A Case of Mistaken Identity

In Contemplative Psychotherapy, we base our work on the idea of brilliant sanity. We have glimpses of our brilliant sanity quite often, but much of the time we turn away from it.

For example, we might be enjoying a beautiful evening sky. The sun is just slipping below the horizon and there is a dazzling display of colors. Our heart feels full and tender; there may be a whiff of sadness along with a feeling of joy. If we are with someone else, we might turn to that person and have a sense of shared connection as together we appreciate the loveliness unfolding before us.

On the other hand, we might turn away from the sense of vastness, clarity, and tenderness. Perhaps we are seeing it alone, and we are all too vividly aware of wanting to have someone to share it with. Or the sense of boundless sky seems overwhelming; we feel insignificant. We begin to think about ourselves and all we have to do later. We fill our minds with thoughts and forget about the beauty in front of us.

As we saw in the last blog entry, we easily get caught up in distraction when we feel pain. This is a key idea in the "Second Noble Truth." We just as easily might redirect our attention when we have a glimpse of the limitless, clear, and heartful sense of brilliant sanity. It may seem too intense.

Buddhist psychology teaches that the main way we turn away from our direct experience, from our brilliant sanity, is by trying to maintain a mistaken sense of ourselves. This false sense of self is often referred to in Buddhist teachings as "ego" and is another aspect of the Second Noble Truth. Here "ego" refers to the attempt to hang on to an identity that is permanent, separate, and solid. It is unfortunate that the same term is often used in western psychology to refer to the ability to use logic, to be in touch with reality, or to feel confident. Those qualities are not a problem. Hanging on to a mistaken sense of identity is a problem, though.

Let's unpack this a bit. To say that we regard ourselves as somehow permanent is to say that we think that there is something in us that is unchanging. What is unchanging in us? When we look carefully, what do we find? The Buddhists would suggest that we won't find anything that actually corresponds to this thing we call our "self." I would invite you to look for yourself. Is it a thought? No, thoughts keep coming and going. A feeling? Well, those keep changing, too. A sensation in the body? Even those are changing. Look carefully, see what you find.

How about this idea of separateness? Again, we are invited to look into our own experiences. In what way are we really separate from each other and from the environment? If I look at the lovely sunset described above, where is my experience of the sunset? Is it "out there" or is in "in here"? If I gaze at you lovingly, is my experience of "you" out there or in here? If I think about the sunset or about you, can I do so without the words of a particular language? If I spoke a different language, wouldn't I think about you differently? If you speak more than one language, you might recognize how language and culture affect your experience in a thoroughly pervasive way.

If I am sitting with a client who is sad, I may start to feel the tug of sadness in my own heart, not just in reaction to my client's sadness but by picking up on it directly. This sense of connectedness happens because, from the contemplative point of view, we are not truly separate. Thich Nhat Hanh, a well-known Vietnamese Zen teacher says we "inter-are." We are inter-dependent, not independent and separate. Brilliant sanity's quality of compassion or connectedness underlies this sense of connection and inter-dependence.

Finally, the idea that we have something in us that is "solid" is a belief that we could find something in ourselves that couldn't be broken down into its constituent parts. The Buddhist teachings again invite us to look and see if we can find something like that. The suggestion is that we can't find anything that can't be divided even further.

It certainly feels like there is some "me" in here. I know that's my experience. It's obvious. I exist; I'm here. I'm the one who likes chocolate ice cream and doesn't like green peppers. I'm the one who feels hurt when someone says mean things to me. I'm the one who's typing these words.

What happens, though, when I take a really good look? Can I find that "me"? Can I find something in my actual experience? Where is it? In my head? My heart? Is it always the same or does it shift and change? Is it truly independent of others? Can I really see someone in pain and stay separate, not be affected? Hmmm.

In contemplative psychotherapy training, we investigate such questions by sitting down with ourselves and observing our experience directly. We do this through the form known as "mindfulness-awareness meditation." We will look more at how to practice meditation in a future blog entry. For now, you might want to just hold these questions in mind with curiosity and let them arise from time to time. Or you might want to sit quietly and just notice your own mind.

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Suppose you conclude that you cannot find a solid, separate, permanent something or other in yourself. So what? What difference would that make?

According to the Buddhists, we spend an enormous amount of time and energy trying to sustain this sense of self, ego. We are limited by how we think about ourselves. Actually, "think" is not quite the right word. Our sense of ego-identity is often more of a gut feeling. It is an assumption that we rarely question.

If we believe we are a solid, separate self, then we come up with various ways of describing ourselves to ourselves. "I'm a person who is friendly; I'm smart; I'm good-looking." Or we might have a negative sense of self that we believe in just as strongly, "I'm never going to get what I want. No one likes me." These stories support our sense of self that is familiar and predictable. Even if it's painful, we might prefer certainty to uncertainty. We prefer our known identity to not knowing. When we prefer the suffering of certainty to the open quality inherent in not knowing, we are turning away from the spaciousness quality of brilliant sanity.

Ego-identity requires constant maintenance. We have to push away any experience that contradicts our sense of ourselves. We try to hold on to the experiences that support it. We ignore the rest. It is quite exhausting. Energy that we could be using more creatively is, instead, being used to keep a false sense of ourselves going.

Not only does it use up a lot of energy, maintaining a mistaken sense of self also means restricting our lives to those things that support ego. We may become uncomfortable or afraid when we consider doing something inconsistent with our false sense of self. For example, we say, "Oh I could never do that. That wouldn't be me." The more we do that, the smaller our world becomes. We might act this way with something as minor as what we wear, but it could extend to who we could live with and how we could earn a living. It could include refraining from saying how we feel or reaching out to someone in pain.

Sometimes people think that this Buddhist idea of "egolessness" means that we don't exist at all. That's not quite right: it's that we don't exist in the way we usually think we do. Instead of being like a solid gold brick, we are more like a flowing river. We can point to the river and say, that's the Missouri River. Or the "Karen River." It keeps flowing and is never the same, even its banks move. Still, there's some sort of ever-changing continuity.

This mistaken sense of self leads to all kinds of pain. In contemplative psychotherapy we see it underlying all sorts of issues that bring people into therapy. There's also some good news: since this mistaken sense of self requires constant maintenance, it often falls apart. When that happens, the sun of brilliant sanity can be recognized, shining as it always has. We will look further into both of these ideas and their implications in therapy in future blog entries.