If you scan reality, sooner or later you will wonder why so much of life includes suffering? The ratio of suffering to not suffering seems disproportionately high. Intelligent beings should be able, for example, to end poverty, war, and standard examples of “man’s inhumanity to man.” Such is not the case: the magnitude of suffering waxes and wanes, but the explanation for suffering continues to escape us. Sooner or later you begin to wonder why so many people are so unhappy, and why we lack a clear understanding about the function of suffering in life in general.
One explanation is that suffering is an inevitable part of life, which we take for granted. It is a given we get to work with as part of life. We accept the fact that life includes trauma, disappointments, loss, and unwanted outcomes, and we either flow with the vicissitudes of life, or we get stuck in a pattern of negative rumination that makes life unbearable. The level of suffering is proportionate to the amount of medication we require to tamp down our suffering. We deal with it by trying to get rid of it, possibly to avoid finding out how it serves us. Medication helps, and that’s good, but it also steers us away from exploring the possibility that it exists because it serves us in some mysterious way. Suffering is viewed as “the enemy,” to the degree that it sounds heretical to speculate that it serves the purposes of the unconscious mind.
It is unthinkable to consider that the level of suffering remains high because at some unconscious level we have no intention of parting with it. If you even allude to this idea, resistance is immediate. Clients give you a look that says, don’t go there. Clients say they want to eliminate their suffering, as if that is the whole truth, but what is missing from the equation is the rest of the story, that suffering is part of a much bigger, far more mysterious agenda. Whatever that is, it fades into nothingness, leaving little evidence behind it.
If we artificially divide consciousness into what we defend as “the truth,” and what we reject as false, sooner or later you suspect that the unconscious part of consciousness warehouses a story that is far different from the one we defend as “the truth.” Consciousness defends the assumption that suffering is ‘bad,’ while the unconscious conveys a hidden message that suffering is somehow essential. Proof for this comes from many sources. You can show a client a variety of ways to interrupt the pattern of their suffering, and they appear to understand the value of what you said, but the unconscious seems to rule the outcome. In some cases, they not only don’t implement positive suggestions, they amplify the behavior that adds to their level of suffering. In many instances they display no awareness they did this. The suspicion grows that we take orders from the unconscious part of the mind, and that the disparity between what we say and what we do is huge. The disparity between the two makes it clear that most of us live a double life, and that the unconscious part of the mind knows much more than we do, including why we are reluctant to part with our suffering. We occupy the tip of the iceberg of knowing.
For example, a client displays that it occupies a parody that it is a “born loser,” as if that is a valid stance in life. The question arises, can anyone be a “born loser” in fact, or is this a parody someone occupies and keeps in place with support from the unconscious mind. It looks like the unconscious knows there is no such thing as a “born loser,” and that it defends that conclusion to keep it in place as if it is valid. The implication is that the unconscious will defend the parody we occupy to defend the fiction we are who we insist we are. It looks like the life you live includes whatever it takes to defend the assumption that the parody you occupy is who you are. If that’s not true, then who are we? Who we pretend to be works to shield us from who we are.
No one can defend a negative parody without regular suffering, and if you try to alter the behavior that keeps this negative parody in place, the unconscious comes to the aid of who it is you insist you are. If you lock into the negative parody that you are a ‘real bad person,’ the odds are you will defend this conclusion as if it is an absolute fact. Moreover, the unconscious agenda will assist you to keep this conclusion in place by motivating you to create the ‘bad behavior’ you require to maintain the conclusion you are, in fact, a ‘real bad person.’ How many of us create ‘bad behavior’ to defend the lie we are ‘bad people?’ A quick visit to your local prison could shed some light on this question.
Could it be that an arsonist’s intention is to prove it is a ‘real bad person’ by remaining at the scene of the fire to make sure it gets recognition for the fiction it is a ‘real bad person?’ Could it be that the unconscious mind knows that there is a huge disparity between who we insist we are and who we are? It will defend who we insist we are because the suffering that goes with incarceration works to service the lie we are who we insist we are. It is rare, but once in a while a man in prison realizes it devoted its life to the defense of the ‘bad person parody,’ and suddenly views crime as utter nonsense. Could it be that ‘criminals’ engage in recidivism, not because they are inherently ‘bad,’ but because they are willing to endure the suffering that goes with incarceration in order to defend the conclusion they are ‘bad people?’ Life seems to be the arena in which we deliver the parody we occupy to defend the fiction we are who we pretend to be.
The idea for “The Recovery process” came out of the awareness that we operate on two tracks: there is who we are, and then there is the parody we occupy to defend the fiction we are who we pretend to be. The unconscious mind knows, apparently, that who we are isn’t who we pretend to be, and that it’s job description includes obscuring who we are in order to support the fiction we are who we pretend to be. The focus of “The Recovery Process” is to demystify why it does this. The answers take us from what we think the truth is, into what the truth might be in fact. It should come as no surprise that the disparity between the two is huge. What we don’t know, consciously, makes what we think we know, miniscule. We occupy a tiny slice of what the truth is.
Psychotherapy supports the assumption that everyone is eager to reduce the level of suffering in their life. At times, it looks like the unconscious mind defends this assumption to protect our hidden agenda, which includes the heretical notion that suffering is required to defend the fiction we are who we pretend to be. Once you tender this suspicion, you run into a wall of resistance, which only adds to the suspicion that the job of the unconscious is to obscure truth by making it difficult to explore it. If it has full knowledge of what the truth is, then it knows who we are and why we depend on suffering to defend who we pretend to be. It has to know what ‘the secret’ is because the evidence suggests that it orchestrates the game we play with truth.
If the unconscious mind keeps all of us in the dark to obscure truth, then the implication is that we all share the same unconscious mind, like it is the main frame and we are satellite computers. If this is true, then it would follow that the rules that run the game are the same for everyone. We are all in the same boat, playing the same game with the same set of rules. If you use suffering to defend who you pretend to be, then the odds go up that this principle is uniform for all of us. The question is, what determines how much suffering is necessary for each one of us to defend the fiction truth is false?Why does this person occupy a parody that requires a higher level of suffering than that individual? We are looking down the barrel of mystery, in which amnesia successfully makes it difficult to reconnect with the inner workings of the game we are all in.
The goal of “The Recovery Process” is to explore moving from what we defend as “the truth,” into the unconscious mind to identify how it shields us from the truth in order to reconnect with ‘the secret’ it hides from all of us. Whatever that secret is, it is increasingly clear that we depend on regular suffering to keep truth a secret. If there is something shocking about this, it is that defending the secret takes precedence over everything, including truth, happiness, well being, and health, both mental and physical. The more you look at it, the more it seems that we work as a vast team to keep truth out of sight and out of mind.
There are two ways to reconnect with the secret the unconscious shields from us: the standard way is to start from who you pretend to be, and work back to the truth of who you are. Th standard metaphor for this process is called “peeling the onion.” This is a very slow, tedious process because what stands between who you are and who you pretend to be is amnesia, the wall of resistance that keeps truth out of sight and out of mind.
Because we can’t be who we pretend to be, amnesia features us living in a state of trance, a kind of fog bank that is so familiar that we accept it as normal. As we wake up, the fog bank lifts periodically to provide glimpses of “The Big Picture,” which reveal the architecture of the interplay between truth, the unconscious mind and reality, the arena in which we deliver the parody we occupy to defend who we pretend to be. The suspicion grows that the secret includes how we depend on regular suffering to maintain the fiction the parody we occupy is who we are.
The second method of reconnecting with truth underscores what “The Recovery Process is all about. This approach starts with what the truth might be, in order to by pass some of the tedium of dealing with amnesia, which isn’t to say it stops just because we preempt it. The difference is that you are upstream of amnesia so you can identify when it kicks in to do its job of ‘keeper of the secret.’ Once you know what amnesia is, and how it works, you know it shows up as that ‘out of it, blah feeling,’ as if you are on autopilot. When we preempt it, we demystify it and make it possible to work with it. It still manifests, but you can watch the way it ebbs and flows like the tide, guarding the secret, and revealing aspects of what it is.
What I say to a new client is, “The Recovery Process starts with what the truth could be, which the unconscious mind shields from us to keep it a secret, and you are under no obligation to believe that what we refer to as “the truth” is the truth.” I always add, “can you suspend judgment by noticing it, so you can play with these ideas as if they might be true? If you can’t suspend judgment, can you share what your resistance feels like, and how it regulates your right to play with new ideas?” Amnesia manifests in many ways, not the least of which is judgment, rebuttals, anger, protest, etc, all of which are diagnostic. The client’s response to these new ideas lets you know immediately if they are ready to reconnect with “The Big Picture,” or not. The goal of “The Recovery Process” is to promote ‘waking up,’ which includes moving from trance to “The Big Picture,” by taking note of the power of amnesia to keep ‘the secret’ a secret.
In the next installment, I will describe how, once again, timing is everything. If there are no accidents, then Serendipity often comes out of the blue to keep you on course.
