Dear Sundari, I want thank you for your recent satsangs and Zoom talks honing and simplifying what it means to be Self-actualized, and how this ‘should’ impact my life as a person in this world. Even though I do (mostly) know I am not the person, but the Self, I have never heard nonduality being unfolded this way before. I am sure that is due to my lack of understanding. I was fascinated by your exchange with Mathew in the Zoom satsang on Sunday; like him, it had not sunk in for me that moksa involves character building as a positive side effect of Self-knowledge assimilating, even if it’s not the direct aim.
I also have a tamasic rebellious jiva program that hates any kind of authority over me. I thought I had made peace with it, but it often causes problems for me, especially in my close relationships. I don’t quite know how to go about improving it. What really made my ears prick up was when you mentioned the term ‘adaptive child’ program, it hit a nerve. I get that this could be the reason for my ‘stuckness’ with self-inquiry. I feel like I have been treading water, and it is so frustrating. Please could you expand on it? I know you have probably brought this up before too, but somehow, that did not register for me, either.
Sundari: Thank you for your feedback, this is a great question. Mathew’s contribution to the topic was very valuable for many people, I am sure. We all are more similar than we realize. I had this issue too as part of my jiva program. Our past conditioning will be our primary input, and there is no escaping unpacking it if Self-actualization – permanent freedom from the limited self/doer identity – is your main goal. You can realize the Self without ‘going there’ as we discussed with Mathew; after all, the jiva program is not real. That may be so, but ultimately, only you will pay the price if you do not follow through and clean it up, because moksa is for the jiva.
The Self is already free, and you are the Self no matter what. However, freedom is not that free if you still have the ball and chain of the jiva’s conditioning hanging around your neck. Those deep seated samskaras, as Vedanta calls them, can be rationalized as ‘not me’ but the mental/emotional patterns associated with them will cause unpleasant blowback karma for the jiva, and block access to Self-knowledge. Though we can default to standing in the Self, the bliss this brings will be temporary, which isn’t enough, after a while. Frustration does set in, and then comes the inevitable ‘stuckness’, because what we really want is to experience the bliss of the Self full time, which we can’t have, if the jiva is in the way. It does not work to superimpose satya onto mithya. Mithya may not be real, but in order to fully negate the world and the doer, we have to face how mithya plays out in our lives.
The teaching below on the adaptive child is a shortened version culled from my soon to be released Lifestyle trilogy, Enlightened Lifestyles. This mechanism activates when we are born, regardless of how good or bad our childhood was, and its major development is in the first seven years of life. It is a combination of the blueprint or tendencies we are born with and how that program is influenced by and adapts to its environment. Basically, the adaptive child program is the creation of our first and most important persona, which developed in response to the psychological challenges we faced as a child. The things we learned to do or avoid doing as children in response to the emotional environment we were born into, whether or not it involved abuse, neglect, violence or over-indulgence. The program may well have been appropriate when we were children, and it is one that we will protect at all costs, usually, long past its usefulness.
Even though this identity is not benign, we are often deeply attached to it usually, unconsciously, because of the protective feelings we have around our past, even when it’s been really bad. It’s what we know, and what we believe ‘got us through’. Some of us have much tougher life karma than others, yet most of us struggle to feel our own value or believe that anyone could truly care for us. This low self-esteem is often the work of the adaptive child which fosters the “critical inner voice” we all possess, even if we were not unloved or exposed to critical attitudes as children. It is like an enemy in our head that constantly tries to bring us down.
I call it the voice of diminishment. It makes us feel unlovable and unloving, doubtful of anyone’s feelings toward us, fostering critical and suspicious attitudes toward life, ourselves, our partners, and relationships in general. Painful childhood experiences are part of the maturation process and it is human nature to doubt and judge ourselves. For many it is hard to shake it, and usually plays out most obviously in our close relationships. Allowing someone to love us is the ultimate challenge to the inner critic and adaptive child, which is all about preserving our earliest identity. It will not go down without a fight.
What should come as a relief is that the adaptive child is everybody’s issue. Though it plays out in different ways depending on our karma, it is not unique to anyone. No matter the blueprint we were born with or how the environment we were born into shapes it, life is set up that way. It goes with the territory of being human because transitioning from a dependent vulnerable child to a secure confident adult requires leaving the security of childhood behind and facing the world. And the world is a scary, unpredictable place where you must make it on your own.
Contrary to society bestowing adulthood on us at a certain age, the truth is that adulthood and maturity are not chronological. They are earned. Depending on how much work you have done to understand your conditioning and what makes you ‘tick’ you may reach the end of your life with the psychological and emotional maturity of your damaged child self perfectly intact. However, even if you have matured somewhat and gained some wisdom, that child-self still exists. How much influence it has on you depends on how much maturity and wisdom you have developed, but much more so, whether or not Self-knowledge has assimilated. Are you really a grown-up, or just a superannuated kid?
The opposite of the adaptive child, the mature adult persona, can only develop if the adaptive child self is understood, objectified and managed. Wise adults are not just ‘grown-up’, which is a natural process that happens to everyone. Wise adults are psychologically and emotionally mature, which does not just ‘happen’. They are present-based and not controlled by their past, so they see things clearly as they are, in the now, and respond appropriately to what is required of them. They are aware of the inner child and how it operates their fears and desires, likes and dislikes, so have objectivity about their conditioned mental/emotional projections.
They know how to fend them off because they have the capacity to stop, reflect and choose how to respond correctly in any situation to maximize peace of mind, and to keep love alive and flowing. When Self-knowledge is the default position of the mind, the best part is that karma yoga and guna knowledge kick in automatically, without having to ‘work out your issues’. It makes quick work of these programs when they arise, so they have no power to cause unpleasant karma. It is a no brainer that the jiva’s happiness and peace of mind is always the main aim, whatever it takes. Your self-esteem is healthy and you like yourself all the time, not sometimes. And that critical voice in your head is banished, for good.
The adaptive child-self is the opposite – it does not have the tools and cannot respond appropriately to what is happening in its environment in the present, as an adult. It is rooted in the past, and does not want to be happy but right. It wants to have its inner indignation and resentfulness validated, at whatever cost. Somebody or something has to give it what it wants or believes it never got. It rarely if ever feels good about itself, and the inner judge is alive and well, always ready to dispense shame and guilt for not ‘being good enough’.
When something triggers this coping mechanism, we feel threatened in some way, inevitably completely irrationally. The damaged child, run by emotional and unconscious likes and dislikes, will try by whatever means to manipulate, control and adapt its environment and the people in it to get or avoid what it wants. Worst of all, when the adaptive child is in charge of our deepest inner emotional responses, no matter the cost to our personal happiness, the ego will fight to maintain it. It’s absurd, but that’s how ignorance works.
I call the adaptive child program the Duryodhana factor, named after Duryodhana in the Bhagavad Gita, the main instigator of the war with Arjuna. It represents that part of the psyche we all possess to a greater or lesser degree – the fearful, self-isolating, divisive, hard, cruel, competitive, least likable traits we like to hide. Especially from ourselves. Though in some of us, the Duryodhana factor manifests as the opposite – the people-pleasing, kind, nice, or ‘spiritual’ persona. Fear and malice can hide out in ‘being nice’ at all times. Or in virtue signaling how evolved or kind we are. There are many versions of this program, but to survive the harshness of life, we must learn to value vulnerability and stop trying to protect ourselves from life.
This is never easy for the childish adaptive ego, accustomed as it is to protect itself at all costs. All adaptive child egos are extremely fragile entities, it hurts to face our most hidden demons. It is such a shock to realize that we have been hiding behind this false persona all our lives, often, even despite having realized the Self. Ignorance has survived moksa – Self-realization. Human beings are very complex and nobody fits neatly into a box or a category. Yet, though our psychological problems seem unique to us, all our conditioning ultimately originates from Maya, the hypnosis of duality or ignorance, and the forces that condition everyone, namely, the three gunas, rajas, tamas, and sattva.
When the time comes these programs will surface, and the ego will fight hard to keep them hidden – and alive. But usually, nothing will stop it. As painful as it is for the poor little ego, thanks to Isvara, the psyche has an inborn drive for wholeness. We manifest ‘in a body/mind’, appearing as a seemingly separate and personal ‘entity’ to work out our karma and realize our true identity as the Self. Sooner or later, the time comes for us to face who we really are. There is no fine print to freedom; you either are or you are not. There is no way we can preserve the iner child identity if we want a free, happy, peaceful, beautiful, limitless life.
Perhaps the most important thing we can do for self-growth is to identify how our Durodhyana (our adaptive child) program operates. It is not hard to do because it always responds the same predictable ways, especially in a crisis, whether minor or major. Be mindful of it, but remember that true growth never involves feeling bad about or finding fault with yourself. Moksa is not about perfecting the person. Not only is your personal identity not your real identity, but nobody makes themselves the way they are. How can you be responsible for things that were not in your control?
Nonetheless, to lead a happy life growth does require understanding how this adaptive mechanism, our conditioning, works, to manage it for peace of mind. As an inquirer, karma yoga is a recognition of the inescapable truth that as a person we are in control of nothing. That we owe everything to life, to Isvara. Surrender to life, and to love, is the only sane option. If we can apply karma yoga, and guna yoga which gives us Xray vision into our psychological patterns, we can at last objectify them and see them as impersonal. They are not who we are, and they do not belong to us. We can let them go. Then we need no special experience to know the Self because we are simply and powerfully, only ever experiencing the Self.
Freedom from limitation requires being able to discriminate your true identity—the unchanging, ever-present Self—from the unreal identity, the ever-changing person. So, once you have a handle on the modus operandi of your inner child, use it to diffuse it. In this way, ‘improving’ your character, which amounts to negating the jiva’s conditioning, is a side-effect of the assimilation of Self-knowledge, not something you have to beat yourself up about. It is simply a matter of understanding with reference to nonduality – not with reference to duality. In duality, there are no real solutions to anything. If Self-knowledge has assimilated, the jiva’s lived experience will improve because it will stop being a problem to itself. That is what is meant by freedom from and for the jiva.
Much love
Sundari
ShiningWorld.com
