Fruits of Retreat

What I learned from my reading during my 'retreat' this weekend:
Buddha's First Noble Truth of Suffering, as translated into modern terms by Mark Epstein:
"Birth is suffering, decay is suffering, death is suffering, the search for ultimate satisfaction through sexuality is suffering, not to be able to love is suffering, not to be loved enough is suffering, not to be known is suffering, not to know oneself is suffering."

Life is ultimately humiliating and unsatisfying, taught Buddha, so long as we cling to our image of self, for any image we can conceptualize is false, and its ego-thirsts insatiable. Otto Rank best put it into terms that the West can understand--that the source of suffering is the result of the original separation anxiety we suffered as infants when we were parted from our mothers, and our subsequent and unremitting drive to regain that sense of perfect completeness. This wish for ultimate security and perfection, for the return to a state prior to the existence of anxiety, is the most compelling subconscious wish of the human psyche. From what I understand, Buddhists view this wish as the force that drives us to see the 'self' and 'others' as permanent objects that can be possessed and controlled, and which need to be possessed and controlled by us because in some way we feel that they must contain a small part of that original 'lost' security that we must regain. I think even Freud understood that it is a mistake to view the self / ego / identity as fixed in any way, because this 'core' that we imagine to be there can and will vanish. It is a mirage, and counting on its existence is a source of endless suffering. The nature of the self, of identity, cannot be defined, and our attempts to define it set into motion that oscillation between between the crises of narcissism and nihilism, of grandiosity and emptiness.

The search for the self is a quest that will not bear an ultimately satisfying fruit, for even if it is found, we lack the organs necessary to 'digest' it. The true self cannot be defined, not because the self does not exist, but because there is no way of defining it in terms that our minds can hold that will not somehow reinforce an erroneous view of the self. Dr Epstein says: "The Self is a metaphor for a process that we do not understand, a metaphor for that which knows". Where Freud himself lamented that psychoanalysis alone was theraputically insufficient to the task of producing a strong, healthy ego in a patient, Epstein asserts that identity issues can be treated, not by helping the patient "find" his or her true self, but through the buddhist approach of bringing the polar extremes the individual is swinging between into focus and thus releasing their holds on the psyche. At this point it does not become necessary to substitute or create a "truer" personality / ego; rather, non-judgemental awareness of the manifestations of the false self make it possible for the individual to recogize when he or she is re-entering that polar territory and bring it back into focus without experiencing the need to swing in the opposite direction. An authentic view of the self is thus cultivated, and small, continuous corrections keep one on course. The course? The Way leading to the Cessation of Suffering. The Middle Path. Buddha's Eightfold Path.

All fine and good, but what does it mean?
I don't know.
Fortunately, Buddha would have considered that an acceptable answer.

Now for the deep-thinking I did this weekend...
I can accept what happened with Demming. I have to, really. Acceptance is the middle path between obsessing on it, and ignoring it. I have tried both those polar extremes, and now I have come to non-judgemental acceptance. It happened, it created a lot of emotional and spiritual fallout, it changed the course of my life for 25 years... but I have the ability to let it go, to float over/through it, rather than bury it or be buried by it, and to learn from it... I spent surprisingly little time thinking about this over the weekend, actually. The realization and my acceptance of it have made it less of a pressing issue for me. I will of course need to talk to my therapist about it... am I avoiding understanding other ramifications relating to my childhood sexual trama, or am I sufficiently aware, now, to make progress in healing without continued intensive internal-dialogue on the subject?

This weekend, I tried to analyse two other issues: my distrust of people who say they love me, and my discomfort with 'attention'. Both the distrust and the attention-discomfort pre-date Demming and I consider them to be serious problems for me. What I hadn't realized until this weekend was that they are related. Mindful meditation is not easy. There is a temptation to think critically as soon as something surfaces, and of course, as soon as I start thinking critically about something, it loses focus...rather like something that can be seen clearly in the peripheral vision, but not in the center of the eye. The trick is to remain aware and observant of the reactions of my mind, body, and emotions to the thoughts or events I am contemplating. I don't know if I am doing it 'right', it has been 15+ years since I last had a meditational instructor, but I know that beyond breath is a clarity that can be attained--just not reliably. Not yet.

So this weekend I dropped two stones into the pond of my psyche, and observed the ripples and how they affected me. I have always thought that my discomfort with attention related to the negative attention from my father -- the consequences of the emotionally combative relationship we had. But that is only an outer ripple. In truth, I do think it has to do with the fact that my parents weren't equipped to be parents, nor were they particularly interested in it their children. They were, at best, disinterested, and at worst, highly aggravated by the inconveniences that their parental responsibilities foisted upon them. My parents were little more than children themselves, and when they weren't toasted out of their gourds, they were fighting, often to the point of physical violence.

There was no safe place for my child-self to build and tear-down and re-build my ego as I went through the various psychological stages of development, so I created a false self that acted as an intermediary, attempting to meet my own needs and those of my family. I became a mini-adult. I learned to cope with the knowledge that as a child I was an aggravating inconvenience by trying to be as perfect as possible, and with parental disinterest by being as bright and talented and over-achieving as possible. So I was both attention-aversive and attention-seeking at the same time. To complicate things even more, I was always aware that the self that got the attention was a construct, that it was not the "real me". There was this pervasive sense of falseness and dishonesty from the time I was 5 until my early 20's. I always felt like people loved and paid attention to the facade, the fake self, rather than the real me. So, when people said they loved me, I knew they only loved the false me, because there was no way they could know the real me. I did not trust their "love", knowing it could be an illusion just as much as my facades were illusory. I grew uncomfortable with the positive attention that the fake self drew, because it wasn't the real me who had earned it.

"Which is the real you?" Michael asked, concerned I think, that the fake self was still in play. My answer is that I jettisoned all of the facades save the one I still use in my professional life. Today I am genuinely myself--whoever / whatever that is. When pressed by him to define the real me, I answered: "My identity is fluid. I have qualities, ie intelligence, humour, etc, and experiences, both positive and negative, which distinguish me from others... But who I am... that depends on what I am thinking and feeling that day. I do not mean that my sense of self is unformed... I just refuse to cling to anything. I do not have an identity crisis. The only time my identity feels threatened is when I feel pressured to present a specific facade as 'me'."

Those coping mechanisms, those reactions, that distrust, are no longer necessary, but they are still with me. I need to work to bring it all into focus, bring it fully into awareness, and giving all of it the full of my attention, acknowlege that it served its purpose and let it go. Acknowledgement and acceptance and then careful maintenance of that healthier middle path that allows me to keep a watchful eye out for relapses.