Oneness and Separateness - Judith Blackstone (from her book, An Intimate Life)

Overcoming Boundary Problems

"All duality comes from the differentiation of a single ground".
THE PEARL GARDEN, DZOGCHEN TANTRA

The Boundary Problem in Relationships

One of the most common problems that people have in intimate relationships is that they feel lost or submerged in the other person, or they fear that this will happen if they allow themselves to be truly intimate. Some people cope with this fear by distancing themselves from other people, by closing themselves off to external influence, or by finding ways to push people away. Others cope in a seemingly opposite way, by attempting to merge with the identity of their partner. Most of us do some of both. These relational styles are ways of accommodating the defensive barrier that we have created, early in our lives, between ourselves and other people. They are a continuation of the delicate negotiation, which begins in infancy and can last our whole lives, between connection with ourselves and connection with other people. This quandary of choice between self-love and love for others is, at root, illusory—for we are fundamentally whole within our own being and one with other people at the same time. Love is an essential quality of the whole field.
The fear of losing one’s own identity in relationships is so central to the challenge of being intimate with another person that I could find some expression of it in all of the couples who come to work with me. To some extent, the fear of identity loss is the fear of ego loss. In an intimate relationship, our ideas about ourselves and our strategies for getting approval, maintaining oneupmanship, and so forth are always challenged. There is almost always some conflict between our partner’s intimate view of ourselves and the image that we hold of ourselves. These conflicts can be very helpful for dismantling our holding patterns. But I have found that the reason so many people are unable to surrender their defenses in relationships is that they are defending something even more precious to them than their constructed ego. They are protecting their actual connection with themselves—their self-enjoyment.
Since the experience of self-connection is difficult to define, the loss of it is often expressed as a vague but intolerable malaise. It is described as a loss of “space,” a sense of being “out of sync” with oneself. People may speak of feeling cut off from their own needs and desires or from their own thoughts and feelings. Some people feel as if they are seeing the world through their partner’s eyes, that they can no longer connect with their own perceptions and responses. The loss of self-connection is experienced as a breach of boundaries, an inability to juggle the guarding of one’s own perimeters with the openness of intimacy. The perceived threat of intrusion often gives rise to power struggles, turning the act of mutual decision-making into fight-to-the-death warfare.
The loss of self-connection is the inability to attune inward to the source of our own experience, within the internal space of our body. Our awareness of our partner overwhelms and replaces our contact with ourselves. But instead of feeling a connection with that person, we feel bound up in them.
In my last book, The Enlightenment Process, I quote R. D. Laing’s description of the loss of self-connection. He writes, “If the individual does not feel himself to be autonomous this means that he can experience neither his separateness from, nor his relatedness to, the other in the usual way. A lack of sense of autonomy implies that one feels one’s being bound up in the other, or that the other is bound up in oneself, in a sense that transgresses the actual possibilities within the structure of human relatedness. It means that a feeling that one is in a position of ontological dependency on the other (i.e., dependent on the other for one’s very being) is substituted for a sense of relatedness and attachment to him based on genuine mutuality.”1
This common difficulty in relationships can be particularly confusing and troublesome for people who are interested in spiritual transformation. Since spiritual realization is the unity of oneself and everything else, they ask, shouldn’t we surrender our connection with ourselves? And isn’t the resentment that one feels at being overwhelmed by another person’s presence simply one’s own clinging to the illusion of existing separately from that person?
In order to progress on the spiritual path, it is important to understand the difference between lack of self-contact and the dissolution of ego. In order to realize true oneness with other people, we need to recognize the difference between spiritual unity and the experience of being “bound up” in another person that R. D. Laing describes.
The Equality of Fundamental Consciousness
As I described in the last chapter, we experience the unified spiritual dimension of life as vast space pervading all of the various forms of life equally. This experience is sometimes called “nonduality” or “one taste.” This unified existence is not something outside of ourselves. It includes ourselves. Our own being is the same one taste as everything around us. This is our most relaxed state.
As we let go of our defensive holding patterns, we can relax into the unified dimension of existence. This feels as if we are dissolving in space, becoming more and more permeable or transparent. At the same time, it feels as if we are truly existing, as if we are being born. It feels as if we are coming into contact with parts of ourselves, actual places within our body, that have been numb and unavailable, as if we are becoming whole within the internal space of our body. This is an emptiness of defensive structures and a fullness of our essential being. Spiritual oneness is not an experience of submerging our own existence in the existence of another person. It is not a diffusion of our own sense of being outward into the environment. It is a deepened and simultaneous contact with ourselves and our environment.
As I touched on in the previous chapter, spiritual oneness is not a return to the predefended condition of infancy. According to the observations of developmental psychologists, we begin life with just a rudimentary ability for self-contact and connection with other people. Early childhood development is described as the increasing ability to differentiate between ourselves and our environment, to recognize and express our own needs and perceptions, and, at the same time, as an increasing ability to connect with other people. Although children are as unguarded as spiritually realized adults, they have just begun the process of inward contact and connection with others that becomes fully developed with spiritual maturity.
A Model of Human Development
In the past two decades, psychologists have emphasized that childhood development always occurs in relationship with other people.
From the beginning of our lives, we exist in a relational field with our environment. The child’s initial inward contact may come to fruition as the internal wholeness of spiritual realization. And the child’s initial connection with the environment may mature into the spiritual oneness, the absolute unity of self and other. It is a process of growing toward inward and outward contact at the same time. Thus, the realization of spiritual oneness is a continuation of the child’s budding experience of the self/other relational field.
As I described in the last chapter, letting go of our defensive structure is an important aspect of spiritual realization. But it is not the whole story. The letting go, or dissolving, of defensive structures only allows the process of human development to continue. The actual process of development is still a mystery, and it appears to be innate—a natural function. There appears to be a spontaneous movement toward increasing contact with the self and the other, or with the relational field as a whole, that drives the child’s process of development and that continues to unfold in adulthood as we let go of our defensive grip on ourselves. Just as a tree needs the appropriate environmental circumstances to grow from its seed, human beings need the appropriate circumstances for this developmental process. But just as the tree and all of its basic characteristics can be predicted from the seed, spiritual realization, having the same basic characteristics universally, is the predictable outcome of human development.
The movement of human development proceeds through deeper levels of contact with ourselves and our environment. This deepening contact bring us into increasingly subtle and unified realms of existence or increasingly subtle attunement to ourselves and the world around us. This process arrives finally at the spiritual dimension of unified, fundamental consciousness, but there is still much further to go. When we reach the experience of “one taste,” we have just begun the most advanced phase of human development. As I will explain more fully in a later chapter, we can continue to “fill out” our realization of spiritual oneness for the rest of our lives.
Suffering as a Schism in the Field of Oneness
According to developmental psychologists such as Margaret Mahler and Daniel Stern, children gradually deepen their connection with themselves as individuals, distinct from their environment. Mahler claims that we begin life in a state of merged identity with our primary caregiver and then proceed through what she calls the “separation-individuation sequence.”2 Stern says there is always some amount of self-distinction, even in infants, but that this increases over time. He also says that this deepening self-connection occurs simultaneously with the ability to connect with other people.3 But both agree that the direction of childhood development is toward the recognition of self and other.
I describe this developing recognition of self and other as “spatial,” as involving a shift in our experience of space, because it produces a deepening of perspective on life. At first, we can barely distinguish our own self from the people who hold and nurture us. Then we begin to discover our own sensations, emotions, perceptions, and needs as belonging to our own being. At the same time, we begin to recognize, respond to, and communicate with people who are other than our own being. This is a deepening of perspective, an increasing polarization of self and other.
When someone holds us, for example, we can sense that our own body is separate from their body. We begin to notice that the emotions of other people are different from our own and that we can feel sad, for example, as someone else feels happy or angry. As we continue to increase our experience of ourselves, we also begin to have an understanding of what is going on around us, and we form opinions, ideas, and beliefs around those events. Through the use of our developing verbal ability, we learn that our thoughts differ from those of other people; agreement and argument become possible. We become increasingly separate from other people, but because we are separate, we are able to touch them, to feel love and other emotions for them, and to communicate verbally with them. Inward contact gives us distance from our surroundings. At the same time, it develops our relational capacities, such as understanding, emotion, and physical sensation.
We reach our deepest perspective when we contact the subtle core of our body. This is a channel that runs vertically through the center of our body. It is our innermost connection with our own being. At the same time, it is our entranceway into fundamental consciousness, the dimension of our oneness with everything around us. In this way, our perspective—our sense of distance from our environment—develops simultaneously with our realization of oneness with our environment.
Thus, human development continues to unfold, under favorable conditions, toward spiritual maturity. But as it turns out, this process is so fraught with difficulty and obstruction that it tends to become arrested, or, at best, limited, in virtually every human life. By limited I mean that some aspects of ourselves become developed and others do not. Because the process of deepening self-contact and connection with others is not accomplished in isolation but in relationship with other people, it is greatly influenced by the capacity of those other people for self-contact and connection. In other words, it is difficult for us, as children, to become more distinct from our parents than they are from us or to be more connected with our parents than they are with us. The process of developing contact with both ourselves and others must accommodate our specific family legacy of developmental arrest and economy.
For example, in attempting to both separate from and connect with our mother, we will have to accommodate her own history of loss, abandonment, or rejection; her fear of connection or her anger at separation; her defenses that limit the depth of her sensation, love, and awareness, as well as her unconscious strategies for avoiding pain. And all of this accommodation and adjustment will occur in a complex economy in which some types of connection (emotional, physical, or mental) are available while others are obstructed.
As we navigate this relationship, we will both imitate her defenses and strategies and form our own. We will learn just how much and what kind of contact we can have with ourselves without loss of her love and just how much and what kind of connection we can have with her without loss of ourselves. We will make some compromises, trading a bit of self-contact for the sake of connection with her—or at least some semblance of connection, for true connection with others requires self-contact. We will also endure a degree of alienation from her for the sake of contact with our own sensations, feelings, and thoughts. But again, the contact we have with ourselves will be limited by our defense against connection with her, for all our defenses limit the relational field as a whole. Our defenses limit our self-contact and our connection with others equally. We cannot close our heart to someone else without closing our heart to ourselves. And this same complex navigation takes place with our father and other primary members of our child environment.
The constraints, attitudes, and strategies that we develop for both protecting our self-contact and for assuring our connection with other people harden with repeated use into habitual ways of being. In this way, our pattern of openness and defense, our degree of authenticity and distortion, our ability to trust the flow of exchange between ourselves and others or our need to manipulate it are all formed in relationship to the people we first encounter in our lives. Likewise, our ability to enjoy solitude, to notice our true desires and needs, to create, or to think for ourselves is formed within the context of these relationships.
Some of the defensive holding patterns that we form in these relationships
hips become bound in the physical tissues of our body, constricting even our physical form. Other patterns emerge in response to circumstances that remind us of difficult situations in our past. All of these formations diminish the functions and capacities of our being. For example, with our own protective grip on ourselves, we limit our capacity for love and sensation. We constrict our senses. We restrain our voice and our creativity. We pull away from the support of the ground. We grip the muscles that we need in order to reach out or embrace or to take in nourishment.
These rigidities hold us in the perspective and economy of our childhood relational field. It is this defended relational field that we bring to our present relationships. Within the limitations of this field, we continue to negotiate the boundaries of self and other, and to balance self-contact with connection to others. In each new relationship, we confront the same riddle of how open we can be with this person without loss of our own self, and to what extent we can be who we really are without loss of their love.
Merging and Distancing
Our defensive patterns both contract and fragment the relational field. They form a defensive barrier between ourselves and our environment. At the same time, they hold us in our childhood perspective on life—in our childhood sphere of self and other. They hold us in the unresolved conflicts of our childhood, in the limitations of contact and the arrested flow of unexpressed responses. The defenses that were meant to protect us from the world actually keep us bound up in it, unable to get the distance (the inward contact) that we need in order to connect with other people.
In this contracted, fragmented relational field, we feel both too close to other people and alienated from them at the same time. We feel encroached upon, yet at the same time we feel unable to truly connect. We cope with this predicament both by distancing ourselves from others and by attempting to merge with them.

These two relational styles are not just sets of behaviors; they involve the placement of our attention in the relational field. People who mainly distance themselves from other people have trained their attention on themselves and attempted to ignore, or at least filter, the vivid presence of others. Because their defenses prevent them from actual contact with their own being, they seem to reside mostly in their thinking minds or their imagination, which sometimes gives them an air of abstraction or preoccupation. These people actually seem distant, as if they have a moat around them. But they are not really distant. They usually feel that life impinges on them with devastating force and that they must defend against it at all cost. To the best of their abilities, they are protecting their precious contact with themselves.
People who abandon their self-contact for the sake of connection place their attention more on other people than on themselves. When we relate with a person who is merging, we feel that they are too close to us, that they are in our “space.” People who merge with others usually think of themselves as being very loving, very concerned for other people. And they have made a great sacrifice in order to feel connected with people. But because their inward contact is diminished, they cannot truly make the connection that they seek.
So both of these strategies for coping with the defended boundary between ourselves and other people are ineffective and unsatisfying. The self that we defend in isolation is just a shadow of our true self. And the connection that we make by attempting to merge with other people is just a fraction of our capacity for intimacy. It is through inward contact with our own organism that we become capable of true contact with other people. We grow toward our true distance from other people and our true oneness with them at the same time.
I first noticed this about thirty years ago, while I was living at a Zen monastery in upstate New York. It is an old joke that the hardest thing about being a monk is other monks, and although I was not technically a monk, this was particularly true for me. I arrived at the monastery at a very low point in my life. I had suffered some losses, of both my physical health and people close to me, several years before and had been living in near isolation ever since. I found the communal situations of monastic life almost unbearable, the boisterous presence of other souls bruising and disruptive. We were expected to eat all our meals together, to work together cleaning the monastery, and to socialize together on the two days each week when the formal schedule was suspended. We also meditated together twice a day, sitting in silence and absolute stillness, attending to our breath or to the compelling phrase of a Zen koan.
It was in this stillness that I first noticed the movement inward, how each breath brought me infinitesimally closer to the core of my body. As the year went by and this inward movement progressed, I began to notice that I felt further away from the people around me. I could look across the distance and connect with them. I could feel their presence while still feeling my own. I could also feel the stillness that was the same in all of us, that was continuous between us, and that was unchanged by even the most intense movement of thoughts, feelings, and sensations.
It is very interesting that when we inhabit the internal space of our body, the barrier between ourselves and other people dissolves. We experience oneness of our internal and external experience, a mutual transparency of self and other. But when we live on the surface of ourselves, as most people do, we live in divided space; we feel separate from everything around us. We can say that the world of the severely defended person is (almost) flat, whereas, at the other end of the spectrum, the world of the advanced spiritual master is (almost) round. This is a deepening of perspective, a deepening of contact with oneself and others.
How Two Hands Touch in Oneness
When we relate with another person in the dimension of spiritual oneness, we do not lose our essential identity. We experience that other people and ourselves are made of the same one essence without losing our own individual embodiment of essence. When we shake hands with another person in this dimension, we experience that our own hand is continuous with the hand of the other person. As fundamental consciousness, there is no separation between our own hand and the other person’s hand. But at the same time, we know our own being in our own hand and the other person’s being in the hand that we shake. The recognition of self and other is reflected in the clear, unified space of fundamental consciousness.
Whatever communication occurs between our own hand and the other person’s hand is also clearly reflected in this space, in this unified relational field of consciousness within the two hands. One person may communicate love, for example, while the other communicates respect. The subtle currents of this communication move freely in the unobstructed space, producing a dance of intermingled currents, an excitement of interference patterns, that is transmitted throughout the energy systems of both people. And at the same time, as fundamental consciousness, we can each distinguish our own communication from the communication of the other person. This is the paradox of spiritual oneness: we are each whole within ourselves and unified with everything else at the same time.

Self-Other

"It is one and the same Self that shines as one's own self as well as the selves of others".

- VIJNANABHAIRAVA

Heart as Furnace

http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com

Six Happiness Habits Worth Cultivating

I got this from Bioneers Nonprofit. Six happiness habits worth cultivating. (http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/pdfs/happycircle-ggsc.pdf )

These all stimulate the creation of positive affect, which is consistently being shown not to be a cognitive event (the reflection on one's life), but rather, an experience of the nervous system's regulation. A peaceful nervous system itself affects the view through which we then reflect on the degree of fulfilment and other forms of happiness. (per Alan Schore).

I'm finding this to be a crucial point - that it is in the reallignment of the felt-sense and feeling functions (analytical psych), that we see the nervous system's self-regulation, and therefore, affect regulation, grow and stabilise into an aware embodied consciousness. All the reflections I have on my life are coloured by this, and all my ability to relate to others is also coloured by this. As e.e. cummings so deftly puts it, "since feeling is first".

http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com

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http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com

Purifying Motive

I read this at the start of a short story by Tim Winton called Family, and it nailed the sense of 'singing-to-myself' which I've been doing in my recent transformation and in preparation for my stint at the Daniel P Brown retreat at the Mount Madonna Centre in Santa Cruz on the 15th of January.


When an archer is shooting for nothing he has all his skill.
If he shoots for a brass buckle he is already nervous.
If he shoots for a prize of gold
he goes blind
or sees two targets
- he is out of his mind!

His skill has not changed. But the prize
divides him. He cares.
He thinks more of winning than of shooting
and the need to win
drains him of power.

- Chuang Tzu.

Container-Contained

I find myself, these days, a peculiar force.
Where life was but word, thought and wonder,
now lays space, possibility, and a realm
of throughlines who interact and morph
and know eachother, between eachother,
like brothers and sisters I'd never had,
they'd never had, we'd never had, and
all playing, shapeshifting, under a potent
omninscient gaze, a witnessing gaze,
big enough to feel into all of this timeless space,
and possibility, and the realm of throughlines,
who move across time, through time, as time,
under a potent omninscient gaze, a witnessing gaze,
which holds together this family of I, like
a father, I am, I am becoming, through the
furnace of my heart, and the belly, throat,
eyes, ears, mind, crown, education, love,
friendship and affection, through the throughlines
which are none other than the fabric of I,
which swaddle my baby self, seed my future babies
our future babies, in throughlines which start
here timelessly, and flow forward into futures
already remembered, as the fabric of I,
which is none other than the sails which
steer this ship back home, on and off course,
always returning, under a potent omninscient gaze,
a witnessing gaze, which is none other than
the mother of this family of I, this mother
who would shed her maidenhood to nurture us all,
and I am her, and as her I can see her outside,
relative, beyond mere divine eternities, into
the far more vast alterities which themselves
invent and produce a We between He and She
in a container-contained, containing the furnace
of the heart and the belly, the sex and the soul,
the mind and the flows between them all, which
are none other than the throughlines of I, you and I,
in time, as we intertwine, in realms beyond our flesh
and back to it again, across time, where I remember
every message you left on my phone,
every glance, every time we left eachother alone,
in memory and alive, in the spaces only ever
between you and I, I find myself, these days, a peculiar force,
ready to dive, into what is never negotiated,
only ever alive, in ways a boy never could feel,
in ways only a man can know, and a secure base
of this family, here and now, which is none other
than the throughlines of I, being qua being,
and in actions as well, across realms I can handle
and so rightfully contain, to withstand the tests
of the ages, and stand firmly on this ground again,
under a potent omninscient gaze, a witnessing gaze,
God of this family, this family of I,
who stands above feeding, a shining sun,
a testing present, a gifting father, a loving mother,
transforming its son in a container-contained,
who can see his own divine horizon, and yours as well,
in this flesh, enlivened, permitted, anointed,
the spirit infusing metamorphosis, this time,
self-aware, birthed again, in intimacy with
the great one, the potent omninscient gaze,
the witnessing gaze, which contains each flow,
and returns me again to a movement between others,
wherever we might tread, in the throughlines
between us all, those throughlines which
were once an enigma, then erotic fixation, an obsession
to know each line as I'd know a story, itself now
loosened, individuated into space, itself
yet another throughline morphing and intertwining
with Others as a family under the gaze,
a peculiar force, where I find us, myself, these days.

http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com

Done - Hazzy Bee

Playing the Gaelic Club on 14 January 2012 at 8pm.

http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com

The Fool

"There's a time when a man needs to fight, and a time when he needs to accept that his destiny is lost... the ship has sailed and only a fool would continue. Truth is... I've always been a fool."

- Young Edward Bloom, character in the movie Big Fish.


http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com

Heart-Anger, Robert Augustus Masters

"Where anger-in and mindfully held anger approaches seek to contain anger, and where anger-out seeks to empty the “container” (usually equated with the body), heart-anger seeks, at least at some point, to radically deconstruct the “container” (including the very intention to contain), engaging in a deeply embodied consideration of anger in which the very notions of “container” and “contained” are permitted sufficient transparency so as to all but shed their outlines (or definitional certitude). Expression here is not necessarily repressed, rethought, kept to oneself, nor evacuated, but rather is infused with wakeful attention, without any requisite dilution or muting of its passion. If heart-anger could be said to have a “container,” it would be love, open-eyed, passion-embracing, unconditioned love, love that remains intimate with awareness. Heart-anger connects. Like all anger, it is “against” something, but its “against” is in the service of a deeper, more inclusive “for” (and “with”). Ultimately -- as in the case of realizers of the nondual -- it is anger devoted to the liberation of all beings, anger free of any sort of self-serving agenda.

Heart-anger is not necessarily devoid of ego, but in its expression, ego mostly assumes a peripheral position to Being -- heart-anger could be said to be the soul’s shout, wrathful compassion in the raw. Though it is far from egoically centered, it is still usually individuated, indicative of the presence of strongly held, distinct preferences. At its most sublime, it is, so to speak, but Sacred Fire, the Heat/Light of Divine Caring (or self-transcending Love), untainted by any trace whatsoever of personal investment. Here blooms a radically different kind of flame, exemplified by the awe-inspiring presence of Tibetan Buddhism’s Wrathful Deities, Hinduism’s Kali at Her fiercest, the Old Testament’s blazingly raging Lord, all burning, burning, burning with a hyperbole-transcending enormity and luminosity in the service of a context that, though always already beyond the grasp of the rational, self-possessed mind, is intuitively known by the awakening heart.

Such “anger” -- or Holy Wrath -- only serves to awaken, and to awaken in the most radical sense; it is pure compassion in action. Heart-anger, however, does not have to be this pure to be deservedly called heart-anger. So long as caring for the other and mindfulness are significantly present during and after the expression of anger, the label “heart-anger” can be applied without qualification.

Heart-anger incorporates the best of anger-in, anger-out, and mindfully held anger. However, if we do not have sufficient “hands-on” familiarity with each of these, we will generally not be capable of heart-anger -- we may still have moments when we are angry and yet still heart-centered, but such a practice will be far from stably established in us. Anger-in must be learned -- healthy, efficacious emotional regulation is essential, so that we are capable of stepping back from arising anger when circumstances dictate that its amplification and/or expression would only do harm. So too must anger-out be learned -- not to have the capacity to directly and strongly express anger all too easily disempowers us. Practicing mindfully held anger is also essential -- not only with regard to learning to investigate closely (and patiently) in the moment whatever characterizes one’s anger, but also with regard to developing compassion for one’s anger and angry “I’s.”

To practice heart-anger is to simultaneously honor mind, body, and spirit. Such practice, like that of mindfully held anger, means to no longer resort to blame, to take responsibility for keeping one’s heart open in hell -- an admittedly far from easy undertaking, but an immensely rewarding one. In heart-anger, we can find not only a moral and fittingly expressive fieriness almost seamlessly aligned with a deep caring for the other, but also our grief, our joy, our interconnectedness (and ultimate identity) with all that is. Our heart-anger announces not that we are detached, but that we care, and care deeply, so deeply that we will not sit back and passively watch desecration and abuse occur. In such caring, we contact not only our personal grief, but also our collective grief, finding in it not defeat, nor impotent sadness, nor powerlessness, but rather a fathomless sense of communion with both the pain and the joy (and all-pervading Mystery) of what is.

Heart-anger seeks not dissociation from the world, but engagement, wherein love, rather than negotiation, shines at the hub of relatedness. As such, heart-anger uses separation to create connection. It is the swordplay of healthy criticism, unconditioned love’s warcry, the firm yet receptive release of needed forcefulness. It honors differences, even as it cultivates intimacy with that depth of wisdom in which it is tacitly obvious that differences don’t really make a difference -- seeing that the Many are One does not stop it from also seeing that the One is Many. Heart-anger does not let its embrace of the Universal separate it from the Particular -- it does not seek transcendence of the personal, the particular, the crystallized, but rather illumination. Heart-anger is a warrior, yes, but it is a warrior who, in nakedly facing suffering, must sometimes also weep.

The fiery intensity at the heart of anger does not ask for smothering, spiritual rehabilitation, nor psychological marginalization, but rather for a mindful embrace that does not necessarily require any dilution of passion, any lowering of the flames, nor any muting of the essential voice in the flames. If such fire destroys, it is only in order to create. And heal. In its flames, the Phoenix is more than a myth. In its fiery heart, love burns brilliantly, ever replenished, illuminating more than we can imagine.

Bringing our anger into our heart is not only an act of love for ourselves, but for all beings, since such a practice greatly increases the odds that we will not let our anger mutate into aggressiveness, hostility, and hatred, but rather into compassion-centered activity. In no longer abandoning nor destructively harnessing our anger, we move a little closer to being the very love that we most desire from others.

Anger can be love - may we permit it to be so".

http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com

Love Not Negotiation

"Heart-anger seeks not dissociation from the world, but engagement, wherein love, rather than negotiation, shines at the hub of relatedness".

- Robert Augustus Masters

http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com

"Conditions can be unconditional, and that's confusing us to conflation".

"Boundaries create clarity, in a 'swording' of reality. It takes at least 30-40 years to get that double-edge to become unified. Under the best conditions. Only recently have we become aware conditions can be unconditional, and that's confusing us to conflation. Buy the ticket, realize you're on the ride".

- Ollie

http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com

Dreams of Love and Fateful Encounters

"It is precisely the lovers' leap out of objectivity and into subjectivity that signals the liberation of love. If it is true that the greatest breach in nature is between two minds (as William James suggested), then we must acknowledge the magnitude of the emotion that allows us to bridge such a chasm. Once we lose the psychological sense of oneness with mother, which prevails (if ever) only during infancy, we become increasingly isolated beings. Sometimes that isolation is so profound as to be painful, raising the awful spectre that one may exist as a consciousness all alone in the universe. Only by sharing in each other's subjective realities can we mitigate that isolation. While empathy, intuition, and identification all help, romantic love goes much further: it denies the barriers separating us, offering hope for a concordance of two souls; or at least for a free flow between them—what has been called "emotional telepathy."

Romantic love, subjectively experienced, is an emotion of extraor-dinary intensity. The experience of love can make time stop, therefore giving one the rare opportunity to live in the present and to escape momentarily the nagging abstractions of past and future. Love may confer a sense of inner rightness, peace, and richness; or it may be a mode of transforming the self. Beyond enlarging and changing the self, love may also enable the lovers to break through the stifling limits of self. Hence, it is a mode of transcendence, frequently designated as a reli-gion of two. While it is true that love can be an agent for personal growth and change, it can also be a loose cannon on the deck of human affairs. Because of its intensity, love has the capacity to disrupt social norms and conventions, giving lovers both cause and sanction to escape the established order. In this sense romantic passion is the expression of individuality (or of two individualities joined), sometimes played out against the restraints of convention. Romantic love is the celebration of the individual and the pair, not of larger social units, and so it is that romantic love may come in direct conflict with ordered society. No wonder, then, that it is regarded with awe and suspicion by those not in its thrall".

Ethel S. Person

Not Two - Root-Tree and Canal-Rhizome

I'm slowly reading A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and Guattari. A couple of pages here, a couple of pages there. I like having these meditations going on in the background of my life. This was my favourite line so far - demonstrating the way we can't avoid making models of a chaotic and potently renewing kosmos, and how a matured orientation brings us out of the rigidity of seeing only objects and into the process and flow of reflective and liberating aperspectivalism.

‎"The important point is that the root-tree and canal-rhizome are not two opposed models: the first operates as a transcendent model and tracing, even if it engenders its own escapes; the second operates as an immanent process that overturns the model and outlines a map, even if it constitutes its own hierarchies, even if it gives rise to a despotic channel. It is not a question of this or that place on earth, or of a given moment in history, still less of this or that category of thought. It is a question of a model that is perpetually in construction or collapsing, and of a process that is perpetually prolonging itself, breaking off and starting up again".

- Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus.


http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com

"Pluralism infected with narcissism"

Andrew Cohen: As you make clear in Boomeritis, this pluralistic-postmodern level of development you've been describing, which in the system of Spiral Dynamics is also called the "green meme," is a position that tends to be inherently anti-evolutionary and anti-transformational. 

Ken Wilber: It does tend to be that way. But it gets tricky, because what the green meme, or the pluralistic-postmodern wave of development, likes to talk about is transformation. And there's a grain of truth to the fact that the green meme really does want to transform, even if it badly fumbles the ball on occasion. But remember that this particular pluralistic wave really is a very high level of development. That needs to be kept in mind, even though we're talking about the pathological version. This wave didn't become really widespread until the sixties, and the boomers were the first generation in history where a significant percentage was in fact at this fairly high pluralistic level of development. The previous level or wave, which is still prevalent, the universal rational wave, became widespread with the Western Enlightenment and is itself only around three hundred years old. But the green meme, the pluralistic wave, came into widespread existence only about thirty years ago. So, all of the great positive aspects of the sixties, including environmental protection, feminism, health care reforms, and, most importantly, the civil rights movement, were products of healthy pluralism and healthy postmodernism. Those were the positive gains of the cultural creatives, the green meme, the pluralistic wave. So in that sense, it was a transformative event because transformation means any vertical move in the developmental scale. And the boomers, the cultural creatives, were a transformation from modern to postmodern, or from rational to pluralistic, from orange to green—whatever terms one prefers. 

But once they settled in there, boy, they settled in! And you're not going to get them to move now because the downside is that once you're there, you are not allowed to make judgments, because "Everybody's expressive truth is the same." So you can't challenge somebody and say, "Look, you have to grow. You're being self-contracted. There's a higher spiritual reality." They'll say, "How do you know it's higher? How dare you judge me!" 

So when boomers engage in a spiritual path, their fundamental desire is not to transcend the ego but to confirm it, to express it, to be told that "What I'm doing is wonderful and divine, just like I am." They are there to celebrate the self-contraction, to embrace the self-contraction and to feel it really hard and call that god or goddess or spirit. And you can't talk them out of it because then you're being judgmental. 

Under the guise of pluralism—which holds that no truth is better than another—not just higher realities but also all of my petty, shallow, narcissistic tendencies can find a happy home. The higher significance of pluralism gets swamped with lower impulses, contracted tendencies, and egocentric expression—all now parading under the banner of pluralism.

To put it simply: boomeritis is pluralism infected with narcissism. It's the very high truths of pluralism completely corrupted and derailed by an ego that uses them to entrench itself firmly in a place where it can never be challenged because there is no objective truth that can get rid of it.

Read and read and read. And read.

“Sit in a room and read – and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time".

- Joseph Campbell

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Remembering Andrew...

This is for one of my best friends from primary school who was found dead a couple of days ago, leaving behind a beautiful young family. I played this tune for him about a year ago when I was talking about how inspiring it was watching him rest in gratitude for the simple joys of being a father, and I remember him being moved. I played it again tonight as I lit a flame and cried for the life which isn't to be anymore. Love you, Andrew.

When he reached the gates of heaven
He didn’t understand
He knew that folks were coming over
Or was it all a dream?
Was it all a crazy dream?

He saw them playing there before him
What were they doing there?
It felt like home, It must be alright
Or is it just a dream?
Is it just a crazy dream?

Memories replay before him
All the tiny moments of his life
Laying round in bed on a Saturday morning
Two daughters and a wife
Two daughters and a beautiful wife

Meanwhile on Earth his friends came over
Shocked and horrified
Dolls and flowers at the storefront
Everybody cried
Everybody cried and cried

Is there vengeance up in heaven?
Are those things left behind?
Maybe everyday is Saturday morning
Two daughters and a wife
Two daughters and a beautiful wife
Two daughters and a beautiful wife

http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com

Blind Compassion

"As we shed our blinders and clearly see our pain—our anger and hurt and frustration and moral outrage—we reenter a realm of love that had been closed off but from which we can now freely give and receive. We express a genuine compassion with spine and heart, and with an especially keen and caring eye for those who are still under the spell of blind compassion".

- Robert Masters in Spiritual Bypassing: When Spirituality Disconnects Us From What Really Matters.

http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com

Dad Passages

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Freud and the Brain ;-)

.

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Giving Birth To Your Images

You must give birth to your images.
They are the future waiting to be born.
Fear not the strangeness you feel.
The future must enter you long before it happens.
Just wait for the birth, for the the hour of the new clarity.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com

Finding the Father - Robert Bly

This poem used to provoke all kinds of emotions for me about my own relationship with fatherspace - my historically internalised father, my then current father, and my idealised father-object (both real father and the archetypal great father). Nowadays, as I've approached the door to the dark house, and brought fire to the lamp, as the heavy brows have lifted - I find another relationship with it. A relationship with my own path into fatherhood. To move through motherspace and into fatherspace and then through it - to "leave home" stably, and lovingly - I'm opening into the view of what I can be and offer as father. The capacity to know how to skillfully bring self-generated meaning to the potential for quiet desperations in fatherspace has been right at the door step of this house. A door which stood right at the end of that extraordinarily long path. I could have never truly guessed that the father I was to find in finding, naming, facing and communing with all of my fathers, would be the father living in me.


Finding the Father - Robert Bly

My friend, this body offers to carry us for nothing - as the ocean carries logs.
So on some days the body wails with its great energy;
it smashes up the boulders,
lifting small crabs, that flow around the sides.

Someone knocks on the door.
We do not have time to dress.
He wants us to go with him through the blowing and rainy streets,
to the dark house.

We will go there, the body says,
and there find the father whom we have never met,
who wandered out in a snowstorm the night we were born,
and who then lost his memory,
and has lived since longing for his child,
whom he saw only once...
while he worked as a shoemaker,
as a cattle herder in Australia,
as a restaurant cook who painted at night.

When you light the lamp you will see him.
he sits there behind the door....
the eyebrows so heavy,
the forehead so light....
lonely in his whole body,
waiting for you.



http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com

Leif Podhajsky

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Fluid Form - Svadhisthana and Synchronicity

OK - this is out of control.

I posted about fluid form earlier today, and made the point that "activating fluid in the body has become a constant theme in my awareness and dreamspace the last couple of weeks" and that I've carried "a sense of the watery elements in my flesh". I said that I "Don't know what it's about yet" and "If you have any thoughts or recommendations about this drop me a line".

After watching videos about Judith Blackstone, the non-dual and intersubjectivity psychotherapist/spiritual teacher, I came across a link to a random guy's video called "Cultivating the Hara Part 1". I've linked to it below. Having done some Hara meditation about a year ago to try and activate that deadened area in my bodymind, I thought it worth taking a look at.

About halfway thorough, I'd started to tire of his delivery and clicked through to another page while listening to him. Then, as is so often the case, I was immediately humbled. He said: "... really grounding our spirit down into the emotional body, and down into the *watery levels* of our humanness. I say watery levels because we are talking about second chakra. The emotional body. In any form of martial arts or in zen meditation the hara is cultivated. The lower body, the abdominal area is cultivated. No matter how wide open and beautiful our hearts are, if we haven't cultivated and stabilised the emotional body in the hara, we are going to destabilise the entire system. The whole system will be unstable if it doesn't have a foundation - and in qigong teachings and chinese medicine, the hara is known as the foundation - it is known as the basement. The entire structure is built on the foundation - our cultivation of groundedness. Of being rooted to the earth".



Seriously, What the Fuck!?!?! *Watery elements*. The second chakra. The sacral chakra. Svadhisthana. My most troubled chakra. The one Dustin pointed out as key. The one my rolfer Colin talked about. The place in my physiology where I recently opened my body - the entire sacral region connected to the occipital areas - a kind of cranio-sacral work I did with him. I'd talked about the fluid forms to him which I felt in my spine when he'd done that work. When he'd activated spinal fluid.

Fuck!

Moreover, I've been containing my emotional foundations recently in a significant shift of ground in psychotherapy. The theme of self-containment was hard won, and I've managed to win that battle and find myself in newfound freedom of passage in and around my grounded sense of emotional security and tantric lessons in containing-in-emotion, rather than containing-via-supression.

And moreover again, I've been walking 10kms almost every day and in that time I've felt my torso move itself up into a new articulation with my legs - the result being constantly activated deep flexors and psoas muscles - the guys who surround and hold together this whole region!

Seriously - what the fuck?!

I'd done spine twists two days ago and felt inordinate relief when I'd rearticulated the lower vertebrae around Svadhisthana. Again - a moment of fluid form came over me.

So, as always, I did some internet research, and surely enough Svadhisthana is well known as the watery one.

From: http://members.tripod.com/kira_lis/chakra2.html

"What a watery chakra! It's element is water. The inner state is tears. Some of the malfunctions include bladder or kidney trouble. The food associated with this is liquids. The gemstone is coral. The animals are fish and sea creatures. And the location of this chakra is in the area of the genitals and womb. Some of the functions and qualities associated with the second chakra are emotions, sexuality, desire, pleasure, creation and procreation. Socialization is also a function of the 2nd chakra. The verb that best fits this chakra is "I feel". This energy is both emotional and sensual. The color of this chakra is generally orange. For chanting, the syllable is "vam". In Tarot, this chakra corresponds to the suit of cups and the cards with the number 2....High Priestess"




What the fuck?! I've just been on a journey with the dark feminine for a couple of months, I've been reading loads about father complexes in High Priestess archetypal stories, I've taken the medicine for the dark feminine which is facing it with courage and in doing so encountering my own anima, and through that transformative process, I've been open to resonant and appreciative *contained* emotional relations with the feminine in women. The high priestess had come up for me all year - starting with a reference to the Jungian Tarot book (see pictures above) my partner gave me on a flight back from Buenos Aires earlier in the year, continuing with my encounters with her in literature, psychoanalysis and then in seeking to make sense of a dream I'd had about her as a devouring father-bound creature of the underworld which appeared to be Lilith. After months of working that dream, I recently opened through and met my path again on the road of obstacles, returning internally triumphant against my own maternal complexes. In that time, I felt a deep release in my groin which travelled up the psoas and... wait for it... into the sacral chakra.



Yes - what the fuck?!?

I've been using orange texta pens constantly for two months - and I have never used them before. I've actively sought out the colour when drawing.

I posted this about the sacral chakra which was speaking the most to me at the moment a few weeks ago: http://thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com/2011/11/blog-post.html
Indeed I'd said on that page: "Sacral Chakra (for me the currently most significant)".

I'd also posted this about "sacral perspectives", which were images which were signifying my passage through this point:
http://thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com/2011/11/sacral-perspectives.html

Indeed, around that same time, I was leaving markers on the road in my relation with the dark feminine: e.g.
http://thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com/2011/11/black-princess-as-other-and-anima.html
http://thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com/2011/11/jung-and-dark-angel.html

Moreover, when I was in the US earlier this year, my friend Dustin had gone to great lengths to discuss the Svadhisthana with me and we'd talked about how it had felt blocked in me. I'd written in my diary that releasing it was my destiny for the next six months.

"Creation", and "the location of this chakra is in the area of the genitals and womb" - I've also been preparing everything for the creation of children and family. To do that I needed to open and move through my blocked emotion in this area, and it is this which I have finally contained.

"Socialisation" - I have been posting about socialisation and asking questions about it to my trusted friends, colleagues and therapist for the last couple of weeks. I have been reading all kinds of books on play and how teen socialisation takes place. I've been recovering and mourning the lost moments on that aspect of the path of life, and in the mourning, freeing myself from it.

"Emotional and sensual" - I've been speaking to friends about how my emotional heart-centre has been transforming from an open container to something capable of burning as a centre of a broader central channel, and how in that I've been feeling far more sensual in my life. I've been feeling the sheets of my bed, warming to all kinds of mundane joys like walking and the simple pleasure of a cup of tea.

I just can't believe how much this thing has coalesced in such a short time. I know this is a very impressionistic post, but these through-lines, and at this point of embodiment, have just been too non-linear to contain in that framework. It all feels very much like the non-mechanistic constructions Deleuze and Guttarri speak of in A Thousand Plateaus (which I was reading on the weekend).

Here's to putting things out to an (apparently) intentional universe!

"Earth Might Be Fair" - William Blake.



http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com

Judith Blackstone - Embodiment

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Melancholy and Grief in Analytic Psychology and Psychoanalysis - Siegmund Hurwitz, in Lilith, The First Eve

In his work on grief and melancholy, Freud elaborated a difference between the two states. According to him, grief is conditioned by the real, i.e. external loss of a love object, either through death or by the object turning away from the Ego. Under normal circumstance, the "respect of reality" will gradually assert itself in such a case and the Ego will be restored to its former condition "at the end of the period of mourning", i.e., it will once again be free and untrammelled. 

Freud holds that the situation is somewhat different in the case of melancholy. As with grief, a "bond between the libido and a particular person" was originally forged. However, as a result of a "real affront or disappointment" on the part of the love object, this object relationship is severely shaken. This is made all the more possible either because the emotional relationship with the object was of an ambivalent nature or because the object cast in that role proved to be too little resistant, resulting in its being relinquished. However, the newly released libido was "not directed towards another object but drawn back into the Ego"; in other words, it was introjected, which led to a "narcissitic identification" of the Ego with the object it had relinquished. As a result the object loss had "turned into an Ego loss, and the conflict between the Ego and the beloved into a struggle between Ego criticism and the Ego which had been changes by identification.

In Freud's view, therefore, melancholy - like grief - is, in fact, a "reaction to the real loss of the love object". But in the case of melancholy, in addition to this grief, there is the fact that the emotions, in retreating from the object into the Ego, finally turn against the Ego. 

It seems to me that Freud with the problem of melancholy in too narrow a fashion, because he identified it with neurotic depression. Jung, on the other hand, saw the problem somewhat differently. Ho made a precise distinction between true melancholy and psychogenic depression - the latter generally being of neurotic origin. Jung sees the difference between melancholy and depression as being that the latter is based on the existence of unconscious figments of the imagination. Exactly the opposite is the case with true melancholy: "The patient has such fantasies because he is in a depressed condition".

According to Jung, depression is above all:

"relative dissociations, a conflict between the Ego and a conflicting force which is based on unconscious contents. These meanings have lost their connection with the psychic whole, to a greater or lesser extent".

From this point of view, it is understandable that Jung stresses that the only way to escape from depression is to call up these contents from the unconscious - in other words, to allow oneself to be led by the unconscious, which may express itself in the form of dreams, fantasies, visions and especially in the so-called active imagination. The prerequisite for this, though, is that the depressive should accept his condition and take it seriously.  In this way, he no longer suffers his condition in a purely passive manner, but attempts to take an active and reactive part in it.  Hence, the contents of the unconscious, which up until now have been themselves unconscious, can be integrated into the Ego.

Siegmund Hurwitz, in Lilith, The First Eve: Historical and Psychological Aspects of the Dark Feminine.

Beat It - Chinese Military Band

Thanks @AdamBongers for this epic lol.

http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com

Judith Blackstone, The Intimate Life

'Every aspect of ourselves is capable of contact. We can contact another human being with our touch, gaze, and voice - and even the subtle vibrations of our emotions, physical sensations, and awareness. We all crave this contact instinctively, for everything that it reaches becomes awake, alive.'

- Judith Blackstone, The Intimate Life
RT@TrishNowland

http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com

Contingencies of Self Worth and Attachment

I loved this summary by Park, Crocker and Mickelson (2004) of the contingencies which constitute the self worth of different attachment bound people. Contingencies of self-worth bind much of our self-perception in social behaviour, and from a Rogerian perspective, make up a large measure of one's enduring sense of self. I have been identifying all kinds of contingencies of self-worth lately, bound up from the perceived expectations of family, the high-performing expectations of a career in a hardcore commercial law firm, and in interpersonal relationships with my partners. This was a cracking primer on the way that my own biases and those of others might have interacted at those key plateaus on my path. Another "ripper from the literature"! ;-D


Attachment Styles and Contingencies of Self-Worth

"According to Bartholomew’s (1990) conceptualisation of attachment, attachment styles result from the intersection of positive or negative mental models of the self and others. A positive self-model is characterised by an internalized sense that others will love and care for them; a negative self-model is characterised by anxiety concerning acceptance and rejection in close relation- ships. A positive model of others is characterised by actively seeking intimacy and support in close relation- ships; a negative model of others is charactersed by avoidance of intimacy (e.g., Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991; Griffin & Bartholomew, 1994).
Secure attachment. The ability to give and receive sup- port from others is a hallmark of the secure attachment style; secure people find it relatively easy to get close to others, to depend on others, and have others depend on them. Bowlby (1973, 1982) argued that attachment security is based on a sense of internalized positive regard from a warm, consistently reliable caregiver.

Research has shown that securely attached people hold positive views of themselves and others (Bartholomew, 1990; Collins, 1996; Mikulincer, 1998a) and that “a posi- tive self model reflects an internalized sense of self-worth that is not dependent on ongoing external validation” (Bartholomew, 1990, p. 251). Developmentally, secure individuals report positive perceptions of their early family relationships (Feeney & Noller, 1990), describe their parents as more benevolent and less punitive (Levy, Blatt, & Shaver, 1998), and show better adjustment in adolescence than do insecurely attached individuals (Cooper, Shaver, & Collins, 1998). Secure attachment translates to a sense of “felt security” (Sroufe & Waters, 1977) or a “sense of a secure base” (Bowlby, 1973), which, in turn, is related to more confidence and assertiveness in social situations (Collins & Read, 1990), increased willingness to explore one’s environment (Green & Campbell, 2000), and more self-disclosure, which facilitates the formation of mutually caring relationships (Mikulincer & Nachshon, 1991). Friends of secure individuals also rate them as warm, intimate, confident, and involved in their relationships (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991).

Considering that secure individuals have close, mutually supportive relationships with others, it follows that securely attached individuals would base their self- esteem on their positive relations with others (Brennan & Bosson, 1998); indeed, secure individuals report feel- ing loved, cared for, and supported by their partners (Shaver & Hazan, 1988) and believe that others will be responsive to their needs in times of stress (Hazan & Shaver, 1987). Because secure individuals already possess a sense of security, we predict that they are likely to derive self-esteem from interpersonal sources that do not require ongoing validation from others, such as family support, because this domain represents a source of self-esteem that is interpersonally based, unconditional in nature, and not highly dependent on others’ validation. In addition to family support, we predict that God’s love, another interpersonal, relatively unconditional source of self-esteem, may also be related to secure attachment. Support for this prediction comes from research showing that adult secure attachment is associated with secure attachment to God and positive images of God (Kirkpatrick, 1998; Kirkpatrick & Shaver, 1992).

Preoccupied attachment. People with a preoccupied attachment style desire to be completely emotionally intimate with others yet worry that their partners will not want to be as close to them as they would like (Collins & Read, 1990; Feeney & Noller, 1990; Simpson, Rholes, & Nelligan, 1992). Developmentally, preoccupied individuals are likely to have had inconsistent caregivers who were both punitive and benevolent (Levy et al., 1998). As a result of these inconsistent messages of love and rejection, preoccupied individuals internalize a negative mental model of the self and a positive model of others. Bartholomew (1990) contends that negative self- models are associated with anxiety regarding acceptance and rejection in close relationships and that “pre- occupied individuals are preoccupied with attachment needs . . . the result is an overly dependent style in which personal validation is sought through gaining others’ acceptance and approval” (p. 252). In other words, because preoccupied individuals doubt their worth and value, they look to others for self-validation, positive feedback, and reassurance (Brennan & Bosson, 1998; Mikulincer, 1998a). Not surprisingly, preoccupied individuals’ self-esteem tends to fluctuate dramatically in response to perceived approval or rejection from others (Collins & Read, 1990); they have an insatiable desire to gain others’ approval by meeting certain standards of worth and value (Bartholomew, 1990). Preoccupied individuals describe themselves as clingy, dependent, needing reassurance, emotional, jealous, and easily upset (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991; Griffin & Bartholomew, 1994); their friends concur, rating them as highly emotionally expressive, self-disclosing, and reli- ant on others (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991), which often manifests interpersonally in clingy, hypervigilant, and controlling ways (Mikulincer, 1998a). Because of their heightened concerns over acceptance and rejection, we predict that people with a preoccupied attach- ment style will be likely to base their self-esteem on inter- personal CSWs that are highly dependent on others’ reactions and are relatively conditional in nature. Accordingly, we predict that preoccupied attachment will be associated with the others’ approval and appearance CSWs, domains that depend on others’ validation and represent relatively unstable, conditional sources of self-worth.

Fearful attachment. The fearful attachment style is characterized by a negative model of the self and a negative model of others (Bartholomew, 1990). Fearful individuals are likely to have had parents that they perceived as rejecting, punitive, and malevolent (Levy et al., 1998). Similar to those with a preoccupied style, fearful individuals desire closeness with others but harbor a deep-seated belief that they are unlovable and unworthy and that others are generally uncaring and rejecting. Accordingly, the fearful style is negatively related to self-disclosure, intimacy, and relying on others (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991). In addition, people with a fearful style are likely to exhibit “intimacy anger” and jealousy that can escalate into verbal and physical abuse in close relationships (Dutton, Saunders, Starzomswki, & Bartholomew, 1994). Because of their simultaneous desire for closeness with others but fear of rejection, we predict that fearful individuals are likely to base their self-esteem on others’ approval and their appearance—relatively conditional sources of self- esteem that require others’ validation yet also make them vulnerable to potential rejection.

negative model of others (Bartholomew, 1990). Fearful individuals are likely to have had parents that they per- ceived as rejecting, punitive, and malevolent (Levy et al., 1998). Similar to those with a preoccupied style, fearful individuals desire closeness with others but harbor a deep-seated belief that they are unlovable and unworthy and that others are generally uncaring and rejecting. Accordingly, the fearful style is negatively related to self- disclosure, intimacy, and relying on others (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991). In addition, people with a fearful style are likely to exhibit “intimacy anger” and jealousy that can escalate into verbal and physical abuse in close relationships (Dutton, Saunders, Starzomswki, & Bartholomew, 1994). Because of their simultaneous desire for closeness with others but fear of rejection, we predict that fearful individuals are likely to base their self-esteem on others’ approval and their appearance—relatively conditional sources of self- esteem that require others’ validation yet also make them vulnerable to potential rejection.

Dismissing attachment. Whereas people with a preoccupied or fearful attachment style are highly dependent on the reactions and behaviors of others, people with a dis- missing style are uncomfortable with close relationships and prefer not to depend on others. Developmentally, dismissing individuals had caregivers who were unreliable, unresponsive, punitive, and malevolent (Levy et al., 1998). According to Shaver and Hazan (1988), “The avoidant infant or child has learned that interaction with significant others is painful; therefore, intimate interaction, whether in the form of care seeking or care giving, tends to be avoided” (p. 487). Because they lacked warm, available caregivers, dismissing individuals regulate attachment distress by mistrusting others (Feeney & Noller, 1990), maintaining emotional distance from others, showing less interest in forming close relationships, and generally valuing self-reliance and independence more than others’ feedback or support (Bowlby, 1982; Brennan & Bosson, 1998; Mikulincer, 1998a; Shaver & Hazan, 1988). For example, dismissing individuals are likely to report never having been in love (Feeney & Noller, 1990), are less effective support seekers (Collins & Feeney, 2000), are less self-disclosing than secure individuals (Mikulincer & Nachshon, 1991), and are more likely to engage in nonintimate sex with casual partners as a way to avoid intimacy (Shaver & Brennan, 1992). In addition, dismissing individuals tend not to be very warm, intimate, or emotionally expressive (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991) and score high on measures of interpersonal hostility, coldness, and competitiveness (Bartholomew, 1990; Horowitz, Rosenberg, & Bartholomew, 1993; Mikulincer, 1998b), which further distances them from others.
Because of their positive mental model of self and negative mental model of others, dismissing individuals should be less likely to rely on others as a source of validation or support. Indeed, research shows that dismissing individuals are averse to partner feedback (Brennan & Bosson, 1998) and value self-competence (Brennan & Morris, 1997). Because they value self-competence over relationships, we expect them to base their self-esteem more on academic competence and less on interpersonal sources that depend on others’ reactions (e.g., others’ approval, appearance) or that rely on others’ love or support (e.g., family support, God’s love). For example, research on attachment styles and religion has shown that dismissing individuals are likely to describe them- selves as agnostic (Kirkpatrick & Shaver, 1992).

In sum, we predict that different attachment styles are related to different bases of self-esteem, independent of level of self-esteem. Secure individuals should be more likely to base their self-esteem on family support and God’s love because these sources provide unconditional love and support, and research has shown that secure individuals base their self-esteem on their close relation- ships with others (Brennan & Bosson, 1998; Brennan & Morris, 1997). Preoccupied individuals should be likely to base their self-esteem on others’ approval and their appearance because they are deeply concerned with interpersonal acceptance and rejection. Fearful individuals, who are also highly rejection sensitive, should base their self-esteem on others’ approval and appearance as well. Finally, dismissing individuals, who value self- reliance and independence, should be less likely to base self-esteem on others’ approval, appearance, family sup- port, or God’s love and more likely to base self-esteem on academic competence.


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Attachment and Narcissistic Vulnerability

I continue to research the depths of the attachment literature in the process of retrieval of my nervous system from the difficulties of interconnection. It just goes all the way down! So much excellent research, and all of which reads like treatises on our liberation.

One interesting article I recently read by attachment researcher M. Carole Pistole pointed out the links between attachment insecurities and one's unintegrated self as a personal narcissistic vulnerability. This paper is just wonderful, as it points out how the ego-insecurities which typify either active or echo narcissistic defences in *everyone's* ego complexes link so elegantly with the Me OK? You OK? dynamics of one's internal working models of attachment.

One's self-esteem is linked fundamentally to their narcissistic vulnerability to self. As introduced by Freud, the term narcissism has been used to describe a variety of clinical phenomena, including the libidinal investment of the self (Moore & Fine, 1990; Sandier, Person, & Fonagy, 1991). In current usage, the term narcissism, despite theoretical differences between authors, is often used in the context of self-esteem and refers to an aspect of personality, (i.e., of ego organization) that manifests in both healthy and pathological ways (Blanck & Blanck, 1979; Kernberg, 1985; Kohut & Wolf, 1978; Moore & Fine, 1990; Sandier et al, 1991). It is related to the cognitive-affective patterning or structuring of the intrapsychic self (Blanck & Blanck, 1979; Kernberg, 1985; Kohut & Wolf, 1978). With a well-patterned or solid intrapsychic structure, the person is able to (a) soothe and comfort self (i.e., regulate esteem internally; Baker & Baker, 1987), (b) sustain goals and relationships (Patton & Robbins, 1982), and (c) value both self and significant others (i.e., there is an even distribution of self-esteem and other-esteem; Blanck & Blanck, 1979; Moore & Fine, 1990). If, however, the self-structure is less patterned or more nondifferentiated, positive valuing of the self and management of esteem functions depend more on others' behaving in ways that support the self— that is, provide valuing, confirming, or comforting functions (Baker & Baker, 1987; Patton & Robbins, 1982). With a more fragile self-structure, the person has more difficulty maintaining an inner sense of comfort and esteem and so is more easily wounded or hurt (i.e., more narcissistically vulnerable).

The term narcissism has been colloquially used in all kinds of pejorative manners, and this malignant appropriation is a genuine shame IMO, as narcissistic vulnerability as well as healthy libidinal investments which promote healthy narcissistic defences are all part of the ebb and flow of all our personal processes. We all move through that initial position (see Klein in particular) and nobody gets out of there without appeal to some degree of narcissistic vulnerability in one or more contexts. Moreover, the further I go into the literature, the more I see that the internalised projective nature of the colloquial understanding of narcissistic elements typically bolsters whichever insecure position is viewing its alternate - thus, the avoiding will avoid their own narcissistic undeveloped self-object characterised by a negative model of others by projecting this disowned self defence on to the other ("You are not OK (extroverted), I am not OK (suppressed)" (fearful avoidant), or "You are not OK (extroverted) and I am OK" (dismissive avoidant), and then reconstruct a projective narrative about the other to fill the gaps of the shameful vulnerability ("She's so controlling", "He's so ambivalent"). Similarly, the preoccupied will avoid their own narcissistic undeveloped self-object characterised by a negative model of self and a positive model of other by projecting this disowned self love onto the other ("You're OK and I'm not OK"), and then reconstruct a projective narrative to shield shame ("She's so emotionally incompetent", "He's so cold") - what Pickering calls the Narcissism of Echo (which can also include the fearful avoidant position as well, as a narcissistic working model of other.



These working models of self and other, and most importantly, their base in the micro-affective actions and reactions of our nervous systems (all stuff that happens preverbally - see Schore) are the core mechanics of our identities. They govern self-esteem, vulnerability, positive affect, partner seeking, activity choices (e.g. career) and the self in a whole gamut of other circumstances (see the enormous survey of research in all these situations and more in Attachment in Adulthood: Structure, Dynamics, and Change by Mikulincer and Shaver).

Although attachment and narcissism share some theoretical components, they target separate phenomena. Both theories involve cognitive-affective patterning, address affect regulation, and can accommodate healthy as well as pathological development and functioning (see Armstrong & Roth, 1989; Belsky & Nezworski, 1988; Bowlby, 1988; West & Sheldon, 1988). Attachment, however, addresses the person's "need for proximity, care, and security from another who can be experienced as separate from the self (Silverman, 1991, p. 183). Although Bowlby (1988) proposed that the attachment system becomes integrated as an aspect of personality, the emphasis of the theory is on interpersonal behavior and its representation. In contrast, narcissism encompasses more general self-regard and undifferentiated or merged aspects of ego organization. When pathological, narcissism addresses a "sense of self lacking sufficient inner resources to give meaning to life simply by living it fully" (Bromberg, 1986, p. 441). Nevertheless, looking at adult attachment relationships without reference to narcissism may obscure how attachment patterns are related to esteem and self-protection. It's to this end that M. Carole Pistole argues that insecure attachment is characterised by a greater degree of narcissistic vulnerability than secure attachment. Concomitantly, preoccupied and avoidant attachment reflect different strategies for managing vulnerability and self-esteem.

Narcissistic vulnerability affects the management of adults' love relationships (Elson, 1987; Solomon, 1989), because the person needs to obtain self-functions from the environment. Relationships that are not driven by narcissistic vulnerability involve a mutuality in which the focus on the self is balanced by a solid, attuned and healthy dependence on the other held in recognition of another as a separate, autonomous self (Solomon, 1989). The self is solid enough that the partner is intellectually and emotionally experienced as different and separate from self (i.e., with separate interests and desires), while also being affectively attuned through the mirco-affective ties of pair bonding, love investment, and mutuality in current and future focus and conflict resolution.

Research indicates that secure attachment relationships demonstrate a sense of self and the partner as a separate other. For example, secure attachment has been associated with more positive views of others (Collins & Read, 1990; Hazan & Shaver, 1987), interdependence (Simpson, 1990), intimacy (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991; Levy & Davis, 1988), trust (Feeney & Noller, 1990; Hazan & Shaver, 1987), and mutuality (Feeney & Noller, 1991). Securely attached adults have reported "being able to accept and support the partner despite the partner's faults" (Hazan & Shaver, 1987, p. 515); and in describing their relationships, they "emphasise the importance of openness and closeness . .. while at the same time seeking to retain their individual identity" (Feeney & Noller, 1991, p. 208). The picture that emerges of secure attachment includes an appreciation of both self and other as well as a capacity for openness and cooperativeness. This description is consistent with others being perceived as separate people and with esteem being distributed between self and other.

It is from this position that we come to see the way that the insecure strategies are constructed to obscure a view of the other as other.

More narcissistically based relationships are characterised by the needs of the self assuming a primary importance. The self is more fragile, and esteem is more difficult to manage internally—that is, there exists a greater degree of narcissistic vulnerability (Solomon, 1989). The person is more sensitive to emotional injury, focuses attention more on personal needs than on the partner, and expects partner to behave in affirming and self-enhancing ways. Interactions with the partner are often dictated by the need to stabilise a sense of worth and to regulate feelings, especially negative feelings about self (see Kinston, 1987).

As noted above, more narcissistically vulnerable persons, in adapting, organize defensive structures (i.e., patterns "of thoughts, feelings, and behaviours"; Patton & Robbins, 1982, p. 880) that attempt to cover over or compensate for the vulnerability and thereby protect the self. Rather than regulating esteem needs through an internal self-confirming process, self-regard is accomplished through a pattern of approaching (e.g., merging; Kohut & Wolf, 1978) or distancing from (Akhtar & Thomson, 1982) significant others. The other person's importance stems more from bolstering or maintaining the self and less from an appreciation of the other in his or her separateness (i.e., likeness and "differentness") from self.




Avoidant Attachment Systems

So the avoidant attachment system manages narcissistic vulnerability through distancing from the partner, thereby, avoiding closeness and intimacy (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991; Hazan & Shaver, 1987). These relationships are associated with low levels of relying on others, using others as a safe base, romantic involvement (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991), self-disclosure (Bartholomew & Horo- witz, 1991; Mikulincer & Nachshon, 1991), intensity (Bartholomew, 1990; Feeney & Noller, 1990), and higher separation distress than the securely attached (Mikulincer et al., 1990). Further, affect is regulated through dismissing the importance of attachment (Bartholomew & Horo- witz, 1991), dismissing distress (Kobak & Sceery, 1988), directing attention toward nonemotional domains (e.g., work; Hazan & Shaver, 1990), and idealizing self or other (Hazan & Shaver, 1987). The need to wall off or reject a portion of experience (e.g., intense feelings and emotional experiences, especially of distress) is indicative of narcissistic vulnerability and a need for partner's cooperation in managing self. Because self-regard is based "on the ability to temporarily tolerate negative affects in order to achieve mastery over threatening or frustrating situations" (Cassidy & Kobak, 1988, p. 304), the defensive function of avoidant strategies leaves the self-structure still vulnerable. An additional indication of narcissistic vulnerability in avoidant attachment comes from the functioning of anger in relationships. "Anger and hostility are often instigated by threats to self-esteem of an interpersonal nature" (Kernis, Grannemann, & Barclay, 1989, p. 1013). Perhaps the hostility associated with avoidant attachment (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991; Kobak & Sceery, 1988) is triggered as a self-protective mechanism that (a) defends against anxiety and negative feelings about self or (b) function to repair damaged self-esteem and preserve a feeling of well-being (Kerni ; et al.( 1989; Solomon, 1989). Self-defense in the relationship is also suggested by the avoidantly attached person's endorsement of love as friendship in the absence of a corresponding endorsement of romantic love, passion, commitment, or satisfaction (see Feeney & Noller, 1990, 1991; Hazan & Shaver, 1987; Lily & Davis, 1988). The endorsement of friendship can be interpreted as a means of maintaining safer levels of emotional intensity, which is consistent with a more fragile self-structure and with using a defensive style rather than internal resources to regulate esteem.

In a seeming contradiction to this argument, like the securely attached and unlike fearful avoidants, dismissing avoidants have reported high self esteem and self-acceptance (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991). The uniquely high, positive evaluation of self was coupled with a uniquely low leve of subjective distress and with interpersonal problems characterised by hostility and coldness (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991). This constellation of findings, interpreted in conjunction with directing attention away from distress (Kobak & Sceery, 1988) and dismissing attachment needs (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991), can be construed as indicating a defensively bolstered self. Meaningful self-worth would be accompanied by competence in relationship and affect management (Basch, 1988), which is associated with secure but not dismissing attachment.

In sum, the primary characteristic of avoidant attachment is avoidance of closeness and ensuing intimacy. The defensive strategy creates a sort of safety in the perceived "detachment" from the partner. Distance facilitates cutting off or never being "touched" by perceived criticism or the experience of intense emotions and, thereby, protects a fragile self from being emotionally overwhelmed with unmanageable emotion. Similarly, the stance of detachment functions to keep away from the self-structure "anything that would diminish it" (Akhtar & Thomson, 1982, p. 13). For instance, by distancing, fearful avoidant people hold at bay their fear of intimacy, possible rejection, and the self's being overwhelmed with unmanageable emotion (see Bartholomew, 1990). Similarly, the high self-concept of dismissing avoidance can be construed as an idealisation of self. Distancing from emotional closeness with partner helps ensure that the facade is not punctured, self-esteem is not injured, and unmanageable emotion is not exprerienced. In avoidant attachment, the person protects self against the dangerousness of others (Kinston, 1987). It is as if the persons' "fragile sense of self will disintegrate" (Modell, 1986, p. 299) or be emotionally overwhelmed or swallowed up (see Kohut & Wolf, 1978) if the partners get close or if feelings are intense.


Preoccupied Attachment Systems.

Preoccupied attachment can be construed as a defensive strategy in which narcissistic vulnerability is managed through merger with the partner. In research, preoccupied romantic relationships were characterised by high levels of idealising the partner and an extreme approach to love which includes obsessive preoccupation (Peer ey & Noller, 1990; Hazan & Shaver, 1987), hyper-vigilance to separation, greater distress over separation (Mikulincer et al., 1990), and attending to distress (Kobak & Sceery, 1988). These characteristics indicate more intensity in attention to partner than is required for interdependency and intimacy (see Elson, 1987), which indeed are not so well accomplished in preoccupied attachment. In addition, the strong clinging and idealised focus on partner is consistent with gaining affirmation through merger - that is, experiencing the idealized other, who contains worth and value, as if he or she were a part of self, were a selfobject.

Moreover, although subtle, language also indicates fusion with the partner. In one study, persons with a preoccupied attachment exhibited a higher level of couple references ("we" vs. "I") associated with the perception of problems in the relationship (Feeney & Noller, 1991). Only when there were problems (i.e., incongruence between self and partner) is a "we" (two people) versus an "I" (fusion) recognised.

Other relationship characteristics also suggest that a component of neediness directs the relationship behaviors. Studies have found that preoccupied attachment is characterised by more emotional dependence, a desire for more commitment (Feeney & Noller, 1990), greater reliance on the partner, more use of others as a safe base (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991), and inappropriately high levels of self-disclosure (Mikulincer & Nachshon, 1991). Further, persons with a preoccupied attachment experience more emotional ups and downs within the relationship (Hazan & Shaver, 1987). In sum, they seem to "depend on others to maintain positive self regard" (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991, p. 234). The interpretation of clinging preoccupation as a defensive strategy is supported by other research. Preoccupied attachment has been associated with lower levels of esteem (Collins & Read, 1990; Feeney & Noller, 1990), and research indicates that low self-esteem persons use interpersonal behaviour "to enhance their self-affect" (Baumgardner, Kaufman, & Levy, 1989, p. 919).

A key function of the preoccupied strategy is to maintain an openness of one's perceived hurt in order for the other to receive empathic attunement to the sense of insecurity this perception induces (Mikulincer & Nachshon, 1991). This 'log of claims' approach is perceived as a way of restoring the connection to security, and, because of the proclivity to not seeing the other outside of the fusion need, blinds the peroccupied to the avoidance of the avoidant partner. This is the genesis of the pursuit-withdrawal dynamic (Mikulincer et al., 1990).


Looking at attachment through the lens of narcissistic vulnerability stimulates making a distinction between appropriate security needs and narcissistic use of the partner to manage self and avoid being hurt. In preoccupied attachment, the defensive strategy is to merge with an idealised other who bolsters feelings of worth. In avoidant attachment, the partner is distanced to maintain self through a behavioral or phenomenological response that strictly avoids closeness and any ensuing intense or negative feelings. One avoidant strategy keeps the self contained, closed, passive, and nonassertive; the other strategy protects through idealizing the self and discounting the importance of the attachment system.

While Pistole's research is predominantly about how healthy personalities navigate narcissistic vulnerability issues, she also points to the attachment-based precursors to psychopathology. For example, fearful avoidance corresponds closely to avoidant personality disorder (Bartholomew, 1990), and dismissing avoidance is reminiscent of narcissistic personality disorder. The high, defensive self-concept of dismissing attachment is similar to the idealized, narcissistic grandiose self; both patterns involve latent vulnerability, coldness, hostility, and using others (American Psychiatric Association, 1987; Kernberg, 1984). Moreover, Mikulincer and Shaver go to great lengths to point out the vulnerability to borderline states in those with preoccupied strategies.

The attachment connection with narcissistic vulnerability seems key in the processing of adult attachment issues both in the contained dyad and intrapersonally. A range of the abovementoined references note that with relationship issues, therapists can facilitate clients' progress by defining and validating attachment needs and also clarifying how narcissistic needs related to self-regard, self-esteem management, and ego organisation are compromising the fundamental mix of autonomy and intimacy which characterises a thriving and life-affirming secure attachment.



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