Psychic Filters and Inner Voices

Speaking of our thoughts, we need to watch them constantly. (Ive decided to surrender
to the nonlinear and let intuition zigzag between interpersonal and intrapsychic
principles.) We need to recognize that different voices, often generated by distinct
subpersonalities, speak in our heads, and we need a central, witness personality that
observes those voices/subpersonalities without becoming them. Hexagram 27 reminds
us not to nourish ourselves on negative, unnourishing thoughts and fantasies. Yes,
thats easier said than done, but here are a couple of psychic filters to keep online that
are guaranteed to catch all the psychic allergens (all the negative thought forms) that all
too easily pervade our inner world.
Well call the first of these the tone filter. As you listen to the voices of your inner world
(or the voices in your outer, interpersonal world) refuse to believe any voices that arent
calm, compassionate and centered. Listen to them, understand where they are coming
from, but dont become them, dont identify with them or believe them. If a voice is
nagging, carping, bitter, mechanically repetitious, whining, angry, self-pitying,
hypercritical, etc. then it is not to be believed! By tone, you can easily distinguish the
voices of false subpersonalities and the still, deep voice of the self.
Gerund Filter
A second filter involves a list of categories of thought that are indicative of the ego
nervously trying to control the Tao. The position of Taoism (based on the I Ching) is that
the universe is unfolding as it should. But the ego, like a nervous back seat driver
clutching an imaginary steering wheel in its sweaty, white-knuckled grip, never trusts
that nonlinear path of the creative so completely out of its control. Categories
(presented as a list of gerunds) that indicate the ego resisting the Tao and/or trying to
assert imaginary control over it include: WANTING, WISHING, WORRYING, HOPING,
FEARING, DREADING, DESIRING, ENVYING, COMPARING, SUPERVISING, LIFEGAURDING, JUDGING, COMPLAINING, SELF-PITYING, STRIVING, ANTICIPATING,
EXPECTING, PRESTRUCTURING, CONTRIVING, FORCING PROGRESS,
HEDGING, RATIONALIZING, CLINGING AND DOUBTING.
Yes, this is an intimidating list! It is an embarrassing revelation of just how often we
default to the ego dominating our psyches. Well get into some of the nuts and bolts of
how to change patterns of thought and the afflictive emotions that ride into town with
them, but first Id like to say a few more words about the ego.
Ego Bashing
In New Age and Eastern circles, ego-bashing and intellect-bashing are the norm, and it
is often claimed that the only path to enlightenment is to eliminate ego completely.

Unfortunately, theyre never able to actually show you people who are walking around
and functioning without egos. Their claims are like a diet book filled with endless
horrifying before photos, but without any believable after photos. To the extent that
they have an after image at all, it comes into focus in the manner of an incompetent
watercolor done in an impressionist style. And when they do claim to have an egoless
guru to show you, it inevitably turns out to be a womanizer with fifty Rolls Royces and
an immature, unruly ego so gigantic and off scale that the deluded disciples cant see
that the Emperor of No Ego is wearing only a loincloth while their ego projections clothe
him in Sarumans wizard cloak of many colors.

As George Bernard Shaw said, The mark of the reasonable man is that he adapts
himself to the world he finds himself in. The mark of the unreasonable man is that he
expects the world to adapt itself to him (not to his EGO). Therefore all progress is made
by unreasonable men.
If you have lived all your life in a cage, then to you the cage is not a cage. It is the whole
universe.
If intuition and the self were in charge of the process, and mind and ego in service of
these higher functions, their experience would be altogether different in kind.