“The Recovery Process” (TRP) describes what it takes to wake up. Waking up happens when you shift from from who you pretend to be, back to the truth of who you are and can only be. You are always who you are, and time displays the degree to which you dismiss who you are in order to defend who you pretend to be. Since we can only be who we are, everyone is eligible to wake up. This is the good news because waking up makes it possible for you to identify that suffering is the consequence of defending who you pretend to be.
What stands between who we are and who we pretend to be is the lie we can be who we pretend to be. Our level of suffering reflects the degree to which we defend the lie we are who we pretend to be. TRP, or waking up, makes it possible for you to realize that suffering goes with defending the lie you can be who you pretend to be. The proof for this is testable: suffering declines the more you surrender to who you are, and expands the more you defend the lie you can prove you are who you pretend to be.
What stands between who you are and who you pretend to be is amnesia. Amnesia obscures who you are so you can defend who you pretend to be. Defending who we pretend to be is ‘the no win game’ we get to play with truth in the course of our life. Waking up is possible because we can’t defect from who we are. Amnesia services the lie defection from who we are is possible so we can defend the fiction truth is false. Everyone is only at war with truth, and amnesia relegates truth to the back of the mind. Everyone is free to wake up, but waking up depends on where we are with the truth of who we are, the intensity of our amnesia, and the degree to which we defend who we pretend to be.
Before I read Wei Wu Wei, I was fascinated with the idea of a “spiritual life,” and I read my share of Eastern philosophy, but I wasn’t ready to identify that suffering is the consequence of defending who we pretend to be. This idea did not appear in consciousness. If it existed, it existed in the unconscious mind, kept out of sight with amnesia. The unconscious mind includes what the truth is, including how we rely on amnesia to keep truth out of sight and out of mind. The unconscious mind warehouses what the truth is, and amnesia obscures what that is so we can defend our preferred rendition of truth. Truth is 180 degrees out of phase with what we want truth to be. Because truth exists as a fixed fact, there is no way to eliminate it. Amnesia can obscure it, but it can’t cancel it.
Truth always threatens to remind us that the defense of our preferred rendition of truth is on shaky ground. Language, for example, mostly services the lie truth is what we insist it is. This becomes increasingly obvious the more you move through the wall of amnesia to get a glimpse of “The Big Picture.” Waking up includes the humor that goes with listening to the way we use language to replace truth with what we want it to be. Our body language serves as indirect proof that truth exists, and the language we use is more or less out of synch with what that is. In fact, everything we do reflects where we are with the truth, either reconnecting with what it is, or doing our level best to pretend it doesn’t exist, or if it does, then it is false.
Reality is the arena that features the dance we do with truth. Truth is fixed, permanent and non negotiable. We can dismiss it with amnesia, but it sill bleeds through to remind us that we are impostors. Waking up makes it possible for you to move from the lie you defend as “the truth,” back to what the truth is. What we dismiss as false is the truth, and what we defend as “the truth” is false. By way of coming attractions, truth includes the lies we defend to pretend we can prove truth is false. Truth includes what it is, how it works, and the part we play in ‘the grand scheme of things.’ Truth includes the game we play with it, and reality is the arena that displays where we are with the truth, and the sum of the tricks we rely on to drag out the fiction we can prove truth is false.
We have only one problem: there is no way to prove truth is false, and every problem we have stems from the sum of what we do to reject truth as if it is false. Everyone displays where they are with the truth, and the degree to which they wage war with truth, as if it is possible to prove it is false. No one can prove truth is false. Reality reflects the sum of what we do to defend the fiction we can achieve that goal. Trying to achieve a goal that doesn’t exist is what our problem is. This is a good example of “doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.” We always get the same result: it isn’t possible to prove truth is false. “The Big Picture,” that resides on the other side of amnesia, reveals why time features us ‘spinning out wheels’: how can we prove truth is false when truth provides the context for the game we play with it. The game truth plays with us includes ‘amnesia’ to obscure the fact that there is no way to defect from truth because it is all there is. There is no such thing as duality. There isn’t truth, and something else that exists outside of truth. Truth features us creating duality to drag out the fiction defection from it is possible. We suffer from the fiction defection from truth is possible.
TRP starts with what the truth is, since it is all there is, and outlines how time features the sum of what we do to defend the fiction truth doesn’t include us as part of what it is. At the core of this parody is duality, since we can’t defend the lie we exist outside of truth without the fiction duality is real. Duality means two, and in this case this means truth, and us outside of it. There is only one, or truth, featuring us defending the lie duality is real to defend the fiction defection from truth is possible. Suffering is the sign we rely on the fiction duality is real to defend the fiction defection from truth is possible. No one can defect from truth, and truth features the sum of all the ways we defend the fiction we can achieve that goal.
TRP makes it possible for you to retrieve how you rely on the fiction duality will work to prove defection from truth is possible. Since this isn’t possible, our problems serve as indirect proof that we know, at some pre-conscious level, that life features us “beating the dead horse.” Fear is indirect proof we know the war we wage against truth isn’t winnable. Anxiety goes with the fear we are engaged in a no win game, and we don’t know why that’s true. The source of anger is the truth it isn’t possible to prove truth is false. Any problem anyone has can be traced back to how they fill time relying on the fiction duality will prove truth is false.
Everything you just read came into focus after reading the works of Wei Wu Wei, aka Terence Gray. He writes from inside “The Big Picture,” on the other side of amnesia, to reveal why we spend almost all of our time trying to replace truth with what we want it to be. He takes you to the heart of the game truth plays with us. What he revealed illuminated what kind of changes are requited to work with clients from a place of truth, and not from the fiction we are who we pretend to be. Once truth comes into focus, you know who you are, who you are working with, and how the defense of duality results in their style of suffering.
In the next installment, I will reveal what it was about what he said that was so startling. That was over twenty years ago, and nothing in my life has ever been the same. Amnesia, on cue, makes the recovery or truth a zig zag struggle, one step closer to “The Big Picture,” followed by rotating place, as an expression of rejecting truth as impossible. In theory, everyone has a date with truth, and time displays when and how and if that will occur.
Greg,
Much of what you are talking about sounds like “A Course in Miracles” to me without the religious language. Are you familiar with that work? If so, how does yours differ? Just curious.
BTW: I am increasingly aware of how the ego plays into our drama of somebodiness. However, I find it a lot of hard work not to fall back into habitual patterns of judgment etc.and to just maintain a stance of “beingness.”