Category Archives: neuroscience

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Embodying Presence: Fall 2022

Administrative Details: Tuesday

The first class will be on Tuesday, September 12, 9:00-11:00 am PDT (12:00 – 2:00 pm EDT), and will run for 13 consecutive weeks, ending on December 13. $360 for the series, no drop-ins. (Adjustments can be made for regular students with some previous commitments.) A video of the class will be available every week. You can register by e-mailing me at yogarthur@aol.com where I can give you more info on payment etc.

Administrative Details: Saturday

There will be four Saturday classes, 9 – 11 am PDT (PST): September 24, October 22, November 19, December 17. $110 for the four classes: $30/class for drop-ins. Five students minimum per class.

Basic Class Structure

The class begins with a 20 – 25 minute meditation, beginning with guidance on heart opening and then sitting in silence (shikan-taza, the Zen practice of ‘just sitting’.) followed by a check in for questions on practice. Then a period of free movement of your own choice, a demonstration/explanation of the embodied theme of the day and your own personal explorations of the theme. The class will end with a chance for follow up questions, and if time permits, another short meditation.

Class Themes

The core categories are Being, Becoming and Belonging: Being is our shikantaza practice andworking with the Heart Sutra and its challenging pointing to emptiness.. I am currently working on the embodied themes for the fall session (becoming) which will include deeper explorations of the three dantiens through pelvis, ribs and skull bones, the four limbs, working with diaphragm and breath and some spherical, circular and spiralic energy patterns that occur from cell to skin. (More being!) Belonging will include world on healing our ancestral lineage through grandmothers and great-grandmothers as well as the support of our emerging and evolving sangha.

Reading Homework

I have been spending much time with these two books. Powerful and inspiring, but challenging!

Being: “Cultivating the Empty Field” The Silent Illumination of Zen Master Hongzhi , translated by Taigen Daniel Leighton with Yi Wu. Wonderful descriptions of the ‘undescribable’ with guidance on practice (Cast off the body-mind – then cast off ‘casting off”).

Becoming and Belonging: Essence with The Elixir of Enlightenment: The Diamond Approach to Inner Realization
(two books in one volume) by A.H. Almaas (pen name for Hameed Ali).

Hameed articulates the process of awakening through recognizing and transforming the ego structures, and how embodying awakening activates the many facets of ‘Essence’, such as courage, compassion, curiosity, love, and more. He also references Taosit Vedic, Buddhist and Sufi teachings to show the universality of awakening, as well as Western psychological pioneers and explorers to help understand the developmental processes of the ego. This is a rare and extraordinary book by one who has mastered the practice and the supporting scholarship.

If you are not familiar with Hameed, here is a recent interview of him with Tami Simon.

gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svahah

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Engaging and Emptying:
Cultivating Spiritual Maturity through Abhyasa and Vairagyam

The practices of Emptying and Engaging are actually very familiar to all in their beginning stages as they are the foundation of all growth and evolution. Growth on all levels requires periodic stages of emptying, such as molting’ old shells or skin, or outgrowing childhood toys. We naturally let go of what is no longer serving us. Simultaneously arises the ‘engaging’ of energy and passion with something new. We see this in children and their capacity to continually find delight in new things.

Although theoretically, we can continue this process of emptying and engaging up to the grave, most adult humans somewhere along the line, become stuck and stop growing. This may be intellectually when curiosity dies and we stop asking questions, locking into a fixed belief system about the world. Or it can be emotionally, when trauma inhibits our capacity to give and receive love and open to new relationships.

Collectively, cultures can also become stuck in patterns of belief and behavior that inhibit collective growth and maturing. We see this operating today in the clash of cultural values taking place across the planet.

We also can become stuck spiritually when our practice becomes mechanical and dry. In meditation, the practice I am calling ‘Engaging’ is learning how to ‘turn on’ (waking up, activating, engaging, nurturing, supporting) any neural circuits that deepen our capacity to be vibrantly alive and fully present moment to moment. Some of these specifically involve evoking the heart center, such as the conscious cultivation of gratitude, joy, compassion and loving kindness. (see Love, Death and the Skandhas, pt 3).

Others work to cultivate stability, equanimity and presence and all of these variations are included in the practice Patanjali calls abhyaasa. Abhyaasa requires discipline, patience, persistence and devotion, and those of us engaged in somatic meditation immediately recognize asana as a foundational component to abhyaasa. By deeply and mindfully engaging with and surrendering to gravity, the macro-phase expression of the cosmic field, the organism can learn to relax and feel completely held and supported in wholeness.

Patanjali’s three sutras on asana clearly delineate this process: (II-42) posture is stable and elegant; (II-43) (asana is mastered by) relaxing all effort and dissolving into the cosmic field (as represented by the serpent ananta); (II-44) Then all dualities are resolved. If we dive into this trinity and practice with sincerity and diligence, we awaken a deep billion year old biological intelligence. We engage with life itself.

‘Emptying’ practice is the complement to Engaging. From the perspective of neuroscience, ’emptying’ is learning how to turn off the specific neural circuits (‘letting go’, inhibiting, ‘restraining’) that are inhibiting our spiritual growth and evolution. This allows our attention to open to and explore untold layers of stillness at the heart of creation. It is analogous to walking into a room where a tv, radio, and noisy fan are all blaring away, disturbing and distracting your attention. Slowly you find the switches and turn them all off, leaving a healing stillness in the room.

The room is the mind and, unfortunately, the noise generating mental habits don’t have switches, and directly turning them off is next to impossible. But with patience we begin to realize that our reactivity, and the energy of attention it adds to the noise, does have an off switch. This is described by Patanjali in sutra I-3, ‘yogash citta vrtti nirodha‘: yoga is the restraining of mental activity.

Restraining, (nirodha), is the process of ‘turning off’ the reactivity to the mental activity, the citta vrttis. Nirodha is more like a conscious circuit breaker, where we choose to break the circuit of the reactivity with our will power. But because of deeply ingrained habits, it keeps resetting on it own. We have to be amused at the process and in time we might discover many of the circuits stay broken and then dissolve.

Another useful analogy to ’emptying ourselves’ of reactivity is fire. If fire is the distracting mental noise, our reactivity is the fuel. When we learn to stop feeding the fire, it eventually burns out, or at least becomes much less distracting, allowing our attention to move away from it and come to rest in the ever present background stillness. Or move on to other fires!

In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, this emptying practice is known as vairagyam, often translated as ‘dispassion’. Vairagyam can be seen as the dissolving of ‘seductivity’. When we feel inadequate, insecure, or lacking in ‘something’, the world of form can be very seductive. We grasp after some sensory pleasure and are temporarily relieved of our discomfort. However, suffering always returns. Learning to ‘distance ourselves’ from our cravings is a life long practice.

Formal meditation requires a leap in emotional maturity, as a mind that is constantly being churned by unresolved cravings can never settle down to the point where meditation can begin. In the opening chapter to the Yoga Sutras, the Samadhi Pada, Patanjali introduces abhyaasa and vairagyam as the first and most important practices for serious spiritual students.

(The following is from my on-line Yoga Sutras Study Course.)

I-12  abhyasa vairagyabhyam tan nirodhah
Practice and dispassion lead to the resolution (of the dysfunctional mind states).

Patanjali now introduces the two fundamental practices of life that lead to greater health, well-being and deeper spiritual awakening. Do not be intimidated by the Sanskrit words, as abhyasa and vairagya are very familiar experiences involving the two basic choices we make in all of our life activities; what do we choose to encourage and nurture, and what do we choose to drop or let go.

Abhyasa begins with the choices we make in how we invest our vital energies in thought, word and deed. We are asked to consciously and continuously choose behaviors and actions that create, sustain a grounded, compassionate and wise state of being. This is a simultaneously disciplined and relaxed state of the mind where we are aligned with the healing powers of the body/mind and the Cosmos at large. This creates specific neuronal pathways of action and perception that become deeply wired into the brain. The second and key part is to then stabilize these patterns so they become integrated into our moment to moment behavior. This is not a simple process, as sutra I-14 explains further.

Vairagya can be conversely seen as a state of consciously and continuously choosing to let go of thoughts, habits and patterns of behavior that perpetuate suffering, in ourselves and others. From a neuroscience perspective, we are inhibiting specific neuronal pathways through our use of will power, refusing to react to the habits and patterns that are perpetuating fear, anxiety and confusion. Craving, and constantly responding to this, is a classic category here. Vairagya also has levels of depth.

As Patanjali introduces these practices in the Samadhi Pada, he is referring to the advanced level of their expression, but even as beginners on the spiritual path, we can see them as expressions of growing maturity. Behaviors that may have seemed cool as an adolescent are naturally dropped as we become adults. We somehow decide that it would be wise to try yoga or meditation and become invested in growing our practice. Patanjali takes these choices and dives into the moment to moment unfolding our our minds to give birth to a new spiritual being, ourselves.

I-13  tatra sthitau yatno’bhyasah
Practice leads to stable healthy mind states and stillness.

I-14 sa tu dirgha-kala-nairantarya-satkarasevito drdha-bhumih
That (stability of mind) however, requires continuous practice, over a long period of time, without interruption, and with an attitude of devotion and love.

Deeply ingrained habits do not go away overnight, whether in an individual or a society. The neuronal connections and cultural fields can be strongly wired, especially if they have been repeated over and over. To lay down new neural pathways and weaken the old ones takes time and patience. Devotion and love are required to make sure the new pathways are healthy and not dysfunctional. It is quite easy to react to an unhealthy pattern by creating another unhealthy one. ”I hate myself for having all this judgment,” is a common thought/vrtti. Learning to gently and compassionately see the thought and recognize it for what it is requires discipline and patience. Meditation practice allows us to see these thought and behavior patterns from a distance, as a witness to them, which is the first step in transforming them.

What we pay attention to receives our energy. By choosing to not react to our thoughts, but just let them come and go, we are withdrawing from them. We are letting them go. This is vairagya, described in the next sutra. There are many vrttis floating about the mind field that are triggers for suffering, and they will keep returning, even if we let them go, if they have strong roots. That is why patience and persistence are the two key supports. Vairagya is sustaining a healthy and alert immune system for the mind.

I-15 drshtanushravika-vishaya-vitrshnasya vashikara-sanjna vairagyam
The control over craving after any experience, whether sensual, psychological or spiritual, is known as dispassion.

The root of dysfunctionality is craving, the intense desire to acquire or get rid of ‘something’, to create a temporary feeling of wholeness or relaxation. These are emotional or limbic responses, that evoke a threat to our existence. To a self-sense that feels inadequate, there is always something that is threatening, that needs changing. Craving, as we soon find out in life, is a self-perpetuating path of inadequacy and subsequent suffering. Life is what it is happening moment by moment and true happiness is not dependent upon the constantly changing circumstances of life. If I believe that my happiness depends upon this moment being different from what it actually is, I will suffer. Seeing through this delusion is a crucial component of yoga. The true nature of the Self, the unchanging limitless existence and consciousness, (sat – chit – ananda) is undisturbed by any and all possibilities life throws our way.

With the discipline of vairagya we stop believing the craving thoughts, even if they keep arising. No, my happiness is actually not dependent upon getting rid of Donald Trump! This eventually leads to dispassion towards most craving. The subtle forms are dealt with in the next sutra.

The neuroscientific perspective on inhibition offers tremendous insight for yoga students. In Buddha’s Brain” authors Rick Hanson and Richard Mendius  describe the capacity to “simply not respond” to limbic (emotional) activity. There is not the inhibiting of the emotional activation which manifests as physiological sensation, but rather inhibiting the next level of neural activity, the story I tell myself that perpetuates the suffering. Repressing emotional content is not healthy on any level, but recognizing it as it arises, positive, negative or neutral, awakens a meta level of awareness. Then I can use skillful means to help the emotional energies move to a more integrated state.

Important note! Vairagyam is not the absence of passion! An integrated self is highly passionate, just not insecure and needy.

I-16  tat param purusha-khyater guna vaitrshnyam
The more advanced form of dispassion involves the full realization of self as the absolute and the dropping away of the most subtle forms of craving and attachment.

see also sutras II – 26, III – 5, IV-29 – 31

In I-16, Patanjali restates I-3, the knower/seer resting in its own nature, as an example of the culmination of refined discipline/dispassion. My mind may generate wants, needs and desires, but I can see their origin and not turn them into issues of survival. I may want an ice cream cone, but getting one, or not getting one is not a big deal in the overall scheme of things. Or, I have been diagnosed with cancer, which is the last thing I want, and the mind wants to rebel. At some point in time, I will face the reality of this and do whatever I can, in the world of form to help heal. But in any case, I recognize and know the undying Nature of the Self, and take refuge there.

Vairagya, a form of restraint sometimes translated as dispassion, begins as the natural process of the emotional maturing as a human being but continues throughout the depths of our meditation explorations. Like all ‘Emptying’ practices, vairagya asks us to keep letting go, only now that extends to anything that interferes with our full spiritual awakening.

Abhyasa is choosing to awaken deeper and deeper levels of stability in the inner levels of consciousness so we can sustain an awakened consciousness amidst the karmic turmoil of the inner and our realms of existence. Gravity and awakened soma are key components in this life long practice.

On the Meditation Cushion

The exploration of Emptying reveals that there are many layers of mind activity that interfere with our growth and these also can be turned off. We begin with by turning off our phones, computers, bright lights and any other distractions in our immediate environment. Finding a quiet space and time to practice is a nice way to ease into this. This can run the gamut from a quiet corner in our home, to a meditation retreat, to a  monastery to a cave in the Himalayas. For most of us, a quiet space at home will be more that sufficient to get started and anchor our practice.

Secondly, we create the intention for the practice to be empty of our personal story, and any thoughts and beliefs about ourselves, our limitations and how this moment should or should not be. It is a willingness to be total receptive to the fullness of the present moment as expressed in our own True Nature. At this level, turning off means to just ‘let go’ or drop the everyday business of the mind. It is not repression, but the recognition that it is not necessary in this moment. The stories will come back on their own, again and again, but it is surprisingly easy to discover the present moment does not need any support from the mind. Presence is self sustaining and as we learn to get out of the way, through years of dedicated practice, our ‘sense’ of Presence strengthens.

If meditation is like a conversation with our own Divinity, we want to be listening with full attention and openness to our own inner depths. In the beginning, our meditation practice is like having a conversation with someone who cannot let you get a word in edgewise. Of course we are the one’s who cannot stop talking while our Divine Self is the one left out of the conversation. The Cosmos and our biological intelligence cannot use us to give birth to something new if we keep rehashing the past through thought.

But if we have the intention to make the effort, even beginners can find some sense of quiet spaciousness, if only for a very short period of time, and this is crucial. As the body mind finds integration through our asana focus, the breath settles. We stabilize our posture so we sit with lightness and ease. Then, just a glimpse of the innate stillness of our natural state leaves a powerful imprint and is the seed of deeper growth.

After we find a quiet space, set our intentions, and stabilize our posture, emptying practice begins with the next intention; to sit for this practice time allowing the comings and goings of the mind to be as they are, without needing to manipulate or change anything. The reality is that thoughts, sensations and emotions will keep arising in the mind field. If we are to truly let things be as they are, we try not to suppress them, but to observe them with curiosity. To change the habit of non stop mental activity and cultivate deeper capacities for listening, we need to study the mental processes in the lab of meditation practice. We begin to notice that emptiness/stillness is undisturbed by what is arising. Only our attention, a powerful source of energy, is affected.

As our meditation experience will include lot of distractions, frustrations, other emotional energies, and even fear, patience, compassion and a sense of humor is also required. Habits do not change immediately and there is no finish line to our journey; only life unfolding moment to moment through the precious vehicle of our incarnation.

I

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Psyche, Soma and Stillness: Part 2: Boundaries, Other Ego Structures and Flow

Boundaries

In the previous post we examined the cosmological nature of forms, their cycles of creating, sustaining and dissolving, and saw how our embryological origins display the bio-physiological expressions of this dance. All healthy organisms can birth, sustain and dissolve structures as necessary in the ongoing flow of life. We also began to look at the ego structures involved with boundaries and how they relate to authenticity.

All types of boundaries found in living systems and serve a necessary role in allowing any and all unique beings to fully thrive in a complex and interconnected world. We see boundaries everywhere in nature, where dramas are constantly being played out between and among individuals and groups over territories for food, mating and place in the social hierarchy. But because the totality of nature is involved, a dynamic balance is always sustained.

(At the level of collective consciousness, human societies have, through ignorance, greed and total dissociation from the natural world, turned the useful and necessary role of boundaries into a global disaster. For millennia, the rich and powerful have misused and monopolized the natural resources of the planet to the deficit and degradation of all members of the ecosystems of Mother Earth. They have accomplished this through both overt violence as well as the more subtle expressions of violence and abuse of power such as the legalization of arbitrary property lines and other geographical boundaries such as towns, voting districts, states and countries. All sorts of conflicts including war arise from these boundary violations.)

Certain boundaries, like those created by the immune system to defend the organism against outside challenges, are not pyschological/emotional in nature and not part of the ego structures. These are naturally maintained as part of the life intelligence and never dissolved. However, our psycho-physiological structures, known collectively as ‘ego’,* can, when healthy, dissolve and re-configure in response to new circumstances and continually evolve.

One of these is the capacity to establish, monitor and modify clearly defined emotional boundaries. This key ego component in developing emotional maturity is crucial to keeping the awakening process on track, and not as common as it should be in the spiritual world. One can have a powerful awakening experience without a clear sense of personal boundaries and this leads to the sad and dangerous phenomena of cults and ‘spiritual’ teachers behaving badly. We will discuss this topic in more detail in the next blog post.

Healthy boundaries require: the ability to differentiate our own emotional states from those of others; the ability to recognize and honor the boundaries of others; taking ownership of our own emotional states and our own emotional development; developing self esteem; and becoming grounded in our own personal authenticity. Interestingly enough, to further our own maturing and spiritual awakening, we also need to learn how and when to dissolve those boundaries. To experience true intimacy with another human being or even life and the totality of creation, we need to relax and dissolve our emotional sense of separateness into the boundary-less-ness of Being.

None of this is easy as at the level of human emotions very little is clear. In infancy and early childhood, the emotionally charged components of the ego are emerging and evolving, as are the capacities to monitor and modulate them. But they are also heavily influenced by both the cultural conditioning and the emotional maturity of our parents, siblings and others in our social group. Because we are so open when young, dysfunctional habits and beliefs about who we ‘are’ and ‘are not’, and what we are capable of what what we are not, are easily absorbed and unconsciously added to our self sense.

The result is that we can stop growing and evolving emotionally, leading to a very confused sense of boundaries. Most children will assume they are at fault if the adults around them are upset. Their boundaries supporting their self sense are not strong enough to distinguish their personal emotions from those of others. In healthy or emotionally mature parenting, adults will own up to and apologize for their emotional outbursts, and acknowledge and validate the emotional states of their children. Unfortunately, this is not as common as we would like.

Therefore, most of us reach adulthood with layers of unresolved trauma trapped in our infantile or early childhood ego structures and these can play a major role in shaping our adult responses to emotionally challenging situations. We have all felt in ourselves, or observed in others, the raging 2 year old, the depressed and withdrawn 7 year old, or the angry frustrated adolescent.

When the egoic structures*, including boundaries, become dysfunctional, they usually fall into one of two categories. First they can become ‘stuck’, leading to rigid and inflexible states and stances. Or, they become chaotic and unpredictable leading to confusion and relentless stress in all relationships. Unresolved trauma is the most common reason for the dysfunctional behavior structures, and traumas can run the spectrum from mild to severe. The skills to recognize and evaluate these dysfunctional patterns are not part of our educational process, but with good karma we may stumble onto a good therapist, or learn meditation practices and thus gain some tools for healing, evolutionary growth and deeper awakening. *(see below)

It is important to note that unhealthy boundaries are a major issue in both psychotherapy and spiritual teaching, as there are often hidden power imbalances. Growth and transformation through relationships requires trust from the client/student and deep inner personal insight on the part of the therapist/teacher. When both parties have unconscious and unfulfilled needs, disaster awaits. The next post will look at this in more depth.

Life is our practice field. Emotional energy is the root of all relationships and human emotional fields are constantly overlapping. Walk into a crowded room and all levels of emotional energy can be recognized, from joy and delight to anxiety, fear, anger and disgust. As you move through and interact with this field, can you know which of these emotions are yours and which belong to others?

If you walk through the room with a healthy sense of boundaries, you can, for the most part, seal off the outside negative emotions and, when possible, physically walk away from the trouble. When meeting a friend, you can then relax the boundaries and open up to establish a relational field of friendship and exchanged love. However, as we know, there are times in relationships where difficult emotions have to be addressed and not avoided. Here healthy boundaries allow us to be present and grounded with our own inner state while allowing others to have their own experience, as the emotional storms swirl around us.

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Exploration: Track your own boundary process over the next week or so. When do you feel your boundaries active, as if you are defending your territory? When do you you feel them relaxing? Where in the body do these feelings manifest? Be aware of others boundaries as well. Can you feels others opening or closing and how does this make you feel?

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Flow

In Chinese Medicine, one of the 12 main meridian lines is the ‘heart protector’, whose role it is to protect the powerful and yet vulnerable heart. It governs the opening and closing the ‘heart gates’, so we can be nourished by healthy relationships and protected from unhealthy ones. When functioning well, we can say the heart protector is rooted in the dynamic, creative, spontaneous natural state of the Cosmos known as flow. As a gate keeper, it can choose to let energy in, or keep it out. And it can choose to let energy out, or keep it in.

The heart field is the center of our meditative attention as it links our psychology, emotions and soma with spirit. A key component of meditation is learning, through direct perception, how the fluid process of creating, sustaining and dissolving works in the dance of life. We begin to recognize that thoughts, sensations and even emotional states are transitory phenomena. We can sustain them by feeding them with the energy of attention, or let them run their course by not feeding them and just letting them be. We discover awareness, the vast, accepting, open spaciousness in which all thoughts, sensations and emotions dance. And we may begin to feel the innate organizing, discriminating and compassionate intelligence of the organism as flow ‘before forms arise’, the boundless potentiality of creation.

In the meditative flow state, unhealthy patterns are recognized but neither repressed (the ‘stuck’ state’) nor re-stimulated, (the chaotic state). Their karmic momentum is allowed to flow through us, like a river flowing between the banks, with the micro bits of trauma dissolving into the flow. Or we may feel the excess energy slowly dissipating like a bouncing ball gradually coming to rest.

This process may take a few moments, or many years, depending upon the depth and intensity of the energy field held in the pattern. In cases of trauma, an outside therapist may be required to help sustain the flow state while processing intense emotions, as traumatized fields are usually isolated and organized to sustain themselves, manifesting as pyschological and emotional ‘stuckness’ or chaos. Safely transforming traumatized emotional energy is usually quite difficult on our own.

The open receptivity of awareness and flow is quite different from the impulsive reactivity triggered by our dysfunctional habits, and unfortunately quite rare in the beginning stages of meditation. Patience is required and we may discover that awareness also openly accepts the inevitability of reactivity. We notice we have become reactive and distracted and gently come back to open receptivity, giving the reactive urge space but not the energy of focused attention. Meditation practice is difficult because of the power and momentum of habit.

The reality is that the mind has a mind of its own. As Arjuna tells Krishna in Chapter 6 verse 34 of the Bhagavad Gita: “The mind is restless, Krishna, impetuous, self-willed, hard to train; to master the mind seems as difficult as to master the mighty winds.” Krishna agrees, but adds in verse 35 that the mind can be trained with constant practice and freedom from emotional reactivity (passion). The two pillars of practice Krishna mentions, abhyasa and vairagya, are the very first practices Patanjali introduces in the Samadhi Pada of the Yoga Sutras.

With time, practice and the reining in of of our emotional reactivity, we learn to become grounded in the alone-ness of inner stillness, ‘one with’ creation, and authentically unique. We embody this in flow. When the egoic boundary structures are fluid and adaptable, we come to know that we are simultaneously ‘no-thing’, ‘all things’ and a unique expression of Divine love and wisdom. We learn to live in the depths of paradox as a feeling of being in a continou spacious flow state, neither stuck nor chaotic. Through practice we can learn to assess the utility of our ego boundaries and assess whether they are healthy or unhealthy.

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Ego Structures and Spiritual Awakening

Sigmund Freud was one of the first Westerners to describe the self-organizing components of mind by dividing this process into three layers or functions, the id, the ego and the superego. In very general terms, Freud’s ‘id’ is the most primitive and governs instincts and basic biological drives. It is also driven by the ‘pleasure principle’ where all desires for pleasure must be immediately gratified or else tension arises. The superego is the conscience or moral compass, defining what is acceptable and what is not acceptable in behavior. The ‘ego’ functions as the mediator between the instincts and morality, trying to find an acceptable middle ground, that is neither rigidly moral, nor chaotically impulsive.

Over the years, we have come to understand that there are many layers, voices, parts and roles that comprise the ego structures. Some helpful models describing these include ‘Internal Family Systems and ‘Voice Dialogue, which I briefly summarize here.

Another approach comes from Buddhism and describes five stages of development known as the skandhas. You can read more about them here, or here, here and here.

Hameed Ali, founder of ‘The Diamond Approach’, (writing as A.H. Almaas,) offers this unique insight on ego structures and the importance of emotional maturity in choosing to do the inner work.

First, experience and recognition of true nature, regardless on what dimension of subtlety and completeness, do not automatically dissolve all ego structures. It is our observation that ego structures, and for that matter psychodynamic issues, are not affected directly by enlightenment experiences. This is due to the fact that these structures and issues have mostly unconscious underpinnings. Unconscious elements of the psyche are not impacted by conscious experience directly, except maybe in exposing them to consciousness in some occasions. These structures are impacted only by awareness of them and complete understanding of their content.

The enlightenment experience may give the individual a greater detachment and presence that makes it easier for him or her to confront these structures and issues without becoming overwhelmed by them, and hence have a better opportunity to work through them. The greater presence that may result might make it easier for the individual to abide more in true nature, and this way have a greater detachment from the influence of the structures. But the structures will not self-destruct simply because the soul has seen the light. We understand that this view is counter to the claims of many individuals who profess enlightenment. The actions of many of these individuals should speak for themselves.

The Inner Journey Home, pg. 194