ARTICLE 15

SELF IMAGE PSYCHOLOGY

SELF-IMAGE PSYCHOLOGY OVERVIEW

First reality humans believe that it is their body’s brain that is responding to input and not that there is actually a conscious awareness (person, self, I or ego) that in second reality is capable of separating one’s self from one’s beliefs and the behavior those beliefs are producing.

First reality is unaware that one responds to one’s own philosophical/psychological dynamics,

rather than to someone or something “out there”.

There is no personal responsibility for what is causing one’s responses when believing in first reality that it is someone or something that is outside and separate that is causing one’s reactions.

We name this first reality behavior the “blame game of scapegoating”.

In his famous book, PsychoCybernetics, Dr. Maxwell Maltz defines what happens in a human’s first reality. In the first part of his definition he tells us how we form our self-image that then becomes our reality.

Our self-image is based on our current beliefs that as philosophical presuppositions become our identity (world view) that conditions us to act psychologically the way we do.

To act on Dr. Maltz’s description requires an awakening

of what Holographic Psychology names “second reality”.

Prior to second reality a human will mistake her/his first reality as describing the actual world, instead of a description of one’s current self-image that as a world view will be related to as if one’s self-image is the real world (out there) instead of being beliefs subjectively held (internally).

This is why a human awakens to empowerment over his/her beliefs in second reality, in contrast to a human in first reality believing that s/he is relating directly to a world or a past that is the cause of his or her reactions.

First reality’s past and future orientation justify a theology (religion) of salvation and retribution for obeying or disobeying someone else’s rules and regulations.

Many religions teach that these states are experienced in this life or in another life (reincarnation) with a promised heaven or nirvana and/or hell.

This orientation gives no clue of how to currently experience

one’s desired feelings of heaven or nirvana.

Examples of this future orientation are:

I will feel happy when _______. I will feel rich when ______. I will feel secure when _______. I will feel love when _______. I will feel healthy when _______ and so on. There is no notice that one’s current feelings are being validated.

These are all first reality beliefs of people that are future oriented in their world view and, in most cases, will blame their past or their current world for their unfulfilled desires. Please notice the part feeling plays (current self-image) in all of the above.

We believe the struggles of early realities are the way that humans are forced to ask questions that can lead to enlightenment. When everything in one’s life is in a satisfactory state of affairs, one is usually not asking questions.

It is time to live in a present state orientation

using a philosophy of unlimited potential awaiting actualization,

and a method for testing such an awesome theory.

It is this paradigm shift of second reality that is so revolutionary after making the discoverythat it is our beliefs that give meaning to the belief that we can ever think in the future or the past.

Our world of understanding is always dealing in the present

even when we delude ourselves that we are dealing in the past or future.

Try an experiment and test yourself about the future and/or the past. See if you can think or feel in the past or future without practicing your test in the present NOW. People that talk about their past are not in their past. Past orientation is in the present, and it is one’s current habits that are being blamed or credited.

Past oriented therapy can be helpful because the therapy is not dealing with one’s past but with one’s present belief system that desires to be changed.

Remember, pre-existing wholeness awaits actualization regardless of the method used (sacred and/or secular) to obtain that realization.

In second reality we are aware that we only deal in present time orientation which is based on our current belief system. That we relate to a subjective awareness of our current beliefs, rather than an objective awareness of an out there world of past or future.

This, reflective second reality enables us to be aware of a personal responsibility and empowerment for any believed-in observation that is still attempting to deny our experience as an unacceptable belief.

Holographic Psychology exposes this important paradigm shift that happens within a human after s/he becomes reflectively aware of how his or her reality is based on his or her beliefs rather than on his or her actual world.

In Holographic Psychology this realization of the subjectivity of awareness is the beginning of second reality understanding in which a person starts to be aware that it is his or her own belief system that determines his or her reality.

This paradigm shift of a reflective capability by a self is described in Dr. Maxwell Maltz’s book PsychoCybernetics when he is defining a person’s self-image.

Starting on page 2:

• “Your Key to a Better Life
• The most important psychological discovery of this century is the discovery of the ‘self-image’. Whether we realize it or not, each of us carries about with us a mental blueprint or picture of ourselves. It may be vague and ill-defined to our conscious gaze. In fact, it may not be consciously recognizable at all. But it is there, complete down to the last detail. This self-image is our own conception of the ‘sort of person I am.’ It has been built up from our own beliefs about ourselves. But most of these beliefs about ourselves have unconsciously been formed from our past experiences, our successes and failures, our humiliations, our triumphs, and the way other people have reacted to us, especially in early childhood. From all these we mentally construct a ‘self,’ (or a picture of a self). Once an idea or a belief about ourselves goes into this picture it becomes ‘true,’ as far as we personally are concerned. We do not question its validity, but proceed to act upon it just as if it were true.
• This self-image becomes a golden key to living a better life because: …
• All your actions, feelings, behavioreven your abilitiesare always consistent with this self-image.
• In short, you will ‘act like’ the sort of person you conceive yourself to be. Not only this, but you literally cannot act otherwise, in spite of all your conscious efforts or will power. The man who conceives himself to be a ‘failure type person’ will find some way to fail, in spite of all his good intentions, or his will power, even if opportunity is literally dumped in his lap. The person who conceives herself to be a victim of injustice, one ‘who was meant to suffer’ will invariably find circumstances to verify her opinions.
• The self-image is a ‘premise,’ a base, or a foundation upon which your entire personality, your behavior, and even your circumstances are built. Because of this our experiences seem to verify, and thereby strengthen our self-images, and a vicious or a beneficent cycle, as the case may be, is set up.
• THE SELF-IMAGE
• For example, a schoolboy who sees himself as an ‘F’ type student, or one who is ‘dumb in mathematics,’ will invariably find that his report card bears him out. He then has ‘proof.’ A young girl who has an image of herself as the sort of person nobody likes, will find indeed that she is avoided at the school dance. She literally invites rejection. Her woe-begone expression, her hang-dog manner, her over-anxiousness to please, or perhaps her unconscious hostility towards those she anticipates will affront herall act to drive away those whom she would attract. In the same manner, a salesman or a businessman will also find that his actual experiences tend to ‘prove’ his self-image is correct.
• Because of this objective ‘proof‘ it very seldom occurs to a person that his trouble lies in his self-image or his own evaluation of himself. Tell the schoolboy that he only ‘thinks’ he cannot master algebra, and he will doubt your sanity. He has tried and tried, and still his report card tells the story. Tell the salesman that it is only an idea that he cannot earn more than a certain figure, and he can prove you wrong by his order book. He knows only too well how hard he has tried and failed. Yet, as we shall see later, almost miraculous changes have occurred both in grades of students, and in the earning capacity of salesmenwhen they were prevailed upon to change their self-images.”

The reason this concept is new to humanity is because we are all outer-oriented at first and learn to name objects as out there, and the feelings we experience we naturally assume are the result of that out there world. We, therefore, believe at this first reality level of comprehension that we are getting the feelings or emotions we experience from our world of others.

In first reality, we are unable to distinguish the difference between feelings and emotions that are given philosophical meanings (one’s current self-image) and are acted on psychologically as if they are outer-caused.

This blind spot includes biological sensations that are physiological raw data prior to conscious awareness giving them meanings and feelings which are validated by one’s current self-image.

We are unable to be aware that it is quite impossible for feelings and/or emotions, that are being experienced within ourselves, to be coming from out there.

Because we are, at first, unaware of this,

we blame or credit our world or our past

as being the cause of our own subjective feelings and emotions.

This belief seems so real in first reality, that it became the basis of behavioristic psychology, which is still the major psychology taught in most universities.

The second part of Dr. Maltz’s definition of an individual’s self-image is a philosophical contradiction of what he had just stated in his first part:

“that once we have established a belief

we cannot change it because

it will be controlling how we relate to all data”.

Holographic Psychology clarifies this confusion by explaining that unless a paradigm shift (second reality) in the understanding of the individual has happened, there is no person, self or ego, to practice reflective conscious awareness that is capable of changing one’s own beliefs or current self-image.

In other words, an outer-oriented awareness, in first reality, automatically blames their world or their past as the cause of their feelings and emotions which automatically negates any personal responsibility for one’s feelings and meanings.

“It is my brother or sister that upsets me whenever I am on the telephone, etc.”

“It is my parents fault that my life is as it is.”

It is the important paradigm shift that Holographic Psychology names second reality that awakens a person to the subjective nature of such behavior.

It is also the second part (or step) of what is needed in an individual’s understanding in order to test any verification of his/her first reality’s current world view. Is my world really as I describe it? What do I use to make my description?

In other words, do I consciously deal with my brother or sister, or do I consciously deal with habits I have formed about my brother or sister or habits I have formed about my past? Where are those habits located?

Only after second reality awakens am I aware that I am always dealing with my own personal habits rather than the past or my current world.

Empowerment only makes sense if I have something to do

with my own responses to my own currently evaluated world view

It is the second step in Holographic Psychology and a necessary second step for a reader of Dr. Maltz’s rendition to test the first part of his definition.

It is this next step or paradigm shift (second reality) that is producing the vast number of self-help systems (sacred and/or secular).

The self-help systems in today’s marketplace (sacred and secular) are validations of this awakening human being.

Humanistic psychology is a total reversal of behavioristic psychology.

Its philosophical model makes a human the cause of his or her environment instead of its effect (victim). It is a human being awakening to his/her awesome, untapped pre-existing potential awaiting actualization.

This second step of a second reality exposes a self that has a:

• Conscious awareness of a self, ego, person or I that is capable of reflection upon his/her own accepted beliefs as being the cause of his/her behavior, both meaning and feeling. This includes all beliefs about one’s self and one’s world. This is now an empowered decision-maker over his/her own beliefs with the desire and the ability to continue or replace them.
   
• This paradigm shift has happened, if and only if, the individual has had a reflective capability awaken in which his/her conceptual beliefs of first reality are no longer treated as factual data about themselves and/or his/her world.

In second reality they are realized as philosophical beliefs (establishing one’s current world view or self-image) and for using a psychological method for changing any part of an unacceptable self-image.

This total reversal of first reality’s belief in direct observation is named second reality by HP/SOS in which one relates to his/her own belief system.

This inner orientation of second reality now places responsibility and empowerment on the individual to continue or to change his or her own belief system (self-image). S/he is now consciously aware that it is his or her own beliefs that are producing his/her current realities of favorable or unfavorable experiences.

LOC of second reality furnishes a psychological method for changing any belief that is unacceptable.

This means that in second reality a person is consciously aware that s/he is no longer actually dealing with a person, place or thing, but with beliefs s/he has accepted about a person, place or thing. Reactions are disclosures of our current belief system and can be telling us very little about our actual world. It is our beliefs that validate our world and not our senses or the world itself.

Both the humanistic and existential movements have reacted against the out there objectivism of behaviorism by investigating the inner dynamics of human consciousness as one’s current experience.

This is a resurgence of the importance of conscious awareness that began in the early 1960s as part of the reaction to the Vietnam War. Students and many psychologists disliked the prescribed or adopted behavioristic approach.

These rebels were in favor of a person-centered psychology, with its emphasis on human values and freedom.

Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) was one of the main leaders in this important cosmology that goes beyond behaviorism’s first force (physical) and includes human consciousness. He sought to establish as an alternative psychology to behaviorism both a humanistic second force (mental) and a transpersonal psychology of being as a third force (spiritual).

For over thirty years Dr. Maslow studied healthy, successful people to discover if these successful people had anything in common. His discovery of self-actualization defined these actualized people as: 

“Healthy individuals are motivated toward self-actualization, defined as the ‘on-going’ actualization of potentials, capabilities, talents, as fulfillment of a mission (or call, fate, destiny, or vocation), as a fuller knowledge of, and acceptance of, the person’s own intrinsic nature, as an increasing trend toward unity, integration, or synergy within the person.”

It is important to be aware that, throughout history, one’s philosophy was considered a revealed truth, and was never thought of as something that one tested until the twentieth century. One’s philosophy was a person’s belief that, as a world view, s/he believed in one cosmology or an alternate one (but never both at the same time). Such data was not considered testable, it was accepted by one’s faith.

This is why, one’s religion is first a philosophy (named by religions, theology), and secondly, its only test in first reality is by one’s faith in it’s theology claims.

This is why a human’s closed belief system of first reality has sustained orthodox systems of dogma (beyond questioning) for so many centuries.

Only after the creation of psychology as a science requiring empirical testing through some form of verification did philosophy become testable as self-image psychology exposed (structured) a person’s world view (current philosophical cosmology) as the determining factor of one’s behavior.

This opened the doorway to having a power and control over our own belief system that was non-existent when relating directly to a world.

There can be no personal responsibility or empowerment when our behavior is believed to be externally caused, rather than a subjective acceptance of an evaluation process of our own beliefs.

This is why CCRS as a church organization has no prescribed dogmas, but we respect each of our member’s or researcher’s dogmas.

In first reality, where one believes one is relating to a world directly, one is usually unaware that one even has a dogma of certainty that is justifying his/her reality. When one believes his/her beliefs are truth they are not considered dogma.

Thoughts are not things, thoughts are the philosophical/psychological symbols representing one’s beliefs about things.

I (subject) BELIEVE IN _____________ (named thing or object)

In first reality, the subject or believer is unaware that her/his belief is an evaluation within her/his own comprehension that is based on her/his current level of understanding. It is irrelevant how s/he spells the word that s/he places on the object line. Beliefs are in the believer and are not in the person, place or thing (label or word) s/he places as the object of his/her belief. This is why prayer is practicing a faith within the believer that has worked and continues to work for every religion (and non religion) throughout history. The belief or faith in help being possible can produce the help one is praying for regardless of the name of the object prayed to that is believed to be what is producing the change (sacred or secular). It is also faith that works for science because it is quite impossible to observe and evaluate anything without one’s current beliefs governing the process of one’s behavior (consciously or unconsciously).

How can this explosive change be understood in first reality when humans in that reality have been fighting each other over whose God or Goddess, etc., is the right one (right name) to pray to?

First reality requires submission or the acceptance of someone else’s world view labels as verification of one’s reality without knowing that the spelling of the object prayed to is irrelevant.

The power of belief is IN THE BELIEVER.

First reality requires a person to be a follower of someone else’s opinions. In contrast, a second reality decision-maker is open to options (the ability to replace unacceptable beliefs with acceptable beliefs) manifesting change.

Remember, the belief is in the believer, not in the words of the object.

Humans have been killing each other for centuries over who spells their object of belief correctly. We accept someone else’s definitions and then fight our entire life defending those definitions as our truth or certainty (reality) until second reality kicks in, where we become aware of what we are doing philosophically and psychologically.

We have named this paradigm shift second reality. We have named the ability to locate one’s own beliefs within his or her self, location of comprehension (LOC). We have named the processing of options, refereeing.

We have named the awakened awareness of a universal source third reality, which explains the spiritual DNA or involution producing evolution. Third reality is the Universal Mind of Dr. Holmes, the collective unconscious of Dr. Jung, and the Absolute of many Eastern Teachings.

HP/SOS explains how and why our self goes through numerous levels of understanding with each level having its own reality. There is no self in first reality’s body with a brain.

In early second reality the self often still believes in a separate self that is motivated to practice change through some self-help system (sacred or secular). This early second reality self often believes “I am the creator of change”.

In advanced second reality the self begins to discover his or her transcendent aspect. This connection opens conscious awareness to an unlimited potential awaiting actualization. The result of this discovery of the transcendent can awaken a UNIVERSAL SELF to an eternal transcendent nature with the possibility to travel between dimensions.

In third reality one is now aware of one’s universal nature which explains why earlier levels produced individual limitations (the pair of opposites). When believing one is a finite and separate body with a brain s/he is often at war with those in his or her world as well as having struggles within one’s self prior to the paradigm shift of second reality. 

As life awakens to ITS ETERNAL NATURE, an exciting journey of discoveries results in a person consciously participating in the dynamic processes of an awakening UNIVERSAL SELF.

Third reality exposes why and how early realities produced suffering and limitation. There is no baby capable of expressing his/her awesome potential of an infinite I AM awaiting actualization as a baby.

First reality will be the identity learned by one’s parents and mentors. Biology will add genetics and psychology will add environment (one’s culture) as aspects that form one’s personality. For countless centuries humans have lived this first reality identity without being motivated to question it. This is why behavioristic psychology is still the major psychology in our universities. Most people will live and die as conditioned people by their environment.

This is why second reality is a paradigm shift that is happening to an ever increasing number of people. It is what Dr. Jung named human individuation. It is what Dr. Holmes named an awakened thinker. It is what HP/SOS has named the birth of the self, I, ego, parson or thinker. It awakens an ability of reflection of one’s own conditioned brain and the behavior it is producing. Second reality will become the basis of self-help systems, both sacred and secular. Its limitation will be that one still thinks of themselves as a separate individual human being.

This is why second reality or science of mind has now awakened to a third reality in which conscious awareness realizes another paradigm shift, the transcendent aspect of human beings. HP/SOS names this research the science of spirit.

It is this paradigm shift that brings God back into the picture. Second reality is actually a form of secular humanism that has surfaced throughout history in pockets of enlightened people. Many when introduced to HP/SOS will believe that the levels of first, second and third reality are levels of a human being but that is not true. Third reality is a realization of an infinite I AM awakening to ITS ETERNAL NATURE.

The levels of understanding are levels of a totally different God from a first reality He, She or It. The transcendent aspect of a human being is what the ancients named spirit, soul or mind. Not of a human being but the spark or aspect of God within creation that represented what will become known as involution producing evolution.

The reason for genius in first and second reality is the channeling of one’s infinite aspect into manifestation. This is why cause and effect reverses in second reality from being a victim in first reality to one’s environment to being the cause of one’s environment. This is why cause and effect changes in third reality to acceptance-by-degree. This is also why one in the early levels is unaware that as creators they can create desirable results or undesirable ones. This all changes after third reality wholeness is achieved. The steps of a human awakening to his or her divinity is the goal and purpose of these lessons of HP/SOS. ENJOY THE JOURNEY!

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