These classes help you discover the mythologies of  self-objectification and the object relationships that perpetuate your suffering and self loathing. You then have an opportunity to just stop the suffering and connect with your innate nature, which is conscious, happy, free and unlimited.  Pathological envy – the second deadly sin – is a compounded emotion. It is brought on by the realization of some lack, deficiency, or inadequacy in oneself. It is the result of unfavorably comparing oneself to others: to their success, their reputation, their possessions, their luck, their qualities. It is misery and humiliation and impotent rage and a tortuous, slippery path to nowhere. The effort to break the padded walls of this self-visited purgatory often leads to attacks on the perceived source of frustration.

There is a spectrum of reactions to this pernicious and cognitively distorting emotion:

Subsuming the Object of Envy Through Imitation

Some narcissists seek to imitate or even emulate their ever changing role models. It is as if by imitating the object of his envy, the narcissist becomes that object. So, narcissists are likely to adopt their boss’ typical gestures, the vocabulary of a successful politician, the dress code of a movie star, the views of an esteemed tycoon, even the countenance
and actions of the fictitious hero of a movie or a novel.

In his pursuit of peace of mind, in his frantic effort to alleviate the burden of consuming jealousy, the narcissist often deteriorates to conspicuous and ostentatious consumption, impulsive and reckless behaviors, and substance abuse.

In extreme cases, to get rich quick through schemes of crime and corruption, to out-wit the system, to prevail, is thought by these people to be the epitome of cleverness, providing one does not get caught, the sport of living, a winked at vice, a spice.

Destroying the Frustrating Object

Other narcissists “choose” to destroy the object that gives them so much grief by provoking in them feelings of inadequacy and frustration. They display obsessive, blind animosity and engage in compulsive acts of rivalry often at the cost of self-destruction and self-isolation.

This behavior manifests in many forms. From scratching the paint of new cars and flattening their types, to spreading vicious gossip, to media-hyped arrests of successful and rich businessmen, to wars against advantaged neighbors.

The stifling, condensed vapors of envy cannot be dispersed. They invade their victims,
their rageful eyes, their calculating souls, they guide their hands in evil doings and dip
their tongues in vitriol. The envious narcissist’s existence is a constant hiss, a tangible malice, the piercing of a thousand eyes. The imminence and immanence of violence.
The poisoned joy of depriving the other of that which you don’t or cannot have.

Self-Deprecation

There are those narcissists who idealize the successful and the rich and the lucky. They
attribute to them super-human, almost divine, qualities.

In an effort to justify the agonizing disparities between themselves and others, they humble themselves as they elevate the others. They reduce and diminish their own gifts, they disparage their own achievements, they degrade their own possessions and look with disdain and contempt upon their nearest and dearest, who are unable to
discern their fundamental shortcomings. They feel worthy only of abasement and punishment. Besieged by guilt and remorse, voided of self-esteem, perpetually self- hating and self-deprecating, this is by far the more dangerous species of narcissist.

For he who derives contentment from his own humiliation cannot but derive happiness
from the downfall of others. Indeed, most of them end up driving the objects of their own devotion and adulation to destruction and decrepitude.

Cognitive Dissonance

The most common reaction is cognitive dissonance. It is to believe that the grapes are sour rather than to admit that they are craved.

These people devalue the source of their frustration and envy. They find faults, unattractive features, high costs to pay, immorality in everything they really most desire and aspire to and in everyone who has attained that which they so often can’t.

They walk amongst us, critical and self-righteous, inflated with a justice of their making and secure in the wisdom of being what they are rather than what they could have been and really wish to be. They make a virtue of virtuous abstention, of wishful constipation, of judgmental neutrality, this oxymoron, the favorite of the disabled.

Avoidance – The Schizoid Solution

And then, of course, there is avoidance. To witness the success and joy of others is too painful and too high a price to pay. So, the narcissist stays away, alone and incommunicado. He inhabits the artificial bubble that is his world where he is king and
country, law and yardstick, the one and only. The narcissist becomes the resident of his own burgeoning delusions. He is happy and soothed.

However, the narcissist must justify to himself – on those rare occasions that he does catch a glimpse of his internal turmoil – why all this hatred and why the envy. The object of envy and hatred has to be magnified, glorified, idealized, demonized or
elevated to superhuman levels to account for the narcissist’s strong negative emotions.
Outstanding qualities, skills and abilities are imputed to it and the object of these emotions is perceived to possess all the traits that the narcissist would have liked to have but doesn’t.

This is very different from the purer, healthier, forms of hate directed at an object,
which is genuinely – or is genuinely perceived to be – ominous, dangerous, or sadistic.
In this healthy reaction, the properties of the hated object are not ones the person doing
the hating would have liked to possess!

Hatred is thus used to eliminate a source of frustration, which sadistically attacks the self. Jealousy is aimed at another person, who sadistically – or provocatively – prevents the jealous self from obtaining what it desires.

According to the 3rd century Chinese philosopher Chuang-Tzu, who one night:  “I Dreamed I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, content with my lot. SuddenlyI awoke and I was Chuang-Tzu again. Who am I in reality? A butterfly dreaming that I am Chuang-Tzu, or Chuang-Tzu imagining he was a butterfly?”

As we move into a most significant time in history, there is an invitation to be of service
as an agent of change in the world. The paradox is that change requires doing nothing.
There is no need to change anything in your life. Change requires a simple stopping; a
change in perception, a change in how we see the world. Are you the dream or are you
the dreamer? We perceive the world through a lens formed from our prior experience,
our world view, a bundle of beliefs formed over a lifetime that become a filter and
distort how we “dream reality.” True power requires waking up to a “Lucid perception
of reality, the singular vision of the Shaman—Healer—Sage.”

Living the Lucid Dream is the path of power. Native cultures practice rituals and rites
of passage, non psychological processes that close the door to the distortions of ego
bound ways and open the door to Conscious Living and Lucid life; a new
accountability. “Lucid Living” requires closing the door to one way of perception and
opening a door to another. The deepest level of consciousness is common to all men
and women of whatever race, creed or cultural background. The concept of the
collective unconscious for me is a living reality.

It is a choice as to how and where we focus our attention. Collectively, we appear to
have reached a consensus agreement prior to this physical existence, to encapsulate
ourselves in a singular, yet collective vision; a story of a stable physical universe in
which effect follows cause with unyielding persistence. We appear hopelessly
imprisoned within a habitual energy field which is supported by our whole society and
beliefs. Our expectancies are rewarded by substances. And the very habitual mold into
which we fit our view of the universe appears to prevent us from seeing it any other
way. We can allow ourselves to the see the energy fields, the underlying structure, the
organizing intelligence of reality or we can see the illusion that is the result of these
energy fields; material form.

We are boundless energy, but have become strangely encapsulated in a virtual image of
reality with boundaries that we have created. We are imprisoned within our own
description of reality. Our own personal judgments hold the system immutable and in
place. Through the commitment to ongoing dream work and the investigation of the
unconscious processes there is a way to free ourselves from these self-imposed bonds,
this consensus hypnotic trance.

It seems as if the collective unconscious, which appears in dreams, has no consciousness
or awareness of its own contents. The collective unconscious, moreover, seems not to
be a person, but something like an unceasing stream or perhaps an ocean of images and
figures which drift into consciousness through the vehicle of our dreams or through
dream like altered states. It is as if all events, all beings, all of time is contained within
us. It is as if there is no one out here, it is as if all potentiality is “in there!”

If it were permissible to personify the unconscious, we might call it a collective human
being combining the characteristics of both sexes. Transcending youth and age, birth
and death, and from having at its command a human experience of one or two million
years, almost immortal.

If such a being existed, it would be exalted above all temporal change. The present
would mean neither more nor less to it than any year in the century before Christ; it
would be a dreamer of age-old dreams, and, owing to his immeasurable experience, an
incomparable prognosticator. It would have lived countless times over the life of the
individual, of the family, tribe and people. And it would possess the living sense of the
rhythm of growth, flowering and decay. It would know all ages, all cycles of all life as
the collective of all unconscious.

Complexes; are personal psychological structures, survival strategies, filters, put in
place by the ego, composed of archetypes, that evolve out of our life long experiences.
These complexes are energetic bundles formed by the ego from what people and
situations represent to us, these are distortions of both reality and of archetypal figures.

When enough rejections come in a particular framework or with regard to a particular
person, the memories of those hurts and failures become associated in a common
bundle of experience; known as a complex or self-definiton. When a child has repeated
experiences of pain or fear in regard to a certain situation, person or place, the energy of
those negative experiences becomes associated around that situation, person or place, to
form a kind of bundle of negative energy a complex or “hangup.” If a child had
repeated idyllic experience with a parent, which became idealized – a positive or god
like mother or father complex is formed. In later years it may become difficult for them
to accept a normal human beings in their life; “how can I hang out with a mere being?”

The psychologist Carl Jung said that the goal of individuation is to bring the ego to
surrender to the self, that is, to find its true strength in relationship to that higher and
greater source of being. Jung proposed that the culmination of the individuation
process leads to the (lucid) dream state in which man’s conscious and unconscious
minds are made finally one.

The fullest sense of self-realization takes place when the conscious part of us, the ego,
learns to observe a complex, rather than identify with the complex; it then identifies
with a higher aspect of self, steps aside and is informed by the unconscious and grows
by receiving from consciousness the inner truth, the voice of the true-self that lies
hidden in the unconscious. Jung felt, as do I, that this process is the ultimate realization
of human destiny.

Dreams integrate current experience with unresolved life issues. The dream journey
can mean taking back what was dropped out along the way and integrating it within us.
Committing to dream work allows one to learn to see the whole world as a dream and
not simply a literal physical manifestation.

When we flee from something, we give it our mental energy in addition to its own. If,
however we turn and face our enemy, the shadowy parts of ourselves that we have
disowned, the enemy usually turns into a friend. We are most afraid of, judge and react
to what we have not yet integrated within ourselves, according to Jung, when the ego
intentionally accepts aspects of the shadow, it moves toward wholeness and healthy
psychological functioning.

One of Jung’’s interpretative techniques was to invite his patients to enlarge on the
events of their dreams, to take them further, to invent conclusions to them. This, he
believed could lead to a revelation of their meanings. Jung felt that dreams not only
indicated, but also to some extent corrected the state of balance between an individual’s
conscious and unconscious attitudes.

Jung found the unconscious to be open to unlimited depths, to the individual
unconscious and to the collective unconscious. Dreams come, or seem to come, from
the depths of our psyche, we receive them without inviting them. Dreams proclaim the
“hidden parts of ourselves.”

In each of us there is another whom we do not know. He speaks to us in dreams and
tells us how differently he sees us from the way we see ourselves. Dreams may come
from an unknown realm of wisdom, either divine or from the human unconscious.
Dreams for the most part, come unbidden, with a mind of their own. They possess a
wisdom and knowledge that often amazes us. There is a power in dreams, something
that possesses a wisdom and purpose beyond the conscious mind. Dreams help us
understand the symbolic nature of outer situations.

The intention of this process is a state of “complete individuation” uniting the opposing
conscious and unconscious poles of personality, bringing all that the unconscious will
give into the business of conscious living; individuation.

What the conscious part of us, the ego, remembers, receives and acts upon, by
integrating it into conscious life, becomes the map, the pattern for our journey to
wholeness. Only what is apprehended, received, and integrated by the consciousness
benefits ego growth, what is forgotten, denied, or unused is lost. When dream-symbols
are accepted and assimilated into consciousness, they transform the ego aiding in its
self-understanding. A new energy is added. A new or enlarged attitude or experience
of self is evident.

Jung said “man’s task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the
unconscious. Neither should he persist in this unconscious, nor remain identical with
the unconscious elements of his being, thus evading his destiny, which is to create more
and more consciousness. As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence
is to kindle a light in the darkness.”

What was your first experience after looking at the Tarot card to the left? When
I first looked at the card, the Devil, I was horrified by what I perceived as something
negative and evil. I said “get that thing away from me.” It was three years before
I understood what I saw in the card were shadow aspects of my personality, my
disowned self, mirrored back from the card. The disowned-self represents those
parts that for one reason or another are not acceptable to the super-ego and our
waking consciousness. Hence, they become compartmentalized, repressed and ever
more negatively charged.

The end result of this process, if allowed to go unchecked, may be that one or more
sub-personalities, at certain times block forward movement. The super-ego strives for
it’s perception of perfection. If it believes that not feeling is of survival value, then it
will numb you out through addictions. The super-ego will do anything it can to protect
you, including kill you! Dis-ease becomes disease!

Aspects created by the super-ego can take over the personality totally and determine
the ongoing process of your behavior. The culture and historical time of your
development strongly affect the nature of the identification and disowning process. An
essential aspect of personal growth and a successful life is the willingness and ability to
consistently be open to recognizing and facing the energy of these mythologies,
subpersonalities that are either too “powerful” or over identified with or “weak” and
disowned. You’ve seen these sub-personalities in yourself or others in the group. The
voice changes with the sub-personality. You may hear the voice modulate from the
little child or the deep male voice or the female voice, the judgmental voice etc.

Everyone has a primitive survival instinct, a genetic program that is all about the
survival of the DNA. The nature of this survival strategy varies with the personal
genetics. Over identifying with these primitive survival instincts is a self-destructive
aspect of the psyche, the purpose to block forward progress and shut us off from life.
It’s the great mystery of the human condition. We ignore the truth of who we are in
favor of suffering.

Metaphorically in this example the super-ego is represented by the devil energy of the
tarot card. Many so called problems come from this part of the personality—addictions,
fear, self-hate, laziness, rage, negativity and depression. The super-ego is dynamic. It
can make you miserable even when nothing bad is happening. It is universally present
in everyone because it has a spiritual function. What is traditionally labeled evil is
really the thought process the “super-ego.” It’s evil because it tries to keep us ignorant.
It demands that we ignore the truth of who we are; happy, free and limitless. The
authentic-self, our true nature, is happy, at peace, free and wise. The ego wants to stay
in business so it demands that we look outside the self for happiness and validation. It
demands that you remain unconscious and blocks your evolution. If you give in to it
you live a limited, unhappy, pain-filled life. However, when you turn on the observer
and notice the inflated ego states of addiction, face these excited states and penetrate the
deflated ego states, you develop higher powers. You rise above your primitive nature.
You become fully conscious. You experience your divinity.

Notice that the devil card depicts a scene with a character that looks like a monster. It is
a conglomeration of disparate parts. This card is a metaphor for the conglomeration,
the matrix of our disowned-selves. The devil sits on a block of stone, a representation of
the ego’s rigid view of the world. Our world view becomes cast in stone. The chains
connected to this block of stone appear to bind the man and woman, a metaphor for the
energetic binding of the intellect and intuition. They are unaware that they could
simply lift the chains that bind them off their necks. They are in a state of blind
resignation, bound to illusion. They are blinded and bound by their personal stories
and the belief in limitation and the way things are. The energy represented by this
symbol is what happens when you get reverse wired. Things aren’t really what they
seem. The card represents the power of illusion to bind creative energy, how ignorance
and reversal of thought create pain and suffering when you hold reversed beliefs. Life
is a challenge and it feels like your tail is on fire.

Just as in a computer game, when you face and conquer the energy guardian of each
level of awareness, you incorporate the energetic power of each guardian. In doing so
you gain new powers and tools. With the new tools you move to higher levels. It is the
same in life. There are specific tools to combat every dynamic each energty guardian on
the path causes. The various seminars offer tools to reveal the mythologies, energy
configuration and the characteristics of each energy guardian at each level. The more
you participate the more authentic power you’ll experience—in relationships, work,
creativity, etc. It is all about energy management. These mythologies and energy
guardians becomes your teacher in the process—that’s the real purpose of energy. You
learn and grow stronger from your struggles. When you grasp this, life becomes more
meaningful. Even the worst problem’s then have value.

The super-ego gets its power by creating a fantasy world, a realm of illusion and traps
you within. It tells you it’s possible to live in a place where you’re special and things
are easy—a perfect world. This fantasy life is a roller coaster ride, a series of inflated
ego states, excited states; emotional highs and a series of deflated or depressed ego
states; emotional lows. Your energy, your natural creativity becomes bound, limited
and contained within the fantasy world of the realm of illusion. Most pain is caused by
your failure to find and live in this realm of illusion, which you never can and never do
find.

However, as long as you narcissistically keep seeking the fantasy world, the super-ego
controls you. We all think there’s a group of others who do live in this fantasy
world—naturally we feel as if we are locked outside and inferior to them. The superego
inflates events in our lives—a job review, a date, a birthday party—hoping they’ll
put us in this magic world. The event becomes more important than you and then you
become terrified.

The search for the fantasy world of the realm of illusion makes us fixate on things
outside us. It causes an addictive relationship to the world. It says if we accomplish
this or buy that, then we can live inside that fantasy realm. This can take the form of
using alcohol, drugs, food, money, sex, etc. The super-ego tells us it is the next thing
that will make us feel whole. But it also makes us dependent on the validation of others
- then, if they reject or insult us, we feel like victims. The super-ego also teaches us to
use things outside ourselves for motivation. This causes the addiction to danger in
relationships or activities and the need to start conflicts, the devil made me do it. No
matter how alluring it appears the outer world is severely limited—it has no forces of
energetic flow or creativity. The true energetic flow comes from the unknown and all
knowing within. Once trapped in the illusion we’re overcome with dissatisfaction,
envy and fear. The super-ego lures us toward a perfect world and ends up putting us
in hell—that’s why it’s called the devil.

The key quality of the super-ego is that it repeats itself. It is cast in stone. You become
fixated and lose your self-respect. The universe keeps moving forward, constantly
changing. When you repeat a thought, feeling or behavior, you keep yourself in the
same place, resisting the universal flow of change. This keeps you separate from the
rest of the universe, trapping you in the fantasy world of the super-ego where it can
control you. You see this most easily when you repeat negative thoughts over and over.
Whatever it is you are repeating, you tend to do it with the sense that you’re right.
That’s a sure sign you’re bound by the super-ego.

The energy guardians whisper in your ear saying this is what you do to enter the realm
of illusion. I invite you to turn on your observer, notice the mental games and just stop!

You can only continue a round of self-betraying behavior, if you think you’re going to get something different from that next cycle. All addictions are self-betrayal. Defining
yourself as an object is self-betrayal.

The greatest fear is not defining yourself at all. When you get close to not defining
yourself in any manner, the greatest fear is that you will not exist. It is a strong, deep,
fear that all the conditioning is attached to, if you stop, then you will not exist! And it is
true, if you stop defining yourself, you do exist, and yet not as any definition. You exist
as who you are, undefinable, undeniable; infinite consciousness.

Resistance to a teaching is not resistance to the teacher, it is resistance to yourself. It is a
fear of giving up the self-doubt, a type of childish behavior, an aspect of a self definition.
Because the self-doubt is a long time companion, it is a tyrant and yet it has
kept you in line, it has kept you from being too arrogant, or a megalomaniac. You’ve
seen the actions of megalomaniacs in history and there is a fear of that behavior. There
is a personal recognition of a talent for that behavior, an affinity for that behavior. This
is all part of the human makeup, the innate human aggression, a genetic survival
strategy.

There must be a willingness to give up the self-doubt, and the aggression. There must
be a willingness to stop resisting yourself, however that has taken form uniquely for
you. There must be a willingness to give up the self-doubt so that if there is a delusion
in place, running you, it can be seen, whether it be self-hatred or hatred for others.
Whatever it is, it can then be seen as you! At the core, it is you who creates it all. If you
think it is someone else that is wrong, it will be seen at your core, it is you who is
wrong. Whatever you see as wrong in others, is where you must make the correction in
yourself.

This is the challenge, to turn on the observer, and then own all of this. In this owning,
megalomania may appear. It is not to be unexpected. Hopelessness, powerlessness,
sadness, whatever is being hidden will appear, it is only in the owning that it can be
seen. Whatever is seen, it is seen for the suffering that it is, the absurdity that it is, you
stop, and the suffering is no longer followed as a practice. Whatever is not seen, is
practiced and followed unconsciously, subconsciously. Suffering must be practiced.
Anything you do to avoid suffering is a practice that will bring on more of the same.
Left unseen we have this inner battle, a play between self-doubt and arrogance, ego and
superego, and deeper than all of that, closer than that is the truth. The truth is closer
than any suffering or self-definition. I invite you to stop suffering. The truth requires
no practice.

In all traditions, this teaching was kept secret until you had proven that you were not a
megalomaniac, and that you had a certain level of maturity. This information requires a
high level of responsibility, as this can be used as a medicine or a poison. Whatever
you are thinking, it is either ego or superego. The truth is closer than any thought. The
invitation is to recognize yourself as the truth. And then recognizing the lies as they
appear against this background of inner truth, the temptations as they appear, the
elaborate explanations and justifications for the temptations as they appear; now with
the capacity to choose the truth. When the binding to the story around resisting the
truth and seeking the truth is cut, then there is an opening, there is freedom, happiness,
infinite open space. Happiness cannot be practiced, it is your innate condition. You
must be willing to face the fear of your ego disappearing in the stopping of the self
definition, in order to experience the freedom of your true nature and true self.

Megalomania n : is defined as a delusional mental disorder that is marked by
infantile feelings of personal omnipotence and grandeur.

Over the last twenty years this behavior has become a much larger feature on the
landscape of human consciousness. In most lives there is a point at which there is a
recognition or perception that innocence has been lost. Where innocence once was there
is now a kind of cynicism, a pollution or sense of hopelessness or jaded outlook, either
spiritually or worldly. There is a memory of something that was pure and fresh and
clean.

In remembering that, there is a desire to reclaim it or get back to that, which is quite
natural, because there is still an echo or taste of that freshness and time. The problem
becomes two fold. Since the innocence is not being experienced, it is believed that it is
no longer here, it is somewhere else. The other part of that is that where it is
remembered is where it is assumed to be. So if you remember your childhood as being
innocent there is a hope or attempt to get back to that childhood innocence. It is
impossible to return to that time, it is gone, it is over, that childhood is over.

In that recognition there is a fear that that must mean that the innocence is over, since
the innocence and childhood were so linked together. The issue becomes centered in
the not knowing that the innocence that is sought in the past is already here at the
bottom of all the experiences that have been layered on top. There have been violations,
betrayals and misery, sellouts, and everyone is both the victim and the perpetrator of
these. With the loss of innocence there is a sense that one is a victim. Then one becomes
the victim or the victimizer, they are the opposite sides of the same energy pattern.
There is then a search to return to this initial innocent experience.

At the bottom of all of this the innocence still exists. Give up the activity that is mental,
it may have byproducts that are physical, circumstantial or emotional. However, the
problem becomes the mental activity designed to return to sometime in your life when
you knew yourself to be innocent and pure and powerful and free and good and holy
and one with spirit. You give up the image of that or the attempt to get that back. The
act of looking for the solution creates the problem.

You actually burn in the fire of this disillusionment, it is the experience of the loss of
that innocence rather than trying to get this back, that serves. Most spirituality is about
trying to get it back. If you put your mind into a trance with some of the most beautiful
methods or techniques, it can work for a moment or two, or an hour, or a period of a
retreat, with a mantra or a meditation practice or process. However, until the
willingness to simply burn up in facing the self betrayal, the self violation, the self
hatred, the self rape, the self theory, in facing that with out moving to fix it or make it
nice or make it comfortable or make it spiritual. Just to burn up in it, to not move into
denying it, as if it is not there, because it is all one, and all god and all is perfect. Just
give up those cliche statements. That is why the slack line works. You have to stand in
the self-betrayal and burn in it, grieve in it. There is the possibility of recognizing that
at the core the purity is still pure. There has been no violation there. No experience to
you or from you can violate that. Then you know directly without doing anything who
you are. Since you do not do anything to realize who you are, it is causeless. Who you
are and the recognition of who you are both causeless. When you assign a cause to who
you are then you have a definition of who you are, and that definition is a story. That
story has an image and an emotion and circumstances, and it is subject to change. That
story is subject to birth, death, betrayal, theft, rape, and hatred.

I have no interest in you having a better definition of who you are. I’m not interested in
you having a better story of who you are, a place to escape to when things are rough or
unhappy, or boring. My interest in spending time with you, is that you discover who
you are and that there is no escape from that. In surrendering to what there is no
escape from, you will meet the bigger deeper truth of who you are. Then there is a
critical shift, where you do not relate to life as a series of definitions subject to change.
You recognize the definitions and at the same time recognize that they are imposed
onto life. Life is free of definition. Life itself, the energy that infuses every life form is
free of definition. You are free of definition. You have objectified and defined yourself
as somebody, good or bad, enlightened or unenlightened, you got it or you didn’t get it,
you kept it or you lost it, all of these are absurd definitions. The fear is to not define
yourself at all.

I’ve observed the loss of innocence occurring at an ever more early age in children’s
lives as they are exposed to the violence in the media and the violent behavior of their
parents who have been over exposed to violence in the media. Once over exposed to
violence we become addicted to that which we are uncomfortable with. Violence
demands more violence. What you focus on in life is what expands.

I’m presenting this material to help you see aspects of your own megalomania that
result from the perceived loss of innocence. The sense of powerlessness and low self
esteem flips into a series of stories and self definitions that become megalomania, an
unrealistic belief in one’s superiority, grandiose abilities, and even omnipotence. The
self definition is characterized by a need for total power and control over others, and is
marked by a lack of empathy for anything that is perceived as not feeding the self.

Although megalomania is a term often ascribed to anyone who is power-hungry, the
clinical definition is that of a mental condition associated with narcissistic personality
disorder (NPD).

Narcissism is most simply defined as self-love. Though it is considered healthy to care
about your own well-being and have a healthy self-esteem, when someone loves
himself to the exclusion of all else, and others become objectified to be used only to
serve the self, this is no longer considered healthy.

There are different psychological theories about how and why NPD develops, most of
which relate to the integration of different aspects of ego and self as a child, and the
nature of the parental roles in that process. Regardless of theory, NPD is characterized
by extremely low self-esteem, which is compensated for by delusions of grandeur and
megalomania, a narcissistic neuroses, a highly configured self-definition. With the
propensity to act only on behalf of one’s objectified self, the unbridled need to feed one’s
ego, and the objectification of others to serve the power-hungry needs of megalomania,
it is easy to see how this can be a recipe for disaster, especially when wrapped in a
charismatic personality.

Los Angeles and the film industry is a magnet and perfect match for this behavior.
Nearly every studio head and actor is dealing with addiction, megalomania, narcissism
or sociopathy, they are all part of childhood compensatory behaviors. The fascinating
aspect of these behaviors is that the dysfunctions along with a charismatic nature drives
these people to major success at the expense of those around them.

One of the most well known examples of megalomania in modern history was Adolf
Hitler. A street waif, Hitler wasn’t content rising through the ranks to become the
military leader of Germany. His megalomania drove him to aspire to conquer the entire
world. Being born into a “superior race” also wasn’t enough for the mentally ill Hitler.
Instead, he wanted to wipe out all other races. This need to destroy everything outside
of what he perceived as an extension of himself is a classic though horrifically
illustrated example of megalomania. Paradoxically, a person who exhibits such
tremendous ego and self-confidence in reality has such low self-esteem and such a
fragile ego that he cannot abide any expression other than his own, for fear of
annihilation of the “objectified self.” Therefore everything that is not under his control
is perceived as a threat.

The principles or characteristics of NPD and megalomania can also be expressed in
lesser degrees or in a different fashion by those we might consider more mainstream
than genocidal maniacs and serial killers. Among actors, executives, dictators,
fundamentalists, and politicians we find those who view themselves as morally
superior with the willingness to sacrifice, kill, or risk the safety of others considered
inferior in order to assert their own agendas. Though there are legitimate circumstances
in which leaders must exercise civil or military force, or religious zealots can profess
solemn beliefs, the line between religiosity and fanaticism, between duty and
megalomania, can be a gray one. This is how the term has become part of our culture’s
vernacular.

When you begin to set these self definitions aside and no longer do this behavior, the
first fear is that you will not exist at all, that is the underlying fear. It is a strong deep
fear that all the conditioning is attached to and it is true. When you stop defining
yourself your self does not exist as any definition. You do exist, however not as a
definition. You exit as who you are, conscious awareness; free, indefinable,
inconceivable, undeniable and innocent.

Change requires the willingness to let go of lower levels of relative completion, or
seeming perfection, to attain higher ones. In the evolution of consciousness nothing
ever stays permanently set. It is important to consciously express a willingness to
transcend whatever may seem complete or perfect to us at present. This keeps us open
to receive higher levels of truth than that which may now seem adequate to us. It is
essential that we accept the possibility of higher interpretations of experience than we
may now be able to perceive. That is why the inline skating, slack line and movement
classes work. They present an experience beyond language, beyond what is held as
true and known by the rational mind.

In all areas of life expression there’s always a higher completion…always a greater
perfection than we have yet achieved. Through your participation in this process
you’ve seen the need to relinquish merely personal interpretations of experience.
Energy is impersonal. Love is impersonal. The states of consciousness are impersonal.
We are but transformers of an energy, of an attitude, or a power. You bring your
personal attributes to the states of relative existence in the world of name and form. To
achieve this, there must be a stillness of personality, through us-never from us-comes
all love, always then, all formation in time and space. All meditational methods are
designed to help us become conscious channels for the light and wisdom of the one ego.
Collapse down the mind chatter and the survival strategies of the intellect and we
become the one ego and channel the one intelligence.

When you hear yourself say “I’ve already done that” or “I know that” this is a cue that
you may be operating from a primitive survival mode, a bound and limited egoic and
personal psychological state, “the expert mode.” The greater the intellect, the more
likely one may fall into this trap. This is a state where the ego mimics data or behavior
perceived as crucial to survival and packages it for use in the future. It is all about
competing, impressing others, validation and approval. This behavior actually brings
the opposite effect, it fosters self-isolation rather than self-respect. It is a state of desire
and what we desire we energetically push away. It only serves to perpetuate suffering
and pain and sustains an energetic binding that truncates spiritual growth.

In the expert mode one interacts with others as if operating from a script. For the
recipient of this delivery, it is as if you are listening to a radio broadcast of the evening
news. There is an unspoken rage. It is unpleasant to watch, as it is a form of self-abuse.
There is no feeling. No vulnerability. No one listening. No self-respect. There is no
real accountability. No real experience of intimacy or of the concepts proffered, only
judging and defending and a perpetuation of the wounding of separation from self.

Authenticity, true openness, true change, requires the willingness to look at the world
and your experiences, as if you have never experienced, seen or heard them before.
You are willing to take in all feedback, both positive and negative, without ascribing
any meaning to what is heard. You understand that all feedback is love, rather than
rejecting that which you perceive as negative, distasteful or unknown. You are willing
to hear the truth about reality. In this listening there is a stopping. In the stopping you
are willing to grow and change. Stopping disruptive behavior engenders change, as
your innate condition is at peace and free. You face the world defenseless, with the
innocence of a child rather than an arsenal of data to shoot down any disagreements
with your world view. You realize that the truth requires no defense and that the
defensiveness perpetuates the separation and suffering.

People are slow learners when whatever it is that they must learn contradicts
everything they “believe.” What you believe is probably not true. There is an
intellectual paralysis associated with unpleasant new information. Information that
does not fit the current world view is rejected outright. We rarely learn the new lesson
based on intellectual comprehension alone, such as a careful study of facts, a
comparison of facts with theory, and then reassessment.

Instead, we are emotionally transformed by an event or experience that overwhelms
our world view. Until then, we suffer and are victims of repressed anger and emotional
pain. Rejection of new experience continues until there is that “emotional acceptance.”
Then we re-think everything. In a moment, life is transformed.

Anger is a compounded phenomenon. Most personality disordered people are prone to anger. Their anger is always sudden, raging, frightening and without an apparent provocation by an outside agent. It would seem that people suffering from personality disorders are in a constant state of anger, which is effectively suppressed most of the time. It manifests itself only when the person’s defenses are down, incapacitated, or adversely affected by circumstances, inner or external.

There is a psychodynamic source of this permanent, bottled-up anger. The person was, usually, unable to express anger and direct it at “forbidden” targets in his early, formative years (his parents, in most cases). The anger, however, was a justified reaction to abuses and mistreatment. The patient was, therefore, left to nurture a sense
of profound injustice and frustrated rage. This is the initiation of the Narcissistic
personality. Healthy people experience anger, but as a transitory state. This is what
sets the narcissistic personality apart: their anger is always acute, permanently present,
often suppressed or repressed. Healthy anger has an external inducing agent (a reason).
It is directed at this agent, it has coherence.

Pathological anger is neither coherent, nor externally induced. It emanates from the
inside and it is diffuse, directed at the “world” and at “injustice” in general. The person
does identify the immediate cause of the anger. Still, upon closer scrutiny, the cause is
likely to be found lacking and the anger excessive, disproportionate, incoherent. To
refine the point: it might be more accurate to say that the narcissistic personality is
expressing (and experiencing) two layers of anger, simultaneously and always. The
first layer, the superficial anger, is indeed directed at an identified target, the alleged
cause of the eruption. The second layer, however, is anger directed at himself. The
person is angry at himself for being unable to vent off normal anger, normally. He feels
like an alien. He hates himself. This second layer of anger also comprises strong and
easily identifiable elements of frustration, irritation and annoyance.

While normal anger is connected to some action regarding its source (or to the planning
or contemplation of such action) – pathological anger is mostly directed at oneself or
even lacks direction altogether. The personality disordered are afraid to show that they
are angry to meaningful others because they are afraid to lose them. The Borderline
Personality Disordered is terrified of being abandoned, the narcissist needs his
Narcissistic Supply Sources, the Paranoid – his persecutors and so on. These people
prefer to direct their anger at people who are meaningless to them, people whose
withdrawal will not constitute a threat to their precariously balanced personality. They
yell at a waitress, berate a taxi driver, or explode at an underling. Alternatively, they
sulk, are unable to feel pleasure or are pathologically bored, drink or do drugs – all
forms of self-directed aggression. From time to time, no longer able to pretend and to
suppress, they have it out with the real source of their anger. They rage and, generally,
behave like lunatics. They shout incoherently, make absurd accusations, distort facts,
pronounce allegations and suspicions. These episodes are followed by periods of
saccharine sentimentality and excessive flattering and submissiveness towards the
victim of the latest rage attack. Driven by the mortal fear of being abandoned or
ignored, the personality disordered debases and demeans himself to the point of
provoking repulsion in the beholder. These pendulum-like emotional swings make life
with the personality disordered difficult.

The two main sources of anger are threat (a disagreement is potentially threatening)
and injustice (inconvenience is injustice inflicted on the angry person by the world).

These are also the two sources of personality disorders. The personality disordered is
molded by recurrent and frequent injustice and he is constantly threatened both by his
internal and by his external universes.

Anger is a primitive, limbic emotion. Its excitatory components and patterns are shared
with sexual excitation and with fear. It is cognition that guides our behavior, aimed at
avoiding harm and aversion or at minimizing them. Our cognition is in charge of
attaining certain kinds of mental gratification. The judgment of fairness or justice
(namely, the appraisal of the extent of compliance with conventions of social exchange)
– is also cognitive.

The angry person and the personality disordered both suffer from a cognitive deficit.
They are unable to conceptualize, to design effective strategies and to execute them.
They dedicate all their attention to the immediate and ignore the future consequences of
their actions. In other words, their attention and information processing faculties are
distorted, skewed in favor of the here and now, biased on both the intake and the
output. Time is “relativistically dilated” – the present feels more protracted, “longer”
than any future. Immediate facts and actions are judged more relevant and weighted
more heavily than any remote aversive conditions. Anger impairs cognition.

The angry person is a worried person. The personality disordered is also excessively
preoccupied with himself. Worry and anger are the cornerstones of the edifice of
anxiety. Anger is the constant fear of loss or the fear of what could be lost or has been
lost. This is where it all converges: people become angry because they are excessively
concerned with bad things which might happen to them. Anger is a result of anxiety
(or, when the anger is not acute, of fear).

Finally, acutely angry people perceive anger to have been the result of intentional (or
circumstantial) provocation with a hostile purpose (by the target of their anger). Their
targets, on the other hand, invariably regard them as incoherent people, acting
arbitrarily, in an unjustified manner.

We all fear the loss of our identity and uniqueness. We seem to be acutely aware of this
fear in a crowd of people. This wish to be distinct, “special” in the most primitive sense,
is universal. It crosses cultural barriers and spans different periods in human history.
We use hair styles, clothing, behavior, lifestyles and products of our creative mind to
differentiate ourselves.

The sensation of “being unique or special” is of paramount importance. It is behind
many a social custom. People feel indispensable, one of a kind, in a loving relationship,
for instance. One’s uniqueness is reflected by one’s spouse and this provides one with an
“independent, external and objective” affirmation of one’s specialness. This sounds very
close to pathological narcissism. Indeed, the difference is in measure – not in substance.

Healthy people “use” others to confirm their sense of distinctiveness – but they do not
over-dose or over-do it. Feeling unique is to the average person of secondary
importance. He derives the bulk of his sense of identity from his well-developed,
differentiated Ego. The clear-cut boundaries of his Ego and his thorough acquaintance
with a beloved figure – his authentic self – are enough.

Only people whose Ego is underdeveloped, immature, and relatively undifferentiated,
need ever larger quantities of external Ego boundary setting, of affirmation through
reflection. To such people, there is no distinction between significant and less
meaningful others. Everyone carries the same weight and fulfills the same
functions: reflection, affirmation, recognition, adulation, or attention. This is why,
to them, everyone is interchangeable and dispensable.

The narcissist employs the following mechanisms in his relationships (say, in a marriage):

1. He “merges” with his spouse/mate and contains him/her as a representation of the outside world.

2. He exerts absolute dominion over the spouse (again in her symbolic capacity as The World).

These two mechanisms substitute for the healthier forms of relationship, where the two
members of the couple maintain their distinctiveness, while, at the same time, creating
a new “being of togetherness.”

To ensure a constant flow of Narcissistic Supply, the narcissist seeks to “replicate”
his projected self. He becomes addicted to publicity, fame, and celebrity. Merely
observing his “replicated self” – on billboards, TV screens, book covers, newspapers
– sustains the narcissist’s feelings of omnipotence and omnipresence, akin to the ones
that he experienced in his early childhood. The “replicated self” provides the narcissist
with an “existential substitute,” proof that he exists – functions normally carried out by
a healthy, well-developed Ego through its interactions with the outside world
(the “reality principle”).

In extreme cases of deprivation, when Narcissistic Supply is nowhere to be
found, the narcissist decompensates and disintegrates, even up to having
psychotic micro-episodes. The narcissist also forms or participates in hermetic
or exclusive, cult-like, social circles, whose members share his delusions
(Pathological Narcissistic Space). The function of these acolytes is to serve
as a psychological entourage and to provide “objective” proof of the narcissist’s
self-importance and grandeur. When these devices fail, it leads to an all-pervasive
feeling of annulment and detachment.

An abandoning spouse or a business failure, for instance, are crises whose magnitude
and meaning cannot be suppressed. This usually moves the narcissist to seek treatment.

Therapy starts where self-delusion leaves off, but it takes a massive disintegration of
the very fabric of the narcissist’s life and personality organization to bring about merely
this limited concession of defeat. Even then the narcissist merely seeks to be “fixed” in
order to continue his life as before.

The boundaries (and the very existence) of the narcissist’s Ego are defined by others.
In times of crisis, the inner experience of the narcissist – even when he is surrounded
by people – is that of rapid, uncontrollable dissolution.

This feeling is life threatening. This existential conflict forces the narcissist to fervently
seek or improvise solutions, optimal or suboptimal, at any cost. The narcissist proceeds
to find a new spouse, to secure publicity, or to get involved with new “friends”, who are
willing to accommodate his desperate need for Narcissistic Supply.

This sense of overwhelming urgency causes the narcissist to suspend all judgment. In
these circumstances, the narcissist is likely to misjudge the traits and abilities of a
prospective spouse, the quality of his own work, or his status within his social milieu. He
is liable to make indiscriminate use of all his defense mechanisms to justify and rationalize
this hot pursuit.

Many narcissists reject treatment even in the most dire circumstances. Feeling
omnipotent, they seek the answers themselves and in themselves, and then venture to
“fix” and “maintain” themselves. They gather information, philosophize, “creatively
innovate”, and contemplate. They do all this single-handedly and even when they are
forced to seek other people’s counsel, they are unlikely to admit it and are likely to
devalue their helpers.

The narcissist dedicates a lot of his time and energy to establish his own specialness.
He is concerned with the degree of his uniqueness and with various methods to
substantiate, communicate and document it.

The narcissist’s frame of reference is nothing less than posterity and the entirety of the
human race. His uniqueness must be immediately and universally recognized. It must
(potentially, at least) be known by everyone at all times – or it loses its allure. It is an all
or nothing situation.

Uniqueness and intimacy are strong rivals.
Intimacy implies a certain acquaintance of one’s partner with privileged information.
Yet, it is exactly such partially or wholly withheld information that buttresses one’s
sense of superiority, uniqueness, and mystery which, inevitably, vanishes with
disclosure and intimacy. Additionally, intimacy is a common and universal pursuit.
It does not confer uniqueness on its seeker.

When you feel guilt, an important characteristic of this feeling is that you should be
punished. You should be punished because of the things you have done, or the wrong
person you believe you are. Once you believe guilt is real, then you believe that you
will soon be punished for the guilt, or the act you believe you are guilty of. Guilt
always demands punishment, and since you fear punishment, this is the origin of fear.

Despite the seeming cause of fear in the world, the ultimate cause of fear is the
punishment that guilt demands. As you operate with the mistaken belief that you are
separate from spirit, your mind creates the obstacles to inner peace, which are the
emotions of anger, fear and rage. Your mind begins the cycle that progresses from sin,
to guilt, to fear, to the projection of anger and then to the justification of that anger. It
turns out that the ultimate object of our fear is our creator. The fear of the creator is the
finial obstacle to peace. There is nothing more terrifying in the ego’s thought system,
than the belief that God himself will strike you dead for your transgressions towards
God, whether or not you believe God exists.

As Voltaire once said, “God created man in his own image and then man returned the
compliment.” The image you hold of God is a mirror image projection of your own
inner experience of guilt. Inadvertently you have transformed this loving god into a
vengeful, hateful, wrathful god, and a god that will punish you for your sinfulness.

Remember as a child, those stories told about a wrathful god. They were often stories
about an angry god that would destroy you for your transgressions. These stories have
nothing to do with the unconditionally loving spirit that created everything. However,
these stories do have everything to do with the wrathful god that mankind has
projected outward, onto the world, from within.

Once this unholy trinity of sin, guilt and fear has been set into motion, it keeps cycling
over and over, and there seems no way out of the cycle. However, the ego is always
looking for a means of redemption. The ego looks for a way to protect us from the
terrifying burden of coming into contact with our own self-hatred, our inner conflicts,
or the terrifying belief that God is going to strike us dead.

In the ego’s system based on separation, God has been turned into the enemy. So in the
ego’s system it is not God you can turn to for help with relief of the anxiety, fear and the
feelings of self-hatred that you have. The only resource you have must be the ego itself.

Of course the ego is not a fool, the ego more than anything else wants to sustain its own
existence. When you turn to the ego for help, the ego seems to have the answers. And
one way to keep the ego in business is to get you to believe in it, to believe that it really
does have all the answers. Since the ego can be defined as the belief in some form of
separation from spirit, all the ego has to do is get you to believe that the separation is
real, that the separation from spirit has actually occurred. As the ego hooks you into the
belief in the reality of sin, or the reality of sin as the justification of guilt, the cycle is
engaged and the ego is in business.

The attraction of guilt is the most important element in the ego’s thought system and a
key element when working with this material. As long as you identify with the ego’s
thought system, you must also identify with the ego’s need to keep you guilty. When
you go to the ego for help, it says, yes, yes, I can help you. What the ego is secretly
saying is that the help that I am going to give you is secretly going to perpetuate the
very guilt you want to be free of. The ego does this in the following manner. When you
have terrifying feelings and go to the ego for help, the ego says, “what you do with
those feelings is push them down into the unconscious, you make believe that they do
not exist.” This is know as repression or denial. The mechanism of denial is very
simple. It says, that if you do not see the problem, then it does not exist.

Just like an Ostrich, that sticks it’s head in the sand, if it doesn’t see the problem, then
the problem magically does not exist. If you don’t feel like cleaning the house, then you
can sweep the dirt under the carpet. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work for long, as the
carpet gets lumpy and sooner or later you trip over the lump. A similar thing happens
with repressed guilt, repression doesn’t work for long, because on some level the
problem remains and builds up over time, ultimately getting your attention in one way
or another.

The ego offers one other step that really takes care of the guilt. This step is the most
important of all the psychological defenses, this step is projection. Projection is the
dynamic that takes the guilt from inside you and projects it outside onto someone or
something else. Almost literally hurling the guilt away from you onto someone or
something in the outside world.

The ego tells you that this is the perfect way of getting rid of your guilt, because the
guilt no longer exists in me it is in you. Internally, at that point, you say it is you who is
responsible for all the misery, pain and suffering that I have in my life, it is not me. You
are guilty and not me. You are the one who should be punished and not myself. Were
it not for what you have done to me, then I would feel good about myself. This is what
projection is. It is to shift the responsibility for all the problems you have, problems
which originate internally from the belief in separation, and then to transfer that
problem outside and to make someone or something outside of us responsible for our
problems. It is you who is responsible for it, not me.

The means you use to keep distance between yourself and the guilt once you have
placed the guilt on someone else, is to get angry. Anger, is defined as a strong feeling of
displeasure. Anger defined from the ego’s perspective as an attempt to justify the
projection of guilt. As a projection placed on someone else, anger is never justified. The
reason why anger or attack are never justified, is that it has no meaning, except that it
seeks to justify both to the other person, to yourself, and to the world that someone else
is to blame, someone else is the guilty person.

The meaning then, of all anger, is the attempt to shift the responsibility for the internal
separation from God, seeing the separation not in me, but in someone else, they are
denying their relationship with God, not I. From the ego’s point of view, it doesn’t
make any difference who or what the object of projection is. It could be a person, a
group of people, a country, it could be an idea, it could even be God. All that the ego
cares about is that someone or something be found to take the blame.

This explains the tremendous personal investment you, as well as others throughout
history have in finding somebody they can make into a scapegoat to blame for all their
problems. This also explains the root cause of all prejudice, the attempt to find someone
who can be judged not as good as, so you can get yourself off the hook. Keep in mind
that this is the advice that the ego gives you to keep you free from guilt. Now what the
ego doesn’t tell you, is that the act of projection, is the best way of holding onto the guilt
and being trapped by it in a never ending cycle.

The truth is, there is no way that anyone can get angry with anybody, whether it is
expressed or keep as thought, without at the same time feeling guilty about it.
Internally, you know the real reason that you are angry with someone else is that you
are trying to escape from taking responsibility for yourself. If you felt perfectly at
peace, you would never be angry. All anger is an attempt to say, “It is because of you,
that I do not have the peace of spirit in my life.”

Gossiping is an indication to childish behavior, an affirmation of being bound to a
search for perfection, this search for right and wrong is another aspect of projection.
Children do not take responsibility for their actions and in this respect their actions are
dangerous. Lose lips sink ships, and more companies are destroyed by this behavior
than any other. Adults know to set gossip aside. They know people make mistakes and
have no problem communicating their feelings with another, rather than gossip about
them. Adults take responsibility for their actions and know that other adults do the
same, and that gossip is a form of withholding information that others need to make
adjustments and corrections. Gossip is an attack, a form of competition.

Those who gossip are trying to win! It is self-betrayal of another flavor. Passing data
through to someone else, or participating in listening to someone else gossip about
another person or event, is the ego projecting feelings of guilt and separation out onto
others or events, this act justifies the gossip and makes it real. Gossiping is an
affirmation of separation, is a form of denial, and perpetuates guilt. What appears as an
attack towards others, is really an attack directed towards self.

If you are gossiping, you use everything outside of self to justify your suffering. You
are a leaky container, bound to jealousy, another aspect of separation, sabotaging your
process and trying to inhibit others growth, out of jealously. You take others down
with you. It is the story that if I can’t win, I’ll kill everyone else or destroy the game so
no one else can win either. Stop the gossiping, it is akin to complaining! Those who
complain and gossip are crap magnets. If you have something to say, say it in the
group. If your afraid to say it in the group, then it probably isn’t useful or true.

These classes, the movement and the Video Holo-Therapy help you discover the
mythologies, the self-objectification and the object relationships that perpetuate your
suffering and self loathing. You have an opportunity to just stop the suffering and
connect with your innate nature, which is conscious, happy, free and unlimited.

Narcissism is a survival strategy and as such is the creation of an Objectified-Self. It is a
cutting off from inner knowing, feeling, and of the inner expression of the authentic self.
Instead a false self image is created from the reflection of objects, people and
experiences that surround one. This false-self stifles healthy individuation from the
parent and development of a functional ego. Narcissism is a direct result of the
aggression the narcissist experienced from his surroundings, in early life. To better
understand the narcissist’s intimate relationships, we must first understand the genesis
of one aspect of narcissism: aggression.

Emotions are instincts. They form part of human behavior. Interactions with other
people provide a framework, an organizational structure into which emotions fit nicely.
Libido is the sexual instinct or sexual drive. Emotions are organized by object
relationships to the libido, the positive pole associated with safety or the negative pole
aggression, which is associated with hurt.

Anger is the basic emotion underlying aggression. As it fluctuates, it is transformed.
Anger has two aspects or two faces: hatred and envy. The libido has sexual excitation
as its basic emotion. This emotional object relationship is an ancient tactile
remembrance of the safety of the mother’s skin and the wholesome feeling and smell of
her breasts that provoke this excitement.

So important are these early emotional experiences, that an early age pathology of
object relationships can develop from traumatic experience—physical or psychological
abuse, abandonment —or these traumatic experiences can move aggression into a
dominant position over the libido. Whenever aggression rules over libidinal drives, we
have a psychopathology.

The emotional twins —libido and aggression —are inseparable. They characterize all
references of the self to an object rather than to the true inner nature, which is the
authentic self. A false world of emotionally-invested object relationships is formed with
each emotional wound and each subsequent objectified-self reference to the outer
world.

The dynamic unconscious-self is made of basic mental experiences, which are really
dyadic relations between self-representations and object representations in either of two
contexts: elation or rage. A subconscious fantasy of merging or unification of the self
and the object prevails in symbiotic relationships – both in euphoric moods and in
aggressive and wrathful ones.

Anger has evolutionary and adaptive functions. It is intended to alert the individual to
a source of pain and irritation and to motivate him to eliminate it. It is the beneficial
outcome of frustration and pain. It is also instrumental in the removal of barriers to the
satisfaction of needs.

As most sources of bad feelings appear to be human, aggression in the form of rage is
directed at human,”bad” objects – people around us who are perceived by us to be
deliberately frustrating our wishes to satisfy our needs. At the furthest end of this
range we find the will and wish to make such a frustrating object suffer. However, such
desire to make one suffer is a different game: it combines aggression and pleasure,
therefore it is sadistic.

Rage can easily convert to hatred. There is a wish to control the bad object in order to
avoid persecution or fear. This control is achieved by the development of obsessive
control mechanisms, which regulate the repression of aggression in such an individual.

Aggression can assume many forms. Biting humor, excessive candor, the search for
autonomy and personal enhancement, a compulsive effort to secure the absence of any
kind of outside intervention – are all sublimations of aggression.

Hatred is a derivative of anger which is intended to facilitate the destruction of the bad
object, to make it suffer and to control it. Rage is acute, passing and disruptive – hatred
is chronic, stable and connected to character. Hatred seems justified on the grounds of
revenge against the frustrating object. The wish to avenge is very typical of hatred.
Paranoid fears of retaliation accompany hatred. Hatred thus has paranoid, sadistic and
vengeful characteristics.

Another transformation of aggression is envy. This is a greedy wish to incorporate the
object, even to destroy it. Yet, this very object which the envious mind seeks to
eliminate by incorporation or by destruction is also an object of love, the object of love
without which life itself will not have existed or will have lost its taste and impetus.

The narcissist’s mind is pervaded by conscious and unconscious transformations of
enormous amounts of aggression into envy. The magnitude of hatred in such
individuals is so great, that they deny both the emotion and any awareness of it.
Alternatively, aggression is converted to action or to acting out.

This denial affects normal cognitive functioning as well. Such an individual has
intermittent bouts of arrogance, curiosity and pseudo-stupidity, all transformations of
aggression taken to the extreme. It is difficult to tell envy from hatred in these cases.

The narcissist is constantly envious of people. He begrudges others their success, or
brilliance, or happiness, or good fortune. He is driven to excesses of paranoia, guilt,
and fear that subside only after he “acts out” or punishes himself. It is a vicious cycle in
which he is entrapped.