Self-Transcendence Practice . . .
of One’s True Nature

by John P. Cock (revised 12/28/07)

This was the daily reflection blog (www.reJourney.blogspot.com) I posted for July 28, 2006:

Self-transcendence

Self-transcendence makes possible awareness, freedom, and relatedness.
~Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. III, pp. 234-237

One of my effective spiritual practices is self-transcendence: it allows me to look at myself from outside, helping me transcend those times when I’m obsessed with myself, my situation, who I think I am. It helps me to be aware, free, and related in a new way – to embrace and transcend my situation. ~jpc

How wondrous is our consciousness in response to spirit. Namaste.

*****

My grandson Nolan, at age 9 and a third grader, was having a really “bad” day at school. He dropped from the A honor roll to the A/B honor roll. His big sister stayed on the A honor roll, which of course made the pain worse for him. He told his teacher in a sulk that he didn’t want the medal given to him at the awards ceremony and gave it back to her. The teacher told his mother, who that afternoon grounded Nolan for the next 24 hours and sent him immediately to his room on that beautiful spring day after school.

I heard about all this, walked to his house about a half-mile away, asked his mother if he could take a walk with me. She said, “Yes.” I asked him to walk home with me, that we needed him to help us. He was glad to escape his room.

As we walked, I turned the conversation, not letting him know I knew what had gone on at school. I asked him if he knew what the word “ego” meant. He did not. I described it as “pride” and shared with him a couple of times as a boy when my pride was hurt.

Then I asked him to tell me some emotions we all have when our pride is hurt. Right off he mentioned “sad” and “mad.” I asked him if he’d ever felt trapped in one of those emotions.

He began to tell me the saga of his day. I asked him which emotions he had experienced. He said “mad.” I asked him who he was mad at. He said his teacher, who he thought had been unfair in giving him one “B.” I asked him if he was blaming her. He said, “Yes.” I told him blaming someone was an ego thing. I asked him what it was like having those emotions today. He said, “It’s like I am inside my emotions and can’t get out.” I asked him if he wanted out. He said, “Yes.”

I then explained a neat trick, that he could “transcend” his self and explained the meaning of the big word. We stopped and I asked him to close his eyes, step out of himself and look at himself. I asked him what he saw. He said, “A hurt and sad me.” I asked him if he wanted to stop being hurt and sad. He said, “Yes.” I asked him if he could see himself. He said he could. Then I told him if he winked “yes” at the “transcendent self” looking at him, his prison door would open. He winked, then grinned a big grin and said, “Neat.”

I told him he could transcend and look at his self at any time – that is, if he wanted to and freely decided to. I think he got it because he wispered “yes” several more times as we walked.
 
Nolan seemed transformed through that half-mile walk and our fifteen-minute conversation. Maybe he experienced what all the sages have known, his true nature: no problem, blissful, at one, graced, and peaceful – whatever words one chooses to describe that primal state of being that everyone has experienced and can experience again and again.

He told me later that he had experimented with the “self-transcendence trick” and that it really works, sometimes.

*****

I probably got this self-transcendence practice from Ken Wilber’s No Boundary back in the late 80’s. It lays out the essence of universal spirituality and how it can be immediately practiced. I read it then as a profound theory. Later, in the early 90’s, he and his wife, Treya, grounded this same theory – even quoting several pages of No Boundary – in Grace and Grit as they wrote about their struggle as she was dying from cancer. Here are some of the underlinings I made then:

As a feeling or sensation arises, we witness it. If hatred of that feeling arises, we witness that. If hatred of the hatred arises, then we witness that. (Grace and Grit* p. 126)

This reminded me of Kierkegaard’s “consciousness of consciousness of consciousness,” or the c<c<c model, as the Ecumenical Institute talked about his quote: “By relating itself to its own self and by willing to be itself, the self is grounded transparently in the Power which posited it.” (. . . The Sickness Unto Death, p. 147)

Or my self-transcendence practice may have come from these two quotes:

Says Chuang Tzu: “The perfect man [sic] employs his mind as a mirror. It grasps nothing; it refuses nothing; it receives, but does not keep.” (Grace and Grit, p. 126)

To witness these states is to transcend them. They no longer seize you from behind because you look at them up front. (Ibid., p. 127)

And I was struck by the ritual-like quote that says who I am not and who I am:

. . . I have a body, but I am not my body. . . .
I have desires but I am not desires. . . .
I have emotions but I am not emotions. . . .
I have thoughts but I am not my thoughts. . . .

I am what remains, a pure center of awareness, an unmoved Witness of all these thoughts, emotions, feelings, and sensations. (Ibid., p. 125 – adapted by Wilber from Roberto Assagioli and from Sri Ramana Maharshi)

This suggests to me that I am what I have been from the beginning, am now, and always will be – pure, unsullied, unencumbered, unburdened, free, in the right state of being, at one, at home in my true nature.

All the above comes to me in a process of spirituality:


The characters of this process or journey drama are ever-present spirit, a great cloud of witnesses, and oneself. Aware of what I am not and what I truly am – one with spirit and all that is – I am released from the prison of who I thought I was and constantly tell myself I am. I am released to decide to be my authentic self. I am left with a compassion for all those imprisoned in the illusion of false images about themselves. I yearn that they experience their true nature at the heart of this great spirit journey.

______
* Read the above quoted material in No Boundary, chp. 9, “The Self in Transcendence.”

© John P. Cock

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