Bob Johnston's Post

Identity: An Integral Noetic Perspective

Bob Johnston | 09.15.06 | 11:58 AM |

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After many years of wrestling with my own identity (ego) issues I have come to see the viability of defining ego as whatever an individual identifies with, whether it be clear timeless awareness or temporal forms, such as body-image, feelings, thoughts, values, beliefs, attitudes, intentions, motives, methods, behaviors, possessions, or whatever.

Having said that, it is clear to me that, all said and done, identity, or ego, can be summed up in two kinds: One, ego stemming from an identification with temporal images, such as one’s body or occupation; and Two, ego derived from the ultimate mystical experience, in other words, realizing oneness with transparent infinite timeless awareness, synonyms for which could be the Source, the All, Cosmic Consciousness, or some other non-anthropomorphic intuition.

Some spiritual teachers have described their ideal as surrendering, even destroying, one’s identity or ego to achieve oneness with their version of a divine being. Back in the early 70s I meditated full time for three days on surrendering myself completely to infinite timeless awareness. But infinite timeless awareness repeatedly responded, “I accept you as one with me but who will manage you, an immortal soul? Just as I do not want to micromanage the choices of trillions of souls for them, I do not want to micromanage your soul for you. In our interdependent participative life together in our state of conscious oneness you are delegated the responsibility for making your own decisions. Always with you, my representative OmniMind (OM) will serve as your coconscious consultant, but it is your responsibility to manage your soul’s intentions, thoughts, intuitions, feelings, sensations, and memories, both in this incarnation and life between lives.�? I finally got the message, rose from my meditation on surrender and proceeded to develop a nature-based philosophy on which I would manage my life with my coconscious consultant OM. From that experience evolved My Ten Commitments as shown on the Declaration Page of this website.

My experience taught me that even if identified as one with the infinite, transparent, timeless aware ‘ocean’ of the Source of all, I am not God (as some have proclaimed) but a microcosm interdependent with our Source, the Macrocosm. In other words, in either state of conscious awareness – temporal or eternal -- one has an identity (ego), they are simply different kinds. The question then becomes: Do I want the kind that says I am a separate temporal ego involuntarily conditioned by my family and culture to believe, value, and behave in a certain way; or do I want an interdependent immortal ego which, as a constituent of the all-pervading Source, has been granted the freedom and responsibility for co-managing my temporal ego with the freest range of existentially available options.

So which is it? An independent ego or an interdependent ego. I believe the answer rests with each of us. I opted for the interdependent ego. The question then became, how can I most effectively and efficiently liberate myself from a temporal ego with all its attachments, identifications, habits, and addictions to a timeless aware identity which brings oneness with timeless awareness (albeit interdependent oneness), healing, peace, and freedom of mind and spirit?

When I first started this exploration back in the early 60s I found there are a number of ‘tools’ for exploration, including, meditation, yoga, biofeedback, dreamwork, and psychosynthesis, among others. Later, I designed and developed various blends and innovations under the labels: intensive integral self-management workshops, affirmational meditation, integrally healthful aging, integral memory scripting, and various combinations and blends thereof.

For me, a blend of all those, but using Roberto Assagioli’s concept of psychosynthesis as the core process, has been the most useful. Paraphrased in my own words, Assagioli’s basic concept says: whatever one identifies with dominates and manages her or him. Whatever one disidentifies with, he or she can transcend and learn to manage. To illustrate, this process is expressed in the following affirmational meditation guide for realizing oneness with our timeless aware Source, hence, interdependent immortal soul.

Introduction
You may want to first commit this affirmational meditation to memory, or record it in your own voice on audio tape. Find a quiet place free from distractions, and repeat to yourself or listen to your personalized tape of the affirmation as follows:

1) As a sparkling window-glass-clear immortal soul, I am one with the infinite, all-pervading, pure, clear, healing, peaceful, free, timeless aware Source of all consciousness.

2) I am not any temporal thought, value, belief, motive, intention, attitude, method, behavior, or possession; however, all my temporal thoughts, values, beliefs, motives, intentions, attitudes, methods, behaviors, and possessions are included and available for my selection and use in my repertoire of options.

3) As a pure, clear, conscious center of the infinite, timeless aware Source of all consciousness, I am interdependently but seamlessly one with timeless awareness.

4) As such, I am, together with the timeless aware Source of all options, able to perceive with my senses, and/or intuitionally, the freest existentially available repertoire of choices for every situation.

5) Together, the timeless aware Source and I view our choices, consider their pros and cons, and may co-create additional choices, adding them to our repertoire as needed.

6) Together, the timeless aware Source and I freely choose the options or combination of options which are most likely to create mutual healthful results between us and other parties and our ecosystem.

7) Together, the timeless aware Source and I receive and contemplate the feedback which may come through person to person(s) communications – aurally, visually, in writing, through feelings, dreams, body sensations, or intuitions, or some combination of all those.

8) Together with our Source, as desired, one can start this whole process all over again from the top . . .

Note: There comes a point when probably you will no longer need to read or listen to the affirmation. You can determine when that point is by just asking yourself, “Who am I?�?

If your inner voice answers spontaneously without coaching, “You are one with the transparent, infinite, timeless aware Source of all, your inner ’place’ of co-creative self-managing; you are not any temporal attachment, identification, addiction, or habit,�? you need not repeat the affirmation except as you feel the need.

I had planned to attach a chart which overviews a comparison of the characteristics of the interdependent timeless aware ego with the characteristics of an ego identified with temporal images – attachments, identifications, and addictions. However,I've been advised my attachment exceeds maximum file capacity. For a copy feel free to contact me at omnimind@admin.umass.edu.

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Member Comments:

The Technology of Affirmation

Submitted by Cougar Brenneman on September 21, 2006 - 8:36am.

When I tried your affirmation series, I thought about a series of affirmations that I’ve used at several times in my life for extended periods—usually at least two months in length. I wrote the series that I was using after reading John Randolph Price’s affirmations for abundance. I didn’t like Price’s original series of affirmations because it seemed to me to be ideological—which motivated me to rewrite them.

In writing the Global Wisdom System, I’ve made a practice of accepting the claim that what people from various traditions present to me as meaningful is truly meaningful for them. However, I try to separate the core truth of what they share from their ideology. Price couched his affirmations in Gnostic Christian terminology which I had no relationship with.

Both Price’s affirmations and yours seem to focus one’s mind on identifying with the cosmic or higher self. After experiencing that higher perspective, the affirmations help you bring that perspective into your present circumstances, problems, challenges, choices, and consciousness. (At least, I experienced them this way for both Price’s and yours.) Bringing a cosmic and/or higher self perspective to the world of Maya changes your experience of the world of Maya, as well as changing the way that the world interacts with you. I found that using my own revision of Price’s affirmations seemed to generate amazing instances of synchronicity, as well as changing my own level of stress about what happened.

I would like to ask you about your experience in sharing your affirmations. I was terribly pleased with how the affirmations helped me, and I therefore gave copies of them to many, many other people, who would look them over and say, “Well, that’s very nice.�? Then they’d go on their way and miss the value of the gift that I was trying to give them. Two people did use the affirmations, and both got value from doing so, but I didn’t understand why it was that many people couldn’t understand their value enough to even try them out once.

So when I read your affirmations and started to try them, I was alert to my own reactions because I wanted to use my own reactions to understand how other people had reacted to the gift of my affirmations (i.e., the rewritten Price affirmations). I’d like to hear your comments about whether you receive similar reactions to the ones that I had, as well as whether my reactions are at all helpful to you.

Please note that I’m not judging your affirmations, but telling you what my automatic first reactions had been. I’ll try to reiterate this as I go.

1) I noticed that I felt confused by the purpose of your affirmations in terms of how I would benefit from them. Now, I truly do understand that the purpose of exploring one’s true identity from a spiritual perspective is multifaceted, and furthermore, I can see that even on the face of it, your affirmations have the benefit of nonattachment to results and ability to select from a broader set of options, but this was my emotional response to reading them and then doing them in meditation the first time.

2) I also noticed that I also had an automatic suspicion of you—as if you were somehow a cult leader trying to rope me in. This is clearly an irrational reaction that has nothing to do with you. However, I believe that many people have this automatic reaction to anything that one shares about one’s spiritual path when it is meant as a gift—especially if the information is challenging.

3) I noticed that when I encountered a challenge in meditating on the affirmations—such as applying the visual metaphor of a window glass to my sense of self—my automatic reaction was to make the metaphor wrong, rather than to accept it as a beneficial challenge. I’m sure that my set affirmations evoked similar resistances in other people.

4) I noticed that your affirmations, like mine, are very dense to make them broadly applicable. With the affirmations that I (re)wrote, this denseness was meaningful to me, and I grew to love their multifaceted applicability. But when picking up your affirmations, which were similarly dense, I found it confusing at first.

5) I noticed that after doing your affirmations a couple of time, I went to the place of “Okay, I got the concept now. I don’t have to do this any more.�? With my affirmation set, I know that “getting the concept�? is not really the point.

Anyway, Gary Craig (founder of Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT) has an entirely simpler approach to affirmations, but one of the things that he teaches I think might be useful to you. I haven’t yet figured out whether my affirmation set can be saved with his approach, but I’m thinking about it. Gary Craig talks about affirmations which are challenging as having an unspoken “tail ender�? on them for most people. These are the “yes, but…�? reactions that many people subconsciously tag onto the end of their affirmations. These tail enders become the real affirmation for many people, rather than the intended wording.

Craig had found that EFT is useful to overcome tail enders, and I have found inner silence to serve a similar purpose. Have you dealt with tail enders in using or sharing your affirmations? If so, how have you dealt with them?

On Affirmations

Submitted by Bob Johnston on September 28, 2006 - 7:04am.

Thank you, Cougar, for your feedback on my affirmations. Clearly, you spent a lot of empathy, time, and energy in verbalizing your feelings. I appreciate your doing so.

I think the caveat I give to participants at the outset of my workshops and university courses is also indicative of my intent in sharing my affirmations on SIA: Please keep in mind that all the ideas, concepts, and processes I present are my personal "working hypotheses" which you may want to test for yourself, i.e. options you may want to consider, experiment with, then cast aside, for I am not here to sell you on any of them, just expand your awareness that such options, complete with their caveats, exist. And, by the way, since they are working hypotheses I may well change tomorrow what you see today, should new scientific findings and/or intuitions tested in the laboratory of my everyday life indicate change.

Again, thank you for your interest in my affirmations and their possible affect/effect on others.

Yours with empathy in integral natural science and trust in our mysterious Source,

Bob Johnston