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Reflection and Discussion

1. What questions and comments do you have from this presentation?

2. How does this understanding of the false self help you to better understand yourself?

Phil wrote:

"As the ego begins to develop, the emotional consequences of conditional love-mostly fear, distrust, and shame-create a turmoil in the unconscious that prevents the ego from developing in harmony with the unconscious self. It is as though the light of God mediated through the unconscious self is blocked out by these deep emotional scars. Hence, the ego will be much more attuned to the outside world and will be in some kind of avoidance posture toward the inner world of the unconscious as it develops."

My experience in prayer, where there has been contemplative grace given, is that hours or days later, the Kundalini is aroused in a way similar to Keating's notion of the unloading of the unconscious.

On other threads I've discussed the difference between emotional scarring and developmental deficits, with the latter containing the former. Developmental deficits seem to include not only the fragile ego which Phil describes, but some missing inner structuring of the subconscious created when the very early mother-infant attachment relationship is quite insecure. One could say this is the subconscious level of the ego, depending on one's schema of the psyche. But in any case it refers to the tacit, preverbal, energetic domain of presence and exchange between the infant and mother.

What I'm trying to get at here is a certain question: Can God, without human agency, heal/restore/rebuild this level of human identity when the lack of it may predispose one to difficulties of the Dark Night passages which the Doctors of the Church seem to leave to the workings of providence?

I've described some partially successful means for this restortation on another thread: "Kundalini and Core Psychological Deficits." One of my favorite is Gendlin's Focusing, and in particular a simple method for generating the inner structuring of mothering presence in question. One brings attention in a relaxed way to the inner area of the body, including the throat, chest, stomach and abdominal regions, letting awareness rest there, and then begins imagining the missing experiences. This imagining could include somebody you know who is a mature parent giving you their love, with you as their child or infant. While imagining this exchange, being loose with it, it is important to stay in touch with how the inner area of the body feels, since this is the domain of inner nourishment.

While the love of God's presence is incomparable to any other form of love, this playful use of the imagination seems to partially create a sense of human agency wherein the organism can continue to unfold from within stymied areas that are still awaiting certain intimate contacts of the parenting variety. For further details, see Gendlin's book "Focusing Oriented Psychotherapy," and the chapter "It Fills Itself In."

Can God, without human agency, heal/restore/rebuild this level of human identity when the lack of it may predispose one to difficulties of the Dark Night passages which the Doctors of the Church seem to leave to the workings of providence?

Good reflections on this topic, w.c., and excellent questions. I'm fairly confident that the unconscious can be healed during the contemplative journey in ways that modern psychology cannot account for.

But you ask about human agency in the healing process, and that's a tough one to answer. Certainly, God can do anything, but generally seems to work in and through the creation, using, in this case, all sorts of healing resources in concert with contemplative prayer. Indeed, it may well take a deep human relationship to effect some aspects of healing in the unconscious.

What you've shared about Focusing on the threads you mentioned in your post seems like an excellent way to combine the interventions of therapy and grace.