When Is The Issue Mindset And When Is It ... Something Else? Pt2

For Pt1

Response to Pt1:
Thanks for addressing my question [When is the issue mindset and when is it ... something else?]

How much do you actually know about the human psyche, your psyche, that internal mechanism that drives your behaviour and logic.

I'm a mystery to myself, revealed weekly like a serialized detective novel. My whole life is about figuring out why, what, how and all that, searching for clues.

I like the knife analogy.

Try to change behaviour without changing mindset and you end up struggling against your very own mindset.

This I know from experience, which is frustrating, b/c remember I'm a "just do it" [kinda person]. So, when I do and it doesn't work, I go almost directly into "God hates me" victim. So, I'm constantly trying to reveal or expose mindset so I can affect it. I do feel surrounded by glass walls and ceilings. And annoying little trip-over bumps.

After reading I buy the psyche = mindset piece, but not that either of those is soul. I think soul is eternal and informs what themes I'm to work on across lifetimes. In this one (and a few others) I think I'm dealing with myriad aspects of power which is incredibly multi-dimensional. I'm generally "so what?" about anything spiritual that isn't actionable, but I do think a lot of the soul stuff is practical (for me), and if anything else, it keeps me motivated to push my boundaries b/c I don't want to come back and deal with this same shit at this same level ever again.

My Response:
Thanks for helping me more clearly understand the issue/s.

• The (apparent) issue/s 

1. The struggle to figure out the why, what and how’s, of you 
2. The feeling of being caged, glass walls and ceilings 
3. The tendency to feel like a victim when things don’t work out 
4. The struggle of power in all it’s myriad aspects and dimensions 

What if I where to suggest that what appears to be this complex set of issues is quite simply one pragmatic and rather unglamorous issue, with rather far reaching consequences.

• The psychological contraction 

The apparent issues are all consequences of the psychological contraction (like getting a shock) which we experience as a feeling. The problem with feelings (not emotions, they are very different) is that they can be spoken about in many different ways, which leads us to the belief that they are in fact, different things.

Let me share with you how we experience the contraction - A feeling of ‘profound but subtle’ inner discomfort, unnaturalness, fear, glass ceiling, caged and limitation, something wrong, something missing, alone’ness, misunderstood, unappreciated, on the outside looking in, an inner hunger or emptiness and confusion ...etc.

• Responding to the contraction 

Let me share with you how we traditionally respond to those feelings - We push back, push away from and resist in one form or another, either through denial and rejection on the one hand or control (power struggle) on the other, dependent on other mindset considerations.

• Suffering 

Let me share with you how we experience the push back or resistance - Suffering, it’s a bland word, much like fear and has no real meaning on it’s own.

Let me share with you how we actually experience suffering - Stress, anxiety, tension, depression, overwhelm, anger, rage, frustration. the need for control, regret, migraines, bi-polar, physical tension (body ache) and illness ...etc.

• Projecting suffering 

What we then do is project the reason for the suffering onto our context, and here context can be either our own behaviour (inner) or the real physical context (outer), incorrectly assuming that this is the cause of our suffering. The logic works something like this. If I can sort out or solve the problems of context (inner or outer), which is the cause of my suffering, then the suffering will stop.

Little do we know that this flow of logic only further deepens and entrenches the contraction.

The inner projection is manifest though the struggle to know or deny ourselves and the outer projection manifest as either with-drawl or control (power), in both cases I have used the extremes

• The motive for participation 

Suffering or the need to escape suffering (push-back) then becomes a motive for participation. It becomes the petrol (gas) which drives the engine of participation. But the problem was never context to begin with, the problem is the contraction and not the effects of the contraction.

If one were to dissolve the contraction, which by the way is completely contra-rational and flies in the face of 100,000 years of cultural evolution and 3 billion years of biological evolution, we also dissolve suffering and the motive for participation.

This is where the problem really lies and is much scarier than just living with the suffering, or until the suffering becomes unbearable.

Who would you be if you where not defined by the struggle (apparent issues). You would come face to face with an inner ‘who am I really’ identity crisis and more than this, it may just mean that after surveying the results of your life’s work, it may just not make as much sense as it did before.

So as part of our ‘necessary’ psychological coping mechanism and in a effort to preserve the integrity of the struggle, motive for participation and keep our sanity, we invent or cling to stories of ancestors, gods and immortal souls journeying onto and into perfection - a place of no suffering.

But all of this neatly sidesteps the issue of simply relaxing the self-contraction and facing the terrifying prospect of not knowing, not only how to act, but why we should act to begin with, because without suffering, why not just see out your days in whatever circumstances arise, at peace and in anticipation of death, since in almost every way that counts, you’re already dead.

The real interesting question is after you have learned to intentionally relax the self-contraction and dissolve the motive for participation, how do you develop a new motive for and logic of participation, ones that’s not determined by push-back, suffering and the need to escape it.

The truth, dear friend is that if you really wanted to, you could learn to drop the whole charade of those apparent issues in just a few months, six at most, if you really wanted to.

But then you would be faced with the need to develop a whole new logic of living, the consequences of which are nothing less than truly ‘revolutionary’, in the real sense of revolution, complete and utter regime (logic) change, which would inevitably turn your world inside out and upside down.

• The need for maturity (independent intelligent inquiry)

Almost anyone regardless of their level of maturity can learn to relax the self-contraction, but it takes a very specific level of maturity to intentionally develop a new motive for and more importantly, logic of participation.

Early spiritual teachers and prophets used the stories of benevolent ancestors, gods and the immortal soul to assist in the process of helping us cope with suffering and to relax the contraction, but only for those who lacked the maturity for independent intelligent inquiry. But when the stories are taken as real, by those of us who now have that maturity, they paradoxically serve only to tighten the contraction and hinder the development of the very maturity required to develop a new motive for and logic of participation, which results in us clinging to the very suffering we think we’re trying to end.

Or we strive for independent intelligent inquiry from within the contraction and it's consequent circular logic and find that yet again, we are stuck.

Of course the power base, that elite group who 'control' the money, means of production and political power, love it, because independent intelligent inquiry would quickly and decisively discern the complete and utter b/s we are daily served up with via mass media and education and quickly spell an end to another charade, the one we (in the West) call democracy and the self-regulating free market economy, a particularly grotesque logic of participation, as it is.


PS
I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't speculate on the possibility and probability of transmigration, reincarnation and other dimensions, but speculation, if handled correctly forms only a slither of intelligent inquiry.