There were times when life seemed more dreamlike than real, but in defense of the assumption the self is real, or must be real for me to be real, these thoughts were dismissed as “unscientific,” and even delusional. In spite of resistance, aka amnesia and trance, I was aware that ‘clients’ relied on suffering to portray ‘not okay people,’ convincingly. Since I didn’t want to know I was doing the same thing, too, even these insights were dismissed to preserve the assumption that right now is real, and not a dream, and that ‘suffering’ is sufficient to maintain the assumption that people are victims, enduring their difficult lives. I noticed, at some preconscious level, that clients said they wanted relief from their suffering, but when you began to meddle with the mechanism of suffering, resistance said, in effect, “I need my suffering to anchor the self as a real, less than okay self.” In my own unconscious state, I perceived this as a “strange paradox”: they pay good money to find relief from suffering at the conscious level of functioning, but the unconscious sends a very different message: “my suffering defines me, and even though I hate it, hating it keeps it in place as objectively awful.”
Once a client locks into the conclusion the self they have is ‘damaged,’ life provides the setting to live this assumption for the duration, if need be. The idea we are who we insist we are depends on the assumption the self, as we define it, exists as proof we are who we insist we are, including a ‘damaged person.’ The implication is a shocker: defending the assumption we are who the self says we are takes precedence over everything, including well being, happiness, love, and a life that is relatively trouble free. Suffering works to defend the assumption the self is real, and that ‘a suffering self’ is the epitome of the real. Apparently, the experience of suffering is secondary to the defense of the assumption the self is real.
» Read more: A Glimpse of THE BIG AHA

