頭腦產生 Part G

頭腦產生

在某一時刻，當情緒衝動變得如此之大以至於這個人再也無法忍受它時，他們開始按照他們認為人們希望他們行事的方式行事。這可能發生在受孕后的任何時候，但通常發生在 2-5 歲左右。這是你和你的個性之間的分裂，真實感受的自我和個性之間的分裂。17

當我們從原本的無自我意識狀態墮落時，我們就獲得了一個頭腦。最終促使思想形成的事件是許多漸進步驟的高潮。即使是最快樂的童年也有它的威脅：蜜蜂蜇傷，疲憊無靈動的母親，太亮的燈，太粗糙的遊戲。在這些時候，孩子開始對世界有一些潛在的敵意和超出他們控制範圍的感覺。“夠了”終於夠了，當然可能是實際的、蓄意的虐待和忽視，但回想起來，同樣可以更普遍地顯得良性和次要的。無論如何，當關係破裂的痛苦變得無法忍受時，就會達到不歸路。雖然我們可能認為這種痛苦在邏輯上一定來自太少的接觸，但事實上，他人現實的全部力量以及他們對我們生存

的威脅是如此令人不安。過多的接觸是威脅。

起初，頭腦是一種無法忍受的感覺或感覺的解決方案，你無法理解或根本不願意體驗。這是身體上的東西，構成了與他人的太多接觸。你不信任它



，受不了它。你想要聯繫，但不是那麼快。因此，在試圖不完全中斷與他人的聯繫時，你試圖告訴他們這對你來說太多了，或者你還沒有準備好，或者你還不願意有那麼強烈的接觸。在試圖將這個資訊傳達給別人的過程中，你開始願意採取某些心理態度，並且這樣做了。18

情緒困擾不僅僅是一種精神上的事件。情緒是物理事件;所以這是我們不想體驗的實際身體感覺。我們認為這種感覺可能會殺死我們，因為我們太渺小，太脆弱，無法承受這種強度。所以我們至少在一定程度上將它從意識中遮罩掉。因此，我們與他人的決裂既體現在身體上，也體現在思想上。事實上，心靈實際上是對身體問題的虛假解決方案;這是所有那些令人討厭的情緒發生的地方。

自我意識是沒有回頭路的。在大多數情況下，它不會引發任何戲劇性的變化，至少不會從外部引發，它只是成長的一部分。但這仍然是一個戲劇性的變化。我們往往記不清它，但是，就像下面的吉莉安的例子一樣，當我們理解原理時，我們也許能夠識別出它的一些意義。她在這裡所描述的是各種事情的混合，但她大致確定的是一種感覺的變化感，標誌著對周圍世界的新態度。

阿嬌：我確實記得很小的時候很快樂。我不記得太多細節了。但彷彿一直陽光明媚，像夏日的午後。我知道人們在那裡，但記憶真的是關於我的。我玩，快樂。我少了兩三個金色的回憶。就像我的弟弟出生一樣。我記得當我媽媽把他給我看時，有一種焦慮。我有一個模糊的記憶，被我父親大喊大叫。我不記得為什麼了。但後來我有一種明顯的感覺，一切都在變化。我不確定是否有一點，我不確定了。但是，是的，當我回想起來時，就像太陽進去了一樣。我什麼都不記得了，儘管上學是一件“壞”的事情。我確實記得其他人，不喜歡



老師，為事情哭泣。它在我的腦海中有一種與我很小的時候截然不同的氛圍。我仍然很高興，但我對人更加警惕。所以我確實看到了變化。曾經有一段時間，一切都是溫暖的，陽光明媚的，友好的，有點柔軟的。甚至水坑也很友好，水坑和昆蟲。然後天更黑了，有些人不太好，昆蟲很可怕。我的童年真的很好，在很多方面都很可愛。但我確實感覺到這種轉變。不是我變得不快樂，而是我意識到世界就在那裡，我必須更加小心，計算如何與人打交道。



如果阿嬌在這方面做更多的工作，她也許能夠理清不同的想法和線索，找到標誌著她最終退出其他人的關鍵事件。原則上，這種斷裂可以修補，不是回到兒童狀態，而是努力實現統一的自我意識。這更像是基督的命令，我們必須（再次）成為小孩子。19

這種分離的背景總是孩子與他人的關係。如果我們沒有關係，我們就不會有思想。如果我們不想聯繫，我們就不會有思想。我們通常認為的“人類狀況”在各個方面都取決於我們想要與他人建立關係。


吃蘋果：瞭解好與壞

在與他人分離的那一刻，我們變得無可挽回的自我意識。當這種情況發生時，我們也意識到他人與我們分離。這就是二元性的本質。只要某物或某人存在，就必須有它與之對立的某物或某人。

隨著與他人的分裂，我們對生活有了固定的想法，而不僅僅是在當下存在的流動中。在亞當和夏娃的故事中，當夏娃吃分辨善惡樹上的果子時，就會發生這種情況。20 這是我們變得自我意識並獲得二元思維的時刻。



在二元論的頭腦中，第一次出現了“我”和“你”。這些想法不同於兩個個體實際存在的現實。兩個個體一直存在，現在仍然存在。但是現在，這個簡單的事實又增加了一些。這些是我和你的想法。“我”和“你”的這些觀念是心靈的基礎。

這種從統一意識到二元自我意識的轉變，在全世界的神話中被描述為墮入黑暗。在猶太-基督教傳統中它以從伊甸園墮落到人類狀況的黑暗和痛苦中，與上帝疏遠為代表。21、當第一批人類吃知識樹上的果子時，他們立即意識到自我是客體。這被赤裸裸地描述為立即意識到並羞於自己的裸體。他們從外部意識到自己。他們同樣意識到其他人是分開的。現在有了「兩個」，不和諧的種子就播下了;現在我們必須考慮如何與這個人建立聯繫。這種認識是對極樂的驅逐，從伊甸園的放逐。


心靈是直接溝通的替代品 導致我們與他人決裂的關係困難從根本上說是理解和溝通

的失敗。接觸太多了，太快了。但我們不能這麼說。如果我們在發生這些事情時善於溝通，我們當時就能解決它。在那種情況下，我們就沒有必要發展出扭曲的方式來表達自己。我們根本不需要頭腦。但我們沒有這些技能，因為我們還是嬰兒。在我們的恐懼中，我們做了自然而然的事情，然後退縮了;結果就是頭腦。頭腦是我們無法實現的溝通的替代品。

但即使這變得困難，我們從未真正放棄試圖被理解。我們可能覺得自己有過，但在內心深處，我們仍然在努力用盡全力進行交流;否則，我們就不會有心思去努力實現這一目標。

然而，這種交流變得扭曲和間接的思想。它被關於生活和其他以異常行為表現出來的想法


所包裹;
這些想法必然是錯誤的。因此，我們原本想要傳達但無法傳達的資訊變成了一場戲劇，其中的信息總是隱含的，但從不直接。這部劇是心靈。

心靈的起源是自我防禦的，但作為一部戲劇，它不是對他人的直接拒絕。它執行一個整潔的雙重動作，以它的方式出色。心靈的關鍵在於，它不僅設置了一個屏障，使他人保持安全距離，而且還是一種與他人聯繫的運動。在這方面，這是一種溝通。遠離他人是一種與他們建立聯繫的明顯願望，並且本身就是一種溝通。

如果我們只是厭倦了別人，並決定我們已經完全受夠了他們，那麼我們可能會決定切斷並獨自繼續前進。但我們不這樣做。有時我們似乎會這樣做，因為這是我們的故事，我們告訴自己和他人的故事。有些人當然會盡力看起來好像他們正在這樣做並相信它。但我們不知道有誰真正退出宣告。如果有人這樣做，我們就不會知道，因為他們不會與我們其他人互動。我們其他人，我們所知道的人，顯然沒有與他人隔絕。所有這些似乎背棄了世界，這隻是另一種形式的關係。

鮑裡斯：從我記事起，我就有生悶氣的傾向。我有時不說話，但偶爾也會離開房間。我從沒想過這是一個部分我仍然認為這隻是我想與我不喜歡的東西保持距離。我也相信這實際上也是一種非常男子氣概的方式，可以抓住並避免衝突，並認為自己很克制，擅長處理困難的事情。通常，提出它的是某種爭論，或者威脅，但我甚至在工作中做了一點，這真的讓我停下來思考。所以我在一次會議中提出了這個事件。

在工作中，有一段特殊的時間，出於某種原因，每個人在一天早上的同一時間結束了茶點。我們是一家小公司，但它仍然很有趣，我們笑了。然後我們開始大聲談論我們



整個星期都在電子郵件上談論的事情。老闆也在那裡，每個人都在切入。我說了我的觀點，但我記得當時很生氣，因為沒有人同意我的想法。事實上，有人說這很瘋狂，有一點爭論，它被駁回了。回想起來，這一切都是完全合理的，而且很幽默，但我當時很生氣。其原因是另一個故事。但無論如何，我沒有繼續與其他人討論，而是離開並假裝我要去廁所。這很容易做到，因為我們都站在出口處。但我沒有上廁所。我出去散步，真的很生氣。像往常一樣，我認為我在做明智的事情，花一會兒時間整理我的思想，以文明的方式冷靜下來。但它一直在我腦海中轉來轉去，我回家談論它，直到我的女朋友受夠了。

當我在會議中對自己誠即時，我知道我告訴自己的故事並不是真的。嗯，這有點真實，但大部分都是藉口。當我走出去時，我離開的時間比我需要冷靜下來的時間要長得多。在內心深處，我知道我在做別的事情。我不只是以成人的方式將自己從困境中解脫出來，我還在發送一個資訊。我在會議中工作了很長時間，終於意識到資訊是這樣的，你們這些混蛋，你怎麼敢嘲笑我！我會讓你看看你是什麼混蛋！這讓我想起了小學里發生的事情。無論如何，我當然沒有這麼說。那也不好。當然，我現在可以看到生悶氣不是傳達資訊的有效方式，而且我對整件事有了更多的瞭解。但關鍵是——這對我來說是會議的真正啟示——我並沒有真正遠離他們。在我看來，走開對我來說就像在那些人的臉上，對他們尖叫是一回事。我甚至沒有離開來阻止自己說出來，不是真的，真的。資訊就在我離開的時候。但一切都搞砸了，連我都不明白。我到底希望他們如何理解我真的不知道。但我做到了;我想他們應該理解我，當我回來時，這讓我更加憤怒，甚至似乎沒有人注意到我離開了房間;他們根本沒有得到



它。當我真正地看到我所做的事情時，我看到了它是多麼有趣，多麼悲傷。



我們與他人的聯繫可能很漂亮有時很脆弱，但通過頭腦，我們創造了一種機制，通過這種機制，我們確保我們也保持聯繫，但以一種減少的、糊狀的和可忍受的方式。這種機制就是心。頭腦不是我們思考的能力;這不是我們的意識;它不是我們智慧或靈魂的所在地。頭腦是思想及其組合的主體，我們用它來與他人保持安全距離，同時保持聯繫。


在
無意識的層面上，我們有一個想法，如果我們能夠控制我們與他人的關係
，那麼我們都可以回到快樂的狀態。對於我們的（無意識）思維方式，我們與他人和一般生活進行交易。我們隨後與人們的困難很大一部分是他們不知道我們認為我們與他們簽訂的這份合同。我們發現這令人困惑和沮喪，因為我們購買了自己的宣傳，即我們扭曲的溝通是清晰和明顯的。然後我們責怪人們不理解我們。

有了思想的建立，我們相信我們已經掌握了局勢，並控制了所有相關的事情。我們認為這意味著如果出錯，我們不會再次受到傷害。換句話說，頭腦是一種與他人交往的方式，似乎是可以生存的。

這似乎也是一個不錯的解決方案。我們沒有計劃;它發生在我們退縮的時候。但它看起來很整潔;我們建立了一個思想緩衝區來保護我們免受他人的侵害，但我們也可以與他們保持關係，通過這些思想安全地進行調解。

我們現在通過我們對他人的想法螢幕來看待他人和世界。然而，這是一個扭曲的鏡頭，所以我們通過它看到的世界並不完全是現在的世界。我們擁有的頭腦越多——隨著年齡的增長，我們往往會積累頭腦——鏡頭就越扭曲。有時候，我們真的根本看不到任何現實，而是在這部正在進行的內心電影的基礎上運作的。伯納沒有使用「投射」一詞來描述這種情況，但它很容易映射到心理治療中常用的投射概念。22



我們對這個問題的解決結果被證明是錯誤的，因為我們相信這是真的。它不是控制它，而是支配和控制我們。我們正在某個地方拉弦，但我們已經迷失了自己，相信了自己的故事。

我們試圖通過不允許他人成為他們的方式來控制關係。當然，我們實際上無法阻止他們成為現在的樣子。但是我們可以構建關於我們自己和他人的想法，這些想法似乎控制著世界，並在世界上產生實際後果，這些後果看起來很像證明我們的想法是正確的。所以我們堅持相信我們自己的宣傳。這背後是控制欲。它在頭腦中“實現”的不僅僅是通過推開他人（我們可能期望的情況），而且還通過拉近他們。推開和拉近在心理上是一回事。在他的一次演講中，伯納以以下方式描述了這種拉近關係：

我們希望其他人......我們愛別人，但我們不能容忍他們的方式。所以我們把他們帶到我們所處的位置，他們不能對我們做任何事情。我們對此毫無意識...但我們仍然想聯繫到如此粘稠H，而建立關係和容忍的唯一方法就是把自己混在一起，減少關係，減少兩極，或者減少能量。23

想法似乎是一個很好的解決方案，因為它們可以作為對他人的緩衝，並淡化我們認為我們可以處理的強度水準。在這個理想的世界中，我們已經讓其他人整齊地包裝和可控。現實現在按照我們的條件，我們的規則。


強迫和抵抗現實

...你無法創造一種思想。你唯一能做的就是要麼接受別人是什麼，要麼不接受。當你接受另一個人是什麼時，就沒有頭腦;當你不接受對方時，頭腦就會產生。這是心的起源...心是一個人強迫或抵抗他人。24


理解心如何發生的
另一種方式是，把它看作是我們抗拒並試圖強迫生活和他人的結果。我們抵制現實中似乎造成痛苦的部分。抵抗疼痛是本能，在一些罕見的情況下，我們的生存取決於它。然而，我們的生存並不取決於抵抗我們實際抵抗的大多數事物。我們弄錯了，因為我們不理解。抗拒現實與試圖強迫現實是一樣的。我們幻想著我們可以通過抵制和強迫來改變他人。

例如，你可能會否認一些似乎給你帶來嚴重情緒痛苦的現實，比如你的母親對你大喊大叫。你可能不會否認和壓抑所有的記憶，只是其中看起來真的無法忍受的部分。你可能會把聲音和她在說什麼留出來，或者「忘記」確切的單詞和含義。或者，據你所知，你可能回憶起整個事件，但無法忍受這種情緒化的感覺，因此抵制和空白了這種經歷，以至於記憶在你的腦海中運行，但沒有感覺或影響;這隱藏在潛意識中。你可能相信你已經完全與過去的事件和解，只有當你在看別的東西時，或者因為記憶異常持久，你最終仔細觀察它，發現缺少什麼時，你才會發現一種抗拒的情緒。

你反抗的那一點是無法忍受的，所以，在你的腦海中，它似乎是一個怪物，如果你讓它進入你的意識現實，它就會跳出來。我們沒有意識到的是，沒有什麼是真正不可容忍的。有些事情可能真的會殺死我們，但沒有什麼是不能容忍的。然而，我們仍然被童年的怪物凍結在原地，直到我們轉過身來正視它們。以平靜面對它們部分是正念冥想可以幫助我們的部分原因。但有時我們需要比喻地握住某人的手，給我們勇氣。我們竭盡全力避免我們抵制過的事情和任何讓我們想起它的事情。我們如此強烈地抗拒，以至於如果在壓力下，那些被抵制的現實片段的一部分開始侵入我們的意識，我們可能會變得偏執，並相信人或“物”會來找我們。

除非我們找到一種方式來接受抗拒的經驗，否認這些現實的碎片。對現實的看似很少的否認，通常但並不總是最初在孩子身上完成ood，影響



一切的外觀;它是視野中的空白點。它變成了一個關於事物如何的固定概念，充當其他經驗的篩檢程式。在概念層面上，這種固定的想法可能會被識別為“當人們大喊大叫時很糟糕”或“不能相信其他人不會傷害我”。被這個想法過濾，其他經驗圍繞最初的否認積累並加強它。另一個人的大喊大叫讓你再次退縮，抗拒新形勢的一部分。看起來證明你是對的。這一切都非常有意義。

由於試圖強迫和抵制現實，關係現在似乎有一些東西阻礙了關係。這是空白點或遠離意識的東西。它可以在身體中感受到一種緊張，特別是在那些可能以某種方式提醒你原始原因的人周圍。這個“東西”是頭腦的一部分。它是你不想體驗的對方的方面，懸浮在你們之間的空間裡。

你願意接受的經歷部分不會懸浮在頭腦中，也不會阻礙關係。他們在那一刻被接受並成為歷史的一部分。如果我們願意，我們可以記住這些事情，但它們不會影響行為。然而，被抵制的現實片段對我們在這個世界上的功能產生了巨大而持續的影響。隨著它們的積累，有越來越多的現實我們不願意去體驗。我們用同樣的機制，試圖通過某些方式的行為來迫使現實成為我們想要的樣子。

Siobhan：我意識到我有一點問題，因為當我的男朋友對事情感到惱火時，我曾經很生氣。如果他對我生氣是有道理的，他幾乎從來不會生氣，但這隻是對房子周圍的事情脾氣暴躁。他平時對我很好，我們相處得很好，但他對無生命的物體有真實的看法。如果他們不起作用，他開始咒罵他們，似乎真的很生氣;毫無疑問，他在某個地方有自己的惡魔。他認為這很有趣，我知道這是關於他而不是我，但我會非常沮喪。我的肚子裡會有一個可怕的腫塊，感覺真的很害怕。我



開始注意到，當他那樣的時候，我的心率會上升，我會處於緊張和敏捷的狀態。

當我去開會時，它又發生了一次，所以我提出了它。我們圍繞我們的關係做了一些事情，最後傑姬（她的Clearer）問我什麼時候開始對男朋友脾氣的焦慮。令我驚訝的是，我想起了一些與我男朋友無關的事件，這些事件對他們來說有著同樣的感覺。我們回顧了大約三件事，直到我想出了關於我父親的這件事。然後我們重複了好幾遍。我從來沒有告訴過任何人這件事，因為它似乎沒有任何意義，儘管它經常作為我童年的事情出現在我的腦海中。但是當我開始講述這個故事時，我們都可以看到那裡有一些重要的東西;周圍有一點點情緒，我現在知道它真的影響了我的生活，在34歲的時候！

在我的我我大約七歲，真的很開心，我從我們家的走廊跳到廚房，我爸爸就在那裡，坐在桌子旁。我問了他一些事情，他抬頭看著我，但好像他沒有真正看到我，他的小女孩。他看起來很生氣。我記得他對我大喊大叫;我想是「滾出去！它嚇壞了我的生活。

我經歷了這件事，起初只是有一種普遍的感覺，我真的不想去那裡。但是，當我第三次回過頭來時，我到了爸爸抬頭的地方，突然間我有一種恐懼和不安的感覺，一切都湧了回來。我不知道這一切都還在那裡，但我坐在那裡哭泣，就像我是個小女孩一樣。

當我再次回顧記憶時，真是太神奇了。它已經改變了。我不認為記憶會這樣改變。但事實卻大不相同。我爸爸這次看起來不一樣了。當他抬頭看我時，他看起來很害怕。與其說是生氣，不如說是害怕，這比被大喊大叫更讓我害怕。我無法忍受爸爸害怕和不安，所以我完全把它弄糊塗了。但當我看到這一點時，一切都發生了變化。傑姬讓我和我父親說話，就好像他在那裡一樣。25 我花了幾次時間，但所有這些東西都出來了，我是多麼害怕他一直



擔心和沮喪，不可預測。我常常不確定當我和他交談時，我會得到什麼樣的接待。

這是一種解脫，但直到接下來的幾周，我才注意到自己的變化。當我男朋友對事情感到惱火時，我只是不感到緊張。我可能會感到有點擔心，但他脾氣暴躁和我感到任何緊張之間有明顯的差距。在那個空白中，我有時間做一些不同的事情;我有更多的選擇。有一次我甚至發現自己在嘲笑他，他也加入了進來。我很驚訝。這不是我一直認為的那樣。生活似乎更加豐富多彩。



保持所有這些抵抗的努力是令人筋疲力盡的，儘管我們大多數時候都沒有注意到這一點。如果我們能夠停止抗拒他人並完全接受他們，就像他們本來的樣子，頭腦就會消失，整個緊張和努力的結構就會消失。但是，即使我們在理論上理解並同意這一點，我們大多數人也與我們的思想過於緊密地聯繫在一起，以至於無法像那樣放棄結構。26 頭腦還有很多，保持它的位置。理智的理解只能在某種程度上放手。即使像Siobhan那樣了解情況的情緒，通常也是不夠的。我們必須真正理解我們第一次不理解的東西，然後如果我們想真正改變模式，就把它傳達給某人。Siobhan這樣做了，這改變了她的整個方面。沒有人打算創造一種思想;如果我們積極地試圖創造一種思想，我們就會失敗。它的創造只是而且總是我們做出的選擇的意外結果;無意中，但仍然被選中。27 但是，當我們變得足夠有意識地思考我們做了什麼時，這些選擇的意義已經深深地埋藏在潛意識中。選擇本身被埋藏得如此之深，以至於我們中很少有人真正理解引用我們潛在的自由，體驗我們的生活，至少在某些時候，我們無法控制的

驅動力。

即使我們試圖撤消選擇，一旦我們有頭腦，這也是非常困難的。用心當然不可能實現。當我們成年後，我們可以有意識地嘗試其他行為方式，並可以弄清楚發生了什麼，我們可以在這方面找到一些成功。例如，我們可以盡最大努力讓別人成為他們自己，而不是


試圖改變他們。但是，即使我們知道足夠多的方法來嘗試這一點，在實踐中也很難實現。我們內心所相信的能量仍然活躍在我們的行為中，儘管可能更微妙。

然而，關於做出選擇的事情是，我們可以選擇不同的東西。28 問題是關係性的;我們需要在關係中解決問題。

The mind comes into being

There is a certain point when the emotional charge becomes so great that the person can’t take it anymore and they start acting the way they think people want them to act. This could happen at any point from conception on, but it usually happens around 2–5 years old. This is the split between you and your personality, between the real feeling self and a personality.17

When we fall from our original state of unselfconsciousness we gain a mind. The event that finally prompts the mind to come into being is the culmination of a number of incremental steps. Even the happiest childhood has its threats: a bee sting, a tired and unresponsive mother, too bright a light, too rough a game. At these points, the child starts to have some inkling of the world as potentially hostile and outside their control. The point where enough is finally enough could of course be actual and deliberate abuse and neglect but can equally and more commonly be something that appears benign and minor in retrospect. In any case, a point of no return is reached when the pain of disrupted relationship becomes intolerable. While we might imagine this distress must logically come with too little contact, it is in fact the full force of the reality of others and their threat to our existence that is

so troubling. Too much contact is the threat.

The mind, in the beginning, was the solution to an intolerable feeling or sensation that you couldn’t understand or were simply unwilling to experience. It was something physical that constituted too much contact with others. You didn’t trust it



and couldn’t stand it. You wanted contact but not that much that soon. So in trying not to altogether break contact with others, you tried to tell them that it was too much for you, or you weren’t ready yet, or you weren’t yet willing to have that much intensity of contact. And in the attempt to try to get that message across to others, you became willing to adopt certain mental attitudes, and did so.18

The emotional distress is not just a mental event. Emotions are physical events; so it is an actual body sensation we do not want to experience. We think the feeling might kill us because we are too small and vulnerable to bear the intensity. So we block it from consciousness, at least to an extent. Consequently, our break from others manifests physically as well as in the mind. In fact, the mind is actually a false solution to the problem of the body; it was the body where all those nasty sensations of emotion were happening.

There is no going back from self-consciousness. In most cases it does not trigger any dramatic change, at least not from the outside, it is just part of growing up. But it is a dramatic change nonetheless. We tend not to remember it clearly, but, like Gillian’s case below, we may be able to identify some sense of it when we understand the principle. What she relates here has a mixture of things going on, but what she broadly identifies is a felt sense of change that marked a new attitude to the world around her.

Gillian: I do remember being happy as a very young child. I don’t recall much detail. But it was as if it was sunny all the time, like a summer afternoon. I know people were there, but the memory is really about me. Me playing and being happy. There are two or three less golden memories I have. Like my little brother being born. I remember a kind of anxiety when my mum showed him to me. And I’ve got a vague memory of being shouted at by my dad. I don’t remember why. But then I have a distinct sense of it all changing. I’m not sure if there was one point, I don’t remember. But yes, when I think back it’s like the sun went in a bit. I don’t remember anything much, although going to school pops into my head as a ‘bad’ thing. And I do remember other people and not



liking a teacher and crying about things. It has a really different atmosphere in my head to when I was really small. I was still happy, but I was more wary of people. So I do sort of see that there was a change. There was this time when everything was warm and sunny and friendly and sort of soft. Even puddles were friendly, puddles and insects. Then it was darker and there were people who were not so nice and insects were horrible. My childhood was fine really, actually lovely in many ways. But I do have a sense of this shift. It wasn’t that I became unhappy, but I became aware that the world was out there and I had to be more careful and calculate how to deal with people.



If Gillian were to work more on this, she might be able to sort out the different thoughts and strands to find the crucial incident that marked the point when she stepped back from others conclusively. This break could in principle be mended, not to return to the child state, but to work towards unified self-consciousness. This is more like Christ’s injunction that we must become (again) as little children.19

The context of this separation is always the child’s relationship with others. We would not have minds were we not relational. If we did not want to relate we would not end up with minds. What we commonly think of as the ‘human condition’ is dependent, in every respect, on our wanting to be in relationship with others.


Eating the apple: knowledge of good and bad

In the moment of separation from others we become irretrievably self-conscious. As this happens, we also become conscious of others as separate from us. This is the nature of duality. As soon as something or someone exists, there has to be something or someone to which it exists in opposition.

With the split from others we took on fixed ideas about life rather than just being in the flux of in-the-moment existing. In the story of Adam and Eve, this happens when Eve eats the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.20 It is the moment when we become self- conscious and gain a dualistic mind.



In the dualistic mind, for the first time, there is ‘me’ and ‘you’. These ideas are distinct from the reality of two individuals actually existing. Two individuals existed all along and still exist. But now there are additions to that simple fact. These are the ideas of me and you. These ideas of ‘me’ and ‘you’ are the foundations of the mind.

This shift from a unified consciousness to dualistic self- consciousness is characterised in myths the world over as a fall into darkness. In the Judaeo-Christian tradition it is represented by the Fall from Eden into the darkness and suffering of the human condition, alienation from God.21 When the first humans eat from the tree of knowledge, they instantly become aware of self as object. This is starkly described as instantly becoming aware and ashamed of their nakedness. They become aware of themselves from the outside. They equally become aware of others as separate. Now that there are ‘two’, the seed of discord is sown; now we have to think about how to relate to this other. This realisation is a banishment from bliss, from the Garden.


The mind is a substitute for direct communication

The difficulties in relating that caused us to break from others were fundamentally failures of understanding and communication. The contact was too much, too soon. But we could not say that. Had we been skilled in communication when these things happened, we would have been able to sort it out then and there. In that case we would have had no need to develop distorted ways to get ourselves across. We would not have needed the mind at all. But we did not have those skills, as we were infants. In our fear we did what came naturally and recoiled; the consequence was the mind. The mind is our substitute for the communication we could not fulfil.

But even though it became difficult, we never actually gave up trying to get understood. We might have felt like we did, but deep down we are all still trying to communicate with all our might; otherwise we would not have taken on the mind to try to achieve this.

The communication, however, became distorted and indirect with the mind. It became wrapped up in ideas about life and others that



manifested in aberrant behaviours; these ideas are necessarily false. So the message we originally wanted to communicate, but could not, becomes a drama in which the message is always implicit but never direct. This drama is the mind.

The mind is self-defensive in origin, but as a drama it is not a straightforward rejection of others. It performs a neat double action, brilliant in its way. The key to the mind is that it not only puts up a barrier that keeps others at a safe distance, it is also a movement of reaching out to others to relate to them. In this respect it is a communication. Backing away from others is a manifest desire to relate to them and a communication in and of itself.

If we were simply fed up of others and decided we had had enough of them altogether, then we might have decided to cut off and go on alone. But we do not do this. It might seem like we do sometimes, because this is our narrative, the one we tell ourselves and others. Some people certainly do their best to look as though they are doing this and believe it themselves. But we do not know of anyone who has really opted out. If someone did so, we would not know about it because they would not be interacting with any of the rest of us. The rest of us, those we know about, demonstrably did not cut off from others. All of that seeming to turn their back on the world is just another form of relating.

Boris: I’ve had a tendency to sulk as long as I remember. I stop speaking sometimes but I also used to leave the room occasionally. I never thought it was a particularly intelligent reaction, but I still thought it was just me wanting to get some distance from something I didn’t like. I also believed it was actually a pretty manly way of getting a grip too and avoiding conflict and thought of myself as restrained and good at dealing with difficult stuff. Typically, what brought it up was an argument of some kind, or the threat of one, but I even did it at work a bit, and that really made me stop and think. So I brought this incident up in a session.

There was a particular time at work when, for some reason, everyone ended up at the tea point at the same time one morning. We were a small company but it was still funny and we were laughing. And then we started to have this conversation out loud about something we’d



been talking about on email all week. The boss was there too, and everyone was chipping in. I said my bit but I remember feeling angry because no one agreed with my idea. In fact, someone said it was crazy, and there was a bit of debate and it got dismissed. Looking back, it was all perfectly reasonable and good humoured, but I was furious at the time. The reason for that is another story. But anyway, instead of carrying on with the discussion with everyone else, I just left and pretended I was going to the toilet. It was easy enough to do because we were all standing there by the exit. But I didn’t go to the toilet. I went off for a walk and was really angry. Like usual, I thought I was doing the sensible thing, going off for a bit to gather my thoughts and calm down in a civilised way. But it kept going round and round in my head and I went home and talked about it until my girlfriend got fed up.

When I got honest with myself in the session, I knew that the story I was telling myself wasn’t really true. Well, it was true a bit, but most of it was an excuse. When I walked out I was gone for much longer than I needed to calm down. Deep down I knew I was doing something else. I wasn’t just removing myself from a difficult situation in an adult way, I was sending a message. I worked on it in the session for ages and finally realised the message was something like, You fuckers, how dare you laugh at me! I’ll show you what fuckers you are! It reminded me of things that used to go on in my primary school. Anyway, I didn’t say that, of course. That wouldn’t have been good either. Of course, I can see now that sulking was not an effective way of getting my message across, and I’ve understood much more about the whole thing. But the point was – and this was the real revelation for me in the session – that I wasn’t really going away from them. In my mind, walking away was the same thing to me as being right in those peoples’ faces, screaming at them. I wasn’t even going away to stop myself saying it, not really and truly. The message was right there in my going off. But it was all messed up and even I didn’t get it. How on earth I expected them to understand I really don’t know. But I did; I thought they should understand me and it made me even more furious when I came back and no one even seemed to have noticed I’d left the room; they hadn’t got



it at all. When I really and truly saw what I’d done, I saw how funny it was, and how sad.



Our connections with other people might be pretty tenuous sometimes but, with the mind, we created a mechanism through which we made sure we also maintained contact but in a reduced, mushy and tolerable way. This mechanism is the mind. The mind is not our capacity to think; it is not our consciousness; it is not the seat of our intelligence or soul. The mind is the body of ideas and their combinations that we use to stay at a safe distance from others yet stay in touch.


The mind controls relating

At an unconscious level we have an idea that, if we can control our relationships with others, then we can all go back to being happy. To our way of (unconscious) thinking, we do a deal with others and life in general. A large part of our subsequent difficulties with people is that they are unaware of this contract we think we have with them. We find this bewildering and frustrating because we buy our own propaganda that our distorted communications are clear and obvious. Then we blame people for not understanding us.

With the mind established, we believe we have a grip on the situation and are in control of all the relating. We think this will mean we will not be hurt again if it goes wrong. In other words, the mind is a way of relating with others that seems survivable.

What a good solution it seemed to be too. We did not plan it; it happened when we backed off. But it looks neat; we have a buffer zone of ideas set up to protect us from others, but we can also stay in relationship with them, mediated safely through these ideas.

We now see others and the world through this screen of ideas we have about them. It is a distorted lens, though, so the world we see through it is not quite the world as it is. The more mind we have – we tend to accumulate mind as we age – the more distorted the lens. Sometimes we really do not see anything much of reality at all, but operate on the basis of this ongoing inner movie. Berner did not use the term ‘projection’ to describe this situation, but it easily maps on to the idea of projection commonly used in psychotherapy.22



Our solution to the problem turned out to be a mistake because we believe it is true. Rather than being in control of it, it dominates and is in control of us. We are pulling the strings in there somewhere, but we have lost ourselves and believe our own stories.

We attempt to control relating by not allowing others to be the way they are. Of course, we cannot actually stop them being the way they are. But we can construct ideas about ourselves and others that appear to control the world and have actual consequences in the world that look a lot like proof that we are right in our ideas. So we persist in believing our own propaganda. Underlying this is the desire to be in control. It is ‘achieved’ in the mind not just by pushing others away, which we might expect to be the case, but also by pulling them closer. Pushing away and pulling close are the same thing psychologically. In one of his lectures, Berner described this pulling closer in the following way:

We want the others…we love the others, but we can’t tolerate the way they are. So we bring them right to where we are and they can’t do anything to us. And we had no consciousness of it… But we still want to relate so much, and the only way to get to relating and the tolerability is to mush yourself together and lessen the relationship, lessen the polarity, or lessen the energy.23

Ideas seem like such a good solution because they act as cushions against others and tone down relating to a level of intensity we think we can handle. We have got other people neatly packaged up and controllable in this ideal world. Reality is on our terms now, our rules.


Forcing and resisting reality

…you cannot create a mind. The only thing you can do is either accept what another is or not. When you do accept what another is, there is no mind; when you do not accept the other, the mind comes into being. This is the origin of the mind… The mind is one’s forcing or resisting others.24



Another way of understanding how the mind happens is to see it as a result of our resisting and trying to force life and others. We resist the part(s) of reality that seems to be causing the pain. It is instinctive to resist pain and our survival depends upon it in some rare situations. Our survival does not depend on resisting most of the things we actually resist, however. We get it wrong because we do not understand. Resisting reality is the same as trying to force reality. We are under the illusion we can modify others by resisting and forcing them.

For example, you might deny a bit of reality that seems to be causing you acute emotional pain, such as your mother shouting at you. You might not deny and suppress all of the memory, just the part of it that seemed really intolerable. You might blank out the sound and what she was saying, or ‘forget’ the precise words and meaning. Or you might recall the whole event, as far as you are aware, but could not stand the emotional feeling and therefore resisted and blanked out that experience such that the memory is running in your mind but with no feeling or affect; this is hidden away in the subconscious. You might believe you are perfectly reconciled to the past event and only discover a resisted emotion when you are looking at something else or because the memory is oddly persistent and you finally look closely enough at it to discover what is missing.

The bit you resisted was intolerable so, in your mind, it seems like a monster that will jump out if you let it into your conscious reality. What we do not realise is that nothing is actually intolerable. Some things might actually kill us, but nothing is intolerable. Yet we are still frozen in place by the monsters of our childhood until we turn and face them squarely. Facing them with equanimity is partly how mindfulness meditation can help us. But sometimes we need to metaphorically hold someone’s hand to give us the courage. We go to great lengths to avoid the thing we have resisted and anything that reminds us of it. We resist so hard that if, under stress perhaps, parts of those resisted bits of reality start intruding into our conscious mind, we can become paranoid and believe that people or ‘things’ are out to get us.

Unless we find a way to receive resisted experiences, we will always deny those pieces of reality. That seemingly little denial of reality, usually but not always originally done in childhood, affects how



everything looks; it is a blank spot in the field of vision. It becomes a fixed idea about how things are that acts as a filter for other experiences. At a conceptual level, that fixed idea might be identified as ‘It’s bad when people shout’ or ‘Others can’t be trusted not to hurt me.’ Filtered by this idea, other experiences accumulate around the original denial and reinforce it. Another person shouting makes you flinch again and resist parts of the new situation. It looks like proof you were right. It all makes perfect sense.

With trying to force and resist reality, relationship now appears to have something in it that gets in the way of relating. This is the blank spot or the thing being kept away from the conscious mind. It can be felt in the body as a tension, particularly around people who may remind you in some way of the original cause. This ‘something’ is part of the mind. It is the aspect(s) of the other you do not want to experience, suspended in the space between you.

The parts of experience you were willing to accept do not get suspended in the mind and do not stand in the way of relationship. They were accepted in the moment and became part of history. We can remember these things, if we wish to, but they do not affect behaviour. The bits of reality that were resisted, however, have a huge and continuing effect on our functionality in the world. As they accumulate, there are increasingly large chunks of reality we are not open to experiencing. We are, with the same mechanism, trying to force reality to be the way we want it to be, by behaving in certain ways.

Siobhan: I realised I had a bit of a problem because I used to get upset when my boyfriend got annoyed about things. It would have made sense if he was angry with me, which he hardly ever was, but this was just generally grumpy with things round the house in particular. He’s really nice to me usually and we get on well, but he has a real thing about inanimate objects. If they don’t work, he starts swearing at them and seems really angry; no doubt he has his own demons under there somewhere. He thinks it’s funny and I know it’s about him and not me, but I would get really upset. I would get a horrible lump in the pit of my stomach and felt really quite scared. I



started noticing that my heart rate would go up when he was like that and I’d be on edge and snappy.

It had just happened again when I went for a session, so I brought it up. We did some stuff around our relationship and then finally Jackie [her Clearer] asked me when the anxiety around my boyfriend’s temper began. To my surprise I remembered incidents that had the same sort of feel to them that had nothing to do with my boyfriend. We went back over about three incidents until I came up with this one about my dad. And then we went over that quite a few times. I’d never told anyone about it because it just didn’t seem to mean anything, even though it often popped into my mind as something about my childhood. But when I started to tell the story, we could both see there was something important there; there was this little twang of emotion around it and I now know it was really affecting my life, at 34 years of age!

In my memory I was about seven and really happy, and skipping down the hallway of our house and into the kitchen, and my dad was there, sitting at the table. I asked him something and he looked up at me but like he wasn’t really seeing me, his little girl. He looked furious. I remember him shouting something at me; I think it was ‘Get out!’ It scared the life out of me.

I went through the incident and at first there was just this general feeling that I’d really prefer not to go there. But then, as I went back over it the third time, I got to the bit where dad looked up and suddenly I had this feeling of fear and upset, and it all flooded back. I had no idea it was all still there, but I sat there crying like I was a little girl.

When I looked at the memory again it was amazing. It had changed. I didn’t think memories could change like that. But it was really different. My dad looked different this time. When he looked up at me he looked frightened. Not so much angry but frightened, and that was what terrified me more than being shouted at. I couldn’t bear it that my dad was scared and upset himself, so I completely blanked it out. But when I saw that, everything shifted. Jackie got me to speak to my dad as if he was there.25 It took me a few goes but all this stuff came out about how scared I was that he was worried and depressed all the



time and unpredictable. I was often not sure what kind of reception I would get when I spoke to him.

It was a relief, but it was only in the following weeks that I noticed a change in myself. When my boyfriend got annoyed with things, I just didn’t feel tense. I might feel a bit worried, but there was a definite gap between him being grumpy and me feeling any tension at all. In that gap I had time to do something different; I had more choice. One time I even found myself laughing at him and he joined in. I was amazed. It wasn’t what I thought it was all this time. And life seemed a bit more colourful.



The effort of keeping all this resistance going is exhausting, although we do not notice this most of the time. Were we able to stop resisting others and accept them completely, as they really are, the mind would vanish and whole structures of tension and effort would fall away. But even if we understand and agree with this in theory, most of us are too closely identified with our minds simply to drop the structure just like that.26 There is a lot more to the mind, keeping it in place. Intellectual understanding only goes some way towards letting it go. Even getting the emotion of the situation, as Siobhan did, is not enough usually. We have to really understand what we did not understand the first time round and then get it across to someone if we want to really change the pattern. Siobhan did this and it changed a whole aspect of how she was. No one sets out to create a mind; were we actively to try to create a mind we would fail. Its creation is only and always an unintended consequence of the choices we make; unintended, but still chosen.27 But the point of those choices is buried very deeply in the subconscious by the time we become conscious enough to contemplate what we have done. The choices themselves are buried so deeply that few of us really appreciate our potential freedom and experience our lives as being in the grip of drives we have no control

over, at least some of the time.

Even if we try to undo the choices, this is immensely difficult once we have a mind. It is certainly impossible to achieve using the mind. We can consciously try other ways to behave when we are adults and can figure out what is going on, and we can find some success in this. For instance, we can do our best to let others be who they are and not


try to change them. But even when we know enough to attempt this, it is tremendously hard to achieve in practice. The energetics of what we believe underneath are still active in our behaviour, though perhaps more subtle.

The thing about having made choices, however, is that we can choose something different.28 The problem is relational; we need to approach the problem within relationship.