According the psychoanalyst Roger Gould maturity depends a lot on discarding irrational childhood assumptions thus being able to take control of our own lives. Simplistically, these assumptions err in being overly dependent on belief in the parent's world and values. There are in general four childhood assumptions that carry over into adult life that have to be superseded or the same, sublated. Using Hill’s book, A Level Psychology through diagrams (p. 173) they are:
Assumption 1. (late teens, early 20s) — ‘I will always belong to my parent and believe in their world’.
Assumption 2. (the 20s) — ‘Doing it their way with will power and perseverance will probably bring results. But when I become too frustrated, confused, or tired, or am simply unable to cope, they will step in and show me the way’.
Assumption 3. (late 20s, early 30s) — ‘Life is simple and controllable. There are not significant coexisting, contradictory forces within me’.
Assumption 4. (35–50) — ‘There is no evil in me or death in the world. The sinister has been expelled’.
Many of us feel sure that we have pretty much discarded our parent’s introjects (i.e., the values of the parents); having come out of the childhood trance, so to speak. We are our own person who is capable of facing life’s problems. But have we really discarded the introjects? Even in our 50s, it is possible that we still haven’t cut the psychic umbilical cord that still connects us with our parent’s world.
Many of us find it easier to swap our parent’s world and beliefs for substitute parents in an effort to delay not letting go of the four assumptions. For example, we might swap our parent’s world for the Pope’s world or the world of the Dalai Lama, or some guru or Zen master. This way we never have to face the core of our being. In the end, many of us start our own families which are more or less modeled after our parent’s world.
Judging from my own experiences, the search for the ideal spiritual teacher or guru is more than often, unfortunately, a search for a substitute parent which amounts to an unwillingness to give up, completely, the four assumptions previously mentioned. In other words, the search is inauthentic. It doesn’t reveal any willingness on our part to cut through the residual parental introjects that lie hidden within us. We are also suckers who can be easily used by a guru or Zen teacher who is looking to line his pockets. Such a person will gladly become our new parents for a price.
Many times we only lose or willingly shed these introjects when a traumatic event takes place which ends up accelerating our disillusionment so that, for the first time, we are free enough to see things the way they really are. Life suddenly turns out not to be a bed of roses. Shit can happen, and more than once. We discover that samsara is real.
The spiritual forthfaring begins with disillusionment—profound disillusionment. It is not unlike Siddhartha’s own profound disillusionment with his father’s kingdom and the life of a prince with all its enjoyments. It is worth mentioning that Siddhartha’s father pulled every trick in the book to stop his son’s renunciation—but the Bodhisattva was finally able to escape. Citing from the Lalitavistara Sutra, taking leave of his father who was in tears, the Buddha-to-be agreed to remain if his father could grant him four things.
“I desire, my lord, that old age should never take hold of me [1]; that i should always possess the radiance of youth [2]; that I should always be in perfect health, and that sickness never should strike me [3]; that my life should be endless, and that there should be no death [4].”
Of course Siddhartha’s father could not grant the Bodhisattva these four things which, to a certain extent, are not altogether unlike the four assumptions mentioned earlier (I have in mind the last assumption). So Siddhartha renounces his parent’s deceptive world and seeks, instead, the spiritual life where, in several years, he will awaken so that he sees the immortal element (amritadhatu) being no longer bound to samsara and its never ending illusions.
Ohh, snap, fashizzle sho-nuff!
I also rejectz whats my parents told me ta do, so I be down wit dat you be sayin bro!
I'm a hippie who took LSD, and I dontz believe in marriage, and I be livin with one hoe and takin her money in one room and sleepin wit anodder who in da next room. I also joined dem Socialist Blank Pantha blood.
I did what cho did homefry, I be doin all the things my old man told me not ta do.
Snap ya man! M.O.B. (money ova bitchiz!)
Posted by: Leon Tyrone Jefferson Leroy-Jackson | May 10, 2010 at 12:03 PM