthly experience’ as if Earth were not our true home, although this may be in response to a general tendency to simply use the body without ever thinking about the reason for having life. However, it seems to me that we are really failing to encompass the importance of the body and its energies and the importance of addressing our physical health, the lack of which can affect both the emotions and our mental health. Our physical health is totally wrapped up in the health of the Earth. (A nice sweeping statement! And of course, completely true. How can we think otherwise?)
What about the mind? (2.8)
The mind exists only while we have a body; (‘ipso fatso’ as in ‘Perishers’). (We don’t like that one either, and argue about it a lot, but it depends on how the mind is defined.)
Our mind has a lot of ‘stuff’ in it when you think about it. (‘Stuff’ being a technical term, of course.)
- Data from this present life experience and all you have accumulated so far.
- Data from all those ‘vibes’ we ‘swim in’.
- Data from the Autonomic Nervous System running the body.
- Data from the spirit.
- History from the soul.
- Our connection to Life and God.
And some of it is conscious and some of it is unconscious.
Mind and spirit are both ‘mental’. (2.9)
Well, what’s the difference between the mind and spirit? They’re both ‘mental’ or both belong in the world of thought. Both mind and spirit can ‘roam’ about; their ‘thinking’ is not confined to the body.
The difference is that spirit’s ‘thoughts’ look/sound like ‘answers’ while mind’s ‘thoughts’ involve data or detail or comparisons collected from Life. Spirit’s ideas belong to the world of intuition, which also includes the symbolic, patterns, the abstract, and generalizations. They can be ‘true’, but they will be true in the abstract, as in, ‘Love is the answer’, which is true, but it is theory. Your business is to find what ‘love’ is for yourself, physically and emotionally, and then work out how to live it. Your body will collect the data, and your mind can compare the theoretical with its own actual and what it sees as true for others out there.
Now, we can look at some of the consequence of these different parts or sections as they come together.
Recognizing concepts that come from spirit. (2.10)
Anyone we know??
- Freedom, singular, ie, detached, and few emotions. It can ‘jump’ away, and it has no ‘messy’ emotions; hence no attachments, to people or things and no love either; and no idea of their value or importance – attachments are seen as a weakness along with the body. Emotions ‘mess up’ rational decision-making and logical thought. Rational is good. (This begs the question of what is good?) It may be able to feel ‘heavenly’ through stilling the mind, but it is unable to act upon giving love as effort or serve.
- There is no other. It has not had to deal with another during time as spirit. Well, it has not had to fit in with another’s wishes/commands. It has been able to do as it pleases. Life is actually quite a shock to it.
- Doesn’t like having a body. Because it’s an animal and vulnerable to pain and death. It requires effort to maintain, and it’s slow and an encumbrance to freedom, and for men it is a betrayer and will not stay under control; (hence many religions’ efforts to punish the body to keep it down for the lord’s sake, or punish those who might make it to go up!). In fact, as far as spirit is concerned the body with its soul is a real pill, and the sooner it can get rid of it or work out how to use it to the max for its own satisfaction, the better.
And very closely related to this is…
- Doesn’t Want to Do Anything. It does not want to do Anything, and defines ‘heaven’ as not having to do anything. Thus, it has terrible trouble with ‘Till and Keep’, especially the boring, routine bits like housework and looking after the body. In the end, the justification for both of the above, is ‘there is no need to look after the body because it is ephemeral to this life and in the end, it doesn’t matter, because ‘Heaven’s where it’s at’’.
- Has All the Answers Already. Why need anything else? And don’t need anyone else anyway; especially anyone else’s Answers. It knows it all already and doesn’t need feedback or actuality to counter that. This translates as thinking that what someone says is what they do. Well, not! This one is such a trap! Our ‘talking’ society increasingly ignores the difference, and relies upon self-estimation as the measure, and then is shocked when the difference is plain to see.
- It’s used to no time. It’s used to imagining it and thinking it’s true, and no need to check anyway because it’s on to the next thing. No idea of the amount of time it takes to grow/build/make/real-ize something in the physical, or of working steadily and patiently to get to this ‘end’. It’s also unaware of time. There’s all the time in the world, and there is no ‘other’. It is used to doing what it wants when it wants, for as long as it takes.
- No Memory. Hence the belief that, if we ‘put it all behind us’ it’s gone. (However much we may like to think this is so, this concept is entirely and utterly incorrect.)
- No Concept of Nurturing, Protecting, Love or Serving. Well, who to? There is no ‘other’.
- It is Always Trying to Dream Up Ways to Escape, and Justify it as Well. It considers life as a trap. Of course, we actually ‘should’ be somewhere else, namely Heaven.
The above list looks to me awfully like most of our mainstream religions (and men). I suspect that these religions come from spirit’s ideas, and hence I will use the label of Spirit-Based Religions (SBR) for them.
All religions based on the Spirit’s ideas about itself negate Life and cannot learn to love it, much less Serve it. This is almost all our current mainstream religions, at least in the West.
The irony here is that Spirit thinks it has all the answers but can’t work out why it’s in a body alive on earth.
But we do need Spirit to…
- Lift us up to get the bigger picture and the context.
- Provide inspiration and imagine possibilities.
- Provide the meaning.
- Provide the metaphors that form bridges in meaning across PEMS.
- Stop us from getting stuck in detail and too much emotion which can drown us.
But Spirit is here to learn…
- The value and importance of love and to discriminate what to be attached to.
- The value of effort and serve for love in creativity and relationship.
- The value of the body and its senses in its connection to Life and Nature and our Inner Self.
- The value of collaboration with ‘the other’ for better ‘answers’.
- The value of patience and time especially in relation to our children and/or our manifestation and/or creativity.
- The importance of our experiences and our memory as communication devices with our Inner Selves.
But for our body with its soul things are altogether different.
Our body with its soul wants to be. (2.11)
The primary issues for the soul are….
- Safe – this seems to be no.1 (just). It wants safety PEMS. ie, in all Energy departments.
- Fed and Watered – no.2. Also, what we ingest needs to be clean – how important and how ignored!
- Clean. It doesn’t like feeling dirty or ‘buggy’ or ‘un-easy’.
And also….
- Comfortable, at ease, or no dis-ease and the correct temperature for it.
- Healthy and Well and able to move with ease and vitality.
- Touched (skin on skin) and stroked.
- Access to Peace and Quiet.
- Fully able to play and explore according to its needs.
And, of course…
Loved. Nurtured, Protected and Served.
It also…
- Likes to spend time and sense in to Nature, go with the flow; just being; patient.
- Kind of has a mind of its own, which is usually unconscious.
- Is the part that can nurture new growth as long as it understands how to nurture itself.
When we watch a well-fed, secure animal enjoying the sun and just Being, we can identify with that. That is soul. (And how much do we get to these, and who does so?) Creations made with soul have a life of their own.
On the other hand, soul does need to let go of those attachments, especially things in the external.
Hence, A DIAGRAM 2B1 of the relationship between body and mind and spirit and soul could be…. (2.12)
What is this Diagram showing?
This diagram shows the qualities and elements pertaining to the different parts of us which come together while we are alive.
The upper quadrants contain the Spirit and the Mind ‘departments’, which don’t necessarily have a ‘where’. Spirit and Mind are our thinking, and both are able to roam wherever they please.
The lower quadrants contain the Body and the Soul ‘departments’, which are together while ‘here’. Body and Soul are our feelings of our sensations and emotions.
However, this diagram has a marked resemblance to the 4 directions/departments of PEMS, not to mention a marked resemblance to the MBTI personality system which I will discuss further on. See MBTI Chapter 15.
But if energy has these 4 departments/domains, so must we because we are made of energy too.
So, what are these 4 departments/domains? These are properties of Energy which I deal with in Chapter 3. What we come Into, which see.
Conscious and un-conscious. (2C)
(This section continues ‘We have a Psyche/Mind of a particular composition and structure’.)
In general, most people have some concept that there is some part of ourselves that we don’t know about and generally use the term ‘sub-conscious’. However, Jung taught that there are 3 levels of consciousness and that is what will be discussed here. When we discuss the conscious and unconscious, we are talking about those things that we are aware of, in contrast to the things we are not aware of.
Define conscious, sub-conscious and un-conscious. (2.13)
Conscious.
This is our light side; it is available to the light. Beck (2001) uses the term ‘social self’.
“The person I own and operate; civilized but fragile” Lopker (2000).
These are the things I think I know about myself, or my concepts/ideas about myself. I will refer to it as the ‘outer self’ or ‘outself’ for short.
The conscious mind is actually built to cope with quite limited amounts of data at any one time, (in general 5-9 bits/pieces of information) although there’s plenty of information/data coming into the unconscious.
This is not to say that we do not know more than a computer or that there is not great potential within, but it is to say that it is wise to allow for that. It seems to be part of the design for being human and it may have to do with de-emphasizing and limiting the importance of external data to the mind and/or forcing us to narrow our focus on whatever.
Sub-conscious. (2.14)
These are the bits of me I’m vaguely aware of but are just below consciousness. If someone tells me something that’s in my sub-conscious, I would say ‘I know that’, because I can recognize it even if I’m unable to name it.
Most people use the word ‘sub-conscious’ to refer to the unconscious, but technically it is only part of the unconscious and a very small part at that. We just don’t like the idea that we don’t know about what’s ‘in here, inside us’, but the unconscious is indeed unconscious and extremely important and I will be using this term in this discussion.
Unconscious. (2.15)
“ …Each of us carries within us a whole other world, shadowy and fantastic, to be sure, but teemingly alive with inner figures, melodramas, grievances and fears, that are constantly exerting their influence over our every word and deed”, Frey-Rohn, (1990). Beck (2001) uses the term ‘essential self’.
In feeling (sensate and emotional) and mental terms, we’re not aware of this part of us at all. This part of my self is not available to my awareness; I don’t know or have forgotten about this part of me completely. This part feels like ‘not me’.
“This is the person I do not know; the person I disown and deny.” Lopker (2000).
The unconscious contains the …
- History of our emotional memories.
- Functions that drive the body and maintain homeostasis.
- Observations and information/data received through the body, including eg, all the music or visuals we did and didn’t (eg, jingles) want to remember, that we have learnt on the way.
- Connection to all Life, and our concepts of same. All our decisions, values, beliefs and attitudes.
- Connection to our Higher Self, hence God and our comprehension of God.
- Potential of the whole Self which is at the centre of all that is encompassed by the conscious and the unconscious.
- Anima, animus, inner child, internalized parents, archetypes, complexes and lots more.
- Stuff which we’re afraid to own including our best and our worst (both of which frighten the socks off us).
Which is rather a lot, really.
The conscious and the unconscious function in different ways and live on different sides of the brain, so the outself has very little idea about the ‘other side’.
In terms of the amount of ‘stuff’ that it contains, it’s very big; as big as the world ‘out there’. Psychologists use figures such as 10% for the conscious and 90% for the unconscious to give us an idea of the difference between the known and the unknown.
Our emotional memories. (2.16)
What is stored in our emotional memories is very important. This is not about remembering the things you wish to be conscious of, such as a sportsman’s name, or where you stored the Lilo after last year’s trip to the beach. This is about some of what is actually stored in the unconscious.
The things we store in our memories mostly have strong emotional energy; from positive to negative. We don’t tend to remember the day-to-day; we remember the feeling or a sensation associated with a memory (the smell of lily-of-the-valley reminds me of my grandmother).
We store all our important emotional memories. The good ones are our assets and are resources for us because they can be used to help us steer our lives in that direction for more of them. The ‘bad’ ones are also stored. These are extremely important because they affect our decisions about our lives, which is what we ‘make of’ our lives. What we ‘make of’ our lives manifests in our lives and hence continues to affect our future, no matter what we may think. (Many psychotherapists speak of them as ‘programs’, because that’s exactly how they function within us.) The business of how (and whether) we clear, resolve, understand, negate or whatever we manage to ‘do’ with these memories is a crucial aspect of this discussion.
We also store memories and their attending decisions about life from past lives. These memories are stored in the body.
Defining the unconscious is a solid cow, because it extends from our highest potential which is unknown to us, all the way down to what we consider to be the worst we could possibly be as well as our worst fears. It is a whopping mix of stuff we wish we knew (the potential as well as the ‘good’ stuff) mixed up with stuff we really don’t want to know (our worst memories from all lives including our judgement of them).
Internally, some part of the unconscious feels like a child; it is the part of us that is afraid, slow, inept, weak, unsure, and it does lots of hiding, especially when it does not trust our own attitude to it. Hence it is often referred to as our inner child. If you tend to ‘bash yourself up’, you are indeed bashing this part of you. It feels like the klutz and the ‘idiot’ internally. This inner child is also the source of our emotions, creation, recreation, spontaneity and intimacy. The more apart we are from our inner child, the less internally satisfied and happy we will be. The more we hate the slow, inept, klutzy bits of ourselves, the less we will be able to relate to our inner child and thus to others as well, particularly our own children.
There is much to be gained by treating our unconscious as an inner child if we are able to care about it as we hopefully would be able to nurture and care about our own child. This is a very valuable exercise that can bring great delight.
“The unconscious therefore is to be seen not as a storehouse of dead memories, but as a rich resource where images thrive and participate in one’s life.” Yabroff (1990).
However, our inner child is not the only part of the unconscious. There are quite a lot of other parts of us or ‘members’. Our feminine (anima) and masculine (animus) also live in here. In fact, there’s ‘a world of people’ in here. As we re-member and integrate these parts we come to feel more resilient/complete.
There is also our concept of and direct connection to God and to Life. The connection to God is through our Higher Self which feels very large and quite remote and is probably the part of us that we must face up to in the end, which is not easy at all. Most of us dodge off till next time… It is the part that knows what we were wanting to achieve in this lifetime. This would be the source of our dreams.
The other point to understand here is that our own conception of God is God as far as we’re concerned. We can’t conceive of God any other way than what is inside us. It can be modified and changed etc, but our little bit stays just that; our little bit; big enough for us but without the comprehension of the whole, which would be just too much. Similarly, with our ‘scoping’ of Life; and all Life is God. Thus, for us, our own unconscious is God and Life and this inner self.
I will refer to this unconscious part of ourselves as the ‘inner self’ because it is inside us, and I will use InSelf for short. I am using ‘In’ for Inner and Self with a big ‘S’ because it is actually bigger than our known or conscious self.
But it is also our direct connection with God, Life or Self (GLS).
From this connection then, we can start to face the concept that God, Life, and our Inner Self are the same thing within our own comprehension; (therefore InSelf = GLS, and I will use both concepts as a method of emphasizing this).
There really are a lot of ‘selves’ in this discussion and I have mentioned a Self a few times as well. Jung used ‘Self’ as “the whole Self at the centre of all that is encompassed by the conscious and the unconscious”. It is a unity of the outself with the InSelf, but it is also an essence of us or the core of our totality, so it’s kind of bigger than the sum.
A lot of the problem with trying to define names/terms is that the unconscious is dynamic, as in, it changes over time within any person as we realize more about ourselves, and it is basically unmeasurable by us or others (using normal methods, but Jung developed methods to ascertain what was within). The upshot leaves us trying to get a handle on a basic set of ‘selves’ which together can make a whole or a unity. I will use Self (’big S’) for the United or Whole Self. Learning to know our InSelf and learning to love this ‘other’ is the path to the Self. The more we know our Self, the more we can come into partnership with God.
The problem for the InSelf, ie, the unconscious. (2.17)
The problem is that we are unconscious of the unconscious, by definition, and thus it is not ‘real’ for us. To spell this out, our internal ‘other’ is not ‘real’ to us, and therefore we consider that it does not exist at all. (This is what Jung was busy proving all his life, although normal society takes very little notice of this.) Our society’s focus on the external world simply exacerbates this. As far as most people are concerned the unconscious is something we would prefer to leave thoroughly alone. In fact, we tend to treat it a bit like sewage, and would rather it be not there at all. It’s certainly not ‘nice’, whatever we would like to think.
The other problem is that the unconscious does not like being ‘unreal’. The more you make it ‘unreal’ the more it makes its owner (= you) feel ‘unreal’, as in, like a ghost which is a primary example of ‘not there’, and it begins to protest and get upset when it doesn’t get a ‘look in’ as far as the action is concerned. It feels trapped and starts to rattle the cage. Thus, there is no peace when the InSelf is not ‘real’ to its owner. Also, the more we ignore it, the more we have to meet it ‘out there’, which is not always what we want. “When an inner situation is not made conscious it appears outside as fate.” Jung.
The difference between us and God therefore, is that God is Giving Life to Her Unconscious all the time; that’s what we are a part of. We want to learn to do the same; giving Life as we make our InSelf Real to our outself. This is our Realization of our InSelf. Notice that as we Give Life to the internal ‘other’, we also become able to give life to the external ‘other’. This is what happens when we manage to ‘Love our neighbour AS our self’.
However much we have difficulty defining the unconscious and however much we don’t know who is ‘in here’; it is still an extremely important part of us, because…
- The unconscious is emanating or broadcasting your vibrations out to Life, ie, to others. This is what Life/Energy is Mirroring or reflecting back to you.
- It comes out in our behaviour, as in, what we do. It is our actual truth about ourselves whether we like it or not, and other people can see/feel/sense it even if we cannot.
- It drives the show. It is the part that is actually in charge here, not the conscious part. It is thus more powerful than ‘you’ ie, your outself or your ‘me’.
So, if your life is not doing what you think it should be doing, then basically it’s a good idea to make friends with your unconscious and start talking to it. ‘How’ is further down in this discussion.
The upshot of all this business about conscious and unconscious is that we might as well consider ourselves as two people; one we know about and are quite sure about who is here, (’that’s the way I am’) and the other we do not know about at all. This internal ‘other’ is as unknown to us as anyone else out there with no relevance or relationship to us, and the grand question is ‘who is this internal other? who is actually there?’ Hence the Delphic axiom of ‘know thyself’.
Understanding that we are actually two people (when we think that we are only one person) is a very important point because the whole of this book hangs on the understanding that we ourselves have an ‘other’ within us whom we do not know, as in, we are unconscious of this person. But it is perfectly possible to get to know this person, and very worthwhile to do so. Notice also that this means we always have a companion ‘built-in’ so to speak, and as we are able to get to know this person, we will feel less lonely when alone.
It is also very important to understand that your body is part of your unconscious, your InSelf, and hence it is part of this ‘other’. We assume that our body is part of ‘us’, our conscious/outself, as in, my body is part of me, and it will do what I want, ie, it is under my conscious control. But anyone who has been ill has found that their ideas and their body’s ‘ideas’ are not the same. Your body is part of the way your InSelf communicates with your outself. This is a big topic and there is more about the body later. See Chapter 14.
Now I wish to discuss the relationship between your two internal ‘people’.
Merge. (2D)
(This section continues the topic of ‘We have a Psyche/Mind of a particular composition and structure’.)
You and ‘the other’. (2.18)
We have 2 types of relationships with ‘the other’. One of these types is the internal relationship between our outself and our InSelf, (our 2 people inside) and the other type is our external relationships between ourselves and others.
In this discussion I will refer back to the ‘coat-hanger’ of the Absolute Opposites (part, apart, partner) introduced in Chapter 1 section D.
A diagram of the human being’s INNER world could look like this. (2D Diag1)
This is a diagram of the internal relationship between the outself and the InSelf. Hence this is about the inner world of our own mind. The Left side lists attributes that tend to be conscious, and the Right side those that are less conscious.
The top line is another ‘coat-hanger’ of 2 AO1s on the left and right, with their AO2 in the middle.
CONSCIOUS | MERGE | UNCONSCIOUS |
Outer self | Inner Self | |
Mind, Thought | Body, Feelings | |
Spirit | Soul | |
Ideas | Actuality | |
Say/Speak | Behaviour/Do | |
Theory | These are Split apart…
but can find Unity and can come together (Merge) as one and Create New Life together, and then separately and together as partners Serve this new Life as it grows.
|
Practice |
This diagram is showing a split/contrast between 2 equal parts; equal in importance, but not necessarily size. Each needs the other, and they need to come together to Merge to create the possibility of New Life. This Merging feels pretty good; ‘heavenly’, in fact. This merger is our ‘partnership with God’ through the logic that the Unconscious/InSelf = God/Life/Self (GLS). This is the reason that new life is able to come in, ie, the Merge activates the Holy Ghost.
Creative people are able to access this merging and bring it into their lives. The Creative process brings New Life into existence.
And now something wonderful happens. We have activated the creative process and brought in new life, but now we need the attributes of both our conscious and our unconscious separately, but working together to Serve and protect the needs of that new life as it grows from germ to adult and able to fend for itself in the cold world ‘out there’.
Notice also that the process of growing ‘the child’ changes the person owning the conscious and unconscious; this person is not the same at the end, that they were before they began.
Note here that the attributes on the same sides of the lists are not necessarily the same thing. viz. the Soul is not the same as the Unconscious, and the Spirit is not the unconscious or all theory, and so on. What the diagram is trying to do is emphasize that there really are a lot of splits (or dualities), and creativity comes out of their merger.
Now I wish to compare our inner world with our outer world using a similar diagram.
While a diagram of our ‘Merge’ type relationship with the external ‘Other’ of the OUTER world could look like this. (2D Diag2) The top line is again a ‘coat-hanger’ of 2 AO1s on the left and right, with their AO2 in the middle.
‘MALE’ | MERGE | ‘FEMALE’ |
Masculine | Feminine | |
Yang | Yin | |
Active | Passive | |
Outgoing | Incoming | |
and so on. | These are Split apart…
but can find Unity and can come together (Merge) as one and Create New Life together, and then separately and together as partners Serve this new Life as it grows. |
And so on… |
This diagram is showing a Split between 2 equal parts; they are not the same, but are equal in importance.
Each needs the other, and they can come together to Merge. This Merging feels pretty good, (‘heavenly’, in fact) and is referred to as ‘sex’ or ‘making love’.
The merging process can create the possibility of the New Life of a child. (The mystery of the Holy Ghost has been activated.)
And now something wonderful happens. We need the attributes of both the male and the female separately, but working together, to Serve and Protect the needs of that new life as it grows from germ to adult and able to fend for itself in the cold world ‘out there’. Notice also that the process of growing the child changes the parents; they are not the same people at the end, that they were before they began.
The internal model and the external model are the same. (2.19)
This external model looks to me remarkably similar to our human model for marriage and children, and hence family, but notice that it is also the model for our internal relationship for creativity from within ourselves; our internal unity.
This external model is in front of our noses every day; it is the model for our internal selves hidden in broad daylight, you might say.
Thus, we can use the most important human model in our external world as the model for our internal world. We can use the external model of the creation of the new life of the child and the need for the skills of both partners in promoting (= Serve) the welfare and growth of that child, to understand the internal mechanisms of our own growth in awareness and consciousness and creativity, which leads to the expression of Self.
As two separate parts merge for a time, (they ‘know’ each other) which feels ‘heavenly’, there is the potential for the true creativity of new life. Yet both these parts are needed separately in a partnership to Serve this New Life and bring it to fruition or maturity, so that this new life can itself create new life and so on. Thus, life renews itself eternally.
All parts of this model are useful.
- The better we are at knowing ourselves, as in, finding our own unity, the more we can partner with others and/or with God, yet it works the other way as well.
- What we create can teach us about ourselves.
- Bringing up children ideally requires the separate and equal skills of both partners working together to Serve the needs of each child. Both are Serving Life and in that learn more about themselves.
Making the two, one. (2.20)
The upshot of all this is that in healing our own internal split/gap/contrast between our 2 inner selves (outself and InSelf), we are making the two, one. This is an important concept that Jesus is said to have taught and said a lot. This concept encompasses that we …
- find our Self; our own Unity, and are able to Express this Self and in so doing we find great satisfaction, fulfillment and true self-esteem (TSE), all of which feel very good. (More detail about TSE in Part II Chapter 8a.)
- learn how to come into partnership with and talk to God.
- become properly Creative which helps our whole Self to Grow
- are able to properly mobilize all our separate attributes to Serve New Life.
- begin to behave to others as God does to us.
So, the funny/strange thing is that we have to find our own unity within if we want to come into partnership with God, but that is because we are part of God.
So, how do we get to this partnership with God? This is basically the ‘raison d’etre’ of this discussion and requires more concepts or ‘building blocks’ to explain.
God as Unity. (2.21)
God has worked out how to unite Her two selves, and out of this She is able to Create Life.
She knows Her internal ‘other’, and knows that both are equally important, and each needs the other, but they are not the same thing.
Proper Merging needs equality ie, proper relationship. (2.24)
The more each self knows the other, the more they love each other, and the more they love each other, the more they can unite, ‘as one’. This is called Merge, and it feels very good.
Merging feels heavenly, gives life to an ‘other’ and Brings in the Holy Ghost.
New Life comes out of this Merging. This Merging has given life to an ‘other’. But there is a mystery here. What is created out of this Merge is a single possibility out of a plethora of possibilities for new life. Think of the many possible DNA combinations between any human couple, yet few are actually expressed as children. Why this combination and not that? How do these new things really happen? We refer to this mystery as the Holy Ghost.
But the two separate entities are not meant to be merged the whole time.
These different and separate things are also used separately, as in, both have their place and their attributes and both are needed for the growth of the new life. The making and nurturing of new life is called Creativity.
As we are alive on earth, we have the possibility of the inner merge between our internal separate selves, and the outer merge of Male and Female as a model/reflection/mirror of the inner. Both are as heavenly as the other but the inner Merge is what God is doing all the time. We want to learn to do the same. That is Creativity. It is an expression of our united parts; the expression from within.
God has worked out that Unity and its expression are where one’s greatest satisfaction and fulfillment lie, and this is what humans also want. This ‘reward’ for Life on Earth is only available while alive, hence the value of working out for yourself what brings you these fulfillments and also how to achieve them for yourself.
The dualities. (2E)
By now we have two sets of dualities; Spirit and Soul with Conscious and Unconscious. Hence what is their relationship?
We tend to equate spirit with the conscious and soul with the unconscious.
It is the conscious part reflecting spirit’s teaching which ‘says’ ‘I think therefore I am’, because it is unconscious of the soul within the body. It thinks that the conscious is all there is to it, because it only knows what it is conscious of, by definition. It (the outself/conscious) considers itself the be-all and end-all, and is prone to refer to itself as Big Mind because it feels superior (because it can jump), and lumps all the unconscious stuff into the category of ‘Little Mind’ (because that bit seems ‘childish’). This latter category being all the weaknesses, problems, fears, attachments, lack of control and general ‘lumpiness’ that stops it doing what it (the conscious) likes and being ‘free’. Considering itself as ‘Big Mind’ and the unconscious as ‘Little Mind’ gets things the wrong way around in a very big way, and is the primary problem with our mainstream spirit-based-religions (SBRs) having no understanding of actual human (or God’s) psychology. (See also Ch.6.)
But the Soul is not necessarily synonymous with the unconscious and Spirit with the conscious. I suspect it is more complex than that, with both the conscious and unconscious holding information from both Spirit and Soul. However, in this modern Western society of ours, our teachings and conscious concepts of ‘out there’ derive more from Spirit’s attitudes to physical life than to Soul’s. There is probably greater convergence between our ideas/concepts/versions of masculine with the spirit and those of feminine with the soul.
In this UUS I posit that spirit and soul occupy different departments of energy within us; the Spiritual (S) and the Emotional (E). But our conscious and unconscious are uniquely personal to us and contain a mix of these two energies as well as the body and the mind. It is the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious that changes throughout our lives as we become more conscious of the unconscious. Hence the relationship is referred to as ‘dynamic’.
Thus, we could think of spirit and soul as being two parts of the possible four parts/departments of energy that we have while on earth, while the conscious/unconscious refer to our awareness of all these energies within ourselves, while on earth.
The problem becomes even worse when we tend to equate
Spirit = Conscious = Masculine = the light = ‘good’, while
Soul = Unconscious = Feminine = the dark = ‘bad’.
There is a difference between masculine and feminine energies, but we judge them so much that it is better to refer to them using the Chinese terms of Yin and Yang.
The Yang/’masculine’ energies can be considered active and outgoing, while the Yin/’feminine’ energies can be considered passive and inward looking, and these are different qualities of energy. The main point being that both are absolutely necessary for growth in life, and our wonderful society is fast losing this understanding, and is having trouble growing to any maturity at all, through this tendency to elevate only one side and negate the other.
Yin and Yang are dualities in a world of dualities; we need both ends to See what we need to See. Each end informs the other. Night is not night without day, waking is not awake without sleep; how many examples do we need?
Spirit needs soul, the conscious needs the unconscious and the masculine needs the feminine, otherwise it cannot experience itself; ‘consciousness loves contrast’.
The warning here is that these are all different dualities, as in, not the same, and we need to be very careful about how we think about them. Equate them at your peril.
See also, contrasts and opposites as part of Chapter 3 on Energy.
The Merge of two ends of any duality heals the split/gap between them and brings in the possibility of the creation of new life. Hence, healing the split becomes a very important concept in our lives.
We need all three parts of the duality with its Merge to generate and support that new life.
We also ‘come in’ with Filters.
Filters. (2F)
Another aspect of the way we are built is that we come in with Filters.
All our perceptions of our world are filtered through our own, well, filters. In other words, we appear to be designed to deal only with our own small, internal versions of what’s out there. Our filters are part of our personality and keep us utterly unique. There are advantages and disadvantages. As a simplistic example, a pink filter on a camera might make some things look ‘nicer’, which is why we may use that filter, but many things will not appear as they actually are. This is what our filters do to us. However, something may appear to our own perception, it may or may not be ‘the actuality’, and certainly not for someone else.
The thing to remember really is that we appear to ‘come in’ with a pack of filters ready-made that have to be sorted out. They may or may not be an issue for us, but it’s wise to remember they are always there.
We don’t know our internal world, and we have filters on.
Note that we are not a ‘tabula rasa’; our personalities are already in us, as every mother has noticed since kingdom come, but not all psychologists.
The MBTI. (2.25)
One of the most important set of ‘filters’ that we have is the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) which is a categorisation/description of our personality type.
There appears to be a direct correlation between the energy departments, the way we are ‘built’, and our personality as described in the MBTI.
There is a whole chapter about this in Part IV, Chapter 15.
We have other filters, but they are a topic of some disagreement, and by the time anyone deals with all the other factors that we come in with, (potentials, expectations, and contracts) that’s more than enough.
Now it’s time to consider the emotions.
Emotions. (2G)
Our emotions are another ‘thing’ that we are equipped with while on earth whether we want them or not. They are part of the soul. Thus, what are the basic emotions? There are many lists of these basic emotions out there and not all of them agree, so here is another list.
The basic emotions.
The ‘Un-Standard’ Ones.
Explore. (2.26)
As in, Panksepp’s SEEK; quoted in Grandin (2009).
This hardly seems an emotion per se; it is much more a basic drive for all life, but its lack, as in, the inability to do so leads to the kind of depression that is aligned with feeling trapped. This is apparent in animals as well as people. Exploration is stimulating and interesting. It is usually fear that is at the bottom of people feeling trapped. Anger may be expressed but fear will be there as well.
The emotion that goes with this depression is boredom, (although boredom doesn’t feel like an emotion) which can be expressed as a ‘dullness’ or alternatively as a looking for stimulation in whatever way in a multitude of possibilities. This stimulation can lead to overwhelm, but trying to relieve the overwhelm can lead to exposing the boredom which does not solve the problem. It is the entrapment/blocking and the underlying fears that have to be addressed because they’re the things stopping the explore.
Desire. (2.27)
Desire is also difficult to define in terms of whether it is a drive or emotion, but it certainly seems to be ‘built in’. ‘Desire’ gets mixed up with ‘want’ and it is ‘want’ that is considered ‘bad’ in some religions. We absolutely need the drive, but it is the ‘wants’ that gets us into trouble. The difference between them is that Desire is the internal ‘emotion’, and the Wants are the names we give to the external things/person/goal. The ‘cure’ for ‘wants’ is not to stop wanting/desiring but to identify for yourself what the internal state would be that you would feel if you had (obtained) these wants. See Goal-Setting Chapter.
If our desire(s) is/are blocked, we again end up feeling trapped, and need to back up and enquire as to just what we are desiring and similarly, just what are we exploring. Many people do not actually know what they really desire, so they simply follow society’s dictates as to what they ‘should’ be wanting.
Now, to the standard emotions.
I am going to use where we feel these emotions in our body as part of my definitions.
Fear and Anger. (2.28)
Here we are ready to fight or run; both of these are felt internally in the same manner; as a tightening in the body, especially the gut. This is the ’fight or flight’ response, and the heart rate increases, our breath rate goes up and so on. All the other functions which are apparent when we feel relaxed and safe, eg, digestion and so on, are ditched under these situations. One of the more important things that is ditched is our ability to think. Hence, the more afraid we are, the less we are able to think clearly. This is a very important point.
Society tends to dictate which of the two is more acceptable for the different genders. Fear is culturally acceptable for women and anger for men. But, basically, when one is there, so is the other, just hidden. They are two sides of the same coin.
Our modern world provides plenty of opportunities for us to experience lesser versions of these states, which are felt as lesser degrees of said ‘tightening’. It is this tightening that we dislike when we can’t release it, ie, very unrelaxing; no ‘ease’.
Throughout this discussion I use the word ‘Fear(s)’ as a catch-all for anxiety, worry, afraid, panic, terrified and so on; lots of people like to think that they don’t have fears, only maybe worries or anxious about something, etc, but really, these are all fears, large and small, and that’s how I am using this word.
Guilt and Shame. (2.29)
These two are very difficult to deal with. They are both felt as twists in the gut which feel horrible enough but can extend to nausea in the stomach if it’s worse. Extreme shame can leave one actually feeling ‘burnt up’. Basically, we avoid them like the plague, as in, do anything rather than face them. They feel disgusting, but they are very important drivers. The more unconscious we are of them, the more they can drive us on in an obsessive manner, without our say-so, for better or for worse.
These are the ones we really run from, and they are also the ones that really hang around.
I am defining Guilt as the feeling that arises from the perception of having done the ‘wrong’ thing, while defining Shame as arising from the perception of failing to have done the ‘right’ thing. This begs the question of just what are the wrong and the right thing, but I address this below in goal-setting, which see. These definitions are a bit ‘spotty’ in that they are not that good, but work in general terms. A problem with trying to define Shame is that it is possible to feel ashamed if, say, your father did a ‘bad’ thing, but in fact you didn’t have anything to do with it.
Resentment. (2.30)
This is our body saying it does not wish to carry out this ‘ought’; it is not your real wish to do this thing, or you are doing it against your will. Fear and anger are at war here. This is hardly a ‘nice’ emotion, but it is an important one, because it is implicated in the development of serious illnesses that can kill us. The best thing to do with resentment is sort out what the problem is and clear it. (See the Treasure Tool in Chapter 16.)
Sadness and Joy. (2.31)
These are felt in the heart and of course, both of these are very important.
Sadness can be felt as a broken heart with a major effect on the body, while joy can bring great lightness and release from the tension brought by any of the negative emotions.
Love and Hate. (2.32)
Well, we all know what Love is, don’t we? It’s that nice, warm feeling in the heart when we think of who/what we love, and hate is its opposite as we shut down our heart and armour it up to wish them ill and/or gone from us in whatever form.
From this we can see that we are actually wishing the loved one well, so that they are able to continue to be in our lives. (I will continue to use only the word ‘people/person’ in this discussion, but things are also relevant; and they are also attachments.)
Thus, so far, love is a warmth in the heart, which feels nice; delightful, in fact, plus a desire for more of this ‘nice’ in the future.
We want to spend Time with this person because it feels good.
We want to know more about them and who they are, as in, we are Interested in them.
We want to make sure we’ve got this person in our future, so we look to keep them or Sustain them and Protect them, so they stay around and we can be with them.
Hence, we want to give them Time, Interest, Sustain and Protect, and the 4 letters of these make a very interesting word, TISP.
TISP. (2H)
Definition and use. (2.33)
‘Keeping’ involves feeding them, nurturing, and generally sustaining and protecting them as required at whatever level is needed PEMS. How much we do this as physical effort and for how long depends on who is receiving this love. For those closest to us, especially children, there will be the greatest amount of effort involved.
Hence, we could use Time, Interest, Sustain and Protect (TISP) as an abbreviation for what we want to do to promote and maintain, our own internal feeling of Desire and Delight (D&D) which we label Love.
Thus, I would argue that Love includes Action/do/give. We can feel love which is nice enough for us as the feeler, but it also needs to engender an Action ie, TISP, that we will desire to do.
Thus, my definition of Love is…
We will Desire and Delight (D&D) ie, Love as our own feeling, to give our TISP (= Love as action) to ‘the other’.
We want to Love Loving. This is why Desire is important.
This definition of Love=TISP becomes quite useful if you are an adult child trying to work out if your parent(s) loved you. (But, of course, all parents love their children!) The questions can then be; ‘How much Time, Interest, Sustain and Protect were rockin’ around the household when you were young?’
What happens when both parents have to work to support an enormous mortgage? How much Time do the children actually get? (Nor am I sure that labelling it ‘quality time’ will impress the children receiving it.) Not to mention Interest if both parents’ attention is with their work.
If your father roared at you, how protected did you feel? Were there any concessions to your smallness? and so on.
Other useful questions would be how much TISP do you yourself actually give and to whom?
The whole point about TISP is that it is required for the growth of life. Children and animals grow when they are loved and have a more difficult time when bits of TISP are missing.
Thus, Love as TISP is needed for growth and Life; it is required for Life. I wish to be very clear indeed about this. All Life needs TISP. God uses TISP to create Life. When bits of TISP are missing, things go wonky, and cannot grow properly. As TISP disappears, so does Life. I consider that our great advanced technological society has rather a large problem with TISP at the moment.
Notice also that TISP is an action, and action requires Effort. Words alone do not ‘cut it’; we know deep down when we don’t get enough TISP, and it makes us cross as well as afraid, even when it’s so deep that we don’t know consciously what’s going on.
We get our definitions of love from our families and some of these ‘definitions’ are absolutely not love. Yes, it may be ‘love’ according to the family, but really what you are getting is ‘what they know of love’ and that may not be very much. But we may not know this until we can access our own anger at the lack of real love that we have received. We cope with this lack of love by disconnecting from our bodies, but our body knows what’s right for us, and sometimes the amount of anger and the lack of real love can surprise us greatly (because the body’s awareness is unconscious).
This is why I am defining Love as TISP. Lots of people think they give and get love but it may have little relationship with TISP.
One of the trickier sorts of ‘love’ could be called ‘lerv’, which I could define as the glitter and illusion of love. But its giveaway is that it just does not feed or satisfy us. We keep thinking that this is love, while becoming increasingly desperate for more from others, or give up (and get very cross about its lack).
Giving TISP to ‘the other’. (2.34)
Giving TISP to ‘the Other’ will give Life and Love to ‘the other’, but ‘the other’ can be in here or out there (because of the way that Energy works in Mirroring your inner person, plus the fact that you comprise two people, not one).
Jesus’ axiom was ‘Love thy neighbour AS thyself, which means ‘thyself’ first. But we have a tonne of problems with people who ‘love themselves’. We also have the Christian ideal of giving to ‘the other’.
The problem is in our vocabulary and the words we use for our concepts. We simply do not understand that we have an ‘other’ internally; we don’t know that there is an ‘other’ inside us. That ‘other’ is unconscious; we don’t know it, and it seems un-real to us; we cannot ‘real-ize’ it. We only know our outself, which is the part of us that we are conscious of, and we think of that as our ‘self’.
As we try to translate the ‘love thyself’ bit, we come up against giving love to the outself, and the problem of being ‘self-ish’, and of people who consider no-one other than themselves. But this is not loving ‘the other’. We know that bit, but we don’t know about that ‘other’ inside us, much less how to give TISP to it, but we need to learn how to if we want to get to Creativity. Others have worked it out, so how can we get there?
In all of this, our current words/terms we have for these concepts are not useful to us because they don’t and can’t help us work out what is needed or how to do it. Hence the need for specific terms to help us untangle these concepts.
Giving TISP to our InSelf does leave us feeling fed and satisfied. Yes, we want more, but we are actually growing in our receiving of it, and it is nourishing us. It also builds our Self-sufficiency. Hence, I recommend finding out how to do it.
Giving TISP to the InSelf has to come first, and the external other will follow naturally (because of Mirror Laws which see below). This is what Jesus was talking about. But, on the whole, we get to learn the hard way what happens when we don’t. However, for those who have children and desire and delight in them, your children will help you, because they are part of you. After all, your InSelf/unconscious is also your ‘child within’.
Serve. (2.35)
Notice also that Giving TISP is a submission, and a service. You are Serving Life.
To Serve Life means using your skills and attributes to ascertain and meet the needs of a new, young or small organism in order to nurture it in a manner that maximizes its own potential and thus grow to serve others in its own right. You are giving TISP to do this. Thus, I include Protect in this definition.
True Service requires a kind of Submission on your part to the needs of another organism that is dependent upon your care. It is not a ‘beneath’ (and if it feels like a ‘beneath’ something is wrong); it is an understanding that the seed requires your ‘keeping’ to be able to grow. True Service will absorb you and delight you, but is not necessarily always easy or playful. Finding what delights you to submit to and serve is a large reason to Explore and Desire.
Notice that as we Serve our children or Life or our creations, we are actually serving ourselves, and difficult as the process may be, it also provides delight, fulfilment, and True Self-Esteem and can be the ultimate selfishness really.
In fact, you are using your outself to give energy to the InSelf; the energy is flowing from the outself to ‘the other’, which is the correct direction for the giving of Life. Thus, this is a ‘self-less-ness’ on your part for your own sake. Ideally you will forget about your ‘self’(outself) as you do so, and you will become far less self-conscious as well. Animals do this in spades, and so do small children (up to about 7 years old). This is an attribute which is very attractive to others. It is also part of being ‘child-like’.
The opposite of this is ‘child-ish’ which is where our outself is forever wanting energy from ‘out there’, so cannot forget itself. It’s a kind of ‘sucking’ as the opposite to ‘serving’; the energy is flowing the wrong way.
‘Till and Keep’. (2.36)
This is God’s directive to Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. So, what then do we think these might be?
To Till is ‘to turn the sod/earth’. There’s no way around the fact that this requires effort. Our Life in the physical world requires effort.
To Keep is to help Life to continue to continue. This requires Sustaining and Protecting Life and my argument is that this includes all Life. This does not mean exploit it to hell for whatever until it dies or wears out. Learning how to Till and Keep requires Time and Interest in so doing, which is for our ultimate benefit, and our children’s; hence ‘sustainability’.
Thus, we need TISP to Keep, and Effort to Till.
My suspicion is that Till and Keep = Serve, and my observation would be that we don’t like it very much. We would much rather be served by others than serve them.
Love as a part of the greater energy. (2.37)
Love is an energy which we can feel with our bodies.
What then is this energy? It leads to life, creativity, growth, joy, truth, coherence, cohesion, integration, building up, wellness, glow, beauty and so on. Notice that giving it is good for both the giver and the receiver.
What then is its opposite and what to name it? Un-love? Hate? Evil?
It leads to chaos, disintegration, tearing down, pain, sickness, suffering, lies, greyness, destruction, ruin, feeling like a ghost, and so on; all of which seem to me to be the attributes of war and the ultimate in Un-love. (‘Live’ spelt backwards is ‘evil’.)
Thus, the logic goes that Love leads to Life and Un-Love leads to Evil?
Then the actual energy continuum stretches from Love to non-Love to Un-Love, with an enormous range of possibilities between them, and life must encompass all of it.
And if…
God is mind exploring energy, (as are we). (2.38)
God has worked out how this energy works ie, its rules. The making/manifestation of Life requires giving Love/TISP. This is what God understands and uses all the time. But, in under-standing this, God is actually subservient to the rules/functions of this energy. It’s the energy that is coming first and God has worked out how to have the best time with this energy and experience, feeling ‘love-ly’ all the time. This is what we are looking for because we want to do that too.
So, this subservience looks like ‘being under’ but, that’s irrelevant if you love it, and this is really the answer to what or which comes first. We have such trouble with God having to be all-powerful, but this is not the kind of ‘power’ as we think of it that God has. I will deal with power issues in Part 2.
The crux of this is then…
God loves creating Life and loves Her creations.
Notice that God does actually Love here. God is not just some vast mental Spirit ‘out there’. She is not Split. She has invested TISP in our welfare, and still does so even if we are not aware of it. There has been a great deal of thought and awareness put into this business of creating Life on Earth.
Life is there to Serve us and does so whether we notice it or not. God is delighted in us and in everything that we do, because She learns about Herself as we Explore. We are part of Her. She does not need anything from us. She knows from the rules of energy that we will ‘get there in the end’ because She did, and there is no end. The ‘getting it’ is realizing how to get to love your Self, ie, all of yourself. And that is a big search.
We want to do the same.
We want to find out how…
- To ’Know thyself’, and really, I’m talking about the InSelf which = GLS,
- Which leads to Loving InSelf = Loving ‘the other’ (the person you don’t know),
- Which leads to Merge, which leads to the whole Self and our connection with God,
- Which leads to Owning InSelf = Self Expression; our Heart’s Song.
- Which leads to conscious Creation from the heart,
- Which leads to ‘feeding’ the growth of ‘the other’ and yourself,
- which leads to true self-esteem (TSE) and fulfillment and peace and rest; we ‘rest in peace’ ie, RIP while very much alive. See more in Part II, Desires.
- So, then you can do more….
Because there is great Desire and Delight (D&D) in so doing.
Creativity. Fulfillment and TSE. (2.39)
Creativity, fulfillment and TSE are all related.
The Creativity that comes from the Heart is the result of the Inner Merge of outself and InSelf. It is the Expression of Self. [“In the beginning was the word”; but I wonder if this is a mis-translation of ‘in the beginning was expression’.] Remember, Explore is first, Expression is close behind as a major drive for us. We are God’s Expression of Her Self as is all Life.
This is our great Search, as in, this is what we are searching for in life; our own unique Expression of Self. It is why we have life, and being incarnate on earth is the only way we can find it. Soul and spirit are only together while we are here alive.
We have the opportunity for great fulfillment when we are able to have children, but it is also important to understand that having children is not the only way to find fulfillment or the only reason for our existence. Having children is the result of the Outer Merge, but the Inner Merge that leads to Creativity will also provide this same fulfillment.
Our failure to find this unique Expression of Self leads to inner feelings of shame, frustration or disappointment which we may try to bury a long way down and look for other things in life to be proud of or ‘pride ourselves’ about, but the hole/lack is still there, and we try to fill it with whatever we can find. Feelings of jealousy or envy are an indicator of this ‘hole’. Remember, this stuff is unconscious, and as such, is terribly hard to get a handle on, or to name it. But it is still there, even if we don’t know it, and however far down it is, we keep searching for full-fill-ment. We don’t feel ‘filled’ or ‘fed’ or ‘whole’ emotionally, and that’s the problem; the ‘hole’ is still there; we’re ‘hungry/empty’ and the answer is not the physical act of eating. We search all the time and can find no rest and no peace. Thus, I am saying that finding and owning our individual and unique Expression of Self is what leads us to fulfillment and rest and peace.
Creativity and Expression. (2.40)
It is also true that Life absolutely wants this Expression of Self.
The necessity and importance of Self Expression is what I think that the 70th maxim in Thomas’ ‘Sayings of Jesus’ is actually saying. It goes, #70. Jesus said, “If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not have that within you, what you do not have within you [will] kill you.”
I would add to the second sentence, ‘If you do not have that [from] within you, what you do not have [from] within you will destroy you’.
Here I use ‘have’ as having it outside you in the physical, hence I read this maxim as ‘what is ‘within’ you must be able to ‘get out’ of you, ‘or else’. I have also seen another interpretation of the 2nd sentence shown as ‘if you are ‘producing’ something that is not from within, what you produce may kill you’.
This is not an ‘easy’ saying, as is true of many of Jesus’ ‘sayings’ in Thomas. [There is a lot of discussion about this saying and what it means on the Internet. There is also information about this in Novak (2005).]
This fulfillment from ‘getting it outside from within you so that you can have it’ is what I refer to as true self-esteem (TSE); it could also be called True Self Expression.
Notice also the similarity between finding peace and rest and our RIP of death. We are prone to think that the only way to find rest and peace is in death, but if we can find it while we are alive, that could feel very good.
Your body is your instrument. (2.41)
Being alive on earth with a body is rather like being given an instrument that you want to learn to play. So, it’s as if you have this unknown thing that you have to get to know. You get to work out what it is, and what it does and doesn’t do. Then you get to work out how to play it and practice using it (not all of us are good at this). Then you get to work out what music you want to play. Then you get to work out who you want to play it with. And then you get to be part of this great musical event; a wonderful symphony which you will love. But, it’s also true that it’s up to you. And it is also true that every single person has their own unique ‘voice’/instrument.
Creativity. (2.42)
Our Creativity is very important to us.
- It is heartfelt; we are passionate about it. The heart centre is the point where our upper half meets our lower half.
- We need to say it (express it) and we want to say it. (Doing so may not necessarily be easy or straightforward, however.) This expression is where our ‘needs’ and our ‘wants’ come together, which is also part of God’s Design. What we need to do and what we truly want to do are in fact exactly the same; fancy that! Thus, the advice for looking for what you truly and most ‘heart-felt-ly’ wish to do is good advice. Look for Desire and Delight.
- You will feel as if you have ‘come home’ when you do it.
- You will ‘grow’ in this, as will others, because it supports life; there is love here, and
- As you ‘grow’ you will change; your Expression changes you as you grow into further expression.
And this does not stop. You will not find the end of it. Neither has God.
Plain old ‘self-expression’. (2.43)
We are in fact kind of aware that ‘self-expression’ is important, as is ‘having a voice’ although I wonder how much all of this is about unconsciously feeling as if we have neither voice nor expression in this day and age (see next part). Thus, we think that if we voice our opinions, we are expressing ourselves, but what we are expressing is our outself, which is not our Self at all, or only a very small part. We hope that if we express this stuff, we may be able to stop the ‘racket’ in our head of all our unexpressed ‘stuff’, but it doesn’t, and we get no peace. It simply adds to the gossip, speculation, opinion, Facebook, twitter, sports talk, (’feed them bread and circuses’) and immense media ‘noise’ overwhelm. We don’t grow; it’s just ‘racket’ and it sends us deaf to our InSelf and ‘the other’.
What happens when our mind is disconnected from the body? (2.44)
Our emotions are our rudders in life. They are there for us to steer toward what gives the body pleasure and/or what warms the heart, while steering away from those things that tighten the body and reduce its pleasure and satisfaction. If there is disconnection from the body’s sensations and emotions, we may be able to disconnect from the unpleasant aspects, but will also be disconnected from the good things that make us human and thus we are unable to steer successfully in life. Since society considers that being disconnected from our body is generally a good thing to be, especially for men, we get into a lot of trouble, which see below.
What happens when we don’t heal the internal split/gap between our outself and our InSelf? The answer is normal human life; good, bad and indifferent and wondering if there is any point to it all.
Conclusion for Chapter 2. (2.45)
This has been a chapter about the descriptions and definitions of the mental ‘nuts and bolts’ of our psyche within us humans that we tend to take for granted and rarely look at closely. But whenever we tackle any endeavour we need to know what our equipment is, and how it works and what it can do, as well as its limitations and advantages. The better we understand our equipment, the more we are able to use it properly for our own purposes.
It’s no good just dismissing bits of ourselves because we don’t like them or we think they’re a liability. They are there for good reasons, and we stay hamstrung if we don’t know how to use them.
The primary reason to understand about humans having a conscious and an unconscious is to be able to understand how this business of ‘the other’ works – that each of us is not singular, but a duality with two ends and a gap or split between them. It is this business of making these two into a ‘one’, ie, Merging to a Unity, that is the key to learning to give Life, which I argue is what we humans want to learn to do.
In particular, our mainstream religions simply have never understood how the human psyche is built, as well as being highly prone to ignoring the body and the emotions, which I argue belong to the soul. These problems at the very heart of our religions are calling us to rethink what we wish to ‘believe in’ and value.
In Sum for Chapters 1 and 2. (2.46)
The last few sections have been discussing the structure of your mind as a part or spark of God, with particular emphasis on (some of) what is held in the unconscious, and there is a great deal, including our comprehension of God, Life and our InSelf.
I have said that the unconscious drives the show. This is mainly because we don’t believe this at all, and tend to think that since it isn’t real it’s not doing anything. Wrong. (Just because we can’t measure it doesn’t mean it isn’t real.) Life is serving you by mirroring your unconscious for you to be able to ‘real-ize’ what is in your unconscious.
In the last few chapters I have argued that regardless of whether you consider it real or unreal, the Unconscious does know…
- why you are here,
- how you got to here,
- what you are supposed to be doing with your life,
- what you need to know,
- what others are doing in your life; their part in your ‘great play’,
- what you have done before, and
- what you really want/need and are looking for.
As in, the basic outline of your life.
Hence, you can ask your unconscious if you want to know.
But you do need to ask nicely, which means that you need to develop some sort of relationship with it in the first place. If you are busy despising such things, you will not be able to make friends with it. Nobody likes being despised.
Considering that it is not there at all and/or completely ignoring it stops relationship in the first place, and so does Blame, which I deal with after we have looked at some more properties of Energy.
So, now we turn to Energy which is what we come into.