The Way We Change
Created on 08/10/2008Hello Everyone,
Thank you for your letters. I read them all and I will try to answer your comments personally as much as I can.
I called this entry "The Way We Change", and I actually assigned the same name to this website (thewaywechange.com) in addition to CliffhousePublications.com, because I believe that this is the core of what we are trying to understand.
The reason:
We change. All the time and we have no choice not to.
I will try to keep it very simple, talking about change.
First, change requires energy to be completed. Transforming the effect of trauma on the body, mind, soul, and everything in between, takes a certain amount of energy to accommodate the change. If we have resources (internal and external), we can accomplish healing and replace suffering with peace and eventually, happiness. If the "spirits of trauma" in us (the accumulated personal and generational traumatic experiences that attain status of independent existence within our psyche) have more energy, then they will orchestrate the change, and most likely we are not going to like it.
This is because unhealed trauma is a parasite consuming tremendous energy. It is a form of mental cancer which, if untreated, may result in complete destruction, and ultimately in physical death. It manipulates all other forces in one's life to constantly feed itself through self-deception, addiction, depression, as well as self-destructive and suicidal impulses.
So the goal of the change we want is to transform the energy-consuming trauma into energy-producing creativity. Like wild animals, traumatic memories can be tamed and can start serving us, instead of keeping our energy their hostage.
Second, change occurs in stages and happens as a cycle - it has a distinct beginning, course, and end after which it builds a foundation for another cycle of change. It's like different sets of spirals unfolding within us that process different types of experiences. Being aware of those dynamics can help us evaluate what stage of change we are in and whether the transformation of experience is complete or not.
Third, there are two fundamental processes in our minds through which all change occurs - dissociation and association. Both in relation to our sense of identity, to our sense of self. We either accept experience as part of who we are (associate with it), or do the opposite - dissociate (push it away from our sense of self as if "it never happened", "it wasn't me", "it wasn't real" and so on).
We are constantly experiencing different degrees of these processes. I want to use a comment that Magali wrote on 08/12/2008 to illustrate this:
"I’ve been thinking about this post for a week. Although there are many things I would like to say, I will concentrate on a question I have about “The master of the House”.
Up to now, I had only a very vague feeling of what “The master of the House” meant/would be like. Reading this post where you talked about being aware of our feelings, but not identifying with them, I keep on thinking about an experience I had that really bewildered me.
One evening, as I entered my bedroom (I was still standing in the middle of the room) “my body” started crying and shaking as if I was being overwhelmed by some kind of unbearable sadness or pain. However, in “my head”, I was completely astonished!
“Why am I crying? Am I sad? I don’t feel sad! Why is my body so sad? I can’t control any muscles… what should I do? How can I comfort it? ... “
My conscious train of thoughts was completely detached from any feelings.
... Is that the place of “The Master of the House?” ...
Thank you again for your comment. It shows a perfect example of an internal crossroads where dissociation plays a crucial role. This example describes the exact state of dissociation (in this case, specifically between mental train of thoughts and feelings and bodily sensations) which is the first step toward changing identity, becoming "The Master of the House". The second step is association. After there is an awareness that we are not our feelings, and that we are not our thoughts about our feelings either, we can reach an experience where we integrate them all in a new sense of who we are, in a sense of a Master. I don't want to give any specific description of this state, I believe everyone has a unique way of experiencing being their own Master. It can be quick and radical or gradual and smooth; the process of change is different for each of us. There are some common similarities in some of the external outcomes of this change. When we have experienced the integration, it is almost certain that we will experience lessened anxiety and depression, we will have much more sense of control over our life and other people will seek our company because, unconsciously, they will want to mirror the changes we have.
But if the association does not follow the dissociation, getting stuck at the crossroads can be uncomfortable in itself. To be more specific, what I would do in the experience of dissociation that you described, Magali, is take some physical steps forward as if I was stepping into the space of my feeling while letting my body and my mind continue their separate experiences, and I would take those steps forward with the intention of bringing my feelings and my thoughts together so I can be all of it (because, you see, in your example you experience yourself as a train of thoughts versus feelings). The Master of the House is all of the experiences, but is not limited to any.
Shamanic practices develop it down to a science. In my understanding of shamanism, the main tool shamans use in any healing, ceremony, magic, etc, is their own selves, because they are already the Masters of their House and they have developed flexibility in shifting their identity in ways we can hardly imagine (Carlos Castaneda wrote primarily about it). They truly shift their sense of self to become anything they want to be - a plant, an animal, another person, a spirit of disease, so they can negotiate the change within. But ultimately, no matter how fantastic the change is that happens as a result of their magic, it still comes down to the same fundamentals - dissociation and association.
For our modern society though, I think we still need to learn how to become ourselves before we try to be an animal or a plant and so on. This is my major objection to some schools in modern culture who teach traditional practices to Westerners. We are not tribal people, our baseline is very different and for us to go into imagining power animals and flying with them into magical lands or getting involved in extensive tantric meditations before we can address our specific fears and anxieties is counterproductive. In a way, it brings more dissociation from the actual problems we face in our lives and creates a false sense of escape and comfort. That's why I have been focusing on transformation of trauma for many years now, because I believe that we need to bring the healing changes first and then we can evolve to the next level. As far as I can see, there is still little awareness of the traumas we carry, individually and collectively. In that sense, dissociation largely prevails in our culture so collective "Spirits of Trauma" are really out of control and are feasting at our expense (just turn on the TV, pretty much any station in any country, to get the visual).
It doesn't have to be this way. We just need to create more transformative, healing experiences so more people can "mirror" them and accelerate the shift of suffering into happiness for all. For now (and again this is just the beginning of creating a plan of what can be done for that), I want to summarize the direction for this change as I discussed in all previous posts. I call it the rule of 4Rs of healing:
Restore time
Reclaim space
Replenish energy
Redefine identity
And when the change happens, everything is transformed, including our relationship.
Before we finish today, let me ask you for a little more attention so I can tell you something about relationships. But please pay attention and make sure that the tricky part doesn't let you distort the meaning and use it as the opposite of what I really mean.
And what I mean is (to use the same metaphor of the internal house), when two people enter a relationship, the chances that they will start "building walls" together are higher than the chances of them "breaking the walls" for themselves and for each other. Nobody plans it, though most of us end up doing it anyways.
Looking back at my own "walls" and understanding now the fundamental things that went wrong in my past relationships, I think the distortion and pain it causes comes down again to identity confusion. Ideally, we would want to be as much "ourselves" (the Master of the House) with another person as possible, but when we are not aware of who we truly are in the relationship, or even worse, when we start pretending that we are somebody else, things go wrong very quickly.
I don't have to go into the whole complexity of interpersonal dynamics here, I bet many of you have learned it in different schools for years. The dynamics that I am interested in relates to The Identity of The Creator and her/his actual presence in the relationship. If the relationship is between two scared little kids who are trying to please their authority figures (and in many cases that's what people regress to, usually soon after marriage or moving in together), then the conflict and escalation of trauma is inevitable. If two people enter a relationship knowing who they are and being their own Masters, then they can associate their beings into a new union and experience Love freely.
And here is another thing - when we are the Masters of the House, we have a responsibility to mentor. Since each of us is a unique focus of existence that is essentially irreplaceable in a spiritual sense, and because we change through our relationships and we change those who are in relationships with us, it is our responsibility to mentor the changes we invoke and to be open to mentoring from those who are with us. This is quite different from traditional role play, because partners are completely equal in their roles and in their mentoring of each other. And equality doesn't mean unification. Yet, we are still so far away from having families balanced in their relationship. For traditional cultures, including Western, create a lot of scared little boys pretending to be the Masters of their women's houses without knowing their own. And to be fair, the same cultures create a lot of angry, passive-aggressive women, who suppress their own femininity with their need to control, based again on fear and on ignorance of who they really are.
And I believe it doesn't have to be this way, either.
And I also believe that when true Love comes, the walls go down the second you meet his eyes, and all the fears go away with them, and Love mentors you both to know who you truly are and you always remember it. Because this is a place where all changes end for the moment which is Eternity, and there you stay still.
But before and after that, we keep changing and we have no choice not to, so we can reach that place of Love again.
To put my suggestions simply:
Do Not possess- Mirror
Do Not control - Mentor
Do Not fear - Love
Thank you for your attention again. And at the end, one more quote from the same post by Magali: "The first post where you said, 'No concepts, no recipes, no solutions, no mysteries solved,' actually made me feel really relieved. The world is not a dead mechanical place, but Life is still full of mysteries, and always changing and evolving…"
August 17, 2008.
P.S. Happy Birthday Gabriel! I love you.
Olga
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