Blog #191--The Alter Ego, Part 2

(Continued from part 1: http://dreamtime3.wixsite.com/jacktuttlebook/single-post/2016/08/15/BLOG-190--The-Alter-Ego-Part-1)

We all have problems learning to trust how our bodies and minds share the workload between opposite brain hemispheres. Most of us can muddle through, learning both from our problems and successes. But some of us suffer pathologies that can be harmful to ourselves and others.

For instance, a young male growing up in a household full of females might find his male self punished repeatedly for normal male behaviors considered negative by his mother and sisters. The older sisters force him to submit to their authority, the younger ones play tricks on him and blame him for their misbehaviors, and the mother believes the girls.

If the boy’s need to express his male side has been forced into submission long enough, once his testosterone levels make a big jump at puberty he can become unruly and unpredictable. At the extreme, he might even become a rapist or serial killer of women. More than likely, his own male and female selves will have great difficulty reconciling each others' existence because he’s learned to hate all things female.

As another example, a young girl grows up in a strongly dominant family where everyone including her grandmother competes for top of the pecking order. She is more like her mother, who isn’t around enough for her to receive the support and protection she feels she needs. And her direct side has its own aspirations thwarted by the ceaseless demands of the more dominant family members. She tries and fails to commit suicide, marries a man who looks and acts somewhat like her father but less dominant, and she becomes matriarch of her own family. She joins a religion that is foreign to other family members and becomes estranged from the family.

She is so adamant against the half of her she inherited from her father that she teaches her children to hate those traits also. When her daughter’s daughter begins to resemble the father’s side of the family, the woman and the child’s mother punish her for it. When the child shows an attraction to anyone from the woman’s father’s family, she is punished. Unable to be herself, the granddaughter eventually kills herself.

A male child is abandoned at birth and given no love and affection as an infant. He grows up in an orphanage with a strong empty feeling unfulfilled by a loving parent. He is able to graduate high school and hold down a job, but his infant self still needs the attention, cuddling and warm feelings he never received previously. He is so fixated on that absence, that he has great difficulty achieving orgasm during sexual intercourse. He finds the only way he can ejaculate is after a woman goes through an elaborate process of bathing, clothing and feeding him as if he were an infant.

Some people have a normal upbringing but still have a dark side that can be extremely dark. For instance, a few serial killers are actually comfortable in their own bodies and know what they are doing. They use their indirect, right brain influence to charm those they wish to attract to them and then use their direct, left brain side to kill them. In other words, both sides seem to work well together to accomplish their goals. There may be some trauma in their past that triggered future behavior, but that past might as well be from a past life as this one. At least, it appears they have a need to kill specific people and can’t stop until the goal is fulfilled.

Everyone feels occasional compulsions they can’t control without great difficulty. Most of us reside somewhere between the extremes, preventing us from being antisocial or overly destructive. Or we find constructive ways of relieving extra stress when it builds up. But even the most “normal” of us may experience an occasional, short-term bout with obsession.

For instance, I talked in the book about how I lost 40 pounds once both my halves had equal motivation to do so. I had gained the weight due to a compulsion brought on in part by stopping smoking. I needed to take something into my body to make up for no longer taking in smoke. There were times I would feel compelled to eat even when I wasn’t hungry.

I’m sure many people experience this even more frequently than I do and understand what it feels like. You don’t necessarily want to do it, but you can’t seem to stop yourself. At worst, it is called “binge” eating or drinking. Overeaters Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings are filled with stories about strong compulsions.

It is hard to love the part of us that appears to be misbehaving. But truthfully, it may not have happened in the first place had we not forced it to go against its natural instincts. I had to be highly disciplined to eat less on a daily basis, and I was doing that while also using discipline to work 70 hours a week without a day off or vacation. I kept the weight off for nearly 3 years, but little by little I found my child self, the one that draws in rather than gives out, making up for lost time. I’ve gained back nearly half of what I lost. This is common among many people and is called “yo-yo” dieting, where people alternate between losing weight and gaining it all back, then repeating the process over and over without resolution.

There are no easy solutions for those who have two sides that appear incompatible. But even they could become true soul mates, increasing their vibration to approach that of their spirits, if they could look backward in time to the inciting cause of their ego frustrations and heal the offending events. Psychologists and psychiatrists do this kind of work with some success, but it usually takes a long time before the two sides stop resisting one another. One can tell them logically that their health and spiritual welfare will improve with the effort, but logic may be part of what is blocked from expressing itself.

Many people complete entire lifetimes without resolving these differences. Their bodies are in sufficient balance to live a full life, but tiny differences in perspective make mental reconciliation difficult if not impossible for them in any given lifetime. Any effort we make to find good in both of our halves will be worth the effort. In fact, both sides of our egos are far more magnificent than we can imagine. If we can alter our perspective enough to notice these positive aspects, the healing can begin.

For instance, any effort a direct person makes to accept the right brain’s abilities gives them greater access to their psychic abilities and creative side. It may also help them relax and enjoy their lives more with less need to control everything. An indirect person can gain self-confidence and overcome fear by standing up to survival threats, and the immune system gets stronger.

If both sides learn to accept one another, we can become a third person, one with our spirits, the universe and our creator. Self-acceptance is the key to personal salvation.

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