June 1, 2003

• Breakthrough
  and DENIAL

  Collective consciousness, as a concept, keeps coming to mind for me.  I’ve thought about it for a long time, from time to time.  Such thoughts usually come up for me when I hear words spoken, or see them in print, which echo my own thoughts or repeat what I have been saying or writing.  Sometimes, of course, it means no more than that these other speakers, writers, and I have been listening to or reading each other’s spoken or written expressions, or have been hearing or reading the same outside sources.  Sometimes, though, it seems that certain themes are in the air or in the stars at some given moment in time.

  
  

  Since I wrote here of a breakthrough in my marriage early last week, I have seen that word in blog entries, comments and emails from several Xangans, and have heard it mentioned at several meetings this past week.  I can infer from the contexts that at least some of those instances of the word were responses triggered by my mention of “breakthrough.”  However, it would be absurd to think that those other breakthroughs I have seen and heard reported were triggered by mine.  It has been an interesting time of change.  The theme of breakthrough seems to be in the air.

  
  

  “Denial” is another word that is coming up in conversation and print a lot lately.  In some of those conversations and a few written exchanges, I brought it up.  Other instances apparently are unrelated to my thoughts or words… or are they?  Are we not all connected at some point of our common awareness?  We all live under the same sun.  We are all bound to the same planet by the same gravitational force.  It does not seem too far-fetched to suppose that we are connected, also, in subtler ways.  I’m not here right now to speculate on the metaphysics of the matter.  I hopped out of bed this morning to express what I had been thinking about breakthrough and denial.

  
  

  I hopped out of bed, my foot landed in a cold, squishy hairball left by one of the furry critters with whom I share living space, and I stopped to do a little cleanup work before I made my way to the computer.  Now, I’m going to pause and get a cup of coffee, since I’m fairly certain I won’t lose this train of thought in the process.

  
  

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  *slurp*  Coffee had a little time to cool there as I fed the cats, which apparently wasn’t what Pidney was asking for, since she is still bitching about something.  I wonder if she resents having her hairball dumped in the garbage?  Where was I?

  
  

  Breakthrough and denial–not two separate concepts at all in this context.  I’ve noticed both here at Xanga and elsewhere recently, some instances where people apparently made significant breakthroughs and then got scared back into denial.  Why do they do that, I wonder?  How can someone catch a glimpse of the light and then shut herself back into the dark closet of denial?

  
  

  A few days ago, I wrote about the time during my childhood when I played with matches.  I know how that phase began for me.  Fire itself, at first, wasn’t the attraction.  The scent of burning sulphur was the lure at first, and then I began to be fascinated with the way the flames changed and consumed the fuel.  I went from holding matches in my fingers and sniffing the smoke, to igniting little piles of paper or twigs and watching them burn.  The playing with fire, my furtive actions and my mother’s fearful responses, had been present in memory all along.  The memory of the beginning of that phase, of seeking some vestige of my father in the lingering memories associated with an odor that reminded me of him, had come to me in a breakthrough.

  
  

  I love when that happens.  I bless such breakthroughs.  I know that at least a little bit of the thrill I feel at those times is simply a neurochemical response, a little jolt of pleasure juice in my brain, the body’s payoff for the mind’s work.  I love the way we, not only humans but apparently other animals as well, are set up so that we reward ourselves for learning and growth.  Whatever higher mind designed us that way really knew its beans, there.   It set up a self-perpetuating chain of “AHA!” moments that I can imagine extending into infinity.  I enjoy imagining that AHA! moment in which that little design element occurred to the designer.  Way fun!

  
  

  Some of my fun with the breakthroughs I’ve experienced and encountered lately has been blunted by denial.  Not so much my own denial, because, dammit, when I’m in denial I don’t know it, and as soon as I do see it, *poof* it is gone.  Other people’s denial is ever so much easier to see.  That’s the value of group therapy for me:  people to watch my back, detect my denial and rag me about it, chip away at it until I stop denying and let the denial go.   Too few of my associates have the perception to see my denial or the courage to tell me about it.  That latter bit is understandable, I suppose.  I can’t deny that some people find me a bit intimidating.

  
  

  What I can’t pretend to understand is that fear of theirs.  Why, I wonder, are so many people frightened by words and ideas?  It is not as if I am vindictive and would come back on someone in anger if he or she reminded me of some fact I would prefer to forget.  Never mind that there are no true facts that I WOULD prefer to forget.  I prefer to remember.  I really do want to know it all, to have my eyes as wide open as they go, with all veils removed from my sight.  I know that to some people that makes me scary, but I’m baffled at what could be scary about that. 

  
  

  Another part of their fear I just don’t get is what harm they think I could or would do if I were the vindictive type and did take exception to their expressing their perception.  If I reacted in anger and threw some words at them, would the words hurt?  Words don’t hurt me.  If I expressed contempt would my contempt hurt?  The only contempt that can hurt me is self-contempt, and I avoid that by being scrupulously honest with myself and others.  It seems reasonable to assume that it isn’t my opinion of them that matters to them, but maybe they are afraid that I might somehow alter their own self-image.  It must be horrible to have such a fragile self-image, to construct a self-concept so shaky that it can be knocked down by a few words.

  
  

  This appears to go directly to the mechanism by which my denial becomes undetectable to those who might otherwise observe it.  In some cases, it is simply a matter of perception, of orientation or attention.  We tend not to notice that which we’re not looking for.  This group here isn’t a therapy group.  Most of you are not keyed to picking up on the subtleties and some of you aren’t all that good at even grasping the meaning that’s laid out there overtly for your consideration.  I chalk that up to human differences, to lovely and interesting diversity.  It’s okay.

  
  

  What is not so okay, what ends up amounting to dysfunction, insanity and cultural illness, is the way some of you conspire to support each other’s self-delusion.  Do you realize that is what you are doing when you (figuratively) pat each other on the head and sympathize over how the world has wronged you, ignoring how each of you set yourselves up for your frustrations and disappointments?  Do you do this knowingly, expecting the others to reciprocate and reinforce your own denial for you?  Or is the collective denial so thick and impenetrable that you see your sympathetic gestures as empathy?  Do you think you do someone a favor when you offer support to a person who is lying to herself, or who is running on a treadmill compounded of deception, delusion and fairy-tale dreams?

  
  

  If so, please, don’t do me any such favors.  I’ll take my reality straight up, no chaser, thank you very much.

  
  

  

  • 1:40 pm
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