The deepest part of ourselves is traditionally described by words such as heart, soul, spirit, spiritual core, essence, substance etc. Some would describe this part of us as the real self, the integrated self or the intrapersonal self. I prefer the 'silent witness' 'the seer', the self as the spiritual self, and see this as the most elementary and instinctive part of being. The self differentiates us from others and the self is the part of us that remains forever the same. Body sensations change, feelings fade whilst thoughts flow by and the silent witness remains to experience all. This 'silent witness', this experiencer, the all seeing 'I', this self, is the organizing principle, it is as Chopra describes a 'field of all possibility'. Very often in therapy we as clients may begin to realise that there is more to come, as we free ourselves of the defences we manufactured to protect the child within we are now open to a new and exciting possibility. We are ready to make contact with a higher self. Also very often during ill health or emotional upheaval the individual will be on the verge of breaking out and looking for a new way of being. This Berne defined as the force for the meaning of life.
So what do we mean when we speak of spirituality? There has been much written and there are many views and interpretations. My definition is based upon other peoples research but is best defined for me as an idea of knowing the unthought known, it is something beyond language and without words a sense of timeless awareness.
When we search for the spiritual aspects of ourselves we search in a place, which is free from time and space; it is through meditation we can transcend into an awareness that is beyond the mind and body sensations. Where all is possible and nothing is necessary, where we are every where and no where at the same time. Unfortunately this idea is seen and heard in bewilderment by many who are sceptical and who listen in disbelief when it is pointed out that deep in the resources of each being is a self known as the transpersonal self, a self that is not connected with the individual personality. It is difficult at first to find and identify with what has been long lost to us, but the beginning is when we start to pay attention to the idea of there being more. I believe that when the individual moves towards the inner self, thus freeing themselves of the false self defences manufactured in order to survive in a hostile or difficult environment, then it is possible to concentrate upon why we are here and what life is really about.
In the book 'I Am That' Sri Nisargadutta Maharaj speaks of the silent witness as a forgotten attribute. "We do not notice our heart beating or liver functioning we just know that they are". The same applies to this transcendent self, just accept that it is and you will become it. This 'I am', he insists is never born and never dies. Dipach Chopra talks of paying attention to this deep power within and says that giving our attention to this 'inner self' will give us everything we ever wanted.
There are simple approaches to finding the transcendent self as Ken Wilber describes in his book 'No Boundary' He says we generally tend to see ourselves as consisting of mind and body and that the centre of self is an expanse of awareness which is detached from a personal mind or body, he says that so often the individual sees that they are the feelings, emotions, thoughts and bodily functions and that the centre is the physical centre. Wilber offers an opportunity to transcend beyond this idea with the simple statement below.
I have a body, but I am not my body. I can see and feel my body, and what can be seen and felt is not the true seer. My body may be tired or excited, sick or healthy, heavy or light, but that has nothing to do with my inward I. I have a body, but I am not my body.
I have desires, but I am not my desires. I can know my desires, and what can be known is not the true Knower. Desires come and go, floating through awareness, but they do affect my inward I. I have desires but I am not my desires.
I have emotions, but I am not my emotions. I can feel and sense my emotions and what can be felt and sensed is not the true Feeler. Emotions pass through me, but they do not affect my inward I. I have emotions but I am not emotions.
I have thoughts, but I am not my thoughts. I can know and intuit my thoughts, and what can be known is now the true Knower. Thoughts come to me and thoughts leave me, but they do not affect my inward I. I have thoughts but I am not my thoughts.
He advocates, that if you allow yourself to say this on a regular basis you will begin to recognise that it affirms the 'I am' and what remains is a pure centre of awareness, an unmoved witness of all thoughts, feelings, and emotions that exists before and beyond birth and death.
Psychotherapy How then do we begin to link this transcendent self to the every day occurrences in therapy? Rudolf Stiener in his book Beyond New Worlds denotes that those of us who have found the spiritual self should be cautious about how we pass it on. I have interpreted this to mean that for some it is safer to stay in script and frightening to change. So any professing of spirituality invites in some a defensive attitude than can seem dismissive and scathing. Spirituality I believe needs to be modelled by the therapist demonstrated without language for I have already described it as beyond words. I have mentioned that therapy is a way of expanding awareness and identity and we must do this in order to dis-identify from the false self or ego that is left. In order to know who we really are we must break from the identity or as Wilber puts it break from the exclusive attachment to the persona. When we break we then are free to identify a new and broader identity of the transcendent self. When we identify with the silent witness, the seer, we can let go of personal problems, worries and concerns that go with the personal self. We can watch ourselves, be witness to the struggles of the mind and body without needing to solve, change or manifest a cure thus we can accept life in each moment rather than struggle against it. Wilber talks of us as moving through several levels towards this spiritual self, starting from the persona level where we identify ourselves from the narrow concept of the mind, alienating any shadow self or unwanted aspects of the psyche. Then on the next level we identify with the ego and mind which is only a small facet of our identity. On a deeper level the sense of self may identity with the whole organism, now seeing ourselves as one facet of the universe, and finally we find true identity when we are at one with the universe, seeing not just the self as our organism, but as all of creation. Thus we see that the total organism, the universe holds no boundary, the individual, environment, body and aspects of psyche appear external, foreign and not self and we can see that all are one with the universe.
As I have looked to link spirituality with TA and the structure of personality I recognize that the individuals need to change is the first step towards awareness that then can take us towards the shadow or transcendent self within. In Transactional Analysis we say that the motivation to change comes from the free Child Ego State. It is the first step the individual makes towards awareness. At this stage there is an urge to improve the way we live our lives, the question 'who am I and what am I doing here' emerges during this early phase. My sense is that this is the silent witness's call to be recognized. This early motivation from the Child makes sense because it is as children that we recognize with basic simplicity that we are not what we seem. Children ask questions like 'If you were not my parents would I still be me?' 'Was I me before I was born?' These simple questions gets submerged in the building of our personality and our defences. The questions are often dealt with in haphazard ways by parents because they themselves have lost sight of their silent self and may answer from a body mind concept.
Throughout childhood and the pressures of our environment we can lose sight of ourselves because of the need to find love and attachment in security. So maybe the secret of our true identity lies within the realms of the Child. Reaching the lost child within and reclaiming that innocence and spontaneity will, I believe, take you towards the silent witness. Throughout our lives we learn to prove or show ourselves in a variety of ways, we demonstrate existence through what we see, touch, taste, hear and feel. We make sense of the world by making it material. Often unconsciously we build a frame of reference upon which to live life and until we find that inner spiritual self we merely live life in script, a cardboard cut-out, living in a shop window, like a tailors dummy. Acting out life, aware of the world's eyes upon us. How we sit stand look and speak will be on the mind, on guard, too often fearful of rejection by others, offending someone, terrified of making mistakes, being found out shamed and caught out in guilt. Each tangled in the belief that the world happens to us and that we are not in control of our lives. The word fate holds such mysterious connotations and by using it we can hand responsibility for ourselves and our destiny over to this mysterious phenomenon.
What joy and bliss to be free of the shackles of defences freeing the child within that built them in order to survive in their world. Observing the persona functioning, all sensations passing and changing while the seer sees and knows that all of that is only an experience and our lives are just an experience. Let me clarify this for you, imagine for a moment that you are standing in the centre of infinity. You as the centre of your universe look around your world at this moment in time and see who is in it with you. Those closest to you, those you work with etc. Now still in the centre of your world see yourself interacting with these others. With all the emotions and physical interactions you experience whilst with them. Everything you do and say will influence what you get back. Everything curves back on you; you are making your world, relationships, society, and work. Much of what happens in your world will be built upon your old frame of reference, that is, your expectations, your inner responses and how you control your environment to give you back just what you expect. Remember when we manufactured this frame of reference it was to protect us from the early environment we made decisions in order to assist us fit in. This frame of reference or persona thinks it is the real self but it is only a false self-defence. So here you are creating your world. Now for a moment see yourself as having the world in you. You are now the creator of your world. In order to see this more fully; imagine that all those in your world are there because of you. You are the world right now. See all of those others interacting with you and each other and imagine your world as it is. Now take yourself out of the world. No! Do not imagine yourself dead because then they would still be revolving around your having existed and be dealing with the loss of you, just simply remove yourself from the centre of the your universe as if you had never been. What happens to all those others? You are no longer there so they are no longer there either in any physical form. You are not in the world your world is in you.
You are given the gifts of the gods; you create your reality according to your beliefs. Yours is the creative energy that makes your world. There are no limitations to the self except those you believe in. (Jane Roberts)
If I am to live my life in a spiritual way then I will accept that every thing I do will have consequences. I am making my world happen moment to moment, if I greet the world angrily then I will be greeted with fear or anger. If I am confused in my world then I will create confusion around me, if I see myself as stupid then whatever happens around me will somehow reinforce my stupidity. If I act arrogantly towards others and push them away I will stand-alone and probably reinforce my expectation that no one loves me. If I have the urge to take care of others is it because I need to be taken care of or do I end up reinforcing my early frame of reference that no one cares for me? If you were abused as children then invariably you may expect to be abused or in fact act in an abusive way towards others, protecting yourself before they get you again. When we go through life guarding against fear or hurt we create a situation or world were we get what we expect so the aim of therapy must be to maintain this belief, but change the attitude, thus the world we create for ourselves will be a perfectly loving one, where we are at one with each other and the universe.
Wilber says that 'as we move towards the transpersonal level we leave behind familiarity and common sense orientations to our worlds and ourselves. For we are entering the world beyond and above'. In order to experience this transcendent self one must take disciplined time to hold with oneself. A minimum of five to fifteen minutes a day of meditation gradually building up on the time using a simple mantra will bring calmness and understanding of what lies beyond this personal existence. I believe that you will move towards a longing to spend more time observing your thoughts and emotions from a comfortable observatory inside, being the silent witness will help you understand a deeper meaning to your existence and give you a calmness and clear understanding of your purpose, and as claimed earlier a clearer understanding of yourself as a field of all possibility. Old urgencies will disappear and you will transcend space and time which in my own experience gives release from painful problems, tensions and anxieties that might otherwise fill my time. From this position of the transcendent witness one begins to view the mind and body as if like any other object, a tree, bird, dog, furniture, this does not mean we treat ourselves with disrespect on the contrary it encourages us to do just the opposite, we treat all the environment as if it were ourselves, it is here Wilber says that the we begin to feel the universal compassion so talked of by the mystics. We begin to love others and our environment not for what it can give us back, but because it affirm us one.
In psychotherapy one must travel the road of discovery moving through the different levels of self, letting go defences that we began building from the moment we arrived in the world. A baby comes into the world a loving light looking for attachment and love, however too often the greeting is not one of love in return. For many, the first contact is unsure and unwelcoming and our attachments can be shaky and insecure and/or later in childhood we are traumatized by events outside our control. It is throughout our development that we push towards autonomy yet all the while is seeking to exchange loving energy. Berne called this the natural life force, a creative drive towards health. 'Nature coming from the deepest biological roots for the human being and striving towards the greatest realization of the good'. He said that in striving for autonomy, the individual rises from the depth of the somatic child and works against predetermined forces, these forces are the environment into which we are born and the parental influences, the need for love, protection and contact. The most fundamental need being that of survival i.e.: If I don't adapt to my environment I won't survive. If I don't conform, suppress my inner desires I may not be acceptable and if I am not acceptable then these others (parental figures) may cast me out. The social and psychological messages passed from parents and parental figures are the key to suppression of the self and the child, in a need to survive will suppres autonomy, the need for survival becomes the block to true self. If we see the purpose to life as a striving for autonomy in order to become who we are and to fulfil a life purpose then our energy is channelled like a plant or a tree or bird or anything else in nature towards a fulfilment of its purpose. Chopra talks of us all as having a life purpose. Whatever your purpose, you may have lost sight of it because of your early child need for dependency. Whatever your purpose, (and it will not be complicated), to find it you will have to move through the lifting of your defence mechanism, firstly by recognizing them, then gradually learning to let go of the past. When we are children make decisions about ourselves, others and the world. The natural child we started out as goes through a process of change. Spontaneity becomes hindered, and thus it becomes necessary to develop an identity that others will accept and respond to, hiding the self that learned to feel shamed, humiliated and unacceptable to the carers they are dependant upon. Through therapy the individual becomes more self-aware bringing them into here and now reality and to who they really are. It is not hard to find the meaning of self awareness, we merely let go of a frame of reference, let go of a need to self defend, guard and protect the child inside from a replay of the early treatment, those who know the meaning of self awareness know that they are in control of their world. They alone are the director of their lives and gradually we begin to know that there is nothing to fear except what you create, Ken Keyes JR says in the Handbook to Higher Consciousness, You should always be aware that your head creates your world.
Generally what people bring to therapy is something that they have become increasingly conscious of and uncomfortable with in their lives, repeated failed relationships, depression, anxiety, lack of confidence in the work market or in their social life. Intense anger or irritability with those around them, eating disorders, addictions, insomnia etc. When as psychotherapists we look beyond these issues we begin to recognize the development of the false self and at first in therapy the client wants simply to return to their old functioning self, perceiving this to be the real self, however very often beneath this the individual is still immature, afraid to emerge for fear that may re-experience the past. However to find the silent witness in themselves the client may have to return over and over, throughout the relationship with their therapist, to the early traumatic occurrences in childhood, in order to discover that all are merely memories that are getting in the way of them being themselves, what they learn in therapy is that they are not alone. Yesterday is but today's memory and Tomorrow is today's dream. Kahlil Gibran The Prophet.
Brian Adams says To hate another is to hate yourself. We all live within the Universal Mind. What we think about another, we think about ourselves. If you have an enemy, forgive him now. Let all bitterness and resentment dissolve. You owe your fellow man love; show him love, not hate. Show charity and goodwill towards others and it will return to enhance your own life in many wonderful ways.
June Brereton