The Development
and Structure of the Self
Growth does not come from either obeying or disobeying rules,
from either doing as you are told or rebelling against it.
Growth comes from allowing your ego’s story to drop away.
—don riso
We must each have a reason to look honestly and fully into the face of the constricted self. As described in the first part of the book, when you die, you do not die in your constricted self. The need to let go of this constricted self when you die is a compelling reason to awake to your expanded self now and live your life out in joy and inner peace before you die. I hope you have come to realize from the first half of the book that your dying is a necessary part of life. You and I know that we cannot run away from death. Hopefully, that fact alone will motivate you to learn to live well now because you can die at any time.
In my view, one of the most important actions you can take for yourself is to learn to open and live now with your expanded self.
As described in the first half of the book, the expanded self is the self in which you would want to die because it gives you a quality of mind that is aware, loving, relaxed, spacious, peaceful, and balanced. I describe this expanded self’s structure and development in Chapter 2. Where we need to begin, however, is to explore how you and I created our constricted self. There are three parts to the constricted self: the body, the mind, and the brain. We will follow the construct of how these three elements develop your ego constricted self.
The Constricted Self
The constricted self follows a pattern of development that includes the body, mind/brain/emotions, and beliefs and behaviors. The body becomes the foundational identification point of our ego identity. We will note that the body is made up of information, energy, and space. Out of this content we sense and experience an energy field, which some call an aura. The mind functions to tell the brain what to do and the brain directs the body. Out of the body mind/brain function there arises in us senses and emotions and perceptions that create our beliefs and behaviors. From this sequence, self-identity arises in which we see our constricted self reflected like a mirror in the world around us governed by “me, my, and mine.” All this leads to a disconnect of reality and generates the source of our fear and suffering.
The Body
In my investigation into the constricted self, I began by asking the obvious question: Is the body the constricted self? I asked this question because most of us believe and identify that our body is who we are. What I ultimately discovered was that the body does not contain or hold self-identity. I may try to identify with my body as my “self,” but, as I explored both in meditation and biological study, I learned that this flesh we call our self is just made up of energy, information, and space.
What you and I know from our education is that the body at its most basic component is made up of the physical atom. The atoms that make up your body are the most basic units of human matter. Consider what an atom is. The atom is the size a ten-billionth of a meter. Each atom has an electron that moves around the atom. To give some perspective on the size of the atom, the nucleus of the atom is like an SUV and the electron is the size of a chickpea. There is a lot of space between them, but that space is full of energy frequencies and information. When two atoms bond together, they form a molecule, connecting energy information through the space around them. When more molecules bond together, it creates chemicals and the chemicals share a field of informational energy. When the chemicals form together, in their field they create cells and the cells organize to form tissues within the field of energy around them. The tissues move together to organize into an organ. There is also a field around them that creates systems such as the digestive system or the cardiovascular system. These systems function as a collective consciousness in a field of energy to create a body. This body matter we call our self is an interconnecting set of energies, information, and, most of all, space! Buddhists would say that our body is simply an interdependent web of causes and effects and there is no Self present.
This interdependent set of cause-and-effect energies within our body seeks coherence. Coherence means that the pulsating frequencies will align with each other. They fall into rhythm, much like a group of clocks will eventually start ticking at the same rhythm or drummers will naturally come into mutual drumming to each other’s rhythm. Physics describes coherence as energy waves that align in perfect phase and balance.
When this happens, they have a constant oscillating or repeated frequency pattern. What we call our body identity is this oscillating frequency pattern.
When we apply this idea to the body’s energy, if our energy is low, there is an imbalance or incoherence. When the frequency gets low enough, the body becomes incoherent, that is, it moves out of balance, order, and rhythm. Disease is created when the energy is low and there is incoherence. The body is made up of oscillating energy frequencies that affect this body matter and information that is communicated throughout the body in healthy or unhealthy body symptoms. When you have a disease, the energy frequency is lowered. You are out of coherence and the chance for the body to “die” becomes possible. The body is an amazing mechanism, but it is not yourself!
From a metaphysical viewpoint, we can add one more aspect to the body matter. Most spiritual traditions claim that around the body is a field of information energy that radiates from the physical form. This is called the auric field or personal field of informational energy. An aura is a field of subtle, luminous radiation surrounding a person or object like a halo. The aura is the manifestation of the electromagnetic field believed to come from the minute electrical impulses running through the body. This view holds that there is a rhythm or pulsation to our physical matter that extends out approximately four feet from the body. This invisible field of information gives life, order, or coherence to matter. You will discover later how you can begin to experience your expanded self as related to this aura.
Let’s stop and explore in a simple exercise a coherence pattern of our auric field. Remember that this field of personal informational energy is the result of charged microcurrents of electricity that are being given off by the nerves in your body. To begin to become aware of this energy field is to sense and feel it before the possibility of seeing it.
Exercise: Sensing the Energy Field of the Body
Become still in silence and breathe deeply so that your mind and heart settle and you can listen to the deepest part of yourself. Then follow these steps:
• One of the easiest ways of experiencing this energy field of your body is to first rub your hands together rapidly.
• After rubbing for a few seconds, hold your hands opposite each other and apart about six inches and slightly move your hands back and forth. As you move your hands back and forth, you will feel a slight magnetic pull between your hands.
• As you continue to move your hands back and forth, spread your hands farther apart. As you focus your attention on the space between your hands, you can begin to feel a “ball” of energy building between your hands.
• This feeling of “energy” between your hands is what is experienced in martial arts, tai chi ch’uan, and Qigong energy practices. There are other practices that one can learn to train one’s eyes to see this energy.
The Mind
Let me come back to the idea of energy coherence in your body. How is the rhythmic and balanced frequency lowered in your body? What causes the frequency to become out of balance or not in coherence? From the research I covered in my previous book, it is clear that imbalance coherence has to do with the functioning of your mind/brain.
The brain is the command center for your nervous system. However, your mind is not located in any specific place in the body or the brain. Yet your mind is intimately involved in all the brain’s activities. Neuroscientists’ definition of the mind is that the mind is what the brain does. To use a computer metaphor, your mind acts like software in a computer. The brain is the hardware that allows a variety of different software programs to run. Because you and I have different brain functions and different types of “software” as a mind, this can account for the different reactions we may have to the same stimulus. Our brain/mind hardware and software are each a little different to match the differences between us. The mind, the brain, and the body all interact like a perfect computer. The mind’s function is to tell the brain what to do and the brain directs the body.
When the brain directs the body, then the body responds and behaviors are acted out. You identify with the actions and behaviors as being you—the person doing the action or behavior. You believe these behaviors must be who you are, as they are behaviors your mind is guiding in the actions of your body. You believe repeated actions and behaviors that your brain and mind make up define your personality—your identity as an individual. However, all your actions and behaviors ultimately come from the evolution of that simple atom to make up this illusive and complex construct we call the personality or ego. But there is still more to this construct.
The Senses and Emotions
As your biological organism grows and ages, the perception of yourself as a personality grows through the increasing development of your sensations. When your mind’s attention is on an object, such as a tree in the environment, it records a variety of sensations registered in your brain. Your senses (hearing, sight, smell, taste, and touch) register the physicality of the tree. Your brain/mind receives this information as it travels through the body, where there is some type of reaction or response. It sees or touches or smells or feels or hears the wind in the tree. Through this experience of the sensations, there is a response in your mind/brain/body to the tree. The response has an emotional feeling reaction as to whether the tree is enjoyable or not enjoyable, pretty or not pretty, or no response at all to the tree. What we know from research is that this emotion or “feeling tone” function is part of every sensation and the resulting perception you have.
What happens next is that this sensation/perception generates thought. Your thought formulates a belief or judgment about the tree in the environment given the awareness of your sensations. This quality of your mind’s feelings and thoughts has a direct effect on the energy of the brain and on the body. The judgment also has a direct influence on the energy and frequency of your entire biological system. The judgment of negative reaction can lower your energy balance or the judgment of positive enjoyment can raise your energy coherence frequency.
Beliefs and Behaviors
But wait, there is more to be constructed in this pattern of your identity. Here is more familiar ground, as it is where you become aware of yourself as a personality with particular beliefs and behaviors. When your thoughts are spoken and feelings experienced, such as when you say or feel “I like that sunset” or “I hate hot weather” or “Weather doesn’t bother me at all,” these beliefs and behaviors create a personification that is called “me” because all the sensations, emotions, thoughts, and judgments are happening within and to you. As your personality gets stronger in its beliefs, values, and assumptions of the “me,” you become attached to them and assume they are “mine.” Your inner dialogue could go something like: “I must be a real person because this is me. It is happening to me and this experience is mine because I can feel it inside. Therefore, this is now my identity because everything I see, feel, or think is me.”
Me, My, and Mine
The habit of me, my, and mine are continually repeated until your personality gets stronger to resist any outside doubt of who you are. The more the repetitive behavior of the inner and outer experience of “me” the more real you feel you are “you.” What we know is that the mind, brain, and body helps concoct the “me.” You are, in fact, an evolutionary and biological learning machine that constructs the “me and mine” called your personality or ego self.
Two Minds: Constricted and Expanded
To make things a little more complex, you and I live in two states of mind. It all depends on which mind you chose and how that mind is directed. One mind is the mind of survival or the constricted self. This mind lives in fear, anger, shame, and stress and experiences all the survival issues that define your reality. When your body lives in survival mode, it lowers the frequency and your body health by consuming a lot of your energy. In the short term, the negative emotions and stress affect your body by contracting and lowering the mental and emotional frequencies of the brain. The good news is that in the short term your energy can be restored. But if the stress goes on and on for a longer period of time, it affects your energy levels, draws from the energy reserves of your body, and becomes chronic.
When this happens, you begin to lose the sense of your energy coherence, balance, and inner and outer rhythm. You struggle to maintain your material body to survive.
Mentally and emotionally, your personality wants the “constricted you” to survive and not die. What is real to you then is the physical, material reality that your senses can verify as “you.” When this survival component happens, you begin unconsciously to fortify the belief that you are more material body than you are energy or a frequency wave. However, deep in your personality is the hidden fear that “you” are only a construct, an illusion, and that “you” does not really exist. You may experience this when you have waves of anxiety that seem to come from nowhere.
Don’t fear, you also have the other mind available to you. This mind is the creative self or the expanded self. This self creates energy and utilizes energy to extend compassion for all beings. This expanded self is still connected to the constricted self of survival, but it has the potential to be free. The quality of your expanded mind has a higher frequency such as love, appreciation, intuition, and gratitude, rather than fear, anger, and shame. The expanded self does not need the material world to exist. Awareness of space, energy, and expansiveness are qualities of the expanded self. You can wake up now before you die and align with what Jesus said, “Be in the world but not of it.” 55
Before you die, your expanded self can release your constricted attachment to the material world of survival, problems, and suffering. The creative mind of this expanded self creates energy and utilizes energy to express compassion for your life and for all beings. To be able to wake up you must confront the fact that your “I” personality of me, my, and mine does not exist. You made it up as a strategy for survival in your particular circumstance. We will now look at the impact that the “I” constricted personality has on your life in terms of pain and suffering. This is what is called the “pain body.”
The Pain Body
This expanded mind is not oriented as the “I” personality, rather, the “I” personality does not really exist. It has been made up. When you move from the constricted personality self to the expanded self, it doesn’t mean you no longer have a personality. When you become free and expanded, the focal point of your senses, perception, actions, and behavior naturally change toward a positive, more fluid, and open expression of your unique nature. You will look the same, speak the same, do many of the same things you always have done. You will still confront what Eckhart Tolle calls the “pain body.” 56
The pain body represents the patterns of genes, environment, and personal experiences (particularly emotional ones) that shape you and me. The pain body is what you experience in the constricted self. Tolle calls the pain body “an accumulation of painful life experience that was not fully faced and accepted in the moment it arose … [it is] an energy entity consisting of old emotion.” 57 It is out of your lifelong struggle that you created your own pain and emotional suffering.
As your expanded personality becomes healed and free through your conscious presence and awareness, the pain body will still be there, but you will no longer experience the suffering when situations activate it. As I’ve described, the body/mind/brain is a creator of your ego identity for good or ill. As we continue our exploration, you will be exploring the way you used all three to construct your constricted self, starting as a young child and how you can come to experience your expanded self.
After the following exercise, I will describe brain frequencies a little more, how two systems in your brain are part of constructing and keeping you hooked into the constricted self, and then the system that can move you into your expanded self.
Exercise: Impact of the Body, Mind, and Emotions
The intent of the exercise is for you to observe your conscious awareness of emotional impact or lack of it on your sensations. In your notebook, describe your observations.
• What is the type of emotion, feeling tone, or non-emotions you experience as you contact or observe something in the room or outside via your senses (sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing)? Just notice what sensations are the strongest for you and what sensations generate emotions, if any.
• What happens to your body energy and attitude toward yourself or others when you are angry or disturbed by someone or something? Or when something brings you joy? Or when something has no response and is just neutral for you? Think of a situation in which anger or disturbance occurred recently. Describe the differences in your notebook.
The Two Brain Systems
The two brain systems consist of four major brain frequencies, the default mode network, and the task positive network. These frequencies and networks determine the movement from constricted self to expanded self.
Within the brain are a variety of frequencies that function to maintain your body and mind systems. There are four main brain frequencies to which you have easy access, and these four will be the ones you will work with when using the videos. These four frequencies are beta (13–38 Hz), alpha (7.8–13 Hz), theta (4–7.8 Hz), and delta (0.5–4 Hz). These four frequencies are active in you from when you wake up in the morning, when concentrating on work, relaxing, daydreaming, and at the end of the day entering deep sleep.
The brain research over the past fifteen years has demonstrated that if you know how to consciously use these brain frequencies, you can make fundamental changes in your life. The great understanding from these years of research is that your brain is “plastic.” The meaning of the brain being plastic is that, by using simple repeatable patterns both consciously and unconsciously, you can change and shape, grow and develop the actual tissue of your brain.
Default Mode Network (DMN)
One remarkable discovery in the brain research is a system in the brain that makes up the constricted self structure. This system is called the default mode network (DMN). This network of brain neurons is activated in your external conscious life to recall past experiences, to plan the future, and to navigate social interactions. It is also used in your internal awareness and conscious thought when not engaged in the external world. The DMN operates as low as 0.1 hertz and is activated when you are internally focused, such as when dreaming, when you are retrieving memories, and when your mind drifts unfocused on past and future perspectives and social interactions.
The DMN consists of the medial temporal lobe (visual memories), the medial prefrontal lobe (the personality), posterior cingulate (integrates with the internal cingulate cortex), ventral precuneius (imagery of self), and the inferior parietal cortex (interprets and senses body image). The DMN is activated between the ages of nine and twelve. It is also strongly active in people with long-term trauma, childhood abuse, and other constrictive emotional patterns and experiences. The importance of you understanding that you have a default mode network is the knowledge that you can change the structure of your DMN brain. Earlier, I presented the notion that meditation has a powerful impact on daily life, emotions, and behavior. Even more important, brain research on meditation practice demonstrates that it changes brain structure and activates another network in the brain.
Task-Positive Network (TPN)
This other brain network is called a task-positive network (TPN). The TPN is activated when the mind is in focused attention and consciously aware. The brain areas of activation when focused and aware are the prefrontal cortex and parietal structures of the brain. Thus, when there is an increased mental focus, as with meditation, it decreases the DMN and decreases the personality of the constricted self. It allows for the expanded self to be constructed.
This is amazing research that supports the practice of meditation as a positive tool to release your constricted self. These TPN frequency patterns can shift both your brain and your mind in your work of awakening to your essential nature by releasing your constricted DMN patterns and open the expanded nature of your being.
Right and Left Hemisphere Brain Functions
There are other brain functions that also affect the constricted self and the expanded self, particularly when we are dying. The brain has a right and a left hemisphere connected by a network of nerve fibers called the corpus callosum. The left hemisphere is dominant in language. It processes both what you speak and what you hear. It is also the dominant logical part of the brain and has the ability to do mathematical computations as well as retrieve facts from your memory.
The right hemisphere is mainly in charge of visual spatial abilities, face recognition, and processing music. It performs some math but not difficult problems. The brain’s right side also helps us to comprehend visual imagery and make sense of what we see. The right brain’s use of language is primarily in interpreting form, the big picture, context, and verbal tones.
Each side has its dominant characteristics, but there are elements of both hemispheres in either side. It is important to note that the left brain houses your personality, which is your constricted self. This is the self that is gradually released when you die. The right brain is the last to be dissolved when you die. The detaching of the constricted self from the left brain allows the right brain to be active until you die. This is why I call dying of the constricted self before we die the waking-up process. You can do this consciously before you die and live in the peace, love, and freedom in the right brain today.
In summary, brain research tells you that your left-brain houses the survival personality. This dissolves when you leave your body. Then your body is free of verbal language, judgments, and figuring things out. This leaves the right brain, which primarily houses the expanded self, as the functioning brain. This self is aware, with expression of positive emotions, light, and color.
In my view, the quality of mind you are in when you die will determine the most important spiritual experience of your life. Some people say, as they are in the transformation process of dying, “This is what I have been searching for all my life.” Your opportunity is to prepare your mind to slip into that quality of mind now before you physically die. This is the purpose of this awakening work. If you are aware in the transformation process of both living and dying you will be able to raise your energy frequencies or consciousness to a high level of releasing your old patterns and your “pain body.” This energy release of tension from thoughts, memories, beliefs, emotions, and sensations by your trained brain/mind will raise your consciousness to perceive life around you very differently from what you currently experience. Your higher energy frequency will increase mind awareness and will expand and dissolve the left- brain’s tightness and your constricted self.
Exercise: Right/Left Brain Assessment
The following are forced-choice questions. People will do both at times. Choose the response that is most characteristic of your natural tendency or behavior, not what you think you should do, or how you’ve trained yourself to do something. Do not analyze the questions, but simply put down your first response. Circle either a or b.
1. In solving a problem:
a. I will stay at my desk and write out possible solutions, arrange them in order of priority, then pick out the best one.
b. I will take a walk, mull things over, discuss it with someone, and then digest the problem while doing something else before arriving at a decision.
2. When making decisions:
a. I occasionally have hunches but don’t place much faith in them.
b. I frequently have strong hunches and follow them.
3. If I have a project to complete:
a. I file the materials in folders and put them away when I am not working on the project.
b. I leave the materials in piles on my desk, floor, etc., and generally prefer not to put them away where I can’t see them.
4. I learn athletics and dancing better by:
a. Memorizing the sequence and repeating the steps mentally.
b. Imitating someone and getting the feel of the game or music by simply trying to do it.
5. In communicating with others:
a. I more easily express myself verbally.
b. I more easily express myself in written or graphic form.
6. When I take notes:
a. I rarely print.
b. I frequently print.
7. When situations require that I take a risk:
a. I become anxious in making the risk.
b. I enjoy the adventure of the risk.
8. We all become moody from time to time:
a. I have almost no mood changes.
b. I have frequent mood swings.
9. In school, I preferred:
a. Algebra.
b. Geometry.
10. When I sit in a relaxed position with my hands clasped comfortably in my lap, the thumb on top is:
a. My right thumb.
b. My left thumb.
11. All of us have some type of written or unwritten goals for our life:
a. I am very strongly goal oriented, and try to fulfill them.
b. I have some general goals but don’t focus my life on them.
12. When wanting to know what time it is:
a. I need to look at a clock to get the accurate time.
b. I have an inner sense of how much time has passed without looking at my watch.
Scoring
Add up all the As and all the Bs you circled.
a = _____
b = _____
a represents your left brain score
b represents your right brain score
The higher the number in the left or right score, the greater the tendency toward that perspective. The following gives some information on the use of left- and right-brain hemisphere function in your thinking style.
The human brain consists of two hemispheres that are mirror images of each other. The hemispheres are connected by the corpus callosum, a series of nerve fiber bundles that transmit information from one brain hemisphere to the other. Each hemisphere controls the movements and sensations of the opposite side of the body; that is, the left hemisphere controls the right side of the body, and the right hemisphere controls the left side of the body. Study of the hemispheres indicate that the left brain controls a significant portion of the analytical mental functions such as language (both speech and comprehension) and logical and rational capabilities, whereas the right brain controls much of the intuitive capabilities—the ability to produce and appreciate music and art—as well as spatial skills. The hemispheres also differ in their methods of processing information. The left brain processes in a sequential manner, dealing with details and features, whereas the right brain tends to deal with simultaneous relationships and global patterns. Although the two hemispheres have these separate characteristics, they are more integrated than is fully understood in current brain research.
Comparison of Left-Mode and Right-Mode Characteristics
|
Left |
Right |
|
Verbal |
Nonverbal |
|
Symbolic |
Synthetic |
|
Abstract |
Analogic |
|
Temporal |
Nontemporal |
|
Rational |
Nonrational |
|
Digital |
Spatial |
|
Logical |
Intuitive |
|
Linear |
Holistic |
Exercise: Convergent/Divergent Thinking Assessment
The following are forced-choice questions. People will do both at times. Choose the response that is most characteristic of your natural tendency or behavior, not what you think you should do, or how you’ve trained yourself to do something. Do not analyze the questions, but simply put down your first response to them. Circle either A or B.
1. When studying an unfamiliar subject, I:
a. Gather information by exploring many areas relating to the topic.
b. Stay focused with the information on the central topic.
2. Given the time and opportunity, I prefer:
a. To know a little about a great many subjects.
b. Become an expert in one subject area.
3. When studying from a textbook or manual, I:
a. Skip ahead and read chapters out of sequence that have special interest to me.
b. Work systematically from one chapter to the next, not moving on to the next chapter until I’ve understood what I’ve read.
4. When asking other people for information about some subject of interest, I:
a. Tend to ask broad questions that call for rather general answers.
b. Tend to ask narrowly focused questions that require specific answers.
5. When browsing in a bookstore or library, I:
a. Roam around looking at books on many different subjects.
b. Stay more or less in one place looking at books on just a few subjects that interest me.
6. I am better at remembering:
a. General principles.
b. Specific facts.
7. When given an assignment or task, I:
a. Prefer to have background information that’s not directly related to the task but may give a context for the work.
b. Prefer to only concentrate on having strictly relevant information for performing the work.
8. In training people for new jobs, I would have the training program:
a. Expose the person to a wide variety of skills and information about the company and its programs as well as the new job.
b. Focus the training on just the skills the person needs to perform at a high level in their new job.
9. When I go on vacation, I prefer to:
a. Spend a short amount of time in several different places.
b. Stay in just one place the whole time and really get to know it.
10. When driving to a location in a new city from my hotel, I prefer:
a. Looking at a map and getting a general overview of where I am going.
b. Have someone give me detailed instructions on how to get from my hotel to the destination.
11. When working on a project, I prefer:
a. Valuing the importance of the details but having someone else manage them as I focus on broader issues.
b. Controlling the details of the reports and other data that will determine the success or failure of the project.
12. Given that both are important, in managing within an organization I prefer:
a. Developing strategy.
b. Developing operational plans.
Scoring
Add up all the As and all the Bs you circled.
A = _____
B = _____
A represents your divergent score.
B represents your convergent score.
The higher the number in the divergent or convergent score, the greater the tendency toward that perspective. The following gives some information on the use of convergent and divergent in your thinking style.
The convergent/divergent questionnaire gives information on the approach that individuals take when they are confronted with a problem or situation that needs to be contextualized or framed before one begins to “think” it through. The concepts of divergent and convergent give the framework in which the thinking takes place. These two are the screen or filter for how one’s thought pattern will proceed.
Convergent is a narrow band approach to problem-solving. Like induction, the convergent approach moves from an individual point, set of facts, or cases and builds toward a generalized conclusion or answer.
Divergent is a wide band approach to problem-solving. Like deduction, it moves from the general to specific by finding specific solutions or results from conclusions, concepts, theories, or broad empirical observations. Most people have a mix of the two approaches. The number ratio on the assessment gives an indication of which of the two is emphasized or not for you as an individual. The convergent/divergent pattern has a significant influence on the sequence pattern of our thinking process, decision-making, and conflict resolution. The convergent/divergent pattern creates the context for how we analyze, synthesize, implement, and question the people and situations we face daily.