Psychology of Awakening (Personality Psychology)

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D I A N A P A U L A R E V E C H E

A N G E L R O S E T R O C I O

Psychology of

Awakening



Personality as a path rather

than pathology

Is PERSONALITY

a flaw or

a pathto spiritual unfolding?



PATHOLOGY

pa·thol·o·gy (p -th l -j ). n. pl.pa·thol·o·gies.

1. The scientific study of the nature of disease and its causes, processes,

development, and consequences.



Path A way or track laid

down for walking ormade by continual

treading.





THERAPEUTIC AGRESSION

Trying to bring abouttransformation though

waging an assault of conditioned personality



HOW DOES IT AFFECT YOU AS A PERSON?

It attacks the personality to rob people of the basic material they needfor their journey of

awakening




It implies a basic message that you

would be a better person if you were someone different from theone you truly are




It makes coercive attempts to

dismantle the personality only to heighten division, conflictand strain to ego



When is personality a path than pathology?

when we learn to work with ourselves as we

are, withoutaggression or blame




We must create conditionsthat encourage thepersonality structure to

break open from within,revealing essentialqualities of our being that

are hidden within.




“When you clean yourteapot, then the teapot wakes you up.” – Chogyam Trungpa

(When you work on your personality structure, your personality wakes you up.)



IDENTITY FORMATION



Three Marks of Existence

1. The difficult realities of pain

2. Impermanence

3. Lack of solid, definite sense of who we are



But since our life is marked by

fear of potential nonexistence,we give rise to….



IDENTITY PROJECT

a. the attempt to make ourselves intosomething solid, substantial and real

b. a way counter the threat of nonexistence;

usually made possible through building self images and stories that identify who they are

c. the desire to overcome our fear of being

deficient, to know ourselves, to value others,and to feel that we are real



COEMERGENCE



Awakened mind and the confused mindas two sides of the same reality are saidto co-emerge

(Example: neurosis-sanity, imprisonment-freedom,existence-nonexistence, pathology-path)

Defensive strategies used as advantages



IDENTITY CRISIS ANDEXISTENTIAL CHOICE



IDENTITY CRISIS

Marks the beginning of a path of unlocking

the intelligence, sanity and the otherpowerful inner resources that we have

been locked up in our conditionedpersonality



Three main existential choices

Pathological Choice 1: Remain stagnant in yourcurrent post and not to risk moving forward into theunknown and uncertain because our old identity hasoutlived its usefulness

Pathological Choice 2: Attack or punish ourselves forthe personality we have become, or to strive with all ourmight to live up to an ideal of who we should be

The choice to Path: Opening ourselves to our

experience and facing and working with ourselves as weare, instead of aggressively trying to make ourselves intosomething different



Working ourselves as weare



The first step in turning personality

into path is developing a commitmentto seeing ourselves as we are, no matter what we‟ll discover.



Awareness practice

(eg. Meditation, innercontemplative inquiry) helpsdevelop the capacity to

witness what we are doing without becoming caught upin judging it as good or bad.



TRANSMUTING NEUROSIS



If we blame ourselves for our personality patterns, we cannot access the gift contained within them and thus only impoverish

ourselves further.

Whatever problem, question, or confusion

we have, whatever seems impossible in ourlives becomes our path























Ego as Grasping

Ego is a structure built on self-representations – Western psychology

Ego is an activity, a recurring tendency to makeoneself into something solid and defined. – Buddhistpsychology

Dak-Dzin – a Tibetan term often translated to as egois grasping at self or holding on to the „I‟ I think myself to be.





The five layers of skandha:

Me or form – It is the birth of ignorance. Correspond to thestage when the child identifies with the body: “I am this

body.”

Feeling – Feeling out situations to see if they are for us oragainst us.

Perception or impulse – involves adopting a stance (of passion, aggression or ignorance) toward situations.

Conceptualization – We generate elaborate beliefs and

interpretations about reality based on our patterns of hopeand fear. The ongoing stream of consciousness – where all the first four

skandhas come to fruition.



Ego and Egolessness

Ego – awareness in a contracted state

Egolessness – It is awareness in a relaxed state.

Ego is dying and being reborn at every moment. We continually have to letgo of what we have already thought, accomplished, known, experienced and

become.

Existential anxiety – sense of impending death, a realization that I isnothing solid and is continually threatened by the process of dissolving.

Egolessness is awareness that allows us to face and accept death in all itsforms.

Narcissism is inherent in the ego, but the development of the ego involves adeparture from primal narcissism. – Freud

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Psychology of Awakening (Personality Psychology)