Absolutely staggering revelation this morning!
For the record bill is recovering from a “heart thing” so there is no self at all. zandtao began some sanna-scanning thinking that retained memories were blocking circulation – at the base of the spine for feet and neck and shoulders for head. In doing this the staggering revelation came through.
zandtao has recently made the huge spiritual error concerning love and rage eventually seeing the rage as father in bill – initially perceived as inherited in some way but now understood as father-in-bill because of this new insight. Inherited in some way doesn’t touch on the reality. There is continuity at birth – no new soul no new “individual”, there is on the one hand the continuity of spirituality and on the other the continuity of self that is father and mother. What there is is the independent Dhamma love at birth that is symbolised as mother love.
So at birth there is the continuity in bill-baby of mother and father. 4 agreements says we make agreements with our parents but in the continuity we are our parents we are the spirituality and egos that come from our parents. We don’t make agreements with those egos, we are those egos. Those two egos mix together and form the bill-baby ego that then becomes conditioned in upbringing. By the time that self becomes adult it is not recognisable as the two egos that were bill-baby’s parents.
When we go back with our inner child work we go back to see the formation of our inner child selves. This ego formation as a separate self is not recognised at birth, and starts to emerge in early childhood. By the time it emerges it is some mixture of parental egos with minor social conditioning. Agreements are not made with parents as our ego is a developing mixture of egos of our parents, the agreements that are made is the agreement between egos and not any agreement made by a new “bill-baby self”. This “combined ego” is then conditioned by upbringing – education, society and peers, so by the time there is adulthood there appears to be a different ego unrecognisable from the constituent parts of mother and father ego - or at least there is a sufficient delusion of separation.
So what blocks our reconnection with Dhamma is this ego that is combined from mother and father and conditioned by upbringing. There is no self in this ego only the laws of conditioning; there is no entity making an agreement it is the continuing egos making agreements with each other and with consciousness, Source or Dhamma.
Reconnecting with Dhamma also has a component that comes from parents, we have two such “spiritual components”. These components are what comes through the blocks that are parental egos. So the new life has the “two amounts” of spirituality that are not blocked off by the egos of father and mother.
What is our spiritual practice? The removal of the blocks that enables spirituality to emerge – arise. We understand that ego arises from conditions so we release those egos. We then realise that egos arise during conditioning so we look at how our upbringing leads to the collection of egos that we call self and we try to release them. But this does not provide the whole picture as to where our egos come from because it does not see this conditioned ego as being a mixture of parental egos that have then been conditioned by patriarchy (society). At birth we are Dhamma and the selves of parents, and recognising these parental egos as our selves in our upbringing brings clarity and helps identify where our own collection of egos come from.
Now that we have a fuller picture of how our self is formed. We can examine our recollection of father ego and mother ego, put them in the mix to become the young “mixed ego” of bill that is then conditioned in life.
This has huge implications for psychological analysis – the jigsaw of self is now so much more complete.
[personal]
And the proof of that jigsaw lies within self-analysis. There has already been mention of the way rage sneaked through recently in zandtao's writing, that was rage in bill that came into bill through part of father-ego. What is important to understand with this insight is that this rage was part of bill becoming part of bill with his father-ego at birth; that is why he made the rage-error with love - it was not separate as father but part of bill's ego. More generally, in terms of sanna-scanning, within sanna there is mother-ego and father-ego needing release, the physical aspects of these egos blocking heart circulation – I think in the neck and shoulders.
What does analysis raise in this? “bill-baby ego” is dominated by a father-ego that is a selfish enraged immature child that oppresses the mother ego, and the mother-ego is completely afraid. Her ego just brings fear. How much is that fear of the father or just fear of life in general? But her grace brings spirituality, that led to bill’s spiritual breakthrough at upheaval – mother’s grace.
And she chose to hide within the father-ego. She was afraid of life when young, afraid of his rage but not afraid of his rage hurting her, just the fear that arose from emotional repression. But she was afraid of life when young – Helena thinks there was something showing this in childhood. She was not afraid of his hitting her – although there was always the drink, but his rage was more frightening when he was sober – his emotionally-repressive ego. Zandtao notes that his inner child regression allows him to question the mother-ego to know this. As a mother she of course was frightened of his rage for her children so she over-protected them. She protected bill from the consequences of his bullying sadly leaving Stephen to suffer. When she was older – Grannie trips, her spirituality was beginning to unfold – interesting, developing spirituality in retirement as well. Her fear of life contained depression - bill immediately thinks of the hell of early Sale years, when zandtao feels fear and panic now it is his mother's fear and depression.
So the mother-ego only really came into play with upheaval in bill's young life - up to 23. Bill could never accept the ego that was his father. So it was not only that he could not accept the conformism of his upbringing his self-esteem could not accept the dominant ego that was his father – again thank you mother for your spirituality. There was numbness in his teens. This was the conflict of his mother’s spirituality, her protection of his spirit fighting the appalling father-ego of selfish rage. This battle was being fought within an arena of emotional repression increasing the numbness.
Going to university he became drunk and developed a self-esteem of academic ego by the time his finals came around, and that self-esteem was much more prominent in his M.Sc year where he lived with his academic prowess. This was all blown up in his first job where he had no discipline and no profit/career-motive leading to upheaval in Sevenoaks.
Fortunately after upheaval spirituality dominated his development although at the time he still had his mother’s fear. But there was still some of the father’s ego present as shown with the acceptance of violence at Argyle Manor and acceptance of some violence at DS. Bill accepted the violence of patriarchy because of his father's rage and violence.
Spirituality means that zandtao is the 5 Dhamma comrades, but there are still vestiges of ego. There is still fear from his mother but the self that is his father’s ego is buried throughout his kaya-system, bill’s ego from upbringing was dominated so much by his father – violent bullying esp of Stephen. The rage that appeared as love-rage was buried somewhere, the emotional repression is also buried. Zandtao, look out for bill’s father-ego and mother-ego and release them.
Why the title “without a self”? With the “heart thing” there was no clinging by bill to self as he was recovering. There was no spirituality because of the heart weakness. What appeared to be left was an ego that did not belong to zandtao – enabling mother-ego and father-ego to be recognised. Without any self these egos could be seen in sanna-scanning. Fascinating!!!
Such a big insight.
This parental self-mixing fits in with paticcasamuppada and anatta. Firstly there is no self so who is making agreements? There is no self but your combined selves agree to do stuff or fragment. Secondly there is only conditioning. So we have parental conditioned selves and suddenly there is new life at birth – what is mistakenly described as a new soul. The mistaken conception is that this new soul is separate and comes to terms with the parents and upbringing creating self esteem that survives. This is not the case, there is only spirituality and conditioning of existing selves - initially parental selves.
But there is no new soul because of anatta – there is only appearance of new soul. Somehow Kamma knows what is good for you, combines the parents whose selves then mix in your khandhas. This mixing creates the khandhas that build into your self-esteem which helps you survive. At the same time fragments are built in your khandhas, and self-esteem and khandhas need to be integrated and released leaving only Dhamma – the 5 Dhamma comrades.
At birth what dominates is the love that is mother-love and Dhamma love – a Dhamma comrade. This love is not self. This love is present continuously as Dhamma although of limited consciousness depending on parents. So at birth there is love that comes from Source or Dhamma, and with this love there are the selves of parents (at the time). No new soul just the continuity of Source and the continuity of parental selves. Source, consciousness or the 5 Dhamma comrades are always there but upbringing is concerned with the selves of father and mother becoming the child’s self that becomes self-esteem for survival.
Fragments arise out of non-acceptance. Firstly there are selves that cannot be accepted by the level of Source present. But there are selves that cannot be accepted by parents, two sets of fragments, the fragments that father-self cannot accept, and the fragment that mother-self cannot accept; somehow these three non-acceptances become buried as fragments which hopefully later are integrated.
We have the parents we are meant to have yet for some people parents are rejected – even physically in life. On a personal level this is a rejection of the egos that come from parents, a rejection that is so strong these egos are not wanted in life. But they are still there in the person, they have not been released but rejected through blaming – rejecting parents. Work still needs doing. If a parent is rejected or hated that is nature's way of saying that parental ego is still present in you and needs releasing. This is hard to come to terms with. The self contains the parental ego that is rejected, but the self in order to survive blames the parent distancing that parental ego that is still present inside. Such rejection and blaming can be used spiritually to recognise egos and release them.
[personal]
Only now does zandtao see the rage in himself and the source of that rage – his father’s ego that is still present. Knowing it is there and where it comes from helps with releasing it but as yet zandtao does not fully understand why his father had such rage. Maybe zandtao does not need to know, just know it is there and let it go. In bill’s life it has peeked through but mostly upheaval has meant that the path has been dominant. But it has been there with potential eruption. Let it go, it is a self and not Dhamma. Similarly there is fear that has also been dominated by the path but it is there and has to be let go. Because of love and spiritual love zandtao does not consider the negative sides of mother-ego enough. She was over-protective and this translated into fear - a fear that is over-protecting. bill did not leave the UK until he was 40. Up until 40 bill thought he was worldly but this was a delusion that came from the mother ego of over-protectivesness. And now in bill's old age there is the panic that arises from his insecurity - wanting his home in Trat. As zandtao is old he gives in too much to this - hence panic.
This fascinating insight helps in integrating paticcasamuppada and anatta.
Here is some imaging to help explain. So there is the river Patsamanat - the river of paticcasamuppada and anatta (Buddhist assumptions). As this river flows there is an infinitely small drop of water in the river that is new life. That droplet of new life is still part of the river Patsamanat but when our selves think of this new life in river Patsamanat (rather than sati and panna contemplation), the selves break the rules and forget the properties of the river Patsamanat.
We can then take another image of river Patsamanat in which there is a timeline of Dhamma and khandhas, and somewhere within this timeline image there is a place that is new life. New life follows paticcasamuppada and anatta so what does this mean for Dhamma and khandhas? Dhamma is everpresent so we look at khandhas. Khandhas are conditioned not created - paticcasamuppada, so at this place of new life there is a continuity of conditioning - a continuity of khandhas - a continuity of selves. At the place of new life there is not creation but a coming together of the conditioning of two parental selves to include a self for the baby. Spiritually there is continuity but in daily life there is a new separate "soul" and the separate people in daily life respond to the separate baby giving the appearance of an individual. Spiritually there is continuity, in daily life there is the separation that is the birth of a new life.
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