第一級：互聯體驗 Part I

 

一級：互聯體驗

最表面的連接體驗由休閒體驗組成。它們沒有深深地埋在腦海裡，也不是很固定。這些隨意的體驗之所以受到抵制，是因為更深層次的態度會導致盲點，所以這個人對某些事情不開放，或者不在當下，完全意識到正在發生的事情。或者他們不太明白某件事，所以它掛在那裡，未消化。這種不在當下，或者不理解，佔了大多數人很多時候的狀態，所以有很多抗拒的隨意體驗。它們被困在腦海中，因為沒有完全消化。

簡：對我來說，最明顯的例子是當我不太聽別人說了什麼或不太明白的時候。我注意到實際的單詞在我的腦海中重複，直到我記下並“聽到”它們。這實際上非常有用，因為有很多次我知道我應該注意但一直沒有，這是我的潛意識一直在做這項工作並確保我最終聽到了。不過，我想有些事情會漏網。



現有的思維結構將這些隨意的體驗與預先存在的想法和記憶聯繫起來，這些想法和記憶與新的抗拒體驗具有某種相似性。它通過其基本邏輯系統來做到這一點。這聽起來可能很聰明，但這是一種愚蠢的邏輯，根據任何可能與其他事物相似的事物來歸檔。它可能像根據形狀、顏色或名稱提交一樣隨機。

海倫：我腦海中回蕩著一首歌，《金泰爾的莫爾》，一首我從小就知道的歌。我不記得聽過這首歌很久了，更不用說想它了，所以它一直在我的腦海中盤旋似乎很奇怪。然後有一天，我累了，中午躺下了，我特別安靜和放鬆，路上教堂的時鐘敲響了一刻鐘。我知道它確實如此，因為我隱約意識到它在幾個月前啟動了，在沉默了一年左右之後，但我並沒有特別聽它。我突然明白了這首歌是從哪裡來的。鐘聲的前三個音符是歌曲副歌的前三個音符。這就是為什麼它一直在我的腦海中盤旋。我沒有把兩個和兩個放在一起，但我的潛意識有，它一直在給我播放這首歌。一旦我意識到這種聯繫，它就不再那麼強烈了，很快就停止了。



自由聯想11 也說明瞭這一點，因為一個人根據隨機聯繫從一個想法跳到另一個想法。這可能是這樣的：椅子、腿、腳、人行道、道路、汽車......很多對話都是基於這種事情;人們通過頭腦中的隨機聯繫被提醒一件事，然後是另一件事。這些連接可以形成更複雜的網路。

瓊摔斷了腿，給了一副金屬拐杖，等她痊癒了。每當她注意到拐杖時，她就會想起她在學校里經常吹的長笛。她的頭腦將拐杖和長笛連接起來，因為兩者都很長，銀色金屬，上面鑽了孔。由於這些屬性，



拐杖和長笛在瓊的腦海中有著相似的含義。因此，它們根據這些類似的特徵進行歸檔和交叉歸檔。這些相似之處實際上是隨機的。笛子和拐杖在瓊的實際經歷中沒有聯繫，只在她的腦海中。瓊每次拿起拐杖時都會自動想到她早已消失的笛子。她甚至不知道自己正在建立這種聯繫，直到她想知道為什麼她會如此回憶她的長笛，然後坐下來解決這個問題。在那之前，她以為自己對過去的快樂時光有一些好奇和相當愉快的閃回，但當她找到這種聯繫並將其完全帶入她的意識時，這種聯繫的自動性質被打破了。她可以自由地思考拐杖而不考慮笛子，除非她真的選擇這樣做。



把這些偶然體驗的隨機聯繫當作它們具有真正的意義，就是誤解了心靈的本質，並在沒有意義的地方賦予意義。我們可以通過將連接帶到意識來處理這種層次的心靈。當一個人能夠區分經驗和記憶時，一個與另一個，並意識到自動建立的聯繫的機制，那麼這種聯繫就會從潛意識中出來並被釋放出來。作為這項工作的直接結果，頭腦相應地變得更加清晰。

這是最容易處理的思維層次，因為隨意的體驗和聯繫不是很固定。此外，只要有足夠的專注和紀律，就可以單獨完成。12 一旦注意到連接，該人就可以專注於它，直到連接暴露和體驗。如果成功完成，人們可以在一點點重複的思維消失的情況下出現。



系列

系列是陷入重複思維鏈的體驗，將一個想法與另一個想法聯繫起來。它們通常比隨意的連接體驗更固定、更深入。

每當莫琳聽到「門」這個詞時，她就會不由自主地想到祖母曾經開過的



一輛黑色汽車，然後她會自動回憶起車裡皮革的感覺和氣味，它自動連接到一個舊男友穿的皮夾克上，她和他有過不愉快的經歷。這一切都發生得非常快，下意識地，這意味著當她聽到“門”這個詞時，她會緊張一點。



這是一系列在頭腦中潛意識連接的想法或事件。序列可以複雜或簡單;它是一條具有無意識聯繫的思想鏈。除非一個人意識到是什麼導致從一個想法到下一個想法，下一個想法，等等，否則他們將被困在這種自動思維中。

Berner發現，處理序列的方法與其他連接相同：我們需要研究意義的重要性將它們從觸發器連接到序列。然後我們可以在觸發器的存在下，無論是單詞，物件，位置等等，而不會使那些 aut連接。當初的原因埋在腦海裡。但可以一步一步地追溯它。只需要讓鏈條中的一個環節清醒過來，就可以打破這個系列。這個人將不再需要對那個詞或事物的反應。這不僅僅是一種機械反應;它在那裡是有目的的。他們不願意經歷全部或部分事件。扳機將他們無意識地帶回了他們通過其他抵抗經歷抵抗的事件。這種抗拒的經歷就像是痛苦，這個人試圖忽視，但不會真正消失，並且不斷經歷。如果事件很重要，那麼它們可以被帶入意識並進行處理。這是我們在這裡看到的連接的自動性，不一定是連接的事件。處理這種自動性是一層無意識的思維，沒有它，我們會更清晰。

一個人只有在系列被打破後才會保持他們對觸發器的反應，如果它對他們有進一步的目的。例如，觸發器也可能被用作不與人們進行社交互動的藉口。如果觸發因素對某事感到不安，以至於得了偏頭痛，並且這使得該人能夠給出一個合理的理由，除了它支援的系列之外不參加派對，那麼他們可能會抓住觸發器，即使



該系列已經有意識。他們可能會堅持下去，因為他們有其他一些不想參加聚會的理由，而觸發因素是作為他們方便的藉口。

堆疊

堆疊是一種系列，但由許多彼此非常相似的體驗組成。由於它們的相似性，它們在頭腦中彼此聯繫非常緊密，難以區分。因此，它們是頭腦中高度充電的團塊，難以解開和排出。

約翰有很多非常相似的經歷，他的母親在廚房裡對他大喊大叫。他當時遮罩了很多經歷，因為被這樣大喊大叫對他來說是無法忍受的。現在它們在他的腦海中處於一個無差別的腫塊中，他抗拒看它。



解鎖堆疊的關鍵在於，儘管它們有許多共同的特點，但每種體驗在某種程度上都是不同的。在上面的例子中，約翰每次的年齡都不同，他穿著不同的東西，廚房的佈置有點不同，有些事件發生在門口，有些發生在桌子上。但是他的腦海裡把它們都放在了一起，因為它們在非常重要的方面都非常相似：他的媽媽都在裡面，她對他大喊大叫或以其他方式告誡他，而這些經歷大多發生在廚房裡。

堆積比隨意的聯繫更能堵塞思想並影響行為。一個人可能會在母親周圍有整個無差別的堆積區域，這些區域結合在一起，使他們的思想區域被壓抑和潛意識，並充滿情感。他們會抵制任何「重新想起」他們這些經歷的事情。可以有很多提醒在生活中，有些人反應非常積極。

拆開堆疊，一個人不必再次經歷所有這些經歷;有一種更經濟的處理方式。我們必須清楚地看到，每一種經歷都不同於其他經歷。這個簡單的權宜之計消除了連接，我們可以處理阻力。最容易掌握的區別



是每個事件發生在不同的時間。僅僅在智力上意識到這一點是不夠的。一個人必須願意體驗其中一個事件與另一個事件不同的實際影響，才能使疊加層分崩離析。當將它們粘在一起的自動連接變得有意識時，就像其他類型的連接體驗一樣，它失去了作為禁區的力量。

一個人可能會認為他們可以通過決定一次體驗所有未經歷過的事件來處理堆積;換句話說，通過決定一槍停止抵抗事件。這可能很有吸引力，因為一旦我們瞭解了堆積的本質，並看到它們是如何不願意體驗部分現實的結果，一個合理的解決方案似乎是讓它全部進入並結束它。但這比聽起來更難。這樣做可能會讓人不知所措，我們很可能會再次傷害這個人。如果一個人在處理自己的思想方面經驗豐富，他們可能會以這種方式解決其中的一些問題，但處理堆疊的最好、最簡單、最經濟的方法是從小處著手，將一個事件與其他事件區分開來。 願意經歷一個事件就是願意在頭腦中體驗所有類似的事情。

在一個簡單的層面上，如果我願意停止抵抗一個“蜘蛛”實例，並讓它完全進入，那麼所有蜘蛛實例觸發器都將被解除武裝。在更複雜的情況下，一個人可能仍然需要回過頭來更詳細地查看一些經歷，以清除周圍的所有創傷，但它不會像以前那樣充滿電荷和力量。伯納談到這樣的聯繫時說：

所有...頭腦中的聯繫是基於無差別的意義相似性。如果你理解了這一點，你就有了頭腦中連接的全部鑰匙。因此，很容易看出，要排出堆疊，您必須更好地區分。13



圈子

另一種連接體驗可以稱為「圈子」。這些很像系列，但它們不是線性的，而是兜兜轉轉，回到起點並重新開始。它們可能是



重複的和強迫性的。一個圓圈被卡住了，繞了一圈，因為它的某些部分正在被抵制。

吉姆感到孤獨，當他感到孤獨時，他會想到他的空房子，這讓他想起了維持這麼大的房子的成本，這反過來又提醒他他的錢比以前少了。這讓他想起，這部分是因為他給了一大筆錢給了一個他希望成為他伴侶的人，但現在離開了他。這讓他想起了自己的孤獨。他回到圓圈的起點，繼續繞圈子。



Level I: connected experiences

The most surface of the connected experiences consists of casual experiences. They are not deeply buried in the mind and not very fixed. These casual experiences are resisted because of deeper attitudes that cause blind spots, so the person is not open to some things or not in the present moment and fully aware of what is going on. Or they did not quite understand something so it hangs there, undigested. This not being in the present, or not understanding, accounts for most peoples’ state a good deal of the time, so there are a lot of resisted casual experiences. They get caught in the mind as something not fully digested.

Jane: The most obvious example for me is when I don’t quite hear what someone has said or don’t quite get it. I’ve noticed that the actual words get repeated in my mind until I take note and ‘hear’ them. It’s actually quite useful as there have been many times when I’ve known I should be paying attention but haven’t been, and it’s my subconscious that keeps doing the work and makes sure I finally do hear. I imagine there are things that slip through the net, though.



The existing structures of the mind take these casual experiences and connect them to pre-existing ideas and memories that bear some kind of similarity to the new resisted experience. It does this through its system of basic logic. That might sound clever, but it is a stupid kind of logic, filing things according to anything that might be similar to anything else. It might be as random as being filed according to shape, or colour or name.

Helen: I had this persistent thing with a song going round my head, Mull of Kintyre, a song I’d known from childhood. I didn’t recall having heard the song for a long time, let alone thought about it, so it seemed odd that it kept going round my head. And then one day I was tired and having a lie down in the middle of the day, and I was especially still and relaxed, and the clock in the church up the road chimed the quarter hour. I knew it did that as I was vaguely aware of it having started up a couple of months before, after having been silent for a year or so, but I hadn’t particularly listened to it. And I suddenly understood where the song was coming from. The first three notes of the clock chime were the first three notes of the chorus of the song. That’s why it kept going round my head. I hadn’t put two and two together, but my subconscious had, and it kept playing me the song. Once I’d realised the connection, it wasn’t so strong any more and quickly stopped.



This is also illustrated with free association11 as a person jumps from one thought to another according to random connections. This might go something like: chair, leg, foot, pavement, road, car… A lot of conversation is based on this sort of thing; people being reminded of one thing and then another, through random connections in the mind. These connections can form more complex webs.

Joan broke her leg and was given a pair of metal crutches to get around on while it healed. Whenever she noticed the crutches, which was very often for a while, she automatically thought of a flute she used to play at school. Her mind connected the crutches and the flute because both are long, silvery-metallic and have holes drilled into them. Because of these properties, there is



a similarity of meaning between crutches and flutes in Joan’s mind. They are consequently filed and cross-filed according to these similar features. Those similarities are actually random. Flutes and crutches are not connected in Joan’s actual experience, only in her mind. Joan automatically thought of her long-gone flute every time she picked up the crutches. She didn’t even know she was making this connection until she wondered why she was reminiscing about her flute so much and sat down to work it out. Up until then she thought she was having some curious and rather pleasing flashbacks to a happy time in her past, but when she found the connection and brought it fully into her consciousness, the automatic nature of the connection was broken. She was freed up to think about the crutches without thinking about the flute, unless she actually chose to do so.



Working on these random connections of casual experiences as though they had real significance is to misunderstand the nature of the mind and assign meaning where there is none. We can deal with this level of the mind by bringing the connections to consciousness. When a person can differentiate experiences and memories, one from the other, and become conscious of the mechanics of the connections that were being automatically made, then that connectivity comes out of the subconscious and is discharged. As a direct result of this work, the mind becomes correspondingly clearer.

This is the easiest level of the mind to work with because the casual experiences and connections are not very fixed. Also, it can be done alone with enough focus and discipline.12 Once a connection is noticed, the person can focus on it until the connection is exposed and experienced. Done successfully, people can emerge with a little bit of repetitive thinking gone.



SERIES

Series are experiences that are caught in chains of repetitive thinking that link one idea to another. They are often a little more fixed and a little deeper than the casual connected experiences.

Whenever Maureen hears the word ‘gate’, she automatically thinks of a black car her grandmother used



to drive, then she automatically recalls the feel and smell of the leather in the car which automatically connects to the leather jacket an old boyfriend wore with whom she had an unpleasant experience. This all happens very quickly and subconsciously and means she tenses, just a little, when she hears the word ‘gate’.



This is a series of thoughts or events that are subconsciously connected in the mind. A series can be complex or simple; it is a chain of ideas that has unconscious links. Unless a person becomes conscious of what leads from one idea to the next, and the next, and so on, they will be stuck in this kind of automatic thinking.

Berner found that the way to deal with series was the same as with other connections: we need to work on what significances of meaning connect them from a trigger through a series. Then we can be in the presence of the trigger, be it a word, object, place and so forth, without making those automatic connections. The original reason is buried in the mind. But it is possible to trace it back, step by step. Only one link in the chain needs to be brought to consciousness for the series to be broken. The person will no longer need the reactivity to that word or thing. It was not just a mechanical reactivity; it was there for a purpose. They were not willing to experience all or part of an event. The trigger took them back, in unconscious steps, to the event they were resisting through other resisted experiences. The resisted experience was like a pain the person was trying to ignore, but would not really go away, and kept coming through. If the events are significant, they can then be brought into the consciousness and dealt with. It is the automaticity of the connections we are looking at dissolving here, not necessarily the events that are connected. Dealing with that automaticity is a layer of unconscious thinking without which we are clearer.

A person will only maintain their reactivity to the trigger, after the series has been broken, if it is serving some further purpose for them. For instance, the trigger might also be put into service as an excuse for not engaging with people socially. If the trigger was feeling upset by something to the point of getting a migraine, and this enabled the person to give a plausible reason not to go to parties in addition to the series it was supporting, then they may hang on to the trigger, even



when the series has been made conscious. They may hang on to it because they have some other reason for not wanting to go to parties and the trigger is serving as a convenient excuse for them.

STACK-UPS

Stack-ups are a type of series but consist of a number of experiences that are all very similar to one another. Because of their close similarity, they are associated with each other very closely in the mind and difficult to tell apart. As a result, they are highly charged clumps in the mind that are hard to disentangle and discharge.

John has, stacked together, lots of very similar experiences of his mother shouting at him in the kitchen. He blocked a good deal of the experiences at the time because being shouted at like that was intolerable to him. Now they are in an undifferentiated lump in his mind, and he is resistant to looking at it.



The key to unlocking stack-ups is that, although they shared many features in common, each experience was different in some way. In the example above, John was a different age each time, he was wearing something different, the kitchen was arranged a bit differently, some of the incidents took place in the doorway, some at the table. But his mind has them filed all in one bundle because they were all so similar in really important respects: his mum was in all of them, and she was shouting at him or otherwise admonishing him, and most of these experiences took place in the kitchen.

Stack-ups clog the mind and affect behaviour more than casual connections. A person might have whole areas of undifferentiated stack-ups around their mother that, combined, leave an area of their mind suppressed and subconscious and charged with emotion. They will resist anything that ‘re-minds’ them of those experiences. There can be a lot of reminders in life and some people are very reactive.

To take a stack-up apart, a person does not have to go through all those experiences again; there is a more economical way of dealing with them. We have to see clearly that each experience is different from every other experience. This simple expedient dissolves the connectivity and we can deal with the resistance. The easiest difference



to grasp is that each event took place at a different time. Realising this intellectually is not enough. A person has to be willing to experience the actual impact of one of these incidents as different from another in order for the stack-up to come apart. When the automatic connection that sticks them together is made conscious, then, as with other types of connected experience, it loses its power as a no-go area.

A person might suppose they could deal with a stack-up simply by deciding to experience all the unexperienced events at once; in other words, by deciding to stop resisting the events in one shot. This may be appealing, for as soon as we understand the nature of stack-ups, and see how they are the result of not being willing to experience part of reality, a reasonable solution would seem to be to let it all in and get it over with. But this is harder than it sounds. Doing so is likely to be overwhelming and we would, more than likely, re-traumatise the person. A person might resolve some of it in this way if they are experienced at dealing with their mind, but the best, easiest, most economical way to approach a stack-up is to start small and tell one incident apart from the rest.

Being willing to experience one event is a willingness to experience all things like that in the mind. On a simple level, if I am willing to stop resisting one instance of ‘spider’, and let it in fully, then all spider- instance triggers will be disarmed. In more complex situations, a person might still need to go back and look at some of the experiences in more detail to clear all the trauma around it, but it will not have the same charge and power it had before. Berner says of connections like this one:

All…connections in the mind are based on undifferentiated similarities of significance. If you’ve understood that, you’ve got the whole key to connections in the mind. And it is easy to see, then, that to discharge a stack up you have to become better at differentiating.13



CIRCLES

Another kind of connected experience can be called ‘circles’. These are much like series but instead of being linear, they go round and round, going back to the beginning and starting up again. They can



be repetitive and obsessional. A circle is stuck, going round, because some part of it is being resisted.

Jim feels lonely, and when he feels lonely he thinks of his empty house, which reminds him of the costs of keeping such a big house going, and this in turn reminds him he has less money than he had. This leads him to recall that this is partly because he gave a substantial amount of money to someone he hoped would be his companion but has now left him. This reminds him of his loneliness. He goes back to the beginning of the circle and keeps going round.

Berner offers another illustration:

‘What am I going to do with my husband? What I’d like to do is get a better relationship going; a better relationship means that we’ve got to talk things out; talking things out means work; work means I’ve got to struggle; struggle means pain; pain means a hard time, and a hard time means unknowing.’ Round and round goes the mind. And suppose you felt unknowing whenever you were sick as a child, and whenever you were sick as a child you also felt connected to your mother, and so your mother connected to a nice feeling, and a nice feeling makes you think of your husband, and the nice feeling with your husband makes you think that you’ve got to get things worked out with him. You are back where you started.14

The connections that keep the circle going can only be stopped by the person becoming aware of one of the connections and disarming one of them. They are being made automatically, so taking away the automatic thinking stops it. The circle is broken and will not start again except by conscious choice.

Saying that all one has to do is to become conscious of a previously automatic connection sounds as though it might be easy. Sometimes it is, especially with casual experiences, but the reason it is automatic and compulsive is because something about it is unconscious and based on resistance to some part of reality. We have to stop resisting something we are strongly keeping out and that can take work. Then


we must communicate fully where we need to do so. Then the circle will be broken.