Instinctual ReSource Capacities
ReBooting our Missing ReSources
An identity is a collection of ideas and feelings that we use to define our sense of who we are. What we call our ego is actually composed of the many identities. Some may be at ease with ourselves and life, while others may feel empty and deficient. Some may be angry or rebellious while others might be subservient or even feel paralyzed in the face of particular events. If we have a “healthy” ego, our identities don't feel separate. We might call the prominence of a particular identity at a particular time a “mood” or reaction caused by some outside event.
We can consider each identity to be a package of ideas or beliefs we hold about ourselves and feelings that are inseparably associated with those beliefs. These packages are derived from past experiences, and the feelings are based on the state of the body — muscular postures, organ activity, and physiological function — associated with memories of past experiences.
The brain applies a past experience to understand the present situation and, based on the outcome of the past experiences it is using, prepares the body for its predicted outcomes. If those outcomes were negative, the mind and body are prepared for a negative outcome. In this way, the identity associated with that past experience hitches a ride, along with the self-beliefs, bodily states and therefore the feelings of that past time. (Feelings and emotions are interpretations of physiological states.)
If I was a helpless, abused six-year-old at that time, I may find myself succumbing to or fighting the feelings and beliefs of that earlier time, only projected onto my current situation. In fact, it is safe to say that whenever we are having a difficult emotional response, it is because our present is polluted with feelings of the past.
A particular identity may feel good and desirable, because it is associated with gaining love, approval, attention or other goodies we wanted, or it may feel undesirable, associated with disapproval, isolation, criticism, and so on, and therefore shame and feelings of deficiency.
Even the “good” identities however, are likely to be conditional, as those in our lives reflect back to us the need to be a certain way to gain those goodies. The shame comes when we don't want to live up to those expectations. “Good” and “bad” identities are therefore two sides of the same coin. Either can cause feelings of not being enough, or having to be something we are not to become or remain acceptable.
Say you develop an identity of being “helpful” that earns you lots of praise in your family. In the beginning, you enjoyed the rewards of being helpful. You delighted in the pleasant words and smiles. You also noticed that your mom paid more attention to you than your sibling when you were helpful. But then, you were criticized or ignored when you weren’t helpful. Certain natural and common feelings, impulses and behaviors are not acceptable if you want to keep your identity of being helpful intact. As a helpful person, you may not get to express, or even accept in yourself feelings like anger, desire for something that does not fall in line with being helpful, creativity that doesn't match what the other person wants, or even just acknowledging what feels right or wrong for you.
On the flip side those same feelings might be actively defined as “bad” and when you express them either because of overt responses or just observation of your family dynamics.
In fact qualities like anger, desire, creativity, safety, assertiveness, bonding, love, anticipation, pleasure, excitement, ah-ha!, freedom, and knowing what is right or wrong for you are more than just feelings. They are actually capacities that we are born with to help us successfully interact with the world and other individuals.
The Sunya Way recognizes the value of these instinctual resource capacities or ReSources, and as part of the process of BodyMind ReBooting, it reboots the qualities that are missing from the particular identity that is being worked on in a session.
Over 60 different ReSources have been found thus far. They are important to our sense of efficacy and capacity for fulfillment. Defensiveness and rigidity may be present when some of these ReSources are unavailable, distrusted, or suppressed.
Sigmund Freud conjectured that part of the purpose of the ego is to tamp down the id, which is taken to be a set of uncoordinated instinctual desires and energies that he called “dark, inaccessible part[s] of our personality”.
Carl Jung spoke of a "shadow self" that contains important parts of who we are. When suppressed, its impulses and energies come out in ways that are destructive to oneself and others.
The Sunya Way demonstrates that at least some of these "dark" impulses are actually innate capacities. When cleanly re-integrated, they make it easier to let go of the outdated parts of ourselves that obscure our 'light'.
Rebooting of the resources can be a game-changer, instantly restoring a sense of efficacy, competence, satisfaction, safety and fulfillment among many other feelings. When a ReSource is rebooted at the right time, of the resources is a signal to your ego that it can relax, that it does not have to be continuously on guard because your deeper resources are available.
That relaxation of the active identification is often the last step on a path that ends at the doorway to spiritual awareness or Essence, even deeper feelings of the substance being that generally arise in the body, when it is not sourcing its experience from memory. The ego and tensions of the body filter out the ultimate source of consciousness that we might know as spiritual awareness or universal consciousness.