The Hopeless Complexity of Relating

15 Guests, 0 Users

A cult is a religion with no political power. - Tom Wolfe

Advanced search

Dilber MulticolorMarley TPSMF Default Theme -

[Jana]

I have been flabbergasted by the complexity of my psyche, emotions, reactions etc... by bumping up against another person. My layers have always confounded and perplexed me...I have been left feeling that it is hopeless...feeling miserable both in and out of a relationship, miserable getting out of one...and being left with the feeling that it is not for me, cause I don't know how to do it, nor if I really want it...even tho part of me does. Basically a big heap of unintegrated mess, which hasn't really been consciously sorted through at all, nor any relationship skills developed whatsoever.

On my way home from work I started thinking of a negotiation process that could be used for conscious navigation of stages and triggers...that is borders and boundaries. As I went to write on the subject I found a file called Process Work on my computer so I thought I would write my piece in that file. Turns out that file held a paper exactly on the work on needed to develop, which comes out of Arnold Mindall's therapy work. I had also been feeling the need for a therapist to work out this difficult hopeless labyrinth I am in over my own conflicted complexity. Following leads to Process Work therapist, I found one in Boulder that I will go see next month perhaps.
www.processwork.org/

My todays writing of trying to work out how to transverse borders and boundaries consciously.

NAVIGATING WE SPACE
Developing Second Attention at the Border
In new relationships there are two universes colliding. Universes with different needs, wants, shoulds, limitations, boundaries, preferences, likes, dislikes, directions, dreams, styles, morals, self knowledge, communication styles, habits, reactions, addictions, compulsivity, coping mechanisms, defenses, emotions, intellect, dreams  etc… All these and more are experienced both consciously and unconsciously, and as two people meet this collide-a-scope of multiplicity enters a storm of activity.

As two universes collide we go through relational experiences that provoke reassessment, inquiry and understanding. The complexity of navigating oneself in response to another may be so acute that there is a painful desire to exit the relationship in order to avoid the sense of hopelessness and futility in “working it out”. However if we develop some relationship skill around consciously entering into and engaging in ongoing relationship then we can avoid the inevitable retreat and have a sense of mastery and success around finding our way in the universe of another.

As a relationship begins we may fall precipitously from strangers, to instant friends, to instant lovers without processing time or boundary checking at each stage. Even if the trajectory is rapid, we can still go about things consciously without offering a mechanical running commentary which would destroy the mood of the encounter. At each border crossing of descent into “We” space, we can apply tools for consciously negotiating the edge without transgression. Pushing unconsciously ahead across a border with the use of alcohol or manipulation will only result in backswinging anyway…which could ultimately destroy the relationship entirely through confusion and pain.

At the borders we must proceed with humor and observation to negotiate a jointly agreed protocol:
• Acknowledge the new shift of state or stage (often as a joke).
• Define what is happening with reasoning.
• Describe what is happening with feelings.
• Discuss possible repercussions with awareness of possible backswinging.

This process can be used for the stages of descent into intimacy and it can also be used for events where one is triggered by the behavior of the other and need to bring up an issue. If triggered events are not consciously embraced as they arise in a masterful way, then they just accumulate and possibly lead to the trashing of the relationship rather than the negotiation of it. Respect and dignity is offered by going into such issues in a masterful way, rather than unscrupulously avoiding them. If one truly gets and stays conscious of the notion that new relationship involves the collision of two universes then we can learn to stay vigilant and avoid a stew of reactivity and a wound poking party. It is dishonest to bury ones triggered issues and pretend they don’t exist, because anything that triggers us is never forgotten. Instead it festers and grows like a cancer, becoming a great attractor in the relationship for other such issues…thus feeding the underbelly of the mechanism that will inevitably tear the relationship apart.

“The negotiation at the edge to the secondary process results in an increase in learning and awareness. Working on edges develops second attention, the disciplined awareness necessary to perceive minute, unintended, irrational experiences that fall outside normal, everyday reality. While the first attention is the normal awareness we develop to deal with everyday reality, or awareness of what Mindell calls the “victim body,” second attention is the awareness necessary to focus on the dreambody. Mindell calls second attention the ability to: focus on things you normally neglect, upon external and internal, subjective, irrational experiences. The second attention is the key to the world of dreaming, the unconscious and dreamlike movements, the accidents, synchronicities and slips of the tongue that happen all day long. Second attention also builds and develops a neutral metacommunicator, an inner therapist who can attend to our experiences without judgment, and an openness to experiences that may threaten or provoke us.”  “Encounters with the Spirit: Developing Second Attention at the Edge,” and it’s by Julie Diamond, Ph.D., a Process Worker  www.juliediamond.net/

[Jana]

I am the kind of person that says their piece and then ducks for cover.
I like to say that the greatest shit grows the best seeds.
I must say, this book on sovereignty is a doozy.
I don't know how many people would be ready enough to read it.
But it sure is liberating...and believe me, I must say so myself, for no one else will.

Here is the cruncher:
The false prophet and the spiritual charlatan are not the problem…get rid of one and there will be a dozen more to take their place. What is more at issue is our spiritual ambition, naivety, and suspension of sovereignty. If there were no following lambs, there would be no wolf leaders. We claim our freedom and genuine spirituality from the endless distraction of the spiritual circus, by questioning our ambition and finding ways to discover inner wisdom and to fill ourselves up from the inside. Spiritual charlatans serve the purpose of ultimately forcing people to find God without a go-between, once they are adequately disillusioned. For if the Self is closer to us than our self, then it is obvious that no middleman is needed. It is the citizen’s responsibility to wake up.

I wrote that for my ex BF because he was engaged in defaming his exwife (a Danish spiritual teacher)...this and other things lead me to feeling this guy an't for me...but then he is of the old school an't had no mind-blowing K and he an't writing a damn tasty book on sovereignty.
Beauty of it is I just trumped my entire book with that one paragraph.

[Francis]

Can you please explain the core concept of sovereignty, as you see it, and why it’s important, in a few sentences? My view is that the concept is mostly valuable for breaking the bonds of socialization but it needs to be largely discarded afterwards, in favor of humility.

[Jana]

Sovereignty is the life of the soul. It doesn't have any of the hubris, bravado, power drive, or other egoic traits exhibited by the deprivation personality (separate-self-sense). Sovereignty is whole-person functioning...body, mind and soul integrated and fully alive. Sovereignty is built on healing the core brain, increasing hemispheric communication and developing Good Parent prefrontal lobes, through recovery from the brain damage wraught by the dominant/submissive pyramid culture. Humility is composed of unity and awe...it is simply the natural state of the sovereign individual. I don't think we know yet what natural hierarchy would look like in an enlightened society. We would have to establish a group of sovereign individuals (all God unto themselves) to see if there was such a thing as hierarchy within that group. I suspect that in a truly spiritual community it is the one that is most unified, that is most humble whom is the principle leader of the group.

The “normal” conditioned superego often judgmental, self-critical, black and white, rigid, concrete, self-suppressing and inhibits the individual from the adventure of divine play and growth.

[Francis]

I don't think we know yet what natural hierarchy would look like in an enlightened society.

It seems to me that it's preferable to run toward something rather than away from something. If we only know what it isn't then we can only run away for that. If we have no model or prototype then we cannot run toward the goal.

We would have to establish a group of sovereign individuals (all God unto themselves) to see if there was such a thing as hierarchy within that group.

Let's start with one sovereign individual, shall we? I guess the pope would qualify, based on your parenthetical descriptor above. But I'm guessing he is not your ideal model...

How about a person that controls their own superego? That way he's at least not at the mercy of subconscious socialization software. The question arises: how does one decide the priorities of the superego once it has been brought under conscious control and reprogramming? It seems like a lot of the content in the superego is typically composed to accomodate the priority of 'survival'. Do we just toss out the defective and neurotic subroutines or do we toss the goals too?

The term sovereign implies hierarchy. Kings have subjects. If we find no hierarchy at the bottom of this thing, I think we'll need a new word...

[Jana]

Haha you hit the nail on the head.

Sovereignty means embodying or owning up to one's inner King and Queen...the Good Parents and benign regulators of thought, affect and behavior. The child that grows up in enlightened society is imparted with non-shaming, all embracing, compassionate and non-suppressing superego-prefrontal lobes. This means there is far less energy wasted in conflict, contradiction, confusion, confoundment, anxiety, fear, resistance, anger, frustration and the morose side of existence that creates toxiicty and inefficiency in brain function. The nobility and dignity of the inner King and Queen is an innate fact when the human spirit is allowed to grow in its natural form. So sovereignty means the native nobility and dignity of the autonomous or whole-person. If the inner hierarchy is grounded on its feet with its head in the stars, then all outer hierarchy tends to be life-enhancing. It is only when the whole-human is broken into dominant/submissive life-aggressive stances that the brain damage of pyramid disease takes over the individual and the collective.

[Jana]

"If we have no model or prototype then we cannot run toward the goal."

The model arises in situ of the daily experience through trying to be true to oneself. The pain and suffering around encroachment or abdication of our freedom is the compass pointing to the sovereign ideal. We have little idea how diminished, convoluted and codependent we are until we try and exercise our full rights as an individual. Often we have been sacrificing our truth and dignity for a petty security and comfort. As we do our core-building practices and extend our soul-mind out into daily life we begin to have a spacious forever evolving vision of what higher relationship and community could look like.

The development of the soul-mind can only occur in a community that is committed to trying to develop a container for the growth of the sovereign individual...Considering our bad habits and automatic programs of predation and sacrifice it is likely to take many generations. If you study the early American anarchists and libertarians like Josiah Warren you get some hints on how an enlightened society is structured.

Josiah Warren and the Sovereignty of the Individual*
In "New Social Arrangements" (1840) Josiah Warren insisted that our own happiness depends upon a proper respect for the happiness of others and that therefore we should not make social arrangements which require compulsion or the violation of the natural freedom of any individual. Warren claimed.' The great mistake of all society is the compromise or surrender of the sovereignty of the individual. This must not be. Society must be remodelled without this surrender. The sovereignty of each individual over his own person and property in all cases was the great idea that must work out the problem of happiness. This was the keystone of Warren's thought.

Each person has the right of defining individual liberty insofar as it pertains to his or her time and labor. Each and every individual should be his or her own executive, unconnected with the executive power of any other. "Each may differ from each." Consequently, Warren insisted that society must not lay down any forms of words whatsoever with the idea of enforcing conformity of opinion. "This is the great fundamental error of all organizations of society." Humans must not surrender even a portion of their natural liberty in response to the word equality.

Individual sovereignty is a right because we have no power to make ourselves like other persons. Warren believed that "the sights, sounds, tastes, and smells, together with the external and internal feelings which each has experienced, constitute the world."  These were collected differently and combined differently in each individual. Therefore, each individual was a world by himself or herself and should, "like the different planets of the universe, have his and her sphere to move in sufficiently distinct from others as to be able to pass through life without coming in collision-with each other."" Individuals may approach each
other in society as each chooses to do so, but they must maintain the liberty to be different. "Where the sovereignty of every one is respected, no one can offend another by any of his applications of it."

Disintegration of society was necessary, until each person became responsible for himself individually. Then there would be no connected interests. Each person
would become his own regulator with "no prescription for others against
their choice of laws, rules, regulations, religions, morals, politics, ethics,
manners, dress, etiquette modes, fashions, subordination, or in any other manner whatsoever." This, according to Warren, would lead to the most
perfect social order ever seen.

http://74.125.155.132/search?q=cache:3cfPL50su-IJ:mises.org/journals/jls/4_4/4_4_8.pdf+sovereignty+of+the+individual&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&lr=lang_en&client=firefox-a

[Francis]

Good stuff Jana. Individualism, as opposed to other isms like racism and sexism, is right and proper. I love this: "The model arises in situ"

[Jana]

Synthesis is just about the most fun thing there is. (found on Jana's grave stone)

I am nearly through all 37 parts of John Lamb Lash on youtube....fricking awesome...doesn't come close.

The difference between sovereignty (illumination) versus religious or God-focus (salvation) is best investigated through the brain research of Michael Persinger and V.S. Ramachandran.

Emotion and memory are very closely related. The hippocampus is located in the medial temporal lobe of the brain; it is involved in the complex processes of forming, sorting, and transferring information into memory. Religions, with their specific codes, laws, axioms, restraints and customs form a parental matrix which is attractive to the inner infant of the non-sovereign individual. Parents and God represent the ecstasy of the unitive experience, which is intimately tied up with the pain of punishment for transgression. Be good and you may get to experience unification through parental love. It is this seductive mix of arch pleasure/pain in people that feel they still need some outer means of self-regulation that is the ultimate seduction for adopting religious belief and joining religious sects. There is no greater pleasure than the ecstasy of kundalini firing through the brain and it is this combined with the sublimation and control of sex energy that fuels the religious ambition that ultimately results in the “cage” of dogmatism, fundamentalism and fanaticism.

Once caught in the net of good and evil, punishment and reward offered by religious indoctrination the subject is bound by the parent-child dynamics within to remain transfixed to a system of belief that damages both their capacity for freedom, original thought, creativity, agency, sovereignty and speaking their mind. This brain damage occurs via an internal chronic restraint stress representing “no way out” or learned helplessness, which decreases serotonin binding the in hippocampus (memory). And probably many other mechanisms of limiting the maturation of the brain such as the inhibition of dopamine in the corpus callosum, leading to the reduced transfer of information between the hemispheres. Plus mechanisms of reduced brain cleansing and heightened agitation/activation due to perpetual chronic guilt/blame, original sin, and fear of transgression scenarios involved in the religious mindset.

To move beyond the religious brain to a society of sovereign individuals requires the lucid introspection and revelation of these ecstatic and brain damaging mechanisms involving child rearing and the seductive cage of the religious philosophical-emotional dramatic institution. Through extensive detoxification and metamorphosis and through conscious social change practices that facilitate psychological and neurophysiological spring cleaning, we can begin to rise above the fatal attraction of the forces of limitation and restraint already established deep within us.

[Francis]

Like everything else in the brain, memory primarily serves the emotional center. Lucid introspection and revelation of ecstatic and brain damaging mechanisms is the whole point of psychoanalysis and religion. In the former case, we're fleshing out the automatic associations that form the patterns of unconscious reactions. In the latter, we're laying down more in hopes of overwriting any 'bad' patterns of automatic associations. Neither seems to work for everybody. The problem with psychoanalysis, as I see it, is that it leaves a vacuum. A blank slate is created and the person needs to be prepared to fill the void with less toxic associations or else why bother? Religion usually supplies it's own prefered set of associations which is fine as long as they 'work' Many times they don't work very well and in the worst cases a toxic cocktail of personal and religious associations makes for real trouble.

[Jana]

Trouble is we are a multiplicity of conflicting aspects associated with the different levels and states, which is fine until you try and include another in your life. ...(Re: The Hopeless Complexity of Relating).
The only relief I am getting is by stopping thinking and dropping into the heart...the brain with its scenarios will exhaust one completely. I am getting that if it is not right before me...its a fiction...and even when it is before me it still is a fiction of temporary state perception. As you get older you just don't have the strength to carry a lot of weight in the head.

[Francis]

Forget lines, levels, etc, unless you want to give yourself a headache. Breaking it down from scratch, I use this model:

There are three ways to form an interpersonal relationship:

1) One person is primarily a supporting actor the other person’s play.

2) Each person takes part-time off from being the lead actor in their own play in order to play a supporting role in the other person’s play.

3) Both people are supporting actors in some third person’s play.

All of these can be healthy or dysfunctional. Case one is rigid hierarchy.  Case two is best for childless lovers and friends. Case three is good for devoted parents and colleagues. Most people are in all three cases with various people at any given time. At least this scheme gives some rough benchmarks for guidance on how to relate, in general terms, to our friends, lovers, colleagues and kinfolk.

Sovereignty then is taking directorial control of one’s own play. As well as consciously and freely choosing what roles to play in other people's plays.

[jimtzu]

Sovereignty then is taking directorial control of one’s own play. As well as consciously and freely choosing what roles to play in other people's plays.

i like that

[Jana]

Yea, I like it too, can I quote it please.

Also can you elaborate on choosing what role to play. Wouldn't you have to modify your behavior, energy, empathy etc...in order to choose a role in another's drama...don't they just assign you whatever role they feel like?

[jimtzu]

Yea, I like it too, can I quote it please.

Also can you elaborate on choosing what role to play. Wouldn't you have to modify your behavior, energy, empathy etc...in order to choose a role in another's drama...don't they just assign you whatever role they feel like?

being assigned a role in someone else's drama depends on how integral (  ) you are in "their" life.  other than the rare cases where someone is so caught up in themselves to actually have a "script", there's a certain improv aspect to it all, with gestalt overtones...  at least that's my take on it.. Francis probably has his own ideas...