How Not To Be

[Z...]

I felt extremely bad when one of the dogs, Sebastian, had a life-threatening problem and yet I didn't recognized it nor was able to help him at all. Instead of doing something about it, I used all the pain to shut myself even more and justify complex theories that I knew it all along and had partaken with the solution when clearly I did not. I would scan the events, find something that I knew about (i.e. a drug used) and blow it out of proportions to justify in my mind that I was doing something all along.

Hi Psyche,

FWIW during our interactions regarding dog health I got the impression that you are quite uncomfortable when it comes to hands on things. Understandable, same as any veterinarian would be extremely uncomfortable doing anything on humans, unless there was a life threatening situation.

Now by your own admission it looks like you never really took charge of the health of human members of the crew and this doesn't quite add up. If this was your true calling this should have come naturally and it is something to ponder upon. My general impression was that for a medical professional you are extremely buttoned up and not particularly approachable or inquisitive in human to human interactions. I am just saying , you are prefect scientist and researcher ( and BTW there is nothing wrong if you follow up on someone else' inspiration, you did this bit in thorough and methodical way which has helped many people here) but you don't strike me as a comfortable practitioner.

I am sure that you are dealing with a lot at the moment and I hope this is not too much, but I do think it may be worth for you to examine what is at the root of this blockage which is stopping you to realize full potential of your wast theoretical knowledge.

 

[Laura]

Now by your own admission it looks like you never really took charge of the health of human members of the crew and this doesn't quite add up. If this was your true calling this should have come naturally and it is something to ponder upon. My general impression was that for a medical professional you are extremely buttoned up and not particularly approachable or inquisitive in human to human interactions. I am just saying , you are prefect scientist and researcher ( and BTW there is nothing wrong if you follow up on someone else' inspiration, you did this bit in thorough and methodical way which has helped many people here) but you don't strike me as a comfortable practitioner.

Indeed, it did not seem that being a doctor was Psyche's "true calling" as you put it. But you are also right that, once she was pointed in the general direction, she did excellent research, reviewing and synopsizing with only a little light touch of guidance here and there when she would get into tunnel vision and forget all the other related things.

It wouldn't have mattered to all of us here if Psyche had just said:"Peeps, I'm trained, I can do mechanical stuff on people who are unconscious and I can regurgitate on tests with the best of them, but I'm really a complete klutz at human relations..." Well, actually, it would have mattered: we would have LIKED such honesty. We would have said: okay then, that's what you are good at, so you need to do it, but also you DO need to practice learning about people and stuff and you'll need some mentoring on that.

 

[Gaby]

I am sure that you are dealing with a lot at the moment and I hope this is not too much, but I do think it may be worth for you to examine what is at the root of this blockage which is stopping you to realize full potential of your wast theoretical knowledge.

It is not indeed too much too ask as it has exercised almost the entire time of my "adult" life. I hereby admit "conflict of interest": I felt relieved by disclosing, so I'll do some more of that. Again, beware of my private logic, or rather, you all can see it, I'm speaking to myself: I hope to beware of my predator mind and I hope I'm reaching somewhere so everybody's effort are not wasted. At least someone will learn something out of all of this. Geez, it reminds me the poster of the Titanic sinking. Okay, I'll try to leave the melodrama out... Private logic, please cooperate.

I admit I hate being a doctor. Not so much because I don't want to help people, but on the contrary. I want to help people and I feel that through the doctorness I don't do it. My first realization of that probably was the first day I put a step on a hospital. It was horrible. I was probably 18 or 19 years old back then. I didn't knew what hit me or if it has ever left me, but I became depressed. I enjoyed the basic medical sciences: how stuff works (i.e. physiology, anatomy, biochemistry). But my conditioning through parenting and peers is just to stick to it and make it work. By the second time I was having serious realizations of career choice, it was the time I had to choose specialty. Because you see, you are not supposed to be a mere general practitioner, I had to be a specialist in something of course! I was 22 years old when I had to choose. I knew that interacting with people and prescribing endless lists of pills was something I did not want to do. Hey, it seems I was smarter back then!! And it seemed to me that the surgical field produced more immediate relief and clearer indications. Although that might be a retrospect interpretation. Surgery, it was heart surgery. It looked like a very dedicated and disciplined field which was done in team work and required a lot of sacrifice and it was a male predominant field. I liked the challenge and the call, and I chose it. Finally, I'm doing stuff. Oops, unfortunately males in [I'm leaving the country out, not that it matters but more to respect their privacy] turned out to be jerks. Like the kind of people you meet in a messed-up world that promotes psychopathic competition. Needless to say, things were not necessarily easy for a person like me who has a heck of a lot of trouble in sorting out herself emotionally.

I sticked to it. It was that bad I did some serious soul searching which ended up with me arriving here 8 years ago AND I'm still soul searching. So that is the short version of the story!

I LOVE researching and sharing it despite the facts. Private logic beware! It seems to me that the problem has been in misrepresentations of perceptions and whatnots. I projected my mother into Laura, but it was my real genetic mother who wanted me to be a doctor (although she swears to me she didn't, this was 3-4 years ago which makes me feel completely insane and like I'm losing it because I swear she did). And using people around me as screens for my projections (i.e. genetic mother's expectations gets projected into Laura), I feel like a reenacted the whole thing of the doctorness and what was expected of me and of course, I'm supposed to be helping out and working and how come I could not do something for which I have spent my entire "adult" life in. In fact, I've been in Uni since I was 17 years old!!! I mean, common?!

I'm actually pretty good with people right now, as long as it is not doctory stuff. I actually joke with them and that seem to help them much more than the doctors taking care of them. Anyhow, yes, I feel like a little kid that has been rebelling ever since. Only that it is not fun.

Does it matter what I want? Can I make a difference anyway?

Private logic beware, but it seemed to me this whole late deterioration started with people's praise for something I don't have a hold of, namely, my feedback to shellycheval in "the cause of my disconnect" [if I remember the name of the thread correctly]. I felt uncomfortable because of being a fraud thing. As long as I was sharing research in the health section and even if some people praised something that I posted in the health forum, that didn't made me uncomfortable. That made me feel actually pretty neutral. I was happy doing that. But I didn't felt good about receiving praise for my feedback to shellycheval. Her thread hit something in me and I wanted to partake in the solution to that problem that has exercised me. After that, it all went down the tubes. Meaning, I don't have a hold on that or me.

FWIW.

 

[Joe]

I admit I hate being a doctor. [...] My first realization of that probably was the first day I put a step on a hospital. It was horrible.

Why did you decide to go back to it last year?

 

[The rabbit]

Its great having strong points Psyche.I remember when I was accepted at acting school in London.It soon became hard work when it became obvious that the school did not want us to do what we were strong at , but to work on what we were weak at.

This group and the work involved here is to find the real us.You know this.I know this.Why on earth you run away from people who genuinely care for you i do not know. For you to be dishonest in their presence is totally beyond me.

There are billions of people out there on this planet you have to be dishonest with in a strategic enclosure sort of way , but if you can not be honest with those you know and who hope for nothing more than your growth as a human being then you must know you are lost. As Laura wrote, if your a Klutz your a klutz.Big deal get over it. And make one of your lessons not to be a klutz. If you don't know how to do something ask for help.I read some ones posting signature a while back.It said the stupidest question , is the one not asked.or something like that.

Stop cheating, be honest and you can confront that which we call the predator.Which is YOU!

 

[obyvatel]

This post is regarding the feedback and mirroring process that goes on in this forum.

The utility of the process and why it works has been well explained already. Another interesting factor is the 3rd party reaction to the feedback. We see quite often that the feedback can be reasonably received by the person it is intended for, but some other members get very offended by it. They may express it directly, coming to the "support" of the person receiving the feedback or they may choose to keep silent in the moment but continue to harbor resentment in private. Eventually, the person could sort of "blow up" with a disproportionate reaction to some other incident, which may be quite dissimilar in context and detail to the initial "offending" event. So, it may be of some value to explore this 3rd party reaction to feedback/mirroring.

What happens when we observe another person getting a mirror? The answer to the question could be different for different people. We could put ourselves in the position of the person and have a vicarious experience of the mirror. If the issues in question are what we can identify in ourselves or have given such issues some prior thought, then we can have more clarity on the issue. We could just feel sorry for the person concerned. We could also get offended and angry. How we deal with these feelings is important. One way which is often repeated in the forum is that we could have some unexamined issues related to the same theme that is being mirrored. This repressed data is not integrated into our consciousness. Such repression is often a primitive defense mechanism for preventing a positive personality disintegration as Lobaczewski stated in political ponerology. It is helpful in such cases to start one's own thread to discuss and get feedback from the network regarding this issue.

What happens if we do get offended but choose to hide it and harbor resentment in private? We go down a slippery path. A perceived feeling of injustice comes up. We start thinking that the person receiving the mirror has been "disrespected". We may tell ourselves that if we speak up, we will be similarly disrespected. Previous experiences of suffering real or imagined disrespect and humiliation may come up and our subconscious (or system1) which specializes in associative thought may start building a story out of it. We would start to reason from this place, but as Lobaczewski wrote (in Laura's quote a few posts back), such reasoning will be essentially faulty. Our thinking would likely start having a paramoralistic flavor. "It is not healthy for anyone to see pathology in everyone who does not agree with the party-line". "Nobody has a right to diagnose another person and use psychological labels over the internet". "This cannot be a path with a heart". etc etc

To step back from this point is possible imo. We have to engage back our critical, rational faculty (system2) and slow down. Feeling of disrespect in such a context is associated with an implicit sense of a psychological contract which defines boundaries of what is or is not acceptable. All of us interacting here did read and acknowledge the "forum guidelines" .

It says there that the vision is

To create an environment for the stimulation, development and then the alignment of objective consciousnesses as defined and described by the Cassiopaeans with the able help of Georges Gurdjieff, Mouravieff, Castaneda, and many other sources available to us.

The mission is

The Evolution of Humanity.

The methodology is

*Facilitation of the creation and the sharing of objective knowledge by providing the framework/resources/moderation and "elder brother guidance."

and the first topic mentioned there is "psychopathology". When we encounter this term for the first time, we usually have very little concrete idea as to what it means though the term may seem familiar and we may think we know what it means. We can engage in intellectual discussions on this topic and lament the state of the "ponerized" world, all without a visceral understanding of what the implications are. In this context, what Laura wrote about implicatory denial in the Wave quoting Richard Cohen may be relevant

The third kind of denial is termed by Cohen as implicatory denial where there is no attempt to deny either the facts or their conventional interpretation; what is ultimately denied are the psychological,political and moral implications that follow from deep acknowledgement.

Such a deep acknowledgement of ponerization and psychopathology would entail that we accept that all of us are affected by it in lesser or greater degrees. That does not make us psychopaths but if we wish to view ourselves and others objectively, as "the universe sees us", then we need objective mirrors. If humanity - which includes us - is to evolve, we need to first have an accurate assessment of where we stand today. The degree to which we are shocked by a mirror bears testimony to how far our view of ourselves and others are removed from objective reality. We have the choice to grow by using the energy of the shock. We may feel that the mirror and feedback from the network is too harsh to bear and choose to reject it. But the mirror provided through life events is usually far more harsh - after all the universe does see us far more accurately than our own subjective impressions.

fwiw

 

[Windmill knight]

I admit I hate being a doctor. [...] My first realization of that probably was the first day I put a step on a hospital. It was horrible.

Why did you decide to go back to it last year?

I'd like to know as well. I think this is a key question, and if answered sincerely it might open the possibility of progress for Psyche.

 

[Gertrudes]

Just wanted to chime in and thank you all for the insightful posts on mirroring. I think this is really important material that could probably have a thread of its own on the public part of the forum.

This whole thread has really made me ponder and here are some thoughts: as a third party observer, seeing a mirroring process developing for me takes TRUST. This is being one big lesson since I have joined the forum. Before even signing up as a member I had the opportunity to observe some mirroring, and the whole process was so alien to me, so outlandish, that I couldn't even form any sort of opinion. I had never seen it before, so I simply had no frame of reference, the only thing I could do was observe.

Ironically, one of the things that helped me start to understand it after I joined was watching, for the first time in my life, Star Wars. It really hit me then, when observing the jedi council and particularly its interaction with Anakin Skywalker (later Darth Vader), how the forum was such a perfect mirror of that. Here we have a council of very experienced people trying to guide a young man that is blinded by his ego. The young man thinks the council is hiding things from him, which is partly a misjudgment, and partly his inability to understand that he can't possibly know everything the council elders know and discuss because he his simply not at that level yet, and progression would never be possible should everything be openly disclosed. Can you teach a 6 year old who has just started school complex math? Of course not. This is maybe a simplistic view, but the same happens within the jedi council, and so as within the forum, at least the way I see it.

Sometimes manifested adverse reactions to mirrors by a third party can be rooted in an internal misunderstanding of the individuals' own perception. In other words, when not understanding something we may immediately interpret that "non understanding" as disagreement, when these are two very different states. Perhaps because in our own self importance we feel the need to have an opinion about everything, perhaps because we feel an inner pressure to know exactly how we feel about something as soon as we're faced with it. Bottom line is that not understanding something sometimes (if not often) gets translated into disagreement. But can we disagree with something that we haven't fully understood? No, we can't. But we can have a defensive reaction to what deep down we acknowledge as lack of understanding.

At the moment if reacting negatively to mirroring I tell myself to dig deeply and try to explain to myself what is it that I'm not agreeing with. In some cases the mirroring may simply be hitting a cord in me, something of my own responsibility, not of the ones mirroring. If I can explain the mirroring and still maintain the disagreement, then bringing it to the network would be the next step. If I can't explain why I'm disagreeing then maybe I simply don't understand it, and may not yet have the knowledge nor data to do so. Accepting, really accepting that I don't know, and trusting others who are in the position of handling the subjects of which I lack understanding has been, at least for me, one of the most important lessons of being a third party observer.
I don't claim to have this figured out, I don't, it is being a lesson, rather then has been a lesson.

My two cents....

 

[Gaby]

Because in the culmination of the heat of the moment, I decided that the life that I hated so much was certainly much easier than all the Work. I remembered the lies I told myself at the hospital and how it felt, and thought that that was much easier. So I made my choice.

In doing so I crushed something deep inside of me and it is looking at me and screaming YOU FAILED ME!!! YOU FAILED ME!!! YOU FAILED ME!!! You, Psyche, abandoned me.

"How can I possibly trust you ever again?!" "You failed me".

And that is the truth.

 

[Joe]

Because in the culmination of the heat of the moment, I decided that the life that I hated so much was certainly much easier than all the Work.

What was so horrible about the Work in that moment that you decided to do something you knew you hated?

 

[clearmiddle]

I admit I hate being a doctor. [...] My first realization of that probably was the first day I put a step on a hospital. It was horrible.

Why did you decide to go back to it last year?

Thinking along a different line, what is a good job, in the context of the Work? Certainly not one that produces fewer or easier lessons. Isn't dealing with the day job part of the lessons? Isn't "I hate my job" an excuse?

Speaking from personal experience, of course, as someone who now would like to have made different choices earlier in life, but who is learning now from that "mistake."

 

[Gimpy]

Because in the culmination of the heat of the moment, I decided that the life that I hated so much was certainly much easier than all the Work. I remembered the lies I told myself at the hospital and how it felt, and thought that that was much easier. So I made my choice.

You picked the devil you knew over one that wouldn't feed you.

In doing so I crushed something deep inside of me and it is looking at me and screaming YOU FAILED ME!!! YOU FAILED ME!!! YOU FAILED ME!!! You, Psyche, abandoned me.

"How can I possibly trust you ever again?!" "You failed me".

Why are you doing this to yourself? Its as if you've internalized an abusive, screaming, angry toddler here.


It is never too late to change if its in you to do it.

But you do have to do it yourself.

 

[Buddy]

[quote author=obyvatel]
The utility of the process and why it works has been well explained already. Another interesting factor is the 3rd party reaction to the feedback. We see quite often that the feedback can be reasonably received by the person it is intended for, but some other members get very offended by it. They may express it directly, coming to the "support" of the person receiving the feedback or they may choose to keep silent in the moment but continue to harbor resentment in private. Eventually, the person could sort of "blow up" with a disproportionate reaction to some other incident, which may be quite dissimilar in context and detail to the initial "offending" event. So, it may be of some value to explore this 3rd party reaction to feedback/mirroring.[/quote]

I think sometimes our minds see a mirroring attempt that is intended to be helpful and pattern matches it with past experiences of actually being abused under a similar guise.

 

[anart]

[quote author=obyvatel]
The utility of the process and why it works has been well explained already. Another interesting factor is the 3rd party reaction to the feedback. We see quite often that the feedback can be reasonably received by the person it is intended for, but some other members get very offended by it. They may express it directly, coming to the "support" of the person receiving the feedback or they may choose to keep silent in the moment but continue to harbor resentment in private. Eventually, the person could sort of "blow up" with a disproportionate reaction to some other incident, which may be quite dissimilar in context and detail to the initial "offending" event. So, it may be of some value to explore this 3rd party reaction to feedback/mirroring.

I think sometimes our minds see a mirroring attempt that is intended to be helpful and pattern matches it with past experiences of actually being abused under a similar guise.
[/quote]

Yep, which is acting from the past, not the present - and which is why it's so beneficial to push against that 'acting from the past', do what 'it' doesn't like and, thus, forge new brain pathways by actually struggling (sometimes with every fiber of the self) against what you've "always done" (getting angry, shutting down, running away, blaming others, trusting no one, etc. etc. etc.). Ultimately, that's how you become Free to really think for yourself in the present and not just live from the past.

 

[Niall]

Sometimes manifested adverse reactions to mirrors by a third party can be rooted in an internal misunderstanding of the individuals' own perception. In other words, when not understanding something we may immediately interpret that "non understanding" as disagreement, when these are two very different states. Perhaps because in our own self importance we feel the need to have an opinion about everything, perhaps because we feel an inner pressure to know exactly how we feel about something as soon as we're faced with it. Bottom line is that not understanding something sometimes (if not often) gets translated into disagreement. But can we disagree with something that we haven't fully understood? No, we can't. But we can have a defensive reaction to what deep down we acknowledge as lack of understanding.

At the moment if reacting negatively to mirroring I tell myself to dig deeply and try to explain to myself what is it that I'm not agreeing with. In some cases the mirroring may simply be hitting a cord in me, something of my own responsibility, not of the ones mirroring. If I can explain the mirroring and still maintain the disagreement, then bringing it to the network would be the next step. If I can't explain why I'm disagreeing then maybe I simply don't understand it, and may not yet have the knowledge nor data to do so. Accepting, really accepting that I don't know, and trusting others who are in the position of handling the subjects of which I lack understanding has been, at least for me, one of the most important lessons of being a third party observer.

Not only that, but more often than not, real mirroring cannot take place at all because the subject is not ready to hear the plain facts as others see them. Even when people explicitly ask for a mirror or just simply for advice and help with navigating a problem, there have been many times - even with long-term members we know fairly well - where it was realised that we could not really do so, at least not to the extent, and in the right direction, that it seemed would most benefit the person's development, either because it seemed pretty clear that the person's actions were communicating the opposite of what was being asked, or because the way they asked was unclear and suggested conflicting motives or insincerity, or pointed to deep psychological issues that the mods are not equipped to help with... any number of things really. Genuinely open and honest exchanges of information are very rare, even on this forum, because people indicate in myriad ways that they do not want to see themselves as they really are... or, at least, "not yet..." "hmmm, maybe later"... "go gentle on me, just a little bit at a time please!"... but time's a-wastin'!