The Taproot Podcast - 🌠Existentialism vs Mysticism: What is the Ego Self Axis?

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, this is Joel Blackstock and you're listening to the Taproot Therapy Podcast. Today's episode is about existentialism versus mysticism. What is the ego-self axis? In the first session, when I give patients my initial impression and observations, they often have a difficult time hearing what I mean regarding their emotional experience. I hear things like, well, I'm not angry because I've also done bad things to people and everyone makes mistakes. Or, I'm not sad because I know also done bad things to people and everyone makes mistakes or I'm not sad because I know it happened for the greater good or well I'm not afraid because I know it can't hurt me these aren't attempts to feel their

Starting point is 00:00:55 emotional experience they're an attempt to turn off their emotional experience with intellect or to solve an emotional problem intellectually. People have a hard time accepting that they can feel something that is true, even though they may know intellectually that something is not true. Is that clear as mud? We can be sad that friends let us down, even though we know intellectually that all humans make mistakes. We can be afraid of a story or an archetypal image, even though we know that it is

Starting point is 00:01:26 not real. We can be angry at the realities of life even though we know that they are inevitable and true. Intellect and emotion often contradict one another. We tell ourselves that our intellect can turn our emotions off, but our intellect can only let us ignore our emotional reality temporarily. Both of these experiences come from two different parts of the brain that process two different kinds of realities. Our ego and cognition come from the prefrontal cortex, the newest part of the brain. This upstart new part thinks that it is all of us. We pretend that we are purely rational creatures until emotion overwhelms us, and we try to tamp it down again. Our intuition, emotion, and creative elements come from the oldest part of the brain, the subcortex. When indulged, our subcortical brain allows us to

Starting point is 00:02:19 feel intuitive gut feelings, creatively heal problems, and listen to our emotional reality. It is also the gateway to the religious and transcendental experience. The subcortical brain stores information that activates our emotional fight or flight center. To do this, it has to store information about the past that our conscious brain may not have time to think about intellectually. The subcortical brain is fast. It is so lightning fast that we do not always consciously notice what it is doing. The prefrontal cortex brain is slower, but it is more deliberate in how it processes information. The subcortical brain raises our adrenaline and makes us cautious after we touch the red-hot coil of a stove. The unconscious subcortical brain associates this image with trauma from the past. It raises the alarm before our conscious brain

Starting point is 00:03:11 knows what is happening. The subcortical brain reacts to stimulus from our past. This becomes a problem when emotional pain and trauma are stored there. Feelings of inadequacy, hopelessness, and rage can get stuck under our life until we acknowledge and process them in therapy. A therapist encouraging you to feel eye movement therapy, a prayer, transcendental meditation, intentional creative practice, yoga, psychedelics, and things like that can unlock the door to this part of the brain. This part of the brain can be a scary place though. If we have trauma, it may block the way down and make it hard to feel your creativity or your intuition. Edward Edinger points out in his book Ego and Archetype that these parts of the brain do not want to be in the same head.

Starting point is 00:04:03 They often disagree and fight one another. The prefrontal cortex is extremely existential and it sees the world through cold reason. Overindulged, the prefrontal cortex would have us fixate on our own ultimate unimportance. From its perspective, we are all a bubble on a tide of empire or a meaningless dot in a vast galaxy. Our existential and intellectual brain doesn't understand emotion or mystical religion. It only understands practical accomplishment and objective material reality. The subcortical brain is myopic and childish. It contains the Zen perspective that all things are one or that we are connected to all things. The subcortical brain contains past emotional information. It also contains information from our shared evolutionary

Starting point is 00:04:52 heritage. This spiritual function of the subcortical brain can help us access wisdom and creativity that feel older than us or timeless or simply connected. In conditions where the subcortical emotional reality overwhelms the ego and the rational brain, we can become psychotic or depersonalized. Much of the psychological dysfunction occurs when we try to use the wrong part of the brain to change our current reality. We have all been around people who become overly intellectual and coldly logical when they are feeling emotion instead of confronting the emotional reality. Magical thinking often occurs when people feel like their emotion or their insight will change the outcome of their existential reality. Falsely.

Starting point is 00:05:37 Some people may retreat into religion when they experience adversity instead of taking practical steps to solve their problems. Others might despise religion because they see no point in any part of life that is not objective and rational. Edinger calls these two dueling functions the ego-self axis. Edinger sees the development of both functions as the key to an intact and stable psyche. This is a quotation from Edward Edinger's book, Ego and Archetype. The self is the ordering and unifying center of the total psyche, both conscious and unconscious. Just as the ego is the center of the conscious personality, or put into other words, the ego is the seat of subjective identity, while the self is the seat of objective identity. The self is thus supreme and psychic in authority and subordinates the ego to it. The self is most simply described as the inner empirical

Starting point is 00:06:34 deity that is identical with the imago Dei. Often people retreat too deeply into one of these functions. These people often distrust one another. Mystics and existentialists rarely get along. New agers rarely hang out with existential philosophers. These people have repressed one part of the human experience in themselves and avoid it in other people. Understanding the reality of the ego-self axis can let us have a happy and whole life. The ego, or the prefrontal cortex, can make us effective at planning an accomplishment. The self, or the subcortical brain, can let us heal trauma, create, and develop a transpersonal

Starting point is 00:07:17 and spiritual dimension. Neither part of the brain is bad or wrong. We need both to understand our humanity. In order to heal and understand religious and political differences, we need to embrace Edinger's lens and use it to hear what people are really saying. Both parts of the brain are right from their own point of view. At our deepest levels, we are alone and cannot be totally understood. From another perspective, we are part of a human experience that connects all of us. The ego brain knows that we are born and die alone,

Starting point is 00:07:56 but the self brain can feel the archetypes in our evolutionary shared heritage. We are each existentially alone, but it is the knowledge that we are all existentially alone that can bring us together and allow us to understand one another. I will end with a poem by Robert Penn Warren, one of my favorite poets. This poem is called Waiting. You will have to wait until it, until the last owl hoot has quavered to a vibrant silence and you realize that there is no breathing beside you and dark curdles toward the dawn. Until drouth breaks too late to save the corn but not too late for the flood and the dog fox stranded on a sudden islet barks in hysteria in the altar break. Until the door enters the waiting room, and his expression betrays all, and you wish he'd take his goddamned hand off your shoulder.

Starting point is 00:08:51 Until the woman you have lived with all of these years says without rancor that life is the way that it is, and she had never loved you, had believed the lie only for the sake of the children. Until you become uncertain of French irregular verbs, and by a strange coincidence begin to take Catholic instruction from Monsieur O'Malley who chews a hangnail. Until you realize truly that our Savior died for us, and as tears gather in your eyes, you burst out laughing, for the joke is certainly on him considering what we are. Until you pick the last alibi off like a scab and admire the inwardness as beautiful as inflamed flesh or summer sunrise. Until you

Starting point is 00:09:35 remember, surprisingly, that common men have done good deeds. Until it grows on that at last, God has allowed us the grandeur of certain utterances. If you enjoyed this episode, I encourage you to check out our website, gettherapybirmingham.com, and maybe the article or podcast episode on mysticism as a form of therapy. Thank you so much.

The Taproot Podcast - 🌠Existentialism vs Mysticism: What is the Ego Self Axis?

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