Jealous Gods
Jealous gods could also be named ego functions (taming, mastery, self-control, adaptation)
Mindful
These gods (what am I worshipping now?) could be rewired for mindfulness (moment-to-moment awareness).
Meditation re-orients ego functions away from possessing things, towards awareness.
Anger/energy required to overcome frustration, blockages. Anger makes change.
Hunan: how do we hide from ourselves?
Winnicott: It is a joy to be hidden but disaster not to be found.
The more we grasp emptiness, the more we feel real.
The cause of all troubles is belief in a separate self.
To become a lamp unto yourself.
Fear
Hovering between two opposing fears: one of isolation, and other of dissolution or merger.
Reich’s interest was in how we carry and perpetuate inadequacy in our body.
False Self
We impose a coherence on ourselves (creating a false self) if the parental environment is not resilient enough. Prematurely separated from the nourishing attention of the mother, people lose touch with their own bodies and retreat to the confines of their minds. This reinforces isolation.
How to stop living entirely in our ideas, but in our bodies?
There are two poles of the false self. Grandiose self developed in compliance with parent’s demands and in constant need of admiration.
2nd pole: empty self: alone, impoverished, insecure, aware only of the love that never given.
In complying with her parent’s needs, she had lost touch with her emotional life.
The false self comes because we can’t express what we really want.
Some feelings were not available to her.
The crumbling of the false self occurs through awareness of its manifestations, not through the substitution of some underlying “truer” personality.
