The superego will do anything it can to protect you, including kill you. When I give feedback that is perceived as a threat to the superego’s distorted perception of reality, the narcissistic quest for perfection, and the need to avoid losing at all cost, the narcissist often manifests self-destructive behavior.  It can be in the form of defensiveness, anger or rage.

Whether it be positive or negative, all feedback is loving, simply information from the universe about the consequences of actions. We need to be in touch with the truth about reality. Defensiveness is a sure sign that the superego is in self-destruct mode. New data, which may disagree with the superego’s flawed view of realty, is rejected at all cost. There is an investment in defending one’s distorted perceptions. The superego applies the same solution over and over expecting a different result. This is insanity. This is the sign of a closed mind. The truth requires no defense.

Negative feedback is often taken by the superego as a threat to the personality or personal self-definition, the "Me" story, the fantasy world within which the superego lives. An internal battle begins between the superego and the ego. The ego is the part of the mind that brings sensory data directly in from the outside world. The superego is distinct from the ego, it is a thought complex, an aspect of intellect, memory and knowledge, a filter and mediator between the data that the ego brings in and the rational mind. This mediating superego distorts, judges and filters the data rather than passing it directly on to the functional mind. The functional mind is the place of feeling, intuition and intelligence. Intelligence is not of the mind, it is of spirit and knowing.

Notice the distinction between memory, intellect and knowledge—and knowing, intuition, and intelligence. A computer has intellect and memory, it has no intelligence. It is the superego that distorts our perception of reality, it "thinks" it knows everything, it is this narcissism that fuels addictions and perpetuates suffering

If you’re committed to becoming an adult, there is a point at which you are no longer willing to continue the internal battle between the superego and the ego. One side of the mind is saying yes, become defensive and go to battle. The other side of the mind is saying no don’t go. One side is saying, you must win. The other, you're going to lose. The truth is, you don't have to go to battle anymore. It is the ancient story of the war between right and wrong, good and evil and instead of going to battle you "surrender," you just "stop."

Who and what your superego thinks you are is a construction, an illusion, it doesn’t really exist. You’re more than your personality, your self-definition, your "me" story, more than your physical body. You are limitless consciousness within which your personality and body appear. The superego identifies with the story of who it thinks you are, the self-definition, rather than the truth of who you are, which is a spiritual being that is limitless consciousness and more than the complex of limited thoughts within your rational mind.

The superego only has power if you're willing to go to battle. A sign that you are dealing with an internal battle is marked by the statements, I agree or I disagree. This is a sign of a mental filter, an intellectual game that deflects receiving new information and is a strategy geared to avoid losing at all cost.

You just don't have to go there anymore. The moment that you become defensive or angry and go to battle, in that moment you’ve lost the battle and you become the victim. Even if it looks like you've won there is a part of you that knows that the win is momentary and can't last. When you decide to no longer fight this internal battle between the superego and the ego the result is peace. You just don't go there anymore and there is peace. It is an amazingly powerful inner revelation when you don't go to battle anymore and suddenly you experience peace.

It's interesting that the reason we go to war is to find peace and peace can never be found in war. Whatever you desire you push away. Peace is already here. There is nothing to do to gain peace, except stop the internal battle and let go of making people and events responsible for your suffering. Peace doesn't appear instantly when you win, it just means that there's another war to prepare for to sustain the peace. The fear of losing a recently won peace comes back stronger than ever. The war inside is the same as the war that we see outside all over the planet. The war outside is a reflection of the projection of what is going on within our own mind.

You can stop participating in the battle. You've learned to remain in inner conflict and identify with and trust the inner war more than peace. You trust the war that is happening in the mind more than the peace that is radiant, and alive and there within your heart. Whether you feel you are worthy of this peace or not, it is always within. When you stop the identifying with the war then you have an opportunity to feel worthy of peace. To feel worthy of peace is to honor peace, to be grateful that peace has appeared in your life. Even if this feeling is just the beginning of the tiniest flame of peace, many never experience peace in a lifetime. They have no concept of what you are talking about, peace in your life! You honor it, you're grateful for it, and the flame grows within. It grows and it grows and it grows.

When you decide to get angry and go to battle, a pervasive depression ensues. Suddenly there is a blanking out, a withdrawal, a disassociation, an almost catatonic state often accompanied by a suppressed or overt rage. It looks like you have one foot on the brake and the other on the accelerator and it is pressed all the way to the floorboards. Smoke could billow from the ears at any moment as the engine races and the vehicle remains immobilized. Disassociation is very stressful.

This cutting off from others, this internal war, is a type of personal "power," a survival strategy learned as a child. The question is are you willing to surrender the power you gain from disassociation to experience your true power?

Are you willing to surrender the power you think you’re going to gain from going to war? When the temptation arises to invoke this power by disassociating and going to war, you just don't go there anymore, it's that simple. You just stop! The complications come when you say well, I'll just reclaim a little of this power, I might need it. This is spoken of in all the spiritual literature as the necessity to "surrender" the quest for all powers that have entranced you, if you want to experience your true-self. Rather than committing your life to war you commit your life to the truth.

With the pleasure and power of this "power of disassociation," also comes the suffering. Maturity comes with the realization that this internal war is an addiction to a game of suffering that can never be won. This is necessary for maturity, to see that the power is limited and that what is wanted is deeper than the power to separate from one’s true-self. This power, even though you may not be aware of it, requires, as in any form of depression, some doing, a ritual, some steps.

First you separate and then comparison, a form of judgment arises, then jealousy, and then the story of inadequacy and the story of insecurity. And insecurity means there will be some level of fear. So far there is no problem with this, it is painful, but there is no problem with it. There is no problem with pain, in life there is pain. If you are seeking anything to avoid pain that is the suffering. People go to war to avoid pain and suffering. That's the search that must be called off. It is the "seeking" to avoid the pain that must be faced and stopped. There is nothing wrong with pain it is part of being. You see this when you stop all forms of seeking to avoid pain.

There are steps to avoiding feeling the pain. There is a strategy or a mantra that you tell yourself to avoid the pain. There is an inner dialogue. If you slow things down and watch what happens, internally, you’ll see this. It’s just like driving a car without thinking about what your doing, driving the car happens automatically in the background.

If you want to know what is going on when you drive you have to become very conscious and turn on your observer, focus and watch the whole process. And when you begin to watch the driving you realize, oh, this has to happen, and then this has to happen, and then this has to happen in order to drive the car.

If you slow things down in your mind, you are able to see how you automatically disassociate and withdraw from the pain in your life. Then you begin to examine a thought process that runs on automatic in the background and is so natural to you that it is invisible and done without thinking. It is as if it just happens. But it doesn’t just happen, there is an invisible strategy, there is a lead up to the disassociation. If you really slow things down and take a look at it you’ll see that you say to yourself, "I’m going to go blank here at this point in time and withdraw." And then unconsciously you want to run away. And then you start pumping lots of adrenaline. This is generated by getting really angry at somebody or something that is theoretically taking your peace away and causing you to be a victim, then running away from the painful situation.

There becomes a story about you and inadequacy based on some comparison and jealousy and worthlessness and somebody who’s causing this story, because they deserted you. "They deserted you," magically in the same moment that you deserted yourself, isn’t that interesting? If you follow the process through you see that you can unravel a story that was wound so tightly that you couldn’t even see it, it was as if it just happened. You get to a point where you see that there are two stories, I’m victimized by this feeling of jealousy that arises within me and this person that causes this feeling, so, I must escape. You stop talking, you clench your teeth, your eyes turn to stone, you become very cold and distant and removed. All of this really takes a lot of energy and some effort. "Depression requires a lot of work and a sophisticated strategy."

At any point along the way you can just say "stop." I’m giving up this power to close down. You sit up straight, you open your eyes, you say I’m feeling hurt or I hurt or I love you. I am not a victim and I do not need to blame you for my suffering. State whatever it is that you’re really feeling in the moment and the war is over.

This is the truth that we hate to tell, the truth we hate to face. Because we have so much invested in these powers we have developed and we think they are so great and special. And to give them up means that I will be unprotected and that I will actually have to experience this pain.

However, in protecting yourself you still experience the pain. It’s just a bad joke that you play on yourself. If this protection actually worked it would be another matter. But the protection augments the pain, turns the pain into suffering. Pain is pain.

Let’s say there is the pain of jealousy. We can diagnose jealousy and why it shouldn’t be or why it should be, but say it is there as part of the human experience. Jealousy, just face it and feel it. I’m jealous. I hurt. I’m fearful. I love. Just face the emotion, meet the emotion and experience the beauty in being fully alive in the joy or pain of the moment.

Now what am I going to do, withdraw, hate, close off? Or just hurt and love. I recommend hurting and loving. Then there is a beauty and aliveness to the hurt and to this most human emotion. All of these emotions, positive and negative, are part of the comedy and tragedy of the human theater. If a precious life is being lived in avoidance of hurt and suffering, the result of that is a dead life. I’m not saying totally dead because there are aspects where we don’t avoid. I’m speaking specifically about this scenario where there is a closing down and a withdrawal, a blanking, a collapsing and a story of hurt, it is very different from an experience of hurt.

An experience of hurt, is an experience of hurt, maybe it was generated by a story, but it is genuinely an experience of hurt and in experiencing of the pain the love is not covered over. You don’t have to go stony. You don’t have to collapse. You love and you hurt, every emotion plays through, you are fully alive.

Narcissism is a pervasive pattern of self-inflation, pseudo-confidence, exhibitionism, and striving for prestige that compensates for feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem, this is where we go when we disassociate and go to war. Narcissism has the following characteristics:

• Pseudo-confidence compensating for an underlying condition of insecurity and feelings of helplessness.
• Pretentiousness, self-inflation.
• Exhibitionism in the pursuit of attention, recognition, and glory.
• Strives for prestige to enhance self-esteem.
• Deceitfulness and manipulativeness in the service of maintaining feelings of superiority.
• Idealization in relationships.
• Fragmentation of the self: feelings of emptiness and deadness.A proud, hubristic disposition.
• Hypochondriasis.
• Substance abuse.
• Self-destructiveness.

Narcissistic Personality—The basic trait of the Narcissistic Personality is a pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy.

• Reacts to criticism with feelings of rage, shame, or humiliation.
• Is interpersonally exploitive: takes advantage of others to achieve his own ends.
• Has a grandiose sense of self-importance.
• Believes that his problems are unique and can be understood only by other special people.
• Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love.
• Has a sense of entitlement: an unreasonable expectation of especially favorable treatment.
• Requires much attention and admiration of others.
• Lacks empathy: fails to recognize and experience how others feel.
• Is preoccupied with feelings of envy.

• The offspring of neglecting parents—They resort to narcissism as the predominant object relationship, with themselves as the exclusive object.

• The offspring of doting or domineering parents, often narcissists themselves—They internalized their parents' voices in the form of a sadistic, ideal, immature superego and spend their lives trying to be perfect, omnipotent, omniscient and to be judged "a success" by these parent-images and their later representations, authority figures.

• The offspring of abusive parents—They internalize the abusing, demeaning and contemptuous voices and spend their lives in an effort to elicit "counter-voices" from their human environment and thus to extract a modicum of self-esteem and sense of self-worth.

All three types exhibit recursive, recurrent and Sisyphean failures. In Greek legend, Sisyphus was punished in Hades for his misdeeds in life by being condemned eternally to rolling a heavy stone up a hill. As he neared the top, the stone rolled down again, so that his labor was everlasting and futile. Shielded by their defense mechanisms, they constantly gauge reality wrongly, their actions and reactions become more and more rigid and ossified and the damage inflicted by them on themselves and on others ever greater. Their life is filled with depression, drama and disassociation, an ongoing story of suffering and pain. While bound up in acting out the Sisyphean myth, the solution is often too simple for the ego to comprehend. "Just stop!"

I’ve seen many narcissists just stop. The ease and peace that rushes into their life without effort often becomes disorienting, they can’t handle the ease as they are so used to constant self-abuse, abusive relationships, the warring or the efforting from the power tripping from the ego level to get results in life.

Leaving the addiction to this self-destructive way behind requires months of discipline and support to give the brain the time required to surrender the addictive pattern and to rewire. It is possible and it is really very easy, you trust yourself and that you are perfect and enough the way you are in the moment and then you just stop. You just "stop" the self-betrayal. That is when the mystery of life begins to play through you. Life is no longer the avoidance of death. It is a vibrant, vibrating, experience of beauty, peace, wisdom and self-love.

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