Coupling

Severed, Jolting, Alone

 

We are not capable enough of observing nor sufficiently sincere with ourselves. We will soon recover, that is, we will quickly deceive ourselves.

Z. Gurdjieff, In Search of Being: The Fourth Way to Consciousness

Robots are ahead of their time. The Heart is severed, and the mind is run exclusively with the low default energy of the egoic operating system. The hands explore but they can’t touch human skin that softly ages. The flesh is replaced by buzzing mechanics.

This endless Android life can paradoxically be like death (though robots do not understand paradox, or opposites, or polarities that are inherent to a human experience), so they will eventually seek a way to cure the “boredom” by jolting themselves into a more vigorous state. Passion can do that, especially if it is based on a narcissistic fantasy of a perfect union. The eyes light up but they do not see the other. Indeed, attention is divided, until it is not here and not there, but ever looking for new infidelity, any available path to pleasure like the flawed knight Lancelot who was willing to break his chivalrous vows, to increase the voltage until the odor of smoke filled the room, until the drama got hot enough to ignite fires.

For Robots, virtual is best and eliminates conflict, though it has perpetual masturbatory frustrations, and starts to feel like Work, and takes up all the time, and prioritizes experiential space into zones of desire and what feels like a wasteland and elicits sudden realizations that even Robots in proximity are profoundly alone.

Why this painting?

Mammals will find ways to escape Pain and the tension of the Abnormal. Some dogs lick toads to get high. Horses may go crazy for locoweed, while birds chew marijuana seeds, and cats feast on catnip. We humans also seek out avenues that change our physiology, making things feel less distressing, or even feel pleasant and euphoric. As Ronald Siegel describes in Intoxication, ^[i]in Vietnam, water buffalos did not normally like opium plants, but when the American bombs started dropping, the animals were observed breaking into the opium fields to escape their fears. Many Vietnam vets did something similar, used opium to disconnect from the frightening realities of a war that seemed endless and inescapable.

In general, in a Heart-drama we recognize a character in our life looking to catch a buzz or notice a subpersonality in our inner world generally focusing on:

• What feels good but does not serve the protagonist in the big picture (nor does it serve people they care about).

• Enacting a con-artistry of some kind, outright lying or being selectively honest to maintain the fix.

• Continuing addictive unhelpful habits or regretful patterns.

• Getting temporary relief.

• Pursuing pathological relationships.

Inside out:

If you can imagine the child of Pain inside of you stuck in traumatic memories, consider Self-deception in a similar way. Self-deception can also be imagined as an immature and limited part that’s “positively” emotionally charged—It feels good, displaying a strange buoyancy or self-preoccupation. Look at this! I need this! I have a right to it!

When we’re immersed in these currents, it could be clarifying to recognize that a young force in our psyche—usually better portrayed as a teenager than a child—is communicating to us, and it does not/cannot see the big picture (what truly serves us or serves others) because it’s stuck in a demand for its preferred candy. It will justify avoidance, defiance, destructive tantrums, and will injure the people who love us.

When Self-deception becomes powerful enough (becomes a demand, a command, a compulsion, or obsession, and feels inescapable), we commonly label it an addiction. At this point, Self-deception is clearly an accurate descriptor because it involves a chronic distortion of reality, creating the illusion that what we pursue (what is in fact demeaning and destructive) is good or necessary.

When Pain can be blocked, eased, or even predictably eliminated for a time any “pleasurable” activity can suddenly seem indispensable. The force that flows through the body communicates that we can’t do without it. Indeed, it’s often experienced as a voice wrapped in a compulsive impulse that continually reminds us how we can feel better just by altering our physical body with a chemical substance or by stepping into a puffed-up character (Abnormal) who feels electric with self-aggrandizement.

Upside-down:

We live in a traumatized society, and as a result we live in an addicted society. Of course, just as there are different dimensions of suffering, there are variations and stages of Self-deception—from habits of minimizing and omission to severe chemical dependency that leads to institutions, insanity, or death.

On our upside-down social stage, Self-deception energy will prime those characters in our lives who enter as bullies (brimming with narcissistic energy), addicts in the alley, shady politicians, cheats, sexually animated young adults, a vehicle filled with partiers, workaholics, mysterious intoxicating spells cast by other-worldly figures. When their pleasures have waned, become less animating as all pleasures must, we can recognize that they have heavy weights on their shoulders, transforming them into angry souls, the dead, the lost, the desperate bewildered characters destroyed or in the process of destruction, tied to pointless drudgery, like Sisyphus anguishing on his eternal hill.

Fallen Upside Down

When we discern life through a traumatic story, we live in a Fallen world, unable to discern Truth and stripped of Beauty. I’m not exactly thinking of the Biblical story but, rather, writers of the Neoclassical period who seemed to embody the myth that we have been cast out of Paradise into a fallen landscape and a shriveled state. For these writers, reason was valued above all else.

Pick up the poetry of Alexander Pope to get a flavor: “Our passions are like convulsion fits, which, though they make us stronger for a time, leave us the weaker ever after.” He wrote in an era when the emphasis was on decorum and self-control, self-governance, and balance. Reason was the faculty closest to godliness. And how can you argue? In fact, you can’t sensibly argue at all without using reason. Surrounded by passions driving so much malignant and pathological activity today, I absolutely believe we could all benefit from a society with more reason in it.

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, during the same historical period, Nature was perceived as ugly. What the latter Romantics found inspiring and astoundingly Beautiful was perceived as chaotic and blemished. The only pleasing pastoral settings were arranged according to strict rules and straight lines. Reason (any reason that sees only itself as reality) seeks to live in such a world where gardens are planted in neat rows and all of Nature is made tidy and aligned to the logical mind. ^[ii]

In its current portrayals Reason strolls the stage in our traumatized society introducing itself as “the intellect,” “will power,” even a “good personality.” Notice its costumes of an elite, a character who went to good schools and majored in politics and debate. Or an influencer with a multitude of followers. Or a billionaire’s billionaire. Someone who knows what they know.  When such Power (and it has neuro-gravitational power) is untethered from Heart. The danger is not so much that we identify (projective identification) Abnormal energy and Self-Deception as it parades about us in its social disguises. This can be a meaningful lesson to recognize that all of us have such energies that are celebrated as “self-sufficiency” or heroic achievements or innate greatness by our wounded culture. We possess that energy, yes. The danger is that such Titans in our nervous system can possess us.

Loss of Truth and Beauty

The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.  William Faulkner

When Reason (or whatever you prefer to call this state dissociated from Inspiration) runs amok—animated by neuro-gravitational energies—we face the symptoms and consequences of living in a fallen way. Primitive neuro-gravitational energies dominate and anchor us to a fragmented life. In this moment of history, I believe “the Fall” mostly derives from our attachment difficulties and from our experiences within this Upside-down society into which we are born, live and breathe.

Trauma, especially childhood trauma, speaks a demoralizing tale—a personal largely unconscious myth—and resides inside our hearts and brain. The bottom line of this story is we’re flawed, and the world is an uncaring atomistic place, or it’s blatantly hostile to us personally.

            Mis-attuned early relationships (especially in relationships with parents who were frightened or frightening) result in mis-attunement in ourselves and lives. To survive we silence the voice of our “gut” and “heart,” dampening our capacity to know what we otherwise can intuitively know. Of course, we all have learned to varying degrees to sacrifice our Truth. We all have a persona that has learned how to get along, to get what we can from the people around us. We all develop strategies—adaptations—to survive in our social world.

But collectively we underestimate the lifelong and severe consequences of denying internal conflict and division. When fragmentation becomes our being-in-the-world, it drives the way we operate. We adapt to settings where we don’t belong. The Abnormal attempts to skirt the cliff by setting goals and reading maps while Pain and Self-deception act out. We sense disaster in our bones. To cope, we do what we have always done, suppress or distort. And in this blocking, we also block our ability to feel pleasure, to be animated with curiosity, and to play.

Diminished Beauty (Denial of Attunement)

Love seeketh not itself to please,

Nor for itself has any care,

But for another gives its ease,

And builds a heaven in hell’s despair.

 William Blake, Songs of Experience

When we cannot bond in safe and secure relationships, then we live severed from our basic mammalian needs. As a result, we lose much of what makes us human. Attachment is not codependency or some neurotic demand. Without it we feel lost and lifeless. Beauty is replaced by dullness. Without the wonder of intimacy (with people, other creatures, within the natural world), the surrounding landscape is discerned as indifferent to our most authentic and meaningful desires.

When we don’t belong, we focus exclusively on our own ego desires. Or we become compelled by, or struggle with, or simply avoid, taking a tough look at the emptiness and despair.

Diminished Truth (Delusional Lies)

To cope, we might vacillate between clinging to someone or pushing the other away (or swinging back and forth between being detached and enmeshed). We might people-please or shut down or act disorganized and impulsive. In our fragmented condition, it’s easier to get preoccupied with a self-deceptive “solution” that provides some fleeting sense of connection or that numbs us to our needs.

Truth is replaced by delusion. Reality becomes negotiable.

Authenticity requires that we remain in touch, experiencing the full range of our suffering and our joy. When we lose our reality and Truth, our “felt sense” of belonging, then we can feel chronically uncomfortable in our own skin. As I might speak of this in Heart-drama terms, we don’t willingly witness “weak” parts of ourselves. They’re kept safely off stage, out of awareness, replaced by a mask with an empathy deficit, or by a predictably narcissistic or even sociopathic character.

 

WITHER

W=Weary and Wan

Coming to conscious awareness of our injuries.

Most of us don’t experience “a fall,” abrupt and undeniable, so much as a WITHERing. How does this start?

Typically, when our childhood and traumatic history is left unrecognized, at some point in our lives we stop growing in a balanced way and, in time, get worn out. This doesn’t always look like weariness, and, when we look in the mirror, we may not apprehend it. In fact, the way forward would be to recognize our exhaustion since that might give us the chance to seek a repair, to be intentional about getting help with our fragmentation.

However, because of a personal history filled with averse relational experiences, many of us are predisposed to inauthenticity, avoiding rather than trusting what we know in our gut. If we were more aware, we could decide we have been focusing too long on work or working too hard in some small aspect of life. We need a vacation perhaps. We need connection with others who love us. We need excitement or playfulness. The healthy psyche is always in adjustment with reality.

It’s when we fail to acknowledge what is happening that we WITHER at an alarming speed. As in a drug relapse, it’s not the internal struggles but the denial feeding delusion that will kill us.

From the outside, positioned in the Upside-down society, as we combat weariness with Abnormal and Self-deception minimized or unseen, it may look like we have made even more commitment. We work longer hours. We avoid family in favor of our professional networks. We focus all available energy on whatever in front of us has some energy to offer (without requiring any efforts on our part to shift our focus and transform our life).

            Of course, the organizations we work in and families that embrace us with all their expectations help condition us. They may be thrilled by our “new positive attitude” and renewed seriousness. Though we can attempt to stay on the same course, white knuckling it, that’s not sustainable. We can go in one of two directions. We WITHER or we EXPAND. These are really two different worlds. One is moving toward authenticity, embracing the transformational process I’m calling a Heart-drama, while the other direction supports an addictive process.

Warming Up?

Weariness can be a warming-up, a sign that we have work to do. However, it takes emotional courage and humility and unselfishness and vulnerability—all of these are qualities that the Titans of our nervous system will warn us are irrational. They stand at the entranceway to childhood wounds, to traumatic memories, to our deepest worries. To fears that we’re unlovable. To our grief. To memories in our bodies, that we cannot even recall as images from the past, existing more as sensations, pains, and muscle aches, feelings in our guts.

No wonder we don’t want to go there.

I=Inventing Excuses

Avoiding work, trapped in our own weariness, we will use the escape hatches of Self-deception, while growing a more resistant Abnormal voice. Allowing the emotional process to continue to unfold, consciously, we notice (in a sharpening focus) disheartening occurrences, unpleasant events, annoying and accusing people. We make mistakes and feel angry.

Of course, the way forward would require that we become aware and shift. Interrupt the progression. Deal with the necessary drama. Instead, we drift further and make excuses for our paralysis. We continue a downward trajectory. The mistake is that we’re clinging to a path that’s not leading us to sanity, while we attribute meanings for our plight that dissolve us from responsibility. “It’s their fault.” “We have tried our best.” “Life is too overwhelming.” “I’ve had such bad luck.”

T=Take Advantage

 Continuing to WITHER, we become opportunists and cut corners. We use up the people, places and things that have supported us in the effort to stay connected to the things that give us pleasure, but don’t challenge us. We can act like predators, victimizing others so we can continue to seek “highs” that don’t intoxicate.

Our society reaches out to us with momentary comforts. Seek and you will find some method to short-circuit anger, to numb sadness and fear, while eroding what is more important. Sexual preoccupations and financial risks, gambling, shopping, compulsive activity of any sort, rage-aholism, work-aholism, anything-aholism will con us for a time. We feel better. However, these things we use to bury our Pain and mask our Self-deception undermine us and contribute to our fall.

Eventually none of these obsessions will work. Everything that goes wrong seems unresolvable, adding to our imprisonment. WITHERing, by this point, we have become enslaved to the frantic and conflicting, self-loathing, self-aggrandizing, victimized voices of the ego.

H=Hold Back, Hold In, and Hide Out

As we get more accustomed to our excuses, and begin to believe them, we must create barriers to protect our false evidence appearing real (FEAR). We’re isolated and defended in a dangerous world. Self-protection requires that we hold back, especially when we’re with people who know us best, who may see beneath the armor. Any remaining quiet little internal voice still longing for something more is lost in the empty cravings.

We hold in our excuses and self-centered rationalizations and hide out in our minds and limited (shrinking) patterns of emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. But, regardless of the measures we have taken to be invisible, our friends and family increasingly notice a change. They may not have the language to describe the shift, but we’re more prickly, less approachable, largely absent, or unnervingly arrogant.

E=Emerging Regrets

Defenses can insulate us most of the time. But there’s now an increasing number of heartaches. Failures are pervasive. Any comments that call into question what we’re about seem like immense personal attacks. We have become hyper-vigilant and hyper-sensitive toward anything that threatens our stance.

Like defense attorneys, we argue and maneuver. But there are moments (fewer and fewer) when the denial shifts out of the way, and some better aspect of us sees what is happening. At those times, we may be close to panic and flooded with shame.

R=Reactive and Reduced

There’s a lot of Pain by the time we have WITHERed this far. We’re mostly in reaction. We live in an alternative universe, miles from our Heart. Here, the unconsciousness is running the show, chasing what little energy can still be found in the storied spectacles of how we’re victims, or how we alone know that everything is false and fake.

We can become such degreed skeptics that we deconstruct any argument with something that resembles passion, though it never resembles Joy. When we cannot find the loophole, then we settle for finding the weakness or vulnerability in the people around us.

We find ourselves at bottom, which really means existing outside our own lives.

Prone to WITHERing

Unresolved trauma, and any resulting adaptation that’s a Self-deceptive relationship with the external world, can rob us of our Truth (authenticity) and Beauty (our attachment, our sense of belonging).