Superego reframed as The Quest for Social Place

NYE

There is an organization dedicated to initiating men into manhood called Illuman (see https://illuman.org/ ). It was started by Father Richard. In 2019, I attended one of their retreats called the Men’s Rites of Passage. (MROP).

Deef

NYE

Yes, this recent interview clip from Wim Hof describes that sort of adventure type bonding experience, with possible initiatory flavor of going into trauma and coming out with connection to ancestors.

13m01s

Wim: then you hear the biggest yelling of releasing trauma and i go to the ancestors and everything because i know how to uh open up the closed up proteins

Jordan: there’s an old mythological idea that the hero has to rescue his his sleeping father from the abyss from a terrible monster
and i construed that in the book as the ability to awaken sleeping ancestral forces likely coded genetically as a consequence of voluntary exposure to stress

The missing part of the initiation is part 3, our society is lacking elders, embodied wisdom holders and shamans who help guide collectives of people through journeying adventures vs just autobiographical narratives. The elders also play a role of welcoming committee which helps integrate and welcome those ancestral downloads into new roles for self and society.

Grannon’s instagram just posted a clip of shadow work, also describing the start of hero’s journey. Voluntarily going into trauma and unknown parts of your unconscious.
6m14s

Though when Grannon talks about your ego, that’s likely more your superego with the inner voice. Your ego is technically the mechanism that manages between conscious and unconscious, so it’s more of a bridge builder, or sorting mechanism. Not so much a constant voice or harsh judge energy. Judgment would be from guilt, pointing towards superego moral mechanism. Ego would be reality testing focused, evaluating and sorting through what’s real and unreal, and how to hold that paradox (and cognitive dissonance) of two opposing truths.

So, theoretically we could create structures and environments conducive for personal journey and adventures into the shadow, or for Wim Hof using physical stress and trauma exercises and challenges to bring people face to face with their limits, and that’s an invitation for shadow ancestral wisdom to be activated (initiations). That’s a more accurate portrayal of hero’s myth and journey. Watching a Hollywood movie, where you imagine yourself as the protagonist, is a sanitized way of feeling the risk and dangers of hero facing inner demons, but it’s too far of a distance to genuinely activate inner initiation. It could maybe work as mental prep though.

We are drawn to be spectators of other’s hero journeys; though that might also be our innate elder welcoming committee mechanism that’s also not integrated and structured into modern society.

Deef

NYE
I have run across Richard Rohr from enneagram, non-duality and some interviews, but I didn’t know that he had inspired/setup this illuman group, which seems to have been running for some time.
How does it’s membership structure work? other men’s groups I’ve explored start with a paywall or other barriers of an retreat and stuff.

I will have to dig into Rohr’s descriptions around initiation a bit more. On the surface he descriptions are on point, very extensive and feel quite accurate. Though I’m still skeptical about the 2nd level initiation of embodied elders. (and he even describes false elders or pretend initiations).

For example. Jordan Peterson describes how hard it was for him to mentally figure out the hero’s myth, but that’s not an embodied ‘lived experience’, which Wim Hof seems to be closer to. But we as an audience still easily dismiss or doubt Wim’s claims even with his scientifically evaluated feats of physical accomplishment, not just that, he’s helped others duplicate similar feats.

Another way to frame the 2nd level or layer of initiation is that midwifery or feminine flavor of initiation, sometimes described as heroine’s or mother’s journey path. Skills of holding space & containment and nurturing deeper self-trust and inner wisdom.

Fear of Abandonment is turned into space, liminality, comfort with aloneness.
Emotional Neediness is turned into intuition, soul’s seed, and embodied inner wisdom/knowing.

Baby first clings to mother as external object and source of inner world (aloneness & void) and also is source of intimacy and emotional needs (literally feeding off breast milk for food). What if emotional neediness is a part of us yearning to connect to deeper innate emotions which connect deep inner wisdom, and deep calm?

NYE

Here’s how Rohr depicts a man’s spiritual journey, “From Wild Man to Wise Man,” by Richard Rohr.

Deef

I stumbled upon this unique academic paper comparing western & Japanese concepts of self and development maps a while ago. I don’t recall how I found it, but it’s pretty amazing. It’s by Noriko Kawanaka and 3 parts from 2004, 2005 and 2006 at https://shoin.repo.nii.ac.jp/?action=repository_opensearch&creator=Noriko+Kawanaka

So this is a nice visual that can describe attachment disorder, Baby is the ego, and caregiver is unconscious.

Attachment trauma surrounds 2 poles

Anxious/Needy Abandonment terror = drive to remain in unity with mother
Dismissive/Avoidant Blame = drive to overpower unconscious/caregiver (false self as fake independence)

Then the path to individuation or healthy ego with 3 themes:

End result is clear boundary between conscious & unconscious, and ego sense of self primarily in consciousness.

Encounter with your internalized caregivers - face your inner demons (devouring great mother)
Rescue your father from hell, reconnect with ancestor/soul energy
Come up from the darkness, Adult initiated and welcomed back as hero who gets the princess, start a family?

This mother is attempting to swallow the hero and bring him back into chaotic unity with unconsciousness. Typically, the negative, destructive mother is represented as a dragon, which the hero must confront and conquer in order to obtain independence from unconsciousness.
The ego, after surviving the dangerous confrontation with the Great Mother and triumphing, becomes the center of consciousness, as symbolized by the hero, who successfully acquires the treasure and/or the captive woman. This is shown in the theme of marriage.
With the birth of the hero and his slaying of the dragons, the conscious mind is successfully separated from unconsciousness, and a clear boundary between unconsciousness and consciousness is established.
In this way, the ego (symbolized by the hero) has achieved individuality or the personal level of the self.

This hero’s journey would be the masculine initiation of separate sense of individual self.

She contrasts Japanese collective sense of self and localized much differently. This might be harder to grasp, as it’s just weird.

But, I identify better with the left side, my sense of self is centered more in my unconscious, and not in a constant autobiographical narrative. Inside there is a floating type feeling. This might be why I can have more capacity to stay with other’s during dissociation?

next two pictures compare western communication vs Japanese.

Everybody tends to be located within their self and often lost in their own thought.
vs
Japanese collective self center of attention is focused on context and environment.

Sometimes I have described having an ability to merge with the field, or merge with unconsciousness. That’s an ability to put the center of my consciousness outside of my body, into a group, into another person, or merge with just raw emotion.

Upside is that it allows me to get direct information from the unconscious, or other’s first person perspective. Downside is that I can get lost in the process, and if I get personal attacks and behavior change demands, my individual self can get overwhelmed easily.

This graphic compares western hierarchy vs Japanese systemic structure, I would’ve preferred the triangle to look more like a network or more circular.

So western self work tends to be top-down, but trauma work tends to need to start at the body so that’s more bottom up.
But from a holistic perspective all 3 layers are interconnected, so it’s about balance and coordination of the 3. So attention is often placed on what’s missing.

In part 3 she uses the 10 Ox-Herding pictures from Zen buddhism to illustrate the japanese model of self development, it’s more of a cycle and process that’s never ending.

She describes the last 3 stages of emptiness, nature & in the world, as the end result of initiation of collective feminine self. Maybe that could be translated into 3 skills of midwifery?

Holding Space
Natural Wisdom
Relationships

Deef

Deef Then the path to individuation or healthy ego with 3 themes:

Maybe the hero myth doesn’t work anymore?? It’s part of the age of pisces, dueling fish & water, which is sort of reaching it’s crescendo and end?

Sloppy quick google search result:

The Age of Pisces is over. Pisces values are being wiped out, causing unprecedented change and upheaval in our lifetime. And we’re not done yet. The Piscean values of money, power and control are being replaced.

They do not resonate with the values of the new great cycle, the Age of Aquarius. Those values are love, brotherhood, unity and integrity.
http://www.2012-spiritual-growth-prophecies.com/age-of-pisces.html

The hero myth model was man separates from mother, goes into underworld, fights and slaughters the dragon, and then gets the riches and the princess. Instead of being trapped under devouring mother’s power, man and the masculine overpowers the feminine and marries.

Isn’t this model sort of using the feminine and embodied women as a scapegoat? And what we’re dealing with now is that women have taken over the hero role and now getting even, their dragon is patriarchy, or the hundreds/thousands of years of scape-goating of woman and feminine?

Their strategy is sorta just flipping the hierarchy over but without much details on what comes next. I’d argue that’s continuing the hero myth, just the dragon is the system now. But where’s the treasure and marriage afterwards, if patriarchy is demolished?

Maybe the new way out that matches age of Aquarius pointers is more towards unity & integrity. Instead of dominance, power and slaying of the dragon. It might be more about taming, integrating and internalizing the dragon and demons within?? Owning one’s capacity for evil, violence, and viciousness. But instead of killing, subduing or overpowering it (which is a trap, as what you disown, owns you). It’s now a path of becoming more whole.

Now it’s about going from the dualistic framing of good vs evil… and into the land of paradox… where it’s about holding the truths between two opposites, and finding more integrative, larger context, 3rd way?

The hero myth is an endless cycle of violence, slay one dragon, get the treasure and princess (validation cookies), but then it’s just onto the next dragon… or even without a dragon, the mind will create a new dragon out of one’s own shadow. Because the hero needs a dragon to slay, otherwise hero has nothing to do, and slowly ceases to exist.

The hero contains the innate human thirst for violence with a continuous and endless series of dragon slaying. Modern parlance with capitalism is this constant consumption for growth, progress, and development. Eventually we will run out of resources, or cheap energy gets used up.

Taming one’s inner dragon is a different type of containment. Instead of externalizing it into a scapegoat (mother, feminine, mother nature/earth). It’s making space and integrating that inner dragon and thirst for violence.. redirecting, channeling and harvesting that raw inner fury, into a precise targeted flame

Going from sloppy orange/red flame, to blue flame.

Not unlike how humans discovered fire, and have refined that technology into so many domains of existence. This whole computer technology infrastructure is powered by electricity and isn’t that all just more precise and refined fire?

and what’s the difference between weak flame and hotter blue flame?? regulated and precise air… getting that air/fuel mixture to just the right level of efficiency..

What does air represent psychologically??? Space and spirit.

Holding space along with channeling/redirecting that inner fuel/fire/passion/fury, but at an alchemical balance that gets more blue flame vs. messy yellow flame.

Emotional literacy has to go beyond just managing flashbacks, now it’s about opening up more emotional flow and pure essence of raw emotions. Getting closer to pure unadulterated emotions to just ‘energy to evoke motion’, that raw creative life force. Then combined with air and space, and that dragon fire can burn through anything with super efficiency.. Maybe laser cutting like light sabre levels for highest levels of mastery.

Deef

Another old resource that captures tricky aspect of western sense of self, or maybe the limits of hero myth. Maybe it also needs some balance from feminine side or collective self.
''Me + We = Mwe"

Self-esteem as violence

One of the things I’ve learned from writers like James Alison, a theologian deeply informed by Rene Girard, is how rivalry is intimately associated with our self-concept. Specifically, most of us create, build up and maintain our self-esteem through rivalry with others. Our sense of self-worth is created and supported by some contrast and opposition to others. I am a self in that I am over and against others. Better. Smarter. More righteous. More successful. More authentic. More humane. Less hoodwinked. More tolerant. More insightful. More kind. More something.

In short, selfhood is inherently rivalrous. Rivalry creates the self. Rivalry is the fuel of self-esteem and self-worth.

Which means that the self is inherently violent. The definition of the self is an act of aggression and violence. To be “Richard Beck” is to engage in violence against others, if not physically than affectionally. From sunrise to sunset every thought I have about myself is implicated in acts of comparison, judgement, and evaluation of others, allowing me to create a sense of self and then fill that self with feelings of significance and worthiness.

And when that definition of self is a false self based on shared fantasy. The constant rewriting of that sense in pursuit of narcissistic supply, creates a constant loop of all interactions as power plays, defining the self is externalized, in a repetition compulsion of kaleidoscopic type of false self (maladaptive ego function)

And this also applies to those with low self-worth, those who define themselves negatively in comparison with others. The violence here is simply internalized, directed toward the self rather than toward others. But at the end of the day it’s the same mechanism, you are either winning or losing the rivalry, having either high or low self-esteem, but in either case the self is still being defined by violence.

This seems to fit excessive inner critic dynamic, common with codependents and the masses.

Things like blogging, given its nature, can bring these rivalrous feelings to the surface making them more transparent (if you are self-reflective). But it’s just a symptom of a deeper sickness, that the self in inherently rivalrous and that self-esteem is a feeling of significance achieved over against others.

He’s talking about the dangers of blogging here, with social media platforms I’d argue this effect is multiplied many fold. In effect the internet and digital communication allows and encourages shadow material to rise to the surface. It’s just that people are just acting it out and projecting it outwards; instead of working to integrate it.

We feel good about ourselves by stepping on the heads of others, physically or psychologically.

Boot lightly resting on the throat, is all codependents know. It feels like home?

In fact, this may be the best definition of “original sin”: Being a self makes you a violent person.

Is the hero path inherently violent? Are there other archetypes that can be developed, or seen as different journeys to self?

How do you become a non-violent, non-rivalrous human being and person?

I think the self has to die. That’s what the bible seems to think. There must be a letting go, a surrendering, an emptying of the self. All efforts to define the self by acts of justification, the accumulation of evidence and data that the self is significant, have to be renounced.

Phrased positively, the self must be experiencing as gift, as an experience of gratuitous and surprising grace.
Only there, in the midst of grace, can the neurotic knot at the root of our violence be loosened and undone.

Path of surrender, emptying and humbled by grace. That can match the initiation of feminine self.
Space (emptying), inner wisdom (surrender), and relationships (as grace/gifts).

source: - http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2013/09/self-esteem-as-violence.html

Deef

Just finished audiobook of Die Wise by Stephen Jenkinson for a hospice volunteer bookgroup, which totally confused everyone else who likely subscribe to some level of toxic positivity. Also likely haven’t been initiated into personhood or adulthood.

This is an excerpt towards the end on initiation. But when cultures don’t have formal initiations anymore, then it’s trauma and mayhem that are an alternative initiation process, or for childhood trauma it’s an early initiation that’s started but then society banishes you for owning and sharing your trauma too much. So it’s an initiation gone by, as containment is lost or invaded (no space holders & adult witnesses)

The teaching that is in initiation … shows us that the end of childhood is the beginning of personhood, and that childhood ends with a deliberate, purposeful, choreographed, culturally endorsed exposure to death.
It is the beginning of the life you seek, and it kicks in just when you want to begin taking up a place in the world and when you want to lose yourself in someone else.
What is true is that you will die. It has always been true, but initiation turns dying from a feared thing into a known thing.

… It gives initiated people some skill at suffering by making the stories of their lives and deaths purposeful stories, and it starts early in life.
The news of your death brings the rest of your life toward you, it forges kinship to go along with identity, and it is news that young people deserve as a part of their adolescence.
We deserve that kind of understanding of life early in our lives, but we do not often get it then. We almost never get it by careful orchestration.

Mayhem is more often our teacher of the bigger things.
We could change it from trauma and loss and therapy and depression into tempering and emotional intelligence and spiritual maturity and wisdom.
We could make our way of dying into our way of person making.
…
Dying isn’t the end of true things—which is what most people mean when they grudgingly admit that dying is part of life—or the euchre of true things. It is one of the true things, that is all. One of the eternal verities, an obligation we have to the life that has been given to us.
When dying is understood as justice, mercy, a sign of the compassion that is stitched into the fabric of life itself, that understanding is a midwife that can bring us into a world-loving, community-serving love of life.
That is its power. The news of our dying is the initiation into life that we are seeking.

Stephen Jenkinson. “Die Wise A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul”

Deef

Revisiting The devouring mother archetype, and maybe later a balanced approach or way out to transcending to ‘the great mother’

Back to this visual which simplifies the conflict between devouring mother and emerging ego:

So this is a nice visual that can describe attachment disorder, Baby is the ego, and caregiver is unconscious.

Attachment trauma surrounds 2 poles

Anxious/Needy Abandonment terror = drive to remain in unity with mother

Dismissive/Avoidant Blame = drive to overpower unconscious/caregiver (false self as fake independence)

Jordan Peterson with God of War examples
4m15s

Jordan Peterson & Russell Brand on the Devouring Mother
4m43s

Jordan Peterson on Overprotective Parents
5m34s

…with a mostly single child landscape then you’re gonna over protect.
and then that ethos starts to permeate the schools & higher education institutions, as those children mature and then that all reinforces it.
Not good.
It’s not obvious what to do about it either.
Because, if it is driven by demographics, it’s a much more intractable problem than we think.

The worst thing you can do for someone who’s anxious is over protect them, it makes them worse.

The clinical literature is clear what you do with people who are hyperanxious is gradually expose them with their voluntary consent to increasingly threatening situations.

That cures them.

It’s exactly the opposite of what all the mental health professionals are trying to do to produce safe spaces…

This over-protective parenting streak feels like similar argument that Grannon’s recently making that society’s problem is more BPD vs Narcissism. It’s more chaotic destructive feminine that’s overpowering and flooding society. Maybe that’s even shadow work essentially, the unconscious is using social media and digital communication, to flood and over-take conscious bodies, forcing them to act-out all the messy and disowned parts of the shadow.

11m

Real life example of a mother’s who’s totally self centered with her devouring smothering with her kids, and her adult son who’s been programmed to prioritize her feelings at the cost of his autonomy and voice.

NYE

Regarding your question about Illuman, its a very loose affiliation. There’s a national organization and I think it has one employee. In the mid-Atlantic area there’s DC Illuman, which is independently incorporated. Aside from being male, there are no membership requirements are no membership dues. Its primary event is the Men’s Rites of Passage (MROP), a 5-day retreat. In addition, there are periodic (weekly or monthly) councils of men that meet for meditation, a reading and sharing based on that reading. But again, these councils all operate independently and there only real connection with the organization may be the use of a shared Zoom account. The men who have gone through a MROP have a shared understanding of some of this stuff like the need to die to the false self, and willingness to share in an authentic way.

I’m not sure what you (or Rohr) mean by second level initiation. Through Illuman I have met some elders, very wise men who lead the MROPs.

Deef

Been meaning to get back to this thread, a recent Tentacle Croissant had some very good observations about American culture, with Richard describing it like people living in a movie and feeling like a camp, ongoing project, and prison..

But I’ll try to get back in here sometime soon..

In meantime… this part 1 just came out from Academy of Ideas… is exploring similar territory of this thread
11m11s

Fryek

hmm… interesting… resonate with becoming “manly” in order to attract women to whom I then hand over complete power… becoming an immasculate slave.

Deef

Jordan Peterson has a pointer of “Nature is what selects, and Women reflect nature and are sexual selectors.” So men are born with innate insecurity of needing to be selected by women & nature.

Camille Paglia critiquing ‘pathological niceness’ that modern feminists & liberal culture is promoting as the ideal
2m

Fresh off instagram presses.. Richard’s take on criminalizing masculinity… some traffic background noise, but that shows it’s recorded live and raw..

5m45s

Deef

These are some insights around social media addiction & trying to find ‘social place’ in this new ever forming digital landscape, with AI algorithms as the organizing structure.

Morning insights on social media and information overload era.
Medium is the message and algorithms are setting up the reward structure. Who gets promote & seen most is based on certain behaviors.

Initial 1 2 punch of the rabbit hole dynamic:

Click bait attention capture “Hey, look over here, behind this door is…”
Stay a little longer, get lost with me, lose track of time (don’t leave the platform, I stop growing if people leave)

Time distortion is key, instead of rewarding art that captures the timeless divine in a moment. The way we we’re hardwired to be in awe of beauty.
Algorithm’s reverse it, takes a moment of your attention, then collects that with everyone else’s for mass time suck.

Endlessly searching and lost in time is the lingering feeling vs Spiritual awe of beauty.

Numbed out anesthetic vs transcendent aesthetic beauty, nature, art (lost in love).

Deef

Excerpt from interview titled “Deschooling Dialogues: On Initiation, Trauma and Ritual” with Francis Weller

in any true initiatory process, there’s three things that happen.

First, there’s a severance from the world that you once knew.

Then there’s a radical alteration in your sense of identity.

And then there’s a profound realization that you can never go back to the world that was.

In true initiation, you don’t want to go back to the world that was. Initiation is meant to escort you into a wider, more inclusive, participatory, sacred cosmos.

Trauma, on the other hand, has the inverse effect. The same three things happen. There’s a severance from the world. There’s a radical alteration of the identity and in a sense, you cannot go back to what was.

But what trauma does to the psyche is it reduces it down to a singularity.

I become cut off and severed from that sense of being engaged with a wider and more encompassing sense of identity. I become isolated in the cosmos. If you talk to anybody who’s gone through trauma, that’s the effect that it has on the body and on the psyche.

You are torn out of that sense of being a part of the cosmos.

What distinguishes these two things is initiation, what I call the contained encounter with death.
The containment was provided by the community, by the elders, by the ancestors, by the rituals, by the space itself. In a sense, you are initiated into a place, not into abstraction. You are actually initiated into the ground beneath your feet. Those are the five things that provided a containment field for that encounter with death, because all initiations require some kind of encounter with death.

What I call trauma is an uncontained encounter with death. There’s nothing there holding you when that same precipice is approached. You are left basically naked, nothing holding you.
Again, you contract back into a place of survival in that moment rather than expand out into that wider, cosmological sense of being.

We don’t have those containment fields in white, western culture.

We still live through these encounters with death, which are inevitable. I often say initiation is not optional.
You don’t get to choose whether or not you’re going to be taken to these edges. You will be taken to those edges. The only thing we have to ask ourselves is what we require to make it meaningful.

And the genuine means of breakthrough happen when these containment fields are present.
If they’re not, we’re living in an ongoing traumatic field. That’s where we are right now.

Deef

I discovered this recently, from 2019… Richard has explored the idea of trauma as initiation and spiritual experiences…

Podcast version here:

Trauma as Initiation (plus Neuroplasticity)

https://podbay.fm/p/fix-cptsd-podcast-or-psychology-and-philosophy-in-narcissistic-times-with-richard-grannon/e/1595631600
47:19
We know trauma changes a person. Can it change you for the better? How it affects our neural pathways, and why neuroplasticity is important in recovery? This, and more in this episode including Q&A Session.

Not sure when Grannon stopped coaching, but this stuff from 2019 feels like he was closer to his active coaching days… the nuances of working 1-on-1 with messy situations and real people, are in these earlier talks…

Might be worth transcribing some portions of this.. and maybe some excerpts..