Strong Emotions, Negative and Positive--a Path to God...............
Back in 1986 I wrote a Master’s Thesis entitled,
“Enlightenment as a Defense Against Psychological
Pain.” I proposed that many spiritual practices, such
as mantra and many forms of meditation were
conscious techniques used to escape pain or mood
disorders, such as anxiety or depression.
Freud and other early ego psychologists spoke
about conscious and unconscious ego defenses such as
repression, denial, projection, splitting, projective
identification, sublimation, dissociation and
displacement, etc., to avoid the anxiety or internal
conflict arising from conscious awareness of libidinal
impulses of the Id, or the crushing guilt and criticisms
of the superego.
Through defense mechanisms, the conscious
awareness was more peaceful as the ego moderated
and modulated both the urges to love, or to destroy
obstacles or people that got in the way of fulfillment,
as well as those of the internalized controller and
punisher (the superego), the internalized
representative of societal repression and convention.
Besides moderating the battle between the Id and
the Superego, the ego weighed the consequences of