The
Collapsing Tower Newsletter 09
March
31st , 2009
Newsletter
#9 Robert Lorenz, Ph.D.
Transmutation of the Ego/Pain-Body
Complex
Precautionary Note Regarding Disinformation
on the Internet
Because of the rapidly growing worldwide interest
in the Mayan Calendar over the last few years,
there’s been an increasing level of disinformation
promulgated on this subject by the groups that
are attempting to establish a neo-feudalistic
New World Order based on hierarchal control.
This is under the guise of re-interpreting the
fruition of the Universal Underworld in materialistic
rather than spiritual terms. Political globalism,
which entails the dissolution of national boundaries,
economies, religions, and social structures
under the rule of a so-called “enlightened”
elite, has absolutely nothing to do with spiritual
enlightenment and ego-transcendent global consciousness.
With spiritual transcendence comes the dissolution
of the social, political, and religious boundaries
we’ve lived with for thousands of years—but
this is a natural dissolution, not
one manipulated by a ego-maniacal few for their
own greedy purposes.
Furthermore, the predictions of events during
the course of the Days and Nights of the Galactic
and Universal Underworlds discussed in Calleman’s
works, The Collapsing Tower, and other
sources could be used to “explain”
planned events, such as economic collapse, depopulation,
and war. I find this somewhat amusing, in that
the planners of such events likely don’t
have the slightest idea that they are inadvertently
serving the Divine Plan, and most probably will
be the planners of their own destruction.
The Pain-Body
You can think of the pain-body as the emotional
engine of the ego. It is, according to Eckhart
Tolle, the accumulation of the unresolved past
emotional pain of the individual, and as such
functions to keep us anchored in the past. The
net effect is to keep the painful experiences
of the past alive and to unconsciously repeat
these experiences in the present, and also to
fear (expect) their repetition in the future.
Tolle also conceptualizes the pain-body as an
“entity” or “artificial elemental”
that demands feeding, and what it feeds on is
pain. It can also be conceptualized a morphogenetic
field (see Sheldrake’s work in The
Collapsing Tower) that regulates a habit
system that has the goal of creating pain. This
topic is examined in greater depth in The
Collapsing Tower in the section dealing
with Sheldrake’s Morphogenetic Field Theory.
One of the ways the pain-body creates pain
is to work in conjunction with the ego to generate
negative emotion whenever any present time experience
activates past painful memory. The present time
experience, however, may not in itself be painful,
but its association with past painful memory
is enough to cause the ego to interpret
it in terms of the past and generate negative
expectations. When we view the present in terms
of the past we then generate thoughts that stimulate
the pain-body and cause us to act in ways we
did in the past, and thereby recreate painful
experiences, thus feeding the pain body.
How the Pain-Body Operates in Relationships—the
Dark Side of Attraction
What dark alchemy transmutes the vibrant aliveness
of ecstatic romance into a lonely bitter pit
of mutual disappointment, resentment, and failure?
Did body-snatchers sneak between the sheets
in dark of night and gobble up the soul of your
loved one, leaving you with a tormenting clone
of who you were certain was your soul-mate?
Well, sort of.
Attraction results only partially from conscious
factors. You may be attracted to someone because
of his or her values, character, intelligence,
or beauty. These attractions are conscious and
understandable. They don’t necessarily,
or even usually, lead to the intense magnetic
erotic and romantic attraction that underlies
the experience of “falling in love”.
The element of fire is missing. They
form the basis of good partnerships and friendships,
but typically don’t go beyond this. This
is true even for beauty. You may be attracted
to someone’s physical form, but unless
that inscrutable quality of “chemistry”
is present the attraction won’t go beyond
the aesthetic level. I don’t know how
many times I’ve heard a client say that
he or she “should” be attracted
because of someone’s physicality or outstanding
characteristics, but complain that “it”
just isn’t there. No “chemistry”.
Many people form a committed relationship and
hope that chemistry will develop. This is like
waiting for Godot. Or they seek out some way
to “work on it.” Did you ever try
to work on getting sexually aroused—with
someone you’re not really attracted to?
Most resort to erotic fantasies to create the
appearance, but in the end both people become
disappointed.
Many of the attractions we experience, however,
are subconsciously driven by the pain-body.
This phenomenon is discussed in Tolle’s
A New Earth, and also in The Collapsing
Tower. These attractions may or may not
have erotic components. Even when the attraction
is erotic or romantic it’s very common
for the pain-body to hijack the romantic/erotic
attraction for its own purposes—the creation
of pain. For example, two individuals who suffered
neglect in childhood share similar pain-body
dynamics. Each has unfulfilled need for emotional
nurturance coupled with a fear of intimacy.
Both want love but subconsciously fear hurt
and disappointment. On the conscious ego level
they could easily confuse the deep emotional
hunger each feels with love, and from this they
form a bond.
As Firestone says in The Fantasy Bond:
Most couples start off feeling real friendship,
caring, tenderness, and genuine affection. Their
relationship is characterized by mutual respect
and separateness. They enjoy sharing and are
intensely interested in each other. These characteristics
are observable in couples who are not yet in
a bond. However, as the partners attempt to
achieve permanent security by making emotional
commitments and guarantees to each other and
themselves, they cease to relate as individuals.
They no longer know each other in the true sense.
They no longer know each other objectively,
having converted the other into a significant
figure from the past. Their emotional responses
are no longer appropriate to real situations
and events, having converted the other to a
significant figure from the past. Their emotional
responses are no longer appropriate to real
situations and events but contain elements and
distortions based on the frustration and pains
of their childhood. Each merely implements the
other’s neurosis.
A bond can become a “death” pact
in which the relationship has a narcotic effect
on the individuals, killing off their pain and
feelings of hunger. Often the bond serves as
a license to act out destructive behavior because
the individuals “belong” to each
other and have implicitly agreed that their
relationship will last forever.
When bonding occurs the dysfunctional relationships
of childhood become the filters through which
the ego views present time relationships. This
is even more pronounced when we’ve been
unconsciously attracted to people who remind
us of parental or other significant childhood
personages that have abused, neglected, or dominated
us in some way. We then begin to experience
the painful memory forms of the past. On the
conscious level this is experienced as anxiety
and creates negative (usually erroneous) interpretation
of the present and negative expectation of the
future. Because thought structures energy,
the negative interpretations and expectations
generated by the ego in response to the painful
emotional memories of the pain-body serve the
purpose of not only maintaining the past negative
emotions but, also, add additional charge
to them. By fearing, dreading, or taking
anxious measures to prevent a repetition of
some past painful experience we are, in fact,
creating, such a recurrence. This is
one of the main methods by which we inadvertently
feed the pain-body.
When we expect the repetition of a past painful
experience (and the more you don’t
want it to happen, the stronger will
be the expectation that it will happen), we
are inadvertently intending it to happen.
The emotionally charged memory of the past,
then, serves as a template for manifesting a
similar experience in the present. It is through
this mechanism that the dark alchemy works to
transform romance to misery.
There are a number of ways the pain-body becomes
activated. These are discussed in The Collapsing
Tower. The most usual path of activation
involves something in the present activating
a painful memory from the past. But regardless
of how the pain-body becomes activated, thought
is the common element. If we didn’t
attach thought to an activated painful
memory it would simply come and go. We wouldn’t
attach it to the present. However, when we do
think about (or imagine) how the present situation
is somehow like a painful one from the past,
we bring the past into the present. We
essentially validate the thought forms of the
past and make them structure the present.
It’s the thought-facilitated imposition
of past painful memory on the present that maintains
the integrity of the ego/pain-body. The only
good reason to think about what we’re
feeling is to get clear on whether what we’re
feeling is in response to an actual present
time stimulus, past memory, or, via empathic
induction, from others or the general human
collective. Making this discrimination is essential,
and has been covered in depth in The Collapsing
Tower. Simply put, unless there is actual
evidence in your face that can account
for what you’re feeling, it’s likely
that you’re picking it up from others
or it’s a product of pain-body activation.
In either case it has nothing to do with you
in present time. You can then use the
energy transmutation method outlined in the
last Newsletter to transmute that feeling to
free energy.
What I’ve found useful since the writing
of the last Newsletter is using your out-breath
to embrace the negative energy and,
then, using your in-breath to pull the energy
to you and fully accept it. By “accept”
I mean acknowledge only. It doesn’t imply
agreement or liking in any way. Now, there are
two reasons to accept it. The first is that
it’s there. The second is that you can’t
change anything you don’t first accept.
There’s no judgment involved here. Regardless
of the quality of the structured energy field
or its origin, the purpose of the method is
to detach your thoughts from it so that it can
transmute to freely flowing energy.
Sub-personalities
What makes relationships so difficult is the
interplay between the various sub-personalities
the individuals bring into the relationship.
This subject has been covered extensively in
Newsletter 02. To truly understand the “dark
alchemy” in bonded relationships you must
understand how you replay your childhood family
dynamics in adult relationships both by acting
out and projecting these sub-personalities onto
your significant others.
It’s also important to understand that
when you adopt parental personas, or ego-types,
you also incorporate within your pain-body the
unresolved pain of each of those figures. I
suspect that by transmuting your own pain-body/ego
type the bulk of the work will get done. At
least the sub-personalities will become much
more apparent after this, and will probably
easier to transmute.
The Ego/Pain-Body’s Basic Fear, Desire,
and Passion
Early in childhood, as the separate ego develops,
we lose contact with our Essential Self. This
creates a feeling of deep anxiety—a fundamental
sense of incompleteness, awareness of mortality
and fear of death and annihilation/nothingness.
This is the existential dread is at the foundation
of every ego-identified person, and can only
be erased by ego-transcendence and identification
with the true Self. Riso and Hudson (see Wisdom
of the Enneagram) refer to this primordial
angst as the Basic Fear of each of the Enneagram
types. Although we’ll recognize the Basic
Fears of all of the types within us, it’s
our own type’s Basic Fear that influences
us the most. Thus, when the unresolved pain
and trauma stored in the pain-body is activated
it is interpreted by the ego in terms of the
Basic Fear of the particular ego-type.
The Basic Desire functions to compensate for
the Basic Fear. The problem is that the
ego attempts to attain the Basic Desire in ways
that work to feed the Basic Fear. This
may be the primary way the pain-body feeds itself.
Riso and Hudson state that the personality
will not relinquish its control until it believes
that the Basic Desire has been obtained. This
is because it believes it will be fulfilled
or at peace if this Basic Desire is realized.
This is impossible, however. The idea of fulfillment
through the gratification of one’s Basic
Desire implies a state of permanence—that
you can get, achieve, or be something on the
desire level that will permanently assuage one’s
Basic Fear.
This attempt to solve Basic Fear by attempting
to attain the Basic Desire is a fool’s
errand. The first two of the Four Noble Truths
of Buddhism are very clear about this. The First
Noble Truth is Impermanence. We are
never able to keep permanently what we strive
for. The Second Noble Truth is that the Origin
of Suffering is Attachment—to the
idea impermanent things can bring about a permanent
state:
The origin of suffering is attachment to transient
things and the ignorance thereof. Transient
things do not only include the physical objects
that surround us, but also ideas, and—in
a greater sense—all objects of our perception.
Ignorance is the lack of understanding of how
our mind is attached to impermanent things.
The reasons for suffering are desire, passion,
ardour, pursuit of wealth and prestige, striving
for fame and popularity, or in short: craving
and clinging. Because the objects of
our attachment are transient, their loss is
inevitable, thus suffering will inevitably follow.
Objects of attachment also include the idea
of a “self” which is a delusion
because there is no abiding self. What we call
“self” is just an imagined entity,
and we are merely a part of the ceaseless becoming
of the universe.
(http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/fourtruths.html)
Thus, in order for us to transcend the
ego we must not only transmute negative emotional
energy forms or states into free Flow, we must
also transmute desire.
Transmutation of the Basic Fear, Desire,
and Passion of the Nine Ego Types
We’ll now examine how the Basic Fear,
Desire, and Passion serve to maintain the ego/pain-body
of the nine Enneagram types.
Type One: The Reformer
The Basic Fear of the One is of being bad,
evil, corrupt, or defective. To compensate for
this Basic Fear the One has the Basic Desire
to have integrity. The One attempts to achieve
this by attempting to be perfect, which is unattainable.
This results in a deterioration to critical
self-perfectionism and the need to hide any
imperfection from others, as well as a very
strong need to be right at all costs. This,
of course, alienates others and feeds the Basic
Fear of being bad, evil, corrupt or defective.
The One must apply the transmutation technique
to both the feelings associated with
the Basic Fear and the feelings and impulses
associated with the Basic Desire. The application
of the technique requires a great deal of vigilance
and self-observation, which will take some with
sustained practice. This is true for each of
the Enneagram types as we go about the day.
The One must recognize when feelings of the
Basic Fear have been stimulated, breath into
them in order to embrace and accept them, and
allow thoughts to drift by. The same is true
for feelings and impulses associated with the
Basic Desire. Striving for integrity is a good
thing, but having to be perfect is a set-up
for failure. Thus the impulse to be perfect
must be transmuted. Similarly, the obsessive
needs to be right, hide imperfections, and engage
in punitive criticality of self or others must
likewise be transmuted. Because the Passion
of the One is anger/resentment—felt toward
others or oneself for “not doing things
right—it’s very important for the
One to recognize when these feelings are stimulated
and transmute them as well.
Of course, all of this can’t be done
at once. Practice transmuting an item or two
until you feel some success. And don’t
expect perfection. This isn’t an easy
task, but your persistence will yield enormous
rewards.
Type Two: The Helper
The Two’s Basic Fear is that they are
unloved and unwanted for themselves alone. The
compensatory Basic Desire is to be loved. When
the Two attempts to achieve the Basic Desire
by acting on their need to be needed a downward
spiral of deterioration occurs and leads to
the creation of the Basic Fear. When they manipulate
others into needing and depending on them, make
others guilty for not taking care of them, create
emotional debt by giving, and generally express
neediness others begin to pull away.
Twos also hide their anger and resentment
from others in order to foster the illusion
that they are selfless, loving individuals.
Also the Passion of the Two is Pride, an unwillingness
or inability to acknowledge one’s own
suffering while attempting to help others. However,
when they feel they have not been properly reciprocated
for “all I’ve done for you”
they become punishing and further drive others
from them.
Twos must practice recognizing and transmuting
the senseless pride and feelings and compulsions
revolving around manipulative giving driven
by their own neediness and fear, and cease the
charade that they are selfless and purely loving
individuals who have no anger or resentment.
When they acknowledge their anger and resentment,
apply the method of transmutation to de-structure
these feelings into Flow, they can move in the
direction of truly loving individuals.
Type Three: the Achiever
The Basic Fear of the Three is being worthless
apart from their achievements. They fear that
unless they are the best at what they do they
will be seen as worthless. This causes Threes
to become highly competitive and image conscious,
to the point that they fear exposing any inadequacy
or defect. They become compulsive about hiding
any mistakes. This is driven by the Three’s
Passion of Deceit/Vanity—really self-deceit,
in that it means deceiving ourselves into thinking
we are only the ego self. But it also implies
bolstering the ego image with exaggerations
and “white” lies.
The Threes Basic Desire is to be valuable
and self-worthy. Their fear-based compulsion
to live behind the image of “the best”,
however, causes them to chase after material
success. This creates a terrible addiction to
MORE—success, awards, money accolades,
fame, degrees, power, etc.—further bolstering
the ego at the expense of connectedness to the
true Self. This does nothing but feed the Basic
Fear and increase feelings of worthlessness,
emptiness, and alienation.
The Three must learn to recognize the futility
of hiding behind images, and face the self-alienation
that results from compulsive denial of the fear
of insufficiency by deceit and image building
activities. As the Three works to become more
authentic by acknowledging impulses designed
to fabricate, exaggerate, and hide mistakes
and imperfections the Basic Fear is forced into
consciousness. The transmutation technique can
then be used to de-structure the fear of inherent
worthlessness and increase Flow, and with this
deepen the Three’s sense of true Self.
The technique can also be applied to the compulsion
to create and hide behind “superior”
images.
Type Four: the Individualist
The Basic Fear of the Four is that they are
without personal significance or identity. They
are acutely aware of their personal deficiencies
and differences. A major problem for the Four
is the attempt to obtain a stable sense of identity
by basing it on shifting moods and feelings.
Their tendency, therefore, is to hold onto past
painful feelings because of their strength and
persistence—thus leading to the adoption
of a “victim persona” in order to
attain a sense of stable identity. They then
use their imaginations to amplify these negative
feelings in order to strengthen their sense
of self. This destructive compulsion creates
more negative and painful feelings, and further
dissociates them from the real world into the
world of fantasy and imagination.
When Fours attempt to fulfill their Basic
Desire by holding onto and amplifying negative
and painful feelings they inevitably descend
a downward spiral into victimization, self-pity
and self-indulgence. They are thus alienated
further from others and the world, thereby strengthening
their Basic Fear of being without identity and
personal significance.
Transcending the ego/pain-body of the Four
entails recognizing the compulsion to hold onto
and amplify negative feelings in order to gain
a sense of self. They must substitute transmutation
for amplification of negative feelings and detach
thoughts of victimization and self-pity from
them. What I’ve found particularly useful
for the Four is the recognition and transmutation
of hatred and resentment of others that results
from feelings of Envy, the Passion of the Four.
This can be difficult and very emotional, but
the rewards are great.
Type Five: the Investigator
The Basic Fear of the Five is being useless,
incapable, overwhelmed or incompetent. The Basic
Desire is to be competent. However, the frequently
abstract, highly intellectual, and idiosyncratic
manner in which they try to achieve competence
deteriorates into useless specialization and
mastery of subjects that are of little or no
interest to others. This supports the Five’s
Basic fear of being useless. Also deriving from
their Basic Fear of incompetence is an extreme
fear of finishing anything. They’ve got
to get it “just right”, but this
can easily result in never completing anything,
thereby reinforcing the Basic Fear. To ameliorate
this tendency Fives must face and transmute
the anxiety and fear attendant upon declaring
projects complete. This entails tolerating and
transmuting discomfort, because they almost
never think something is good enough
or complete.
The Passion of the Five is Avarice, a stinginess
that derives from the belief that they don’t
have sufficient resources to meet life’s
challenges. This includes psychic as well as
material resources. Fives believe, for example,
that they have only a limited amount of psychic
energy and that interaction with others can
cause depletion that can have catastrophic consequences.
They therefore withhold themselves from contact,
hold onto their resources, and minimize their
needs. If they challenge these illusory fears
by giving and participating, they can then transmute
their fears and actually create energy.
Thus Fives must transmute the impulse to isolate—first
by recognizing it as destructive and engaging
in social interaction in order to stimulate
it into conscious awareness.
Type Six: the Loyalist
The Passion of the Six is Anxiety/Worry, which
can be thought of as the anticipation of fear—of
something bad happening, although nothing of
that nature is happening in the moment. This
comes from “living in the future”
and attempting to anticipate every possible
thing that could go wrong. Sixes are also given
to “catastrophizing and are extremely
sensitive to danger signals, which causes them
to be unable to relax. This gives Sixes something
of a paranoid stance to life. For example even
slight misunderstandings or differences of opinion
could easily create exaggerated reactions such
as fear of abandonment, or that people have
turned against them.
The Basic Desire of the Six is to be secure,
however the way the Six attempts to achieve
this desire, by searching outside of himself,
only feeds the Basic Fear of having no support
or guidance. Because of the Six’s failure
of self-confidence the result is a dependence
on others and outer structures for guidance.
They fear losing the support of others and at
the same time become resentful of this dependency.
Such over-reliance on others that is coupled
with resentment causes them to alienate others
and feed their Basic Fear.
The individual who has a Six ego-type must
recognize that his is the primary type of the
Thinking Triad. This means that detaching thoughts
from negative feelings during the transmutation
process poses, at least at first, a more difficult
problem than in other types. This shouldn’t
be taken as a deterrent but more as a challenge
to gain greater internal focus and inner reliance.
When the Six demonstrates that he can transmute
negative feelings of fear, worry, anxiety and
the chronic attendant inner contraction that
results from these it becomes a great victory.
This, in part, entails transmuting the impulse
to seek outside of himself for direction and
tolerate the uncertainty of relying on inner
knowing.
Type Seven: the Enthusiast
The Passion of the Seven is Gluttony—the
need to “fill themselves up” with
experiences in an attempt to overcome feelings
of inner emptiness that result from being out
of contact with their inner guidance. They stay
constantly busy and preoccupied with future
gratification in order to avoid being in the
present and feel the anxiety and psychic pain
that would surface if they stopped distracting
themselves. Because there is no material solution
to a spiritual problem, however, this constitutes
a dead-end path.
The Basic Fear of the Seven is being deprived
and trapped in pain, and their Basic Desire
is to be happy—and when this deteriorates
into frenetic escapism their Basic Fear becomes
realized. The Seven must recognize this compulsion
to maintain a high level of mental excitement
and how they require ever increasing levels
of sensory stimulation to avoid the inescapable
fear and anxiety of the feeling of emptiness.
They must stop and allow themselves
to experience the feelings they are running
away from by transmuting the compulsion to distract
themselves. If they can bring themselves to
do this they can experience and transmute the
underlying fear and anxiety into Flow and experience
deep contact with themselves. Failure to do
this can lead to serious addictions and mania.
Type Eight: the Challenger
The Passion of the Eight is Lust—a powerful
need for intensity, control, and self-extension.
The Eight’s lust drives them to willfully
and aggressively assert themselves, frequently
to the point of intimidating others.
The Basic Fear of the Eight is being harmed
or controlled by others, and their Basic Desire
is to protect themselves and determine their
own course in life. When the Eight’s Basic
Desire deteriorates into constant opposition
and fighting it brings about their Basic Fear.
Others feel they need to control the Eight for
their own safety. The Eight’s fear/expectation
of being controlled or hurt also causes them
to reject others before they are rejected. Thus
they are blocked in love, since love gives others
power over them.
The Eight uses anger to drive fear away and
make space. Anger is the instinctual force that
pushes things away—whether people or feelings
the Eight doesn’t want to feel. He must
acknowledge this and learn a better way to deal
negative feelings, and particularly fear. Because
the Eight unconsciously uses anger to push fear
away, when he transmutes the anger he’ll
experience the underlying fear. If the Eight
does this and allows himself to acknowledge
fear, he can then transmute the fear and use
his powerful instinctual energies properly.
Type Nine: the Peacemaker
The Passion of the Nine is Sloth—the
desire to be unaffected by life by not engaging
with full vitality. The Basic Fear of the Nine
is loss of connection, fragmentation, and annihilation.
Their Basic Desire is to be at peace and maintain
their inner stability. As Nines become stressed
their peace-seeking deteriorates to stubborn
neglectfulness, avoidance, and dissociation.
One of the ways Nines realize their Basic
Fear of loss of connection is by being too accommodating,
which others experience as inauthentic. This
marks the beginning of the Nine’s “disappearing
act”. The Nine must understand that it’s
he first loses connection with others
by disappearing behind platitudes and conventional
roles. The the Nine must acknowledge the anxiety
he feels when a conflict arises, rather than
run away from it. It’s then that he can
use the transmutation technique, and eventually
restore authentic connectedness with others.
Summary: The Existential Dilemma of the
Ego
In both The Atman Project and Up
From Eden Ken Wilber traces the evolutionary
and ontological (individual) development of
the ego as a relatively recent organization
of consciousness development—a stage
of development rather than the pinnacle of evolution.
The problem with the ego is that it emerged
several hundred years ago when it declared itself
a permanent fixture of consciousness, separate
from the body, others, and the universe. This
has been discussed in The Collapsing Tower,
and formed the basis of the myth of the expulsion
from the Garden of Eden. The ego’s dilemma
starts with the arrogant assumption of its permanent
separate autonomy coupled with the deeper awareness
that it simply isn’t true. The ego suffers
from severe existential angst—the terror
of ultimate annihilation that will inevitably
occur when we evolve beyond it. In order to
maintain the illusion of immortal status it
does everything it can to hide from its mortality
and smallness.
As Tolle so clearly outlines in his books,
the ego derives its identity from the past and
seeks its salvation in the future. The dilemma
is that the ego uses the pain-body to anchor
it in the past, and therefore makes the pain-body
part of itself. When it looks to the future
for salvation it then brings the pain-body with
it in order to have a coherent future identity.
However, the pain-body is comprised of not only
the pains and trauma of childhood, which the
ego uses to attain a sense of stability, but
it also holds the existential dread of annihilation
that the ego doesn’t want to
experience. Thus, it futilely attempts to keep
itself coherent and safe by inadvertently holding
onto the very terrifying existential dread it
attempts to avoid.
In Buddhism this existential dread of the
void, of nothingness, is called Sunyata. Freud
called it the “death instinct”.
It is what the ego will experience when it dissolves
into the transcendent level of consciousness
that the Divine thrust of spiritual evolution
relentlessly compels it. This is the root of
the Basic Fear of each of the Enneagram types.
The Basic Desire of each of the types is the
futile attempt the particular ego type uses
to avoid Sunyata. It is futile because each
Basic Desire, as evidenced by examination of
each of the types, inevitably leads to verification
of the Basic Fear. Thus, the ego ultimately
can’t win. However, its efforts to
win can, in fact, destroy us and our planet
if we don’t take measures to prevent it.
This is also why the efforts of the ego-possessed
beings that control our planet can’t win
either. And similarly, their efforts to win
can destroy themselves, us, and our planet if
we don’t take measures to prevent it.
Luckily, the preventative measures are the
same in both cases—ego transcendence.
It’s important to understand that another
term for Sunyata is The Flow. Out of
the Flow come all things and, when they have
served the Divine Purpose sufficiently, dissolve
back into The Flow. According to the Mayan Calendar,
the time of ego-transcendence is now.
If we work assiduously to transmute our individual
ego/pain-body complexes, we will be aided by
the Divine thrust of the evolutionary will.
We’ll then experience Sunyata as the peace
and joy of the immortal Self rather than existential
terror of the temporal ego. If enough of
us do this we’ll create a morphogenetic
field of transcendence that will spread throughout
humanity—because it’s aligned with
the Divine Plan of spiritual evolution. Those
who oppose the Plan will find themselves in
the position of someone attempting to hold back
the inexorable force of a great tsunami.
Addendum to Newsletter 09
Robert Lorenz, Ph.D.
The Essence of who we in truth are, the Higher
Self or Atman, doesn’t incarnate on the
material plane. It isn’t subject to the
cycle of birth-death-rebirth. It’s immortal
and derives from the eternal, universal Ground
of Being that is the source of All-That-Is.
Human spiritual evolution involves a “spark”
of Atman coming into physical existence, living
and learning for a while, and then disengaging
with the physical body (dying) in order to assimilate
incarnate experience. In the course of many
such incarnations the “spark” grows
in intensity and awareness. A sense of individuated
self –consciousness slowly develops. This
individuation process evolves over further incarnations,
at first with a fundamental sense of connectedness
with all living things, the Universe, and Spirit.
When evolution proceeds to the ego level, however,
the sense of conncetedness diminishes as the
ego individuates to the point of separateness.
The lessons learned from this are assimilated
over more cycles of birth-death-rebirth. When
we’ve gained all we can from ego separateness,
the experiences become increasingly painful
with each incarnation. Something deep inside
of us and long-forgotten, a poignant longing,
begins to emerge and pull us in the opposite
direction. We must disentangle ourselves from
ego identification, or we’ll be unable
to proceed on our spiritual path. And this is
where we are now.
As you practice transmuting negative emotions
and compulsions you must remember that you are
being born into Essence, while at the same time
you will experience the death throes of the
ego. To the degree that you’re identified
with the transient ego, you’ll experience
its death terror as your own. You must know
that the ego’s death is your liberation.
Although Riso and Hudson indicate a different
Basic Fear for each of the nine Enneagram types,
there is really only one truly Basic Fear—annihilation.
The ego can be conceptualized as a morphogenetic
field that acts like an entity. Like any entity
it resists death and annihilation. When threatened
with imminent dissolution it constricts itself
as an act of self-preservation. We experience
this contraction as the ego’s fear. If
the threat increases the constriction becomes
a discordant, incoherent, and even violent vibration.
Panic and terror ensue.
The Basic Desire of each of the ego types
is to avoid this terror, and each type has a
specific way of doing this. Although the methods
vary among the types, the same powerful avoidance
compulsion underlies all of them. When you do
your transmutation work you must focus your
attention on the avoidance compulsion itself—the
feeling and sensation of the energy—rather
than the specific method of avoidance. When
you do this you’ll experience the fear
that drives the compulsion. By continuing to
transmute the feeling and sensation of the avoidance
compulsion you will begin to experience the
underlying terror. This is the point at which
you must remember that it’s the ego’s
terror you’re experiencing. Eventually
the feeling and sensation of terror will become
predominant. It’s at this point that you
must transmute the terror.
Because fear and pleasure are mediated by
the same brain circuits—which is why people
like roller coasters—its possible to experience
the ego’s fear as your pleasure—that
is, if you understand what you’re doing
and keep the ego’s thoughts detached.
And as people who do extreme sports know, the
ego’s terror can be experienced as your
ecstasy. With practice you can get here.
If you have any questions
or comments contact Robert Lorenz through the
email link below:
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