III. Inspired Individual

 It’s not what you look at that matters. It’s what you see. Henry David Thoreau

Neuro-gravitational energies are ancient aspects of the human psyche. We can even see Pain and Self-deception alive in our canine companions if we take the time to observe them closely, especially those who have been traumatized and wired to some survival adaptation, driven to protective behavior by distress that lives in their bodies. But I imagine that the Abnormal is uniquely human, at first coming into our world in certain families, societies, tribal networks, when someone achieved extraordinary status, “How important am I! Do you know who I am?” Perhaps this is just an extension of the self-referential child who struts about, “See what I can do!” Or perhaps it’s more primitive. As active in Neanderthals, Denisovans, Erectus, etcetera. Or older still, shown in the leader (male) of a Gorilla group that attacks for territory, kills, or maims and takes possession of new sex partners.^]

Having inner divisions (Abnormal, Pain and Self-deception) in disagreement is not a hopeless condition. There’s a solution to the constant distraction, and the solution needs to be sought in the therapeutic Work. What solution? What is it? I think it’s a more evolved aspect of humanity, an aspect that’s not so much trying to be smart and significant, it is truly the only capable driver, the only driving force powerful enough to keep us from the ledge. It transforms the drama and has the potential to heal us.

I base this statement on my practice-based evidence (not evidenced-based practice); I believe that the only way to ease recurring insanity and ultimately grow with intention is to locate another force in our psyche, the push rather than a sucking pull. You know by now that I call this solution Inspiration, the Self inspired. It’s inherently creative. It’s the whole, whereas these other characters that show up (like arguing family members in a cramped van) are fragments, often easily type-cast and predictable once you learn what to look for.

Rather than being the mind in denial (Abnormal), or an Addict chasing anything that’s stimulating and distracting (sex and drugs and rock and roll) in a desperate attempt to feel different (Self-deception); rather than the small wounded and/or desperate parts of us (Pain), when we are in this larger self, we’re grounded. We’re better able to channel energy toward what serves us and toward what serves others. Inspired, we begin to find resolutions and solutions.

In therapy sessions I’ll introduce this solution immediately. I’ll share this with clients, what I believe leads to healing and wisdom. As soon as there’s an opening, I’ll speak about it. And I share it repetitively.

But the solution is not a behavioral tool. It’s not just a quick cure to solve a problem. It’s not a cognitive skill. It’s not even a solution in the way we have been taught to think of this. I’m not handing out workbooks or lecturing on a series of procedural steps, like a recipe that results in a predictable and delicious desert.

That seems to be a disappointment for many.

Come to Life

Give up defining yourself – to yourself or to others.

You won’t die. You will come to life.

And don’t be concerned with how others define you.

When they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it’s their problem.”

Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth

 

The solution (not a fix) I recommend to clients is “come to life,” the way I believe Tolle means this. This solution can be called a state of presence, a spacious and surrendered awareness. It’s right-hemisphere leaning, as McGilchrist writes in The Master and Its Emissary. “The right hemisphere . . . yields a world of individual, changing, evolving, interconnected, implicit, incarnate, living beings within the context of the lived world, but in the nature of things never fully graspable, always imperfectly known—and to this world it exists in a relationship of care.” ^]

Inspiration

We can name it the True Self in contrast with egoic form. Some therapies have something like it in mind, and many spiritual traditions refer to it:

For example:

• Internal Family Systems (IFS) calls this simply the Self.

• Buddhists refer to something like it in their notion of Buddha nature.

• The structural family systems therapy model refers to the differentiated self.

• In Hinduism they refer to the Brahman.

• It seems reflected in the depiction of the Muses in Greek and Roman myths.

• It has been named the Secondary Imagination by Samuel Coleridge, philosopher, and poet from the English Romantic period.

• It may be what is called the Wise Mind in Dialectic Behavioral Therapy.

• Donald Winnicott, in describing concepts of the False Self versus the True Self, said that only the True Self is real and can be creative. The False Self results in a feeling of being unreal.

I’m obviously not the first to have identified a larger state of being (larger than the ego). Here, I have been referring to this mind state as Inspired, Inspiration, or the Inspired Self only because I want to highlight the creative impulse in it and the spontaneity. This energy allows unhindered freedom of expression. It innervates in the sense it changes the way we perceive. It peels back layers. It unfolds the world.

Not Typecast

On our stage, Inspiration is of a different order and dimension from Fallen World characters who show up. In contrast to them, Inspiration is an undefinable energy that permeates the theatre. It may be played as a character in our imagination, but it’s beyond embodiment and momentary appearance. It’s an entity that is always larger than any mask. If we dare, we might call this a transpersonal or spiritual reality.

I remind myself often of what Richard Schwartz has asserted; there must be “a preponderance of Self in the room” for healing to take place. One might hope that as we explore our Heart-dramas we could access this energy consistently and bring this force into what the drama portrays as the problem.

Keep this idea of “a preponderance of Self in the room” in mind as you Work. If you can connect with Inspiration often enough, then you can deal with moment-to-moment drama moment to moment, by introspection and reflection. You can attend our inner theatre and better recognize when and how you externalize these conflicts and project them on others.

Essential Identity

The psyche is the starting point of all human experience, and all the knowledge we have gained eventually leads back to it. The psyche is the beginning and end of all cognition.

            Jung, Mysterium Conjunctions, Chapter 1, The Unconscious

The Inspired Self is an essential identity, so it resists being contained in language. It’s not a behavior or an activity, not a habit, not a job or even a career, not a role or an obligation or an expectation. Putting labels or even words on our identity is a fool’s errand from the start. As soon as we apply a name, we have probably obscured as much as we have revealed.

But we know it when we’re aware enough to see it. In any given Heart-drama, we might cast this force of our True nature as quite different masks, portrayed through a wide range and diverse assortment of imagery. For example, the Inspired Self has shown up as loving dogs, as horses, grandmothers or grandfathers, counselors, beloved schoolteachers, spiritual entities, religious figures such as Jesus or Buddha, intimate friends. Many deceased people have appeared who, regardless of their exact roles in life, shared one thing in common; they were able to, at some important moment in time, remain loving, open, and unconditional.

Getting Our Self Together:

            Without Contraries, there is no progression. Wiliam Blake

Polarities are held together by Inspiration, striving always to make present the world of our experience, while knowing that it is infinite and cannot be represented fully. What does that mean “held together?” It does not require us to perceive good people on both sides. In fact, we have a responsibility to prioritize, to assign responsibility. Held together in Inspiration allows us to draw from the dark and the light, to think clearly and to feel deeply, to be in the astonishing world and to be connected to many aspects of the inner landscape, to be inside our bodies, the interiors and to be present to what is outside, the Beautiful and the ugliness that nudges up beside us, to notice what is upside down and what is upright—allowing us to be an ethical force and to re-member that we are in a greater world and to see what has happened to us in the past in order to expand the Heart and to embrace what we share with all living things.

In later chapters, the central polarities we struggle with in a Fallen World will be explored. These are Inside-out and Upside-down.