Splitting as a Symptom of Internal Considering

I never really understood what was meant by "Black and white thinking" until reading this thread. For the longest time I've considered it something I rarely ever fall into, but it's clear now that this is a total lie!

This is something that has actually been the bane of my life for the longest time, and I could just never put my finger on it. I have observed vertical splitting in nearly every relationship I've ever been in, every friendship, and of course my relations with parents. The thing is, I wouldn't call it black and white thinking, it's more like black and white feeling, i.e. runaway horses.

It's something I've learned to deal with over time. I'll be in a situation where someone isn't conforming to my internal expectations at that given moment. E.g. I'm feeling serious and a person is being silly (or vice versa), this feeling can become a judgement on their whole character. Or somebody turns up late for a planned event, and suddenly I see their entire being as lazy and incompetent.

When I say "I", I mean that immature, narcissistic part of the emotional center. My intellectual center sits on top of all this, and tries its best to keep a lid on the situation. In fact this center is very well developed, very balanced and reasonable. The problem is, it really struggles to control the crazy emotional center, and no amount of cold, rational thought can actually make me feel any different.

It takes a serious timeout, relaxation, pipe breathing etc. to get back into that state of being able to truly see and feel the balanced nuances of people and situations. Then I look back on myself in a given situation, and feel rather guilty and confused that I could have acted so stupidly. When I'm alone and relaxed, or with close trusted people in the right setting, it feels like I'm running on totally different 'Hydrogens'. (Interestingly, I often reach this kind of understanding state towards the evening/late at night, whereas in the daytime I'm more prone to internal considering. Maybe this indicates some kind of health issue, as sometimes I only seem to really come alive at night).

In other words, I really don't deal well with 'friction' in the moment, particularly emotional friction, but through recapitulation I'm able to gain some insight into what is happening. The idea of using these signs as an alarm clock appeals to me. Today I will be trying to put this into action and remember myself throughout a situation that 'it' doesn't like.

There's probably much more depth to this problem that I can't understand yet. Some of the posts in this thread show a level of self observation much clearer and deeper than my current abilities. Still, it is very good to know I'm not alone! Thank you for this thread Laura, and to everyone else who has shared.
 
Thank you for this post. Hit the nail on the head with me. I can be 'overzealous' sometimes and have been really trying to work on that. Internal recognition is the first step!
 
Laura said:
I just want to shout and shake them "wake up! The world and life depends on what you put into it!" And, of course, they are convinced that they have put a lot into it but it all just blew up in their face. I realize only slowly (a fault of my own brand of internal considering?) that many people are severely crippled by seeing the world as mostly bad and this is so deep and pervasive in them that almost nothing can break its control. That means it must be programmed into them at a preverbal stage of development.

GqSoul said:
The noted persistence of the "illusion of validity" that we maintain, and the vehemence with which we defend it, seems to depend on where we are on the spectrum of psychological health.

Chp 65: The Way of the Fool said:
The second stage, or circuit, the famous “anal phase,” is concerned with keeping or letting go of experiences in interactions with others. This second circuit determines how an individual will expand their identity to include others. The drive of the second phase is to interact with other selves. It is this drive that either brings about the congregation of groups, or results in paranoid withdrawal from anyone who is different. Trauma in the formation of this circuit (generally from 12 months to 24 months) can result in a lack of social feeling, a tendency to manipulate and exploit others for one’s own gain, and cruelty to others, whether conscious or unconscious. This is generally a result of a feeling of non-acceptance, that one is missing out on something that others have, the need for approval from others and basic lack of self-esteem.

...

Now, I want you to keep in mind the idea that an infant “shows a strong desire to participate in a world of others. Eventually his willingness for self-modification, necessary to win rapport with his world, is stronger than his desire for autonomy.” It is very important, and we will come back to it.

Those with strong positive second circuits imprints are able to feel for others in terms of a sense of concern or identity by association. They are willing to reach out and acknowledge the being of another.

However, due to the most common imprinting of our society, which is negative, most of this reaching out is in the context of territory, which involves emotional con games, pecking order, rituals of domination or submission. It has been noted that a lot of people with negative second circuit imprinting can be found in military or hierarchical organizations where there is constant striving to please someone in order to maintain or rise in status.

... This circuit is also very often referred to as the ego because it mistakes itself for the whole self.

Unholy Hungers said:
Once again, we touch the positive Great Feminine whenever we feel safe in the world, whenever we feel accepted and appreciated just as we are.

So I'm thinking that a benevolent second circuit a.k.a. trust in the universe would be the source of one's will to overcome splitting. And those who just can't do it, or find it difficult for some reason, have to mend their second circuit and "touch the positive Great Feminine." (Or maybe healing the second circuit and overcoming splitting are intertwined with each other.) We need a healthy and realistic self-esteem, and we need to dig up our "subconscious beliefs" -

Psalehesost said:
The concept of the Abyss also seems significant here, as it enters into the black-or-white thinking of certain people: It is a belief that has formed that a number of things (which things vary from person to person) are bad in absolute terms, and that if one is not constantly toeing the line with regard to these things, then one is basically evil, a monster, and doomed. An imagined "evil" self (subconscious belief) is kept under the mechanical restraint of rigid rules.

Anything and anyone else that does not conform to these rules is likewise easily condemned, and cannot be excused, because that, according to the rigid thinking, would mean to condone the "evil", associating with it, and thus being "evil" oneself.

- and use them to uncover our contradictions and hypocrisy. This would be the destroying of "buffers," unless I'm mistaken. And to do all this with self-compassion: seeing ourselves without beating ourselves up.

[quote author=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-compassion]
  • Self-kindness: Self-compassion entails being warm towards oneself when encountering pain and personal shortcomings, rather than ignoring them or hurting oneself with self-criticism.
  • Common humanity: Self-compassion also involves recognizing that suffering and personal failure is part of the shared human experience.
  • Mindfulness: Self-compassion requires taking a balanced approach to one's negative emotions so that feelings are neither suppressed nor exaggerated. Negative thoughts and emotions are observed with openness, so that they are held in mindful awareness. Mindfulness is a non-judgmental, receptive mind state in which individuals observe their thoughts and feelings as they are, without trying to suppress or deny them. Conversely, mindfulness requires that one not be "over-identified" with mental or emotional phenomena, so that one suffers aversive reactions. This latter type of response involves narrowly focusing and ruminating on one's negative emotions.
[/quote]

- where it sounds to me like "mindfulness" equates with "having a cool head" or "being in your right mind."

Here's how I conceive of the notion of cool head/right mind: it's like watching TV, and assuming you are unbiased/detached, you are able to laugh and be critical. It's easier to see/judge/laugh at/ridicule/hurt/etc others than it is to do it to ourselves.

So then something happens to you and you start reacting in exactly the same way as one of the characters - you become That Guy or That Girl. Your head is no longer cool nor are you in your right mind. And if in the heat of the moment you saw yourself be That Guy or That Girl, I think you would cease identifying with whatever got triggered and would be seeing yourself the way you watch TV. You might laugh.

If I saw myself that way all the time, it would be liberating, but would there be any "Me"? I would be the one who moves my lips, who holds veto power over my thoughts and actions, but nothing more. The clay which is also its own potter, molding itself.

Know what a roast is? Seen any of the Comedy Central ones?

[quote author=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roast_%28comedy%29]A roast is an event, almost exclusively in the United States, in which an individual is subjected to a public presentation of comedic insults, praise, outlandish true and untrue stories, and heartwarming tributes, the implication being that the roastee is able to take the jokes in good humor and not as serious criticism or insult, and therefore, show his or her good nature. It is seen by some as a great honor to be roasted, as the individual is surrounded by friends, fans, and well-wishers, who can receive some of the same treatment as well during the course of the evening. The party and presentation itself are both referred to as a "roast." The host of the event is called the "roastmaster." Anyone who is honored in such a way is said to have been "roasted."[/quote]

At the Comedy Central roasts, the celebrity guest of honor sits while comedian after comedian comes up to the podium and delivers excellent insult comedy targeting said guest and each other. It's quite inspiring to see the good-naturedness of the celebrity guests (who may themselves be comedians) and comedians who are able to laugh, and laugh hard, at jokes about themselves. That's non-internal considering. They can dish it out, but they can take it too.
 
Laura said:
My own experiences with splitting are as follows:

Someone says or does something that triggers a defense program.

I may know that person only slightly or for a long time - doesn't seem to matter.

The next thing I know, I am seeing everything they ever did or said as threatening, unfair, mean, deceptive, you name the negative trait.

What I learned from working with Ark was that this, itself, is Internal Considering. It's all about me.

What happens is that the repressed/suppressed emotional energy goes straight to the head because I am afraid to express it for fear of being further criticized/condemned/seen as petty or selfish. That emotional energy in the head is what is making the theories about whoever/whatever, seeing everything in the dimmest, grimmest, most unfair light possible.

This kind of thinking can go in any number of directions. You can start plotting your revenge... which you don't want to express because it sounds so mean and petty. Or you just feel like crying... only you don't want anyone to know that you are that hurt because it makes you look like a wimp. You don't want to talk about it, you just want to sit there and stew in your misery/rage/thoughts of revenge.

When he was able to get me to finally unload some of this kind of thinking, Ark smiled at me and said "what a GREAT theorist you are!" Because, indeed, my plans for revenge were masterpieces of cunning. But the funny thing was, once I had been able to verbalize it, I saw how silly it was and how untrue it was, that I was just basically doing the PMS routine only slightly different. Being able to say it out loud, talk about it, risk making a fool of myself by revealing what I was feeling, as petty and mean-sounding as it was, just completely dissipated and defused it.

That's what gave me the clue that exaggerating it, dramatizing it, getting campy about it even, was a good way to get it in perspective.

But you can only do this with people who know the score, who understand what you are doing, why, and how it works. In short, only with people you can really trust.

This was really REALLY helpful to me. Thanks for sharing it. Over the past week or so I got caught up in the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman verdict. I was especially caught up in the thread of comments on SoTT articles pertaining to it. I had the same kind of thinking towards a few commenters and was really fuming so to speak. I was also having difficulty with looking at things critically, although I didn't think so at the time, and was looking at the whole thing in a very polarized manner. Until today one of the commenters (wjtiems) posted this:

_http://www.sott.net/article/264054-We-ve-had-our-conversation-on-race-Now-we-need-one-on-guns

"What kind of brainwashing can so effectively cause the simplest of facts to be forgotten?"

This quote is on page 154 of the book '911: The Ultimate Truth', second revised edition, by Laura Knight-Jadczyk and Joe Quinn. I was re-reading that section trying to get a better understanding of the Zionisst/Israeli angle involving 911 and everything that has followed, when Zimmerman's verdict was broadcast. I paid no real attention to the case because I figured it was just noise to distract from the signal. I read media articles, saw coverage on the TV and slightly noticed a few facts begin to contradict and change. I thought nothing much of it. It was a sensationalized case and the media makes mistakes. Then I read those italicized words on page 154: "What kind of brainwashing can so effectively cause the simplest of facts to be forgotten? How does this happen?

At that moment I connected those words with the hype in the media. From that point I have made every attempt to focus on the evidence and critical thinking and I have been literally amazed at how 'the simplest of facts' have been 'forgotten'. In my opinion that question on page 154 has shown to be very relevant in light of things recently.

When I read this the blood literally left my face and I did not know what to think or how to even describe how I felt. So I thought about it and ran to the forum looking for something. Then I found this topic and when I read Laura's quote above, it explained the state I was in and I realize that the commenter's article made me aware that I had not been in my normal state of mind. It was a very shocking realization. I had no idea. These comment threads on SoTT pertaining to the case is a very good example of the phenomena discussed in this topic. Just thought I would share that. Thanks again.
 
happyliza said:
Although I have studied the major psychology books I do not have any of the cognitive science ones yet and only learn what is on the thread as well as be as introspective/self observing as possible. So I too have a long long way to go and the subconscious can be a beggar to penetrate together with the many hundreds of 'I's.

TBH, I haven't read the whole thread yet, but a large part of it. I just wanted to respond to you, happyliza, because you mentioned introspection. If I remember correctly: Timothy Wilson writes in 'The Adaptive Unconscious' that introspection isn't as good as we think it is. What does help is a network. He also speaks of inference which is another way of looking at our behaviour through the eyes of others. The way people respond to us tells us something about us, which is more objective than introspection. (Hope I am correct here. :D)

happyliza said:
I was wondering whether a better way to access the repressed memories and bahaviour may be through hypnotherapy? (I have studied this in depth now and wish to pursue training). By studying such threads as this it may be possible to devise objectively truthful questions for myself/sub-conscoius for a suitably qualified hypnotherapist to work with and maybe role play to test trigger points and their causes? Just a thought. I am interested to know - from Laura's vast experience with Hypnotherapy, when someone is truly hypnotised whether the sub conscious level can lie to itself? If a habit or predator or main feature is so deeply embedded in someone whether the disassociation/lie/self deception can affect the body's etheric field. Notwithstanding errant entities/attachments maybe I guess it depends WHO is talking and we have to get through that level first.

Have you thought of bodywork? I am thinking of doing this, since there is so much still present in my body. I would recommend Peter Levine's 'In an Unspoken Voice'. There is a thread on the forum about his book and I think it is worth the read. Especially, because you said this in your next post:

It is a similar but more controlled emotional shock and freeze that I get on all emotional situations – such as the example in my last post on this thread. It got worse I think due to having to deal with the psychopaths in my life – they too leave you totally tongue-tied but that is deliberate part of their mind games.

Not only did you have to deal with psychopaths, you also lost (custody of) your children. I can't even imagine what that must be like, happyliza, and I am really sorry to hear this.
Trauma gets frozen/stored in the body, if we can't find a way to work through it. You must also have suffered a trauma after the separation from your kids. OSIT.

When they do see me (for maybe one hour each time I try to see them) which is now only 2 x per year if I can get back to UK. My eldest daughter just sits there rigidly hardly any conversation feeling quite righteous and condescending as if she is just tolerating my presence. Conversation ends up being so false being under such scrutiny even though I try to ask open ended questions and be as light –hearted and caring as possible. This is despite a constant big lump in my throat due to the emotional situation. It strangulates me inside and takes ages to get over the overwhelming depression that descends on me each time I see them – even though my whole world totally lights up when they agree to meet. I am not lying to myself as I know it is just a form of ‘duty’ for them - but my joy is genuine – naturally. Most of my texts or messages never get answered – this has been ongoing since 1996. Plus they have cut off from my side of the family totally. Their father wouldn’t even contribute to his own son’s funeral – even though they all came. It so saddens me what a role model they ended up with by me relenting to my son (who felt sorry for his father being the one ‘ousted’) and letting him go to live with the alcoholic pathological. It was my intention to move towns with the kids – I wish I had – but hindsight is a killer.

Maybe your kids pick up on something in you while you are with them. Maybe you should stop trying so hard to be light-hearted. They are probably old enough to understand that this is very rough on you. Why not tell them that you have a lump in your throat and that you freeze and don't know what to say. That's not bizarre at all, you only see them twice a year. You have to get to know each other again and build up a new kind of relationship. And if they don't want to listen you could write down your thoughts and what you would like to tell them and keep your journal (and tell them that you have this journal that is for them), until the moment comes when one of them may ask for it.
 
There is lots of thoughtful input in this thread and I'd like to pull a few bits together because we have been doing quite a bit of discussing here; it's interesting how some of our discussions then get mirrored in something that someone else posts on that very day!

Note what Gimpy wrote here:

Gimpy said:
My folks are a couple of very wounded, dysfunctional people. I can't spend more than a week in their company without 'catching a mental cold'. That doesn't mean they are evil monsters. The truth is they're no better or worse than the majority of the public. Its a question of what can I, as a person, deal with, without falling into similar patterns of dysfunction?

Awareness is one of the keys. What are the limits of your awareness? Where do you hit your nose on a wall? Where does your brain 'shut off'? Answering those questions is a start. Once that's done, its possible to look at someone else and watch...and learn whether or not they are aware....and over time see if its surface awareness, or deeper than that.

Summing it up in a sentence is hard, but I heard this once and it stuck: "I love you, but I don't like you sometimes, and I can't live with you."

External Considering doesn't mean that you have to force yourself to live in miserable situations. As Gurdjieff pointed out, it is having a wide and deep knowledge of psychology so you can do what makes life easier for others AND YOURSELF. Gimpy has just described this. You don't have to hate people or assume that they are necessarily sick or defective in their own context. Some people are just asleep and have no possibility of waking up and we have to acknowledge that. And then we have to decide what is our proper response.

In cases where the individuals are simple, basically good-hearted people, (they can be family or friends) then we have to realize that they are not going to wake up, and just get along with them as best we can and try to be pleasant and attentive when we are in their presence. Different people have differing capacities to do this for different reasons: temperament, their own wounds in process of healing, and so on.

In cases where the individuals you have to deal with show signs of pathology (which can exist along a spectrum) which usually amounts to their own projective identification, then the problem of what to do takes on a bit more urgency.

As you know, projective identification is a process whereby parts of the ego are thought of as forced into another person who is then expected to become identified with whatever has been projected. The projector strives to find in the other, or to induce the other to become, the very embodiment of projection. In short, the other person tries to mold you (or anyone) into their image of what you should be. The problems come to the fore with the "inducing in the other" the embodiment of the projection.

Wikipedia gives a bit more on this:

Projective identification differs from simple projection in that projective identification can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, whereby a person, believing something false about another, relates to that other person in such a way that the other person alters their behavior to make the belief true. The second person is influenced by the projection and begins to behave as though he or she is in fact actually characterized by the projected thoughts or beliefs, a process that may happen outside the awareness of both parties involved.

The recipient of the projection can suffer a temporary loss of insight, a sense of experiencing strong feelings of being manipulated so as to be playing a part, no matter how difficult to recognise, in somebody else's phantasy. One therapist, for example, describes how "I felt the progressive extrusion of his internalised mother into me, not as a theoretical construct but in actual experience. The intonation of my voice altered, became higher with the distinctly Ur-mutter quality."

In everyday life, it can happen that the recipient feels almost kidnapped or coerced into carrying out the unconscious phantasy of the projector. In extreme cases, the recipient can lose any sense of self - to become inhuman, a moving bag of skin, with important symbolic messages rattling about inside - and may find themselves acting out in attempts at self-exorcism; the attempt to rid the self of projections or possession.

...
An example of projective identification is that of the paranoid schizophrenic who develops the delusion that he is being persecuted by the police; fearing the police, he begins to act furtively and anxiously around police officers, thereby raising the suspicions of police officers, who then begin to look for some grounds on which to arrest him. In such instances, they unknowingly project bits of their parents in their negative, punishing, powerful aspect on to the police...the family policeman in their heads.

What is projected most often is an intolerable, painful, or dangerous idea or belief about the self that the projecting person cannot accept (i.e. "I have behaved wrongly" or "I have a sexual feeling towards ..." ). Or it may be a valued or esteemed idea that again is difficult for the projecting person to acknowledge. Projective identification is believed to be a very early or primitive psychological process and is understood to be one of the more primitive defense mechanisms. Yet it is also thought to be the basis of more mature psychological processes like empathy and intuition.

So, in the above description of projective identification, we find splitting and internal considering writ rather large. But still, they are good examples because they are so exaggerated that we can get the taste of them so as to be able to catch the smaller and milder versions in our daily lives.

But more importantly, when we interact with persons who insist in projecting onto us their own beliefs about us, whether they project that we are a saint or a sinner, and this process PERSISTS, then there is a problem and you have to figure out what to do: can you distance yourself or do you just have to walk away?

Interestingly, the people who may tend to project great sanctity on another person can, in an instant, flip and see that person as all evil. As long as the projectee (coining a term here) makes the projector feel good, all is well. But the instant the projectee does or says something that makes the projector feel bad, then everything about the projectee is reinterpreted and that person goes in the trash as all bad.

I've certainly experienced this often enough which is one of the reasons I tend to strongly discourage people who come on the forum with that worshipful attitude. It's okay to acknowledge my labors for others, but don't start that guru schtick.

So, there's that. Next item with my comments in blue text:

Carlise said:
I never really understood what was meant by "Black and white thinking" until reading this thread. For the longest time I've considered it something I rarely ever fall into, but it's clear now that this is a total lie!

This is something that has actually been the bane of my life for the longest time, and I could just never put my finger on it. I have observed vertical splitting in nearly every relationship I've ever been in, every friendship, and of course my relations with parents. The thing is, I wouldn't call it black and white thinking, it's more like black and white feeling, i.e. runaway horses.

It's something I've learned to deal with over time. I'll be in a situation where someone isn't conforming to my internal expectations at that given moment. E.g. I'm feeling serious and a person is being silly (or vice versa), this feeling can become a judgement on their whole character. Or somebody turns up late for a planned event, and suddenly I see their entire being as lazy and incompetent. {Excellent examples of splitting/internal considering. Also notice that it is due to "projective identification" though this is just the everyday garden variety.}

When I say "I", I mean that immature, narcissistic part of the emotional center. My intellectual center sits on top of all this, and tries its best to keep a lid on the situation. In fact this center is very well developed, very balanced and reasonable. The problem is, it really struggles to control the crazy emotional center, and no amount of cold, rational thought can actually make me feel any different. {This is the part that makes you act civilly, lie to people about how you are feeling, and then you plan your escape.}

It takes a serious timeout, relaxation, pipe breathing etc. to get back into that state of being able to truly see and feel the balanced nuances of people and situations. Then I look back on myself in a given situation, and feel rather guilty and confused that I could have acted so stupidly.

{The problem here is that the chemicals of the emotions that were evoked during the "episode" haven't been metabolized. And in most life situations, can't be. If you have someone available that you can vent to, having a little objective rant, gets it out so that it doesn't affect your health and doesn't build up a backlog. Just because you are able to reestablish your calm state, doesn't mean you've brought the program to the surface and run it off the track! But this has to be done safely and with awareness. If done correctly, you are able to metabolize, little by little, the old stuff that is part of the program formation. Keep in mind this isn't just allowing yourself to get angry and express it. It is a process of expressing what is lurking inside in a controlled drama so you can LOOK AT IT.}


In other words, I really don't deal well with 'friction' in the moment, particularly emotional friction, but through recapitulation I'm able to gain some insight into what is happening. The idea of using these signs as an alarm clock appeals to me. Today I will be trying to put this into action and remember myself throughout a situation that 'it' doesn't like.

Here you have a good example of the ordinary, everyday, projective identification as described above. I placed in bold the key element in the last paragraph: I really don't deal well with 'friction' in the moment, particularly emotional friction.

What is being said is: "I don't like to feel bad and when I do feel bad, it changes how I view everything."

True for about everyone. But, as I mentioned earlier in the thread, the whole point of working on the self is to get to the point where you are not controlled by your negative emotions at all and that means that you have to bring them up, acknowledge them, look at them, understand their silliness and pettiness and that they really are childish because they are being generated by old programs of fear and anger at not being able to express yourself.

If nothing else, you can pace back and forth in a private space and just rant and dramatize, and make it as outrageous as possible.

I tell you one that I have done a few times and it is pretty effective. One of my kids would say or do something that hurt me. Well, since we have this working relationship, I would "put on the drama" which amounted to me speaking the lines from a Bill Cosby comedy routine. "I didn't carry you in my womb for 9 months to have you speak to me like that!" And of course, I would put on the cry face, quiver the lip, say a few "boo hoo hoos". The kids would join in with the lines from the same routine: "you know what is wrong with kids these days? BRAIN DAMAGE!" Then we may end up in a multiple part drama where someone else chimes in and says: "You were mean to me yesterday and I spent the whole night thinking about eating worms and dying only I couldn't think of the best way to prepare them so, as you see, I'm still alive and worm free this morning." "How was I mean to you?" "Remember when you said blah blah? It reminded me of when my mother used to say blah blah... It really hurt my feelings though I know you didn't mean it that way."

Yes, the process can get quite noisy and dramatic and emotional. Emotion gets expressed, programs get acknowledged, humor is brought in to make it less threatening to do so, and at the end, everybody understands everybody else.

In short, instead of feeling hurt and splitting and going off into internal considering, we try to deal with such things as close to in the moment as possible, not take ourselves too seriously, but still "throw the wolf a piece of meat." The emotions are there, the programs are there, the tendencies are there, and it is self-damaging to not realize this and find a way to deal with it without suppressing or repressing. In other words, it is a process of knowing the machine, observing the machine, and operating it from a position of being master, not slave.

Next:

Mariama said:
TBH, I haven't read the whole thread yet, but a large part of it. I just wanted to respond to you, happyliza, because you mentioned introspection. If I remember correctly: Timothy Wilson writes in 'The Adaptive Unconscious' that introspection isn't as good as we think it is. What does help is a network. He also speaks of inference which is another way of looking at our behaviour through the eyes of others. The way people respond to us tells us something about us, which is more objective than introspection. (Hope I am correct here. :D)

Exactly. See my example above. You can't go into introspection because that is usually Internal Considering or Patching Up, or active suppression. Body work is good, too, especially if it is deep and you can do some yelling and groaning in the process. Hypnosis? Too much like introspection on steriods. Of course, if you can go back to initial traumas and express them with the anger or fear or hurt you felt at the time, and the therapist is trained to help you do this, then that can be useful.

Muxel said:
GqSoul said:
The noted persistence of the "illusion of validity" that we maintain, and the vehemence with which we defend it, seems to depend on where we are on the spectrum of psychological health.
{Indeed. Persistence and defense that is a long-standing, immutable pattern of behavior defines a personality disorder. }

Chp 65: The Way of the Fool said:
The second stage, or circuit, the famous “anal phase,” is concerned with keeping or letting go of experiences in interactions with others. This second circuit determines how an individual will expand their identity to include others. The drive of the second phase is to interact with other selves. It is this drive that either brings about the congregation of groups, or results in paranoid withdrawal from anyone who is different. Trauma in the formation of this circuit (generally from 12 months to 24 months) can result in a lack of social feeling, a tendency to manipulate and exploit others for one’s own gain, and cruelty to others, whether conscious or unconscious. This is generally a result of a feeling of non-acceptance, that one is missing out on something that others have, the need for approval from others and basic lack of self-esteem.

...

Now, I want you to keep in mind the idea that an infant “shows a strong desire to participate in a world of others. Eventually his willingness for self-modification, necessary to win rapport with his world, is stronger than his desire for autonomy.” It is very important, and we will come back to it.

Those with strong positive second circuits imprints are able to feel for others in terms of a sense of concern or identity by association. They are willing to reach out and acknowledge the being of another.

However, due to the most common imprinting of our society, which is negative, most of this reaching out is in the context of territory, which involves emotional con games, pecking order, rituals of domination or submission. It has been noted that a lot of people with negative second circuit imprinting can be found in military or hierarchical organizations where there is constant striving to please someone in order to maintain or rise in status. {Notice also that this is related to Projective Identification.}

... This circuit is also very often referred to as the ego because it mistakes itself for the whole self.

Unholy Hungers said:
Once again, we touch the positive Great Feminine whenever we feel safe in the world, whenever we feel accepted and appreciated just as we are.

So I'm thinking that a benevolent second circuit a.k.a. trust in the universe would be the source of one's will to overcome splitting. And those who just can't do it, or find it difficult for some reason, have to mend their second circuit and "touch the positive Great Feminine." (Or maybe healing the second circuit and overcoming splitting are intertwined with each other.) We need a healthy and realistic self-esteem, and we need to dig up our "subconscious beliefs"

The above is striking to me because this is one of the things we were talking about in the house here on the very day this post was made. In particular, we were discussing it in relation to the ideas of vertical and horizontal splitting.

obyvatel said:
My understanding of vertical splitting is that it is like two or more "I's" with largely incompatible attitudes existing side by side without being consciously aware of each other. An extreme form of vertical splitting would be a case of MPD (multiple personality disorder). Vertical splitting is like two or more windows open on the computer screen running different programs.

Horizontal splitting could indicate a repressed layer which activates a particular "I" having certain fixed attitudes and characteristics in response to certain situations. It is like the code that launches a program window in the computer screen. A more appropriate image could be that of an island which has mountains and rivers and lush green valleys on its surface (vertical split) while in the portion under the water, it could be a dormant volcano (horizontal split). This is my current understanding which may or may not be accurate.

Since splitting seems to be tied to the instinctive substratum, it is most likely connected with the neuroception process. The brain acts on the neural image provided to it by the 5 exterior sense organs and through the interoception process called the "6th" sense organ by Porges which provides information about the internal state of the body. When this neuroception process is faulty, it presents an image of the environment/situation to the brain which is incompatible with the real situation at hand. The brain starts running with this image creating narratives and generating responses inappropriate to the real situation. If this view of the process is accurate, then there should be a sensation arising out of the neuroception process in the background of all the emotions, narratives, and even what can appear as logical thinking but wrongly applied to a faulty premise.

A couple of things come to mind from Lobaczewski: 1) selection and substitution and 2) schizoidal psychopathy which can be more or less severe along an entire spectrum.

The only way to understand selection and substitution in the garden variety form is to place it in the social context. Lobaczewski writes:

During good times, people progressively lose sight of the need for profound reflection, introspection, knowledge of others, and an understanding of life’s complicated laws. Is it worth pondering the properties of human nature and man’s flawed personality, whether one’s own or someone else’s? Can we understand the creative meaning of suffering we have not undergone ourselves, instead of taking the easy way out and blaming the victim? Any excess mental effort seems like pointless labor if life’s joys appear to be available for the taking. A clever, liberal, and merry individual is a good sport; a more farsighted person predicting dire results becomes a wet-blanket killjoy.

Perception of the truth about the real environment, especially an understanding of the human personality and its values, ceases to be a virtue during the so-called “happy” times; thoughtful doubters are decried as meddlers who cannot leave well enough alone. This leads to an impoverishment of psychological knowledge, the capacity of differentiating the properties of human nature and personality, and the ability to mold minds creatively. The cult of power thus supplants those mental values so essential for maintaining law and order by peaceful means. A nation’s enrichment or involution regarding its psychological world-view could be considered an indicator of whether its future will be good or bad.

During “good” times, the search for truth becomes uncomfortable because it reveals inconvenient factors. It is better to think about easier and more pleasant things.

Unconscious elimination of data which are or appear to be inexpedient gradually turns to habit, then becomes a custom accepted by society at large. Any thought process based on such truncated information cannot possibly give rise to correct conclusions; it further leads to subconscious substitution of inconvenient premises by more convenient ones, thereby approaching the boundaries of phenomena which should be viewed as psychopathological.

...Such a society, already infected by the hysteroidal state, considers any perception of uncomfortable truth to be a sign of “ill-breeding”. ... Telling the truth becomes immoral.

Now, bring that description down to person's home life, the attitudes of their family and peers, and you can easily see how habits of mind are inculcated. If a person is brought up in a family where "any perception of uncomfortable truth [is] a sign of ill-breeding," that is gonna be one heck of a program to overcome. Negative emotions are "bad" and expressing them is even worse. You must, at all costs, hide or suppress them.

Lobaczewski write:

Information selection and substitution: ... Unconscious psychological processes outstrip conscious reasoning, both in time and in scope, which makes many psychological phenomena possible: including those generally described as conversive, such as subconscious blocking out of conclusions, the selection, and, also, substitution of seemingly uncomfortable premises.

We speak of blocking out conclusions if the inferential process was proper in principle and has almost arrived at a conclusion and final comprehension within the act of internal projection, but becomes stymied by a preceding directive from the subconscious, which considered it inexpedient or disturbing.

This is primitive prevention of personality disintegration, which may seem advantageous; however, it also prevents all the advantages which could be derived from consciously elaborated conclusion and reintegration. A conclusion thus rejected remains in our subconscious and in a more unconscious way causes the next blocking and selection of this kind. This can be totally harmful, progressively enslaving a person to his own subconscious, and is often accompanied by a feeling of tension and bitterness.

We speak of selection of premises whenever the feedback goes deeper into the resulting reasoning and from its database thus deletes and represses into the subconscious just that piece of information which was responsible for arriving at the uncomfortable conclusion. Our subconscious then permits further logical reasoning, except that the outcome will be erroneous in direct proportion to the actual significance of the repressed data.

An ever-greater number of such repressed information is collected in our subconscious memory. Finally, a kind of habit seems to take over: similar material is treated the same way even if reasoning would have reached an outcome quite advantageous to the person.

The most complex process of this type is substitution of premises thus eliminated by other data, ensuring an ostensibly more comfortable conclusion. Our associative ability rapidly elaborates a new item to replace the removed one, but it is one leading to a comfortable conclusion. This operation takes the most time, and it is unlikely to be exclusively subconscious.

This is the process by which emotional energy - which cannot be destroyed - begins to run the intellect. Thus, a subconscious habit of automatic repression begins and subconscious selection and substitution of data begins, leading to chronic avoidance of the crux of the matter. This is the process of creating narratives to explain our unconscious motivations. The problem here is that, the smarter a person is, the better they are at elaborating whatever is needed to come to the "comfortable conclusion."

Lobaczewski then writes:

The emotionalism dominating individual, collective and political life, as well as the subconscious selection and substitution of data in reasoning, are impoverishing the development of a psychological world-view and leading to individual and national egotism. The mania for taking offense at the drop of a hat provokes constant retaliation, taking advantage of hyper-irritability and hypo-criticality on the part of others.

Again, scale this down to the individual and what you see is that repressed emotions which drive the subconscious selection and substitution are the substructure of an ego that is terrified all the time. This terror of the blocked contents of the subconscious leaves a person prickly and always on the lookout for some offense that can shore up their internal negative view of the world. Thus, projective identification, splitting, internal considering, etc are all intertwined in these types of processes.

This takes us back to Second Circuit imprinting and what GqSoul noted above that struck me as so insightful a connetion:

GqSoul said:
The noted persistence of the "illusion of validity" that we maintain, and the vehemence with which we defend it, seems to depend on where we are on the spectrum of psychological health.

<snip>

So I'm thinking that a benevolent second circuit a.k.a. trust in the universe would be the source of one's will to overcome splitting. And those who just can't do it, or find it difficult for some reason, have to mend their second circuit and "touch the positive Great Feminine." (Or maybe healing the second circuit and overcoming splitting are intertwined with each other.) We need a healthy and realistic self-esteem, and we need to dig up our "subconscious beliefs"

I suspect that fixing the Second Circuit isn't easy if it is possible at all. Because of some of the similarities to splitting that are included by Lobaczewski in the description of the schizoidal psychopath, we were re-reading that material here and one of us here pointed out the following bit: "several varieties of this anomaly, whose existence can be attributed either to changes in the genetic factor or to differences in other individual characteristics of a non-pathological nature."

In other words, the BEHAVIOR of what would be labeled a schizoidal psychopath extends along a spectrum both in terms of traits and causes. As we've been discussing above, a person can behave more or less schizoidally or psychopathically for any number of reasons. But the question right now is: what about the people who just can't go there? Those whose "persistence of the "illusion of validity"" is accompanied by vehement defense of same? Can we look inside and see what is going on?

So, let's look at this schizoidal psychopath:

**Carriers of this anomaly are hypersensitive and distrustful {Suppressed and repressed negative emotions due to selection and substitution}

**but they pay little attention to the feelings of others {probably because they are so busy engaging in projective identification.}

**tend to assume extreme positions, and are eager to retaliate for minor offenses. {the substructure of an ego that is terrified all the time}


**Sometimes they are eccentric and odd. {"When this neuroception process is faulty, it presents an image of the environment/situation to the brain which is incompatible with the real situation at hand. }

**Their poor sense of psychological situation and reality leads them to superimpose erroneous, pejorative interpretations upon other people’s intentions. {"The brain starts running with this image creating narratives and generating responses inappropriate to the real situation. ...what can appear as logical thinking but wrongly applied to a faulty premise."}

**They easy become involved in activities which are ostensibly moral, but which actually inflict damage upon themselves and others. {This is easy to understand based on the above. It's this kind of thinking that leads people to harm others for the sake of an idea or an ideology with which they have identified and through selection and substitution have validated in their minds as good, and those who do not meet this subjective criteria are "bad".}

**Their impoverished psychological worldview makes them typically pessimistic regarding human nature. {This is interesting because it smacks of the Authoritarian Follower type of personality. What is clear to me is that Authoritarian personality types do not necessarily have to follow the "constituted authorities" i.e. the PTB. They can also select an authority to follow who makes them "feel good" if they are a misfit in the world of the majority of authoritarian followers. The main characteristic of this personality is "submission to the authority" they have selected AND aggression directed against others in the name of that authority who do not adhere to the conventions endorsed by that authority.}

**They embitter other people’s lives {Obvious from what is described above.}

**When they become wrapped up in situations of serious stress, however, the schizoid’s failings cause them to collapse easily. The capacity for thought is thereupon characteristically stifled, and frequently the schizoids fall into reactive psychotic states so similar in appearance to schizophrenia that they lead to misdiagnoses. {This is the part that is interesting and is probably the cut between those that can be fixed and those that cannot. Collapsing and being unable to think clearly is one thing, going psychotic is another. This needs looking at more carefully, I think. Obviously, anybody can split and go off into internal considering, but when it goes to this extreme - and we've certainly seen it a time or two - then we are forced to consider that the person really does have some sort of defective substratum.}

**The common factor in the varieties of this anomaly is a dull, pale emotions and a dulled feeling for the psychological realities. This can be attributed to the incomplete quality of the instinctive substratum, which is working as though on sand. {This could be second circuit imprinting leading to habits of mind/thought, OR it could be a genetically defective substratum. It's not so easy to tell unless and until the person collapses as described above and frankly, I'm not that interested in pushing a person to collapse just to find out! Of course, it happens spontaneously in some relationship dynamics.}

**Low emotional pressure enables them to develop proper speculative reasoning but because of their one-sidedness, they tend to consider themselves intellectually superior to “ordinary” people. {This, too, is interesting. It's like the Dunning-Kruger effect. However, I have seen people who are very, very bright and clever: they have some pretty efficient software in their brains. BUT, when the emotional pressure comes into the picture, it's like their operating system is unable to run the program because there is a virus that takes up a huge amount of resources - the virus of Splitting/internal considering.}

In the end, I think GqSoul's citation from Unholy Hungers is the key:

Unholy Hungers said:
Once again, we touch the positive Great Feminine whenever we feel safe in the world, whenever we feel accepted and appreciated just as we are.
 
Thank you for the information in this thread. I was trying to understand the splitting in my self.

I took the print outs of thread and read through it slowly and trying to understand the origin. I want to comment on my current understanding( This is system 2 narration). Forgive me for the example are from not so healthy work environment. Since body’s happens to react in similar ways unconsciously , I want to mention. Not meaning to blame it on some specific person or program, but when I am reviewing the past, this is program seems to have great influence.

I have grown up seeing people laugh at father’s back for his plain talk, often criticism (stupid sincerity and weakness). Mother calls me stupid, because I don’t know how to talk with people appropriately which I undestood at that time as manipulative. This is something I lived with, felt upset when my dad’s friends ridiculed at his back , felt happy for occasional rare praise for his straightforwardness. As a small child, I have seen contempt of the others towards my grandfather which has serious impact on me. They were once his business partners, before they became owners with manipulative back stabbing which plunged my grandfather in to serious poverty and subsequent events of forced marriages to my aunts, my manipulative mother’s maneuvers to force marry my sister to her brother to safeguard them is not so easy to talk.

Over the years, I felt uneasy and confused when people say things to others to please them . I am not sure how it happened but I have a program of considering of people who modulate the language to others pleasure /fit in are manipulative or lying. ( black and white thinking and projection but I don’t know anything better ).

So I never tried to understand people to respond appropriately despite the anxieties, as it is in black side. so NO external consideration, it is all about ME. This is a program that repeated my entire life. Part of me wants me to go straight ( father), other part feared of ridiculed (mother). when I see manipulative people do this, program got strengthened and when normal people did it, It weakened. But mostly father won.

BUT I don't remember of having this program of the people I value very highly ( ex: this forum or any of my teachers) but clearly know of it, as this is one of the topic ( what is lying , manipulative and what is not at work ) I used to discuss with a friend during lunch time.

Only after participating in this forum and watching, reading how emotional brain is architected for the type of social tuning, I realized how stupid this program and how deep it is.

Some Past incidents

1. I came to know that On the first day of my first job in US, the company that hired me thought of firing me, (but they didn’t ) . When they asked me to reassess the for a project (they already gave 3 month estimation to the client), I said ‘who gave 3 months. It shouldn’t take more than a week’. I didn’t realize that they are threatened by my wording. This incident gave me impression that I don’t know how to talk.

Similar incidents happened where I heard ( from a friend) that ‘It doesn’t matter what you think from your writing/talking, it is what others think about” or “be a Roman in Rome” when I struggled to survive in corporate environment. I couldn't do that either. Not many times, but still happened. 'TONE' of my message is a challenge I struggled with.

Once in a while somebody comes along asking “ Are you clear of trouble?”. I say them “what Trouble ?”. Only thing I know is “I said something to some body that went to “ tail to tiger” routine and somebody complained. The thought of knowing what happened ( watching my back), but couldn’t , because the thought itself is in black bin. Sort of new age mind set. Only repeated experience has some corrections.

2. Over the years, when I dealt with some people, I find it hard to adapt and I learned in a hard way on how to tune to their needs with proper wording. But when the conflict arouse, I felt incapable of express it for lack of knowledge of other and blockage from program mentioned above.

I always felt uncomfortable in meetings at work. I sit calmly because I have no interest in indirect word fighting with smiley faces over some body’s work that goes on those meetings. But when I need to talk, I want to talk straight ( weakness), but fear that they don’t like, but I don’t know anything better. Until now, I never understood why I care about their infighting. This is usurping of emotional energy from the above program. Since this is work environment of authoritarian politics, It went into ‘black’ side.

Currently I was reading Goleman’s “primal Leadership” where he talks of emotional intelligence of the team and how resonance makes or breaks. This puts completely different light to the situations where I felt projecting. I always felt there is some thing missing in the equation , but never understood.

3. I have memories where I became very upset that I lost a badminton game, which gave me a pause on why I got so upset over a frivolous play. Luckily it is only once, but It reminds of me deep roots. Making fool of myself is a big thing for me.

4. Repeated unconscious anxiety in people dealing and rereading of laura’s article on predators mind , I started to realize how important the need of ADAPT. Now it looks like a fundamental thing, but some how I missed it for long.

When I started brooding over the past for the clues, I can see TON of ‘internal considerations’ and how badly this habit screwed things up and how I continue to struggle with it.

However painful it is, It is good to see the truth. Thank you for the information.
 
seek10 said:
I started to realize how important the need of ADAPT. Now it looks like a fundamental thing, but some how I missed it for long.

When I started brooding over the past for the clues, I can see TON of ‘internal considerations’ and how badly this habit screwed things up and how I continue to struggle with it.

However painful it is, It is good to see the truth. Thank you for the information.

Indeed. Being able to "see ourselves as others see us" and adapt to them is a crucial survival skill.

As I wrote in The Wave or Adventures somewhere, I became very impatient with people who kept excusing their inability to move forward in life with "I'm just unique and different..." "I'm not of this world; I'm a wanderer..." "I'm too spiritual to soil my hands with ________ (fill in the blank with any useful activity)" and so on and so forth.

As the Cs have said, what we are here to learn are the lessons of 3D, basic karmic and relationship understandings and being able to at least reach the point of being a good obyvatel. As Gurdjieff said, The Work cannot begin at a level lower than that.

From Gurdjieff's Views from the Real World Page 94-96 with some bolding and comments by me:

Everyone is in great need of one particular exercise, both if one wants to continue working and for external life.

We have two lives, inner and outer life, and so we also have two kinds of considering. We constantly consider.

When she looks at me, I feel inside a dislike of her, I am cross with her, but externally I am polite because I must be very polite since I need her. Internally I am what I am, but externally I am different. This is external considering. Now she says that I am a fool. This angers me. The fact that I am angered is the result, but what takes place in me is internal considering.

This internal and external considering are different. We must learn to be able to control separately both kinds of considering: the internal and the external. We want to change not only inside but also outside.

Yesterday, when she gave me an unfriendly look, I was cross. But today I understand that perhaps the reason why she looked at me like that is that she is a fool; or perhaps she had learned or heard something about me. And today I want to remain calm. She is a slave and I should not be angry with her inwardly. From today onward I want to be calm inside.

Outwardly I want today to be polite, but if necessary I can appear angry. Outwardly it must be what is best for her and for me. {i.e. sometimes it is useful to exhibit anger. Note the term "exhibit". That means you must not identify with it. Exhibiting it may be a process of tossing the wolf a piece of meat, or it may be useful in your relations to make it clear that something must not continue.} I must consider. Internal and external considering must be different. In an ordinary man the external attitude is the result of the internal. If she is polite, I am also polite. But these attitudes should be separated.

Internally one should be free from considering, but externally one should do more than one has been doing so far. An ordinary man lives as he is dictated to from inside.

When we speak of change, we presume the need of inner change. Externally if everything is all right, there is no need to change. If it is not all right, perhaps there is no need to change either, because maybe it is original. What is necessary is to change inside.

Until now we did not change anything, but from today we want to change. But how to change? First, we must separate and then sort out, discard what is useless and build something new. Man has much that is good and much that is bad. If we discard everything, later it will be necessary to collect again.

If a man has not enough on the external side, he will need to fill the gaps. Who is not well educated should be better educated. But this is for life.

The work needs nothing external. Only the internal is needed. Externally, one should play a role in everything. Externally a man should be an actor, otherwise he does not answer the requirements of life. One man likes one thing; another, another thing: if you want to be a friend to both and behave in one way, one of them will not like it; if you behave in another way, the other will not like it. You should behave with one as he likes it and with the other as this other likes it. Then your life will be easier.

But inside it must be different: different in relation to the one and the other. {Keep in mind that he is talking about ones' relations to those outside the work. You must be sincere with fellow Workers.}

As things are now, especially in our times, every man considers utterly mechanically. We react to everything affecting us from outside. Now we obey orders. She is good, and I am good; she is bad, and I am bad. I am as she wants me to be, I am a puppet. But she too is a mechanical puppet. She also obeys orders mechanically and does what another one wants.

We must cease reacting inside. If someone is rude, we must not react inside. Whoever manages to do this will be more free. It is very difficult.

Inside us we have a horse; it obeys orders from outside. And our mind is too weak to do anything inside. Even if the mind gives the order to stop, nothing will stop inside.

We educate nothing but our mind. We know how to behave with such and such. "Goodbye" "How do you do?" But it is only the driver who knows this. Sitting on his box he has read about it. But the horse has no education whatever. It has not even been taught the alphabet, it knows no languages, it never went to school. The horse was also capable of being taught, but we forgot all about it. . . . And so it grew up a neglected orphan. It only knows two words: right and left.

What I said about inner change refers only to the need of change in the horse. If the horse changes, we can change even externally. If the horse does not change, everything will remain the same, no matter how long we study.

It is easy to decide to change sitting quietly in your room. But as soon as you meet someone, the horse kicks. Inside us we have a horse.

The horse must change.

If anyone thinks that self-study will help and he will be able to change, he is greatly mistaken. Even if he reads all the books, studies for a hundred years, masters all knowledge, all mysteries--nothing will come of it.

Because all this knowledge will belong to the driver. And he, even if he knows, cannot drag the cart without the horse--it is too heavy.

The Horse Must Change.

That is what working with the emotions is all about.

If you have a horse that is wild and undisciplined and you want to train him, you first run off the excess energy, tire him out, get him so that he is able and willing to be guided. Then, after he experiences being guided as something that is not so bad, something that produces good results a few times, something that is satisfying, then you have to run the energy out of him less and less often because he is more and more willing to put his energy at the service of the master.
 
Regarding the Obyvatel:


Gurdjieff said:
"Obyvatel is a strange word in the Russian language. It is used in the sense of 'inhabitant,' without any particular shade. At the same time it is used to express contempt or derision--'obyvatel'--as though there could be nothing worse. But those who speak in this way do not understand that the obyvatel is the healthy kernel of life. And from the point of view of the possibility of evolution, a good obyvatel has many more chances than a 'lunatic' or a 'tramp.'

... I do not at all wish to say that all obyvatels are people of the objective way. Nothing of the kind. Among them are thieves, rascals, and fools; but there are others. I merely wish to say that being a good obyvatel by itself does not hinder the 'way.' And finally there are different types of obyvatel.

Imagine, for example, the type of obyvatel who lives all his life just as the other people round him, conspicuous in nothing, perhaps a good master, who makes money, and is perhaps even close-fisted. At the same time he dreams all his life of monasteries, for instance, and dreams that some time or other he will leave everything and go into a monastery. And such things happen in the East and in Russia. A man lives and works, then, when his children or his grandchildren are grown up, he gives everything to them and goes into a monastery. This is the obyvatel of which I speak. Perhaps he does not go into a monastery, perhaps he does not need this. His own life as an obyvatel can be his way.

"People who are definitely thinking about ways, particularly people of intellectual ways, very often look down on the obyvatel and in general despise the virtues of the obyvatel. But they only show by this their own personal unsuitability for any way whatever. Because no way can begin from a level lower than the obyvatel. This is very often lost sight of on people who are unable to organize their own personal lives, who are too weak to struggle with and conquer life, dream of the ways, or what they consider are ways, because they think it will be easier for them than life and because this, so to speak, justifies their weakness and inadaptability.

A man who can be a good obyvatel is much more helpful from the point of view of the way than a 'tramp' who thinks himself much higher than an obyvatel. I call 'tramps' all the so-called 'intelligentsia'--artists, poets, any kind of 'bohemian' in general, who despises the obyvatel and who at the same time would be unable to exist without him. Ability to orientate oneself in life is a very useful quality from the point of view of the work. A good obyvatel should be able to support at least twenty persons by his own labor. What is a man worth who is unable to do this?"


"What does obyvatel actually mean?" asked somebody. "Can it be said that an obyvatel is a good citizen?"

"Ought an obyvatel to be patriotic?" someone else asked. "Let us suppose there is war. What attitude should an obyvatel have towards war?"

"There can be different wars and there can be different patriots," said G. "You all still believe in words. An obyvatel, if he is a good obyvatel, does not believe in words. He realizes how much idle talk is hidden behind them. People who shout about their patriotism are psychopaths for him and he looks upon them as such."

"And how would an obyvatel look upon pacifists or upon people who refuse to go to the war?"

"Equally as lunatics! They are probably still worse."

"A good deal is incomprehensible to you because you do not take into account the meaning of some of the most simple words, for instance, you have never thought what to be serious means. Try to give yourselves an answer to the question what being serious means."

"To have a serious attitude towards things," someone said.

"That is exactly what everybody thinks, actually it is exactly the reverse," said G. "To have a serious attitude towards things does not at all mean being serious because the principal question is, towards what things? Very many people have a serious attitude towards trivial things. Can they be called serious? Of course not.

"The mistake is that the concept 'serious' is taken conditionally. One thing is serious for one man and another thing for another man. In reality seriousness is one of the concepts which can never and under no circumstances be taken conditionally. Only one thing is serious for all people at all times. A man may be more aware of it or less aware of it but the seriousness of things will not alter on this account.

"If a man could understand all the horror of the lives of ordinary people who are turning round in a circle of insignificant interests and insignificant aims, if he could understand what they are losing, he would understand that there can be only one thing that is serious for him—to escape from the general law, to be free. What can be serious for a man in prison who is condemned to death? Only one thing: How to save himself, how to escape: nothing else is serious.

"When I say that an obyvatel is more serious than a 'tramp' or a 'lunatic,' I mean by this that, accustomed to deal with real values, an obyvatel values the possibilities of the 'ways' and the possibilities of 'liberation' or 'salvation' better and quicker than a man who is accustomed all his life to a circle of imaginary values, imaginary interests, and imaginary possibilities.

"People who are not serious for the obyvatel are people who live by fantasies, chiefly by the fantasy that they are able to do something. The obyvatel knows that they only deceive people, promise them God knows what, and that actually they are simply arranging affairs for themselves--or they are lunatics, which is still worse, in other words they believe everything that people say.

"To what category do politicians belong who speak contemptuously about
'obyvatel,' 'obyvatels' opinions,' 'obyvatels' interests'?" someone asked.

"They are the worst kind of obyvatels," said G., "that is, obyvatels without any
positive redeeming features, or they are charlatans, lunatics, or knaves."

"But may there not be honest and decent people among politicians?" someone
asked.

"Certainly there may be," said G., "but in this case they are not practical people, they are dreamers, and they will be used by other people as screens to cover their own obscure affairs.

"The obyvatel perhaps may not know it in a philosophical way, that is to say, he is not able to formulate it, but he knows that things 'do themselves' simply through his own practical shrewdness, therefore, in his heart, he laughs at people who think, or who want to assure him, that they signify anything, that anything depends on their decisions, that they can change or, in general, do anything. This for him is not being serious. An understanding of what is not serious can help him to value that which is serious."
 
This thread has been a real breakthrough for me; I can't believe I missed this for so long. It's opening another door to working on myself. In fact it's made it fairly clear that I've not actually begun the Work in earnest at all, everything I've been doing thus far is just preparatory work with the aim of first becoming a good Obyvatel.

True for about everyone. But, as I mentioned earlier in the thread, the whole point of working on the self is to get to the point where you are not controlled by your negative emotions at all and that means that you have to bring them up, acknowledge them, look at them, understand their silliness and pettiness and that they really are childish because they are being generated by old programs of fear and anger at not being able to express yourself.

If nothing else, you can pace back and forth in a private space and just rant and dramatize, and make it as outrageous as possible.

...

In short, instead of feeling hurt and splitting and going off into internal considering, we try to deal with such things as close to in the moment as possible, not take ourselves too seriously, but still "throw the wolf a piece of meat." The emotions are there, the programs are there, the tendencies are there, and it is self-damaging to not realize this and find a way to deal with it without suppressing or repressing. In other words, it is a process of knowing the machine, observing the machine, and operating it from a position of being master, not slave.

Repression and suppression has always been such a default state for me that I didn't even realise that I was doing anything wrong. EE and bodywork have helped, and the occasional sad film, but there really is a whole lot there that I've never dealt with!

The dynamic you described sounds very interesting. Regarding people who I could practice this with, I'm in an interesting situation now where one RL friend is starting to get more into the forum etc, and we have another who we see regularly who may or may not follow. We have been friends a long time before I found you guys, and therefore still have mutual programs running all over the place. This could be a good road to take, because Immersion and I spend a whole lot of time together, but we both have the default programmed state of not expressing negative emotions. This results in the splitting phenomena coming up regularly, as we run a business together.

I did practice this kind of thing alone today, for about an hour. Saying all the stupid narcissistic things out loud that I've been scared to say and kept bottled up. Did the whole poor me routine, got a whole lot out, but kept with it the whole time and didn't identify, there was a kind of higher part of me just observing the whole thing with an amused smile. After this came a great deal of compassion for my immature, uneducated emotional center, real self compassion for possibly the first time in my adult life.

...
What I said about inner change refers only to the need of change in the horse. If the horse changes, we can change even externally. If the horse does not change, everything will remain the same, no matter how long we study.

It is easy to decide to change sitting quietly in your room. But as soon as you meet someone, the horse kicks. Inside us we have a horse.

The horse must change.

If anyone thinks that self-study will help and he will be able to change, he is greatly mistaken. Even if he reads all the books, studies for a hundred years, masters all knowledge, all mysteries--nothing will come of it.

Because all this knowledge will belong to the driver. And he, even if he knows, cannot drag the cart without the horse--it is too heavy.

You know, sometimes you can be told something over and over in myriad ways and not really grasp and understand it. Then one day, somebody puts it a certain way, and it all just clicks into place...

Now it's totally clear why emotional development is the key here. I'm just riding a poor little horse who is confused and has no idea where to go, so responds to A influences telling it left or right. Instead of getting angry at the horse, or shutting it off all together, I can be considerate to it; teach it new ways of being, and take good care of it.

The emotions allow us to drag the carriage by giving us the motivation to do things. You can't do anything worthwhile in an emotionally dead or misguided state, the smallest things can become the heaviest burdens and you just follow the emotions around. The key is to teach the horse to seek things that are worthwhile to one's Goal, and this is the emotions working correctly, as a directing force under the control of the driver.

This is all obvious stuff, but hey, I take a while :-[
 
[quote author=Carlise]
I never really understood what was meant by "Black and white thinking" until reading this thread. For the longest time I've considered it something I rarely ever fall into, but it's clear now that this is a total lie!
[/quote]

I think calling it a "total lie" is itself black-and-white, since from the context it sounds more like you we're just misinformed. :)
 
Laura said:
The Horse Must Change.

That is what working with the emotions is all about.

If you have a horse that is wild and undisciplined and you want to train him, you first run off the excess energy, tire him out, get him so that he is able and willing to be guided. Then, after he experiences being guided as something that is not so bad, something that produces good results a few times, something that is satisfying, then you have to run the energy out of him less and less often because he is more and more willing to put his energy at the service of the master.
Thank you for validating the need of discharging the excess energy before some control comes back. I observed this but wasn't sure. Impatience in dealing with emotional center is another big thing for me. I want to go read or learn some thing new or do some thing useful, but child is screaming, I feel uneasy with the situation. LOT to learn in this area.
 
Carlise said:
The dynamic you described sounds very interesting. Regarding people who I could practice this with, I'm in an interesting situation now where one RL friend is starting to get more into the forum etc, and we have another who we see regularly who may or may not follow. We have been friends a long time before I found you guys, and therefore still have mutual programs running all over the place. This could be a good road to take, because Immersion and I spend a whole lot of time together, but we both have the default programmed state of not expressing negative emotions. This results in the splitting phenomena coming up regularly, as we run a business together.

One thing about "not expressing negative emotions" is that it doesn't mean that one can't also "rant" (for fun and for learning) when the situation calls for it. I think if both done consciously then they are both ways to observe our programs by bringing up a lot of our subconscious stuff to the surface and observing it. In life, such as at work, I find that as a general rule it works as a good strategy to "not express negative emotions" since people who don't know me can misunderstand it, see this as a weakness and even try to feed off it. Also, by not expressing negative emotions in life or showing it in subtle physical expressions (such as irritation) other peoples negative programs won't get triggered in response leading to unending misunderstandings and divisions between people.

If I don't express negative emotions in life situations (such as at work) while at the same time staying as relaxed as I can then I'm better able to consciously observe how my reactive emotions, after getting triggered, can control my muscle tensions. I'm better able to "'observe" (or sense?) my emotions (to greater and lesser degrees) by recognizing where my muscle tensions and postures are, how they shift, my skin temperature even and how they are all affected by my thoughts. In other words, I can't really observe my emotions directly but only indirectly insofar as how my body is responding.

For example, let's say that some guy at work with negative intent says some nonsense to me that triggers my anger. Ok then, now I'm angry. Although these situations are situation specific I'll generally say nothing, stay relaxed, do the pipe breathing, even smile if I could, and instead of outwardly reacting in a visible way that could trigger the other guy I'll focus my attention on what my body is telling me about my reactive emotional state. THAT information now becomes significant. What becomes less significant is my anger at the other person. What becomes less important to me is my narcissistic reaction. I see that the other person is just a machine. I see that I'm a machine. This is what I see. Two people being machines. The difference between us though, at that particular moment, is my awareness of the fact that I'm a machine also just like him. But within that awareness is the difference between us. Within my awareness is my miniscule chance to be free, or maybe its more like a chance for a chance to be free since I haven't really acted yet on what I see. But I now have a choice to act upon what I see. I could choose to not react outwardly, or suppress it inwardly, so I can utilize this energy (to transform it) for the inner light to see myself reacting inwardly.

It's much easier said then done though. It takes constant practice so that I can eventually be prepared, and ready, to be in front of the reaction even before it happens. However, most of the time I react inwardly and suppress it without transforming it. But there are moments, with constant practice, that I do have a 'victory' (in the way described above).

Then there's (conscious) ranting. If I'm with people that understand what I'm doing (which is very rare) and if I'm in the the right kind of mood I'll rant about how screwed up things are in the world (including myself!). It's a way to let off steam and bring stuff up from the unconscious and observe it. In the end we can laugh at it, relax, and not take ourselves so seriously. But I can only do this with people who will understand otherwise they will see this as weakness and as "complaining". But it's not weakness and complaining if one can allow oneself to play the conscious fool sometimes and act with conscious control, knowing what one is doing and why one is doing it.
 
kenlee said:
One thing about "not expressing negative emotions" is that it doesn't mean that one can't also "rant" (for fun and for learning) when the situation calls for it. I think if both done consciously then they are both ways to observe our programs by bringing up a lot of our subconscious stuff to the surface and observing it. In life, such as at work, I find that as a general rule it works as a good strategy to "not express negative emotions" since people who don't know me can misunderstand it, see this as a weakness and even try to feed off it. Also, by not expressing negative emotions in life or showing it in subtle physical expressions (such as irritation) other peoples negative programs won't get triggered in response leading to unending misunderstandings and divisions between people.

<snip>

Then there's (conscious) ranting. If I'm with people that understand what I'm doing (which is very rare) and if I'm in the the right kind of mood I'll rant about how screwed up things are in the world (including myself!). It's a way to let off steam and bring stuff up from the unconscious and observe it. In the end we can laugh at it, relax, and not take ourselves so seriously. But I can only do this with people who will understand otherwise they will see this as weakness and as "complaining". But it's not weakness and complaining if one can allow oneself to play the conscious fool sometimes and act with conscious control, knowing what one is doing and why one is doing it.

Exactly. And sometimes, when you control your emotions in a situation where you HAVE to, there is a build-up that needs to be metabolized. I like the term "metabolized" because it is a bit different from "released" which might suggest just blowing up. You don't want to blow up unless you are doing it consciously for effect, because you have assessed a situation and know that the other party needs to experience your blow-up - but that's a bit touchy and you really need to have a lot of knowledge and mastery to go there, so leave that aside for now.

At the very least, what you can do when you feel that internal considering coming on, is sit there in a room by yourself and speak out loud all the wild bits and pieces of judgmental and revenge oriented plans and listen to yourself. Make it as outrageous as possible and put the words in the context of the maturity of them. If you realize that what you are thinking or saying belongs to a six-year-old, see the speaker - the emotional self - as six-years old saying this stuff. Heck, you can even try to sound like a fretful, whiny six-year-old just for fun and effect.

Obviously, it's better if you have someone to work this with who can get into the role and join you. Like "You were a jerk to me. My dad is coming over to whup your dad. Yeah, my dad can beat your dad up. My dad is as tall as a skyscraper! My dad can stop trains with a look! Your dad ain't nuthin! " That sort of thing.

Try to find the age and context of the original emotional program and express it in those terms instead of creating an intellectualized narrative that seeks to justify very childish emotions by casting them in adult terms. Clearly, internal considering is NOT adult, so you can pretty much know that in advance.
 
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