Vertical & Horizontal Healing - A Holistic Approach to Evolution
Mayan, Andean, Egyptian, and Druid Crosses reflect the wisdom of the meeting between the horizontal and vertical dimensions of reality.
Perhaps like you, I’ve spent years in therapy. Cognitive behavioral therapy, neuro linguistic programming, EMDR, EFT, hypnotherapy, and even couples therapy all in an attempt to reform my beliefs and behaviors into more pro-relational shapes. These approaches, some more successful than others, helped me see that my beliefs and behaviors were mailable—changeable if enough effort was invested in my own improvement. Among all of them, hypnotherapy and EFT were the most effective but none of them had me approach my problems not as a chemical or behavioral problem but as an identity problem.
When I was 19, I was super depressed and was diagnosed with “generalized anxiety disorder” which prompted a few prescriptions from a psychiatrist. A trial of medications would follow, each one with their own terrible effects that left me more confused, depressed, anxious, and defeated than when I started down my road to recovery. When I was 23, I would even receive 12 sessions of ECT (electro-convulsive therapy) when every medicine eventually failed to produce a life worth living. The benefits lasted a whole 4 days. For 4 incredible days, I knew what it was like to have “normal” physiology in which to see and feel the world through. But on that 5th day, all my debilitating depression and anxiety came flooding back. When I phoned my physicians to inform them of this tragedy, their response: 12 more sessions of ECT should do the trick…
I refused. I knew there had to be a way that didn’t damage my brain, my long and short-term memory, which I already felt the tragic effects from, from the 12 I just completed.
My girlfriend at the time had just finished a book and said, “you have to read this.” It was The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. It looked intriguing so I figured, what did I have to lose and cracked its spine. It only took one afternoon of reading—a few chapters really, for me to have one of the most healing experiences of my life. Somehow, his words and the way those words pointed me toward something so profoundly simple, worked. I was free. Free from what seemed impossible for simple words to free me from—from my “chemical imbalance”, from my codependent beliefs and behaviors, from my low self-esteem, free from “me.” I was so free of my problems that I couldn’t imagine ruining this new-found freedom by showing up to work the next day, and the next, and the next. I just sat on the beach reveling in the pure bliss of liberation; not caring about tomorrow until, well, I was fired from my job for insubordination. Eventually, this “power of now” wore off too and I would beg for my job back but something had forever changed: I realized that there were somehow two of me—one who created my suffering and one who did not know what suffering was.
For years I would try to re-enter this stream of liberation, to no avail. I kept making small advances in healing the horizontal way—the way of belief and behavioral change. Changes to the programs of my psychological self, my ego, but it wasn’t so clear how I could find that other ‘me’ who didn’t need patterns and programs to survive. I would have momentary and momentous glimpses again and again of this self which only existed in the ever-present now, like visiting an oasis in a desert of continual suffering. If only I had a reproducible method to find this self. If only I could leave my ego behind forever and have one of these “ego deaths” I was reading about in various spiritual texts. It would take years of practice to learn that it wasn’t an either/or situation—it was a both/and…
See, contrary to the stories we hear of Eckhart Tolle or Ramana Maharshi leaving their egos behind forever in a single transformative moment, there is a middle ground that enables us to live more enlightened in the real world. One where we can utilize the ego for the gift that it is without being trapped in our identification with it. A middle ground where we can utilize the essential perspective shift of ego-transcendence in order to entrain the ego as a hospitable servant to our journey of ever-expanding evolution. A path of Love-realization.
”Your mind makes a great servant but a terrible master.” — David Foster Wallace
If you start walking the Yogic, Buddhist, Vedantan, non-duality, or even the New Age path of enlightenment, you’ll soon realize that most all of these teachings are about the same thing: independent ego-transcendence. The path of self-realization or the “vertical” dimension of reality where, if only we can surrender enough, we can be free of our ego forever and live happily ever after in a state of holy bliss. And yes, this is totally do-able, I’ve done it in fact, but what these teachings won’t tell you is that your ego isn’t a design mistake. It’s not a bug in the program—it is a feature. They won’t tell you that, once you’ve self-realized into total ego surrender, you won’t be able to have normal relationships or jobs or families. Not because you won’t want those things anymore, but that’s also possible, but because operating in those environments actually requires a healthy, developed ego. An ego side-kick if you will.
Most modern mystery schools and ancient lineages can get you to the top of the mountain of transcendence but they can’t walk you back down into the inscendent valley where the shadows and heaviness of real life unfolds.
Ego transcendence isn’t just some impossible wu wu lofty spiritual goal, it’s social and psychological science. You’ve probably heard of “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs?” Well, Abraham Maslow, towards the end of his life wrote about transcendence—the underdiscussed top-level of his developmental pyramid. Toward the end of his life, he wrote, “…the wise, self-actualizing, old adult who knows the whole of the D-realm, the whole of the world, all its vices, its contentions, poverties, quarrels, and tears, and yet is able to rise above them, and to have the unitive consciousness in which he is able to see the B-realm, to see the beauty of the whole cosmos, in the midst of all the vices, contentions, tears, and quarrels. Through defects, or in defects, he is able to see perfection…We need to teach our children unitive perception, the Zen experience of being able to see the temporal and the eternal simultaneously, the sacred and the profane in the same object.”
According to him, it is our personal evolutionary responsibility to not only self-actualize (horizontal growth), but also to self-transcend (vertical growth) in order to meet our ideal human destiny. Self-realizing-transcendence is now more than ever an essential personal skill because only through being able to see beyond the ego’s separative, contrasting functions can we find the unitive perfection that can heal all divisions. If you don’t have this skill already, Relationship Yoga offers a method which will enable you to rapidly develop it.
Here’s the hack that took me 15 years of awakening to realize. The realization that is more neuroscience than spirituality essentially, which you can start practicing today.
Presence is a right-hemisphere, neo-cortex dominant state of consciousness. We activate these parts of the brain by anchoring our awareness within felt-sense, somatic experience (intuition, feelings, and energy perception/interoception).
Ego relaxation is a default-mode network slow-frequency state (alpha, theta, delta). We can train our brains into these frequencies mechanically, using meditation and brainwave entrainment.
Attend to and through what exists prior to your ego which is always the experience of energy—the field of aliveness in your own body. Doing so fosters unity because this field is essentially identical in every being.
Return to it again and again as the ‘self’ you are identified with. Shift what area of the body you reference as yourself—from your head to your heart and body energy.
Observe the ego continually. As long as you are observing your ego-mind—thoughts, beliefs, behaviors, attitudes—rather than letting it act through you, you will remain identified with the “soul” part of yourself.
Devote your will (mind) to be in service to Love. Give it a master to serve. Love is the only force powerful enough to subdue its relentless attempts to wrestle back power, which it seduces you into through meaning-making (interpreting reality for you).
This all takes practice but if you are identified with the energy of your heart and the intuitional energy of your body, you are no longer identified with the ego. The locus of your ‘self’ is no longer found via a reference to what’s stored in your head and you’ve become ever-present. You are now your soul who is lovingly observing and sculpting the ego. Your body-referenced presence itself becomes a temple-guardian, a mindful steward over your experience—who never allows anything automatic to pass by your awareness unchecked. Un-presenced. You as your soul are now choosing to respond with and broadcast back, in every moment, only that which matches the consciousness of these higher aspects of yourself. The “self” which is not the programmed patterns that only exist within the constraints of your mind’s thought-bound beliefs and attitudes. Easier said than done, which is why we need Yoga—the embodied practice of being while doing.
Horizontal = becoming, growing, changing.
Divergent, Duality, Differential.
Vertical = being, presence, the unchanging.
Convergent, Non-dual, Unity.
Over time, this process both reveals and redeems or reforms your ego. The parts of your ego which weren’t aligned with Love are transformed through the simple act of being met with the profoundly alchemical energy of your heart blended with your awareness. The parts of your ego that weren’t fully seen, acknowledged, and loved were the cause of your suffering. Your suffering was your ego making noise so that it could be resolved—desolved with the universal solvent solution of your own loving presence. But, if you’re out there meditating solo without inviting intimate relationships into your life, you will only find the most easy, most available parts of your ego to heal.
Only through intimate relationships can we reveal the parts of ourselves which remain hidden from our solo-practices of meditation and contemplation. We have to realize that Love-actualization—becoming the most loving being possible—is the whole reason for being human at all. To walk that path, we have to learn to relate to ourselves and others differently, mindfully. When we do, mindful, intentional, attentive relating replaces automatic behaviors. We realize all of our problems are just identity problems due to our ego-mind’s incessant creation of problems that the mind alone cannot solve. Heart-bound presence is the only place where life is balanced perfectly—where we can feel completely content and yet open to the ego’s unquenchable thirst for more, which helps us move forward into the next self-actualizing challenge. The meeting place of the horizontal and the vertical—the crossing of the two ‘yous’ and your will to choose—is where your power can be actualized.
When we make the vertical our priority, when we see that our state of consciousness is what projects our suffering or not, we gain a different vantage point to see the lay of the land from. We can see our ego is just the depository of our becoming—an endless sculpting of a creature who can never become completely loving, completely accepting, but who’s always worth the effort in choosing right action.
We can only heal our psychological selves holistically by aligning them with our perfect being, which is always already present. If we can’t find our being, our soul, we will get stuck in ‘healing’ as a new need will replace the one that was just satisfied, Ad infinitum. If we can’t see from the perspective of the perfection of now, we will continue to create the kind of problems which have no external solutions. We will forever be addicted to outwardly seeking and healing that which can only be found in ‘presencing’ our state of consciousness. It all starts with what you choose to prioritize next: automaticity performed by your mind or a deepening into yourself lived anew from attending to the energetic presence found below your head. By prioritizing how we relate, not what we relate. Presence isn’t a what or a where, it’s a how. Love isn’t essentially a what you do, it’s a how you do it. And within your presence is your highest love, your highest self, which can never be added-to, never changed. Only by taking away what we’ve constructed as our belief-based self can we reveal the optimally unifying loving presence that already exists. Only this Love, found in presence, is powerful enough to get your ego to surrender when it matters most.
Your ego has a lot to learn from the love that your soul already is, but as long as your mind remains your master, love will lose and the divisive nature of fear will win this lifetime. Fear can only win if you don’t prioritize and optimize your state of consciousness.
Start here: these meditation tracks (Buddha Mind 1 & Buddha Mind 2) will begin to entrain your nervous system into an ego-relaxed state. Begin practicing saṅkalpita saṃvāda—a way to relate intentionally through presence, from your soul, which has the power to awaken the souls of others. See that using your will to intentionally craft what you prioritize in every moment as your greatest power. Try choosing to prioritize attending to your intuitive energy over attending to your thoughts. Prioritize how you deliver over what you deliver in every moment and loving presence will take over your life. In its wake is only healing—healing every unintegrated part which hasn’t found love and acceptance yet. In yourself, and in those fortunate enough to relate with such a steward, wise in the ways of being and becoming.
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