“You Can’t Change What You Can’t Remember”
I cannot count the number of trainings, seminars, and workshops I've been to over my life. Mostly, I've retained next to nothing when it comes to learning. I have often realized I need to make a change. But try as I may, until I discovered how to have epiphanies by choice, I basically always failed. And no, I don't always have epiphanies. But I do try to make note of the parts I struggle to remember.
The thing is, if you understand what makes you forget, you at least have a chance to heal what keeps you from remembering. What does this? The experience of too much information.
[1] Observations and interpretations are complementary opposites (two sides of the same coin). Thus they are mutually exclusive and cannot occur at the same time.
[2] All observations reference a specific place and time. If what you’re saying references both a time and a place, then you are observing. If not, then you are interpreting. Observations of the present are the most potent. Observations of the past are less potent. You can’t observe the future.
[3] All observations include a personal awareness of change, both positive and negative. If you can visualize the possibility of change, including positive change, then you are observing. If not, then you are interpreting.
[4] All observations exist as points on a storyline. If you can picture what you’re saying as part of a storyline, then you are observing. If not, then you are interpreting.
[1] All interpretations are ideas and thus, are non-visual. But only native interpretations reference a group of observations without adding anything extra. In effect, native interpretations merely label “groups of observations,” whereas synthetic interpretations add references to material which has not been observed.
[2] The main source of synthetic interpretations (and thus the cause of all blame) is “fixed ideas,” events wherein the outcome feels fixed regardless of what you say or do. We all want to avoid suffering, and synthetically interpreting these events gives us the illusion we can avoid them. The problem is, all fixed ideas involve either a mind which in which all we can see is one thing (a stuck clock) or a completely empty mind (a blank slate). Thus regardless of how good the synthetic interpretation is, like a math problem wherein some of the numbers are blurry, nothing can substitute for actual observations.
[3] This need to change the future is universal in human beings. Fixed ideas make people feel the future can’t be changed, in effect, that painful outcomes are inevitably. Moreover, because fixed ideas are for the most part moments of involuntary blankness (and since you can’t change what you can’t see), ironically, fixed ideas are experiences people are unable to change.
[4] Over time then, most people become so accustomed to their mind being blank that they rarely if ever register its true significance. The true significance of a blank mind? The sudden onset of a blank mind is the sine qua non of traumatizing moments. Therapists call this state, dissociation. The lack of association. Ordinary people call these experiences, “wounds.”
[1] There are two kinds of fixed ideas: blank slates (you see nothing) and stuck clocks (you see only one fixed thing). Both involve blankness. Sadly the experience of blankness is so common that people rarely if ever notice it. This is unfortunate as the sudden onset of blankness always means the person is reliving a trauma.
[2] Only sudden-onset blankness indicates the reliving of trauma.
[3] Ironically, fixed ideas often lead to fixed outcomes, and because you can’t change what you can’t see, fixed ideas often do lead to fixed outcomes.
[4] Fixed ideas are the main cause of arguments and fights.
[1] Those who forget are doomed to repeat.
This is the cause of mistakes: all mistakes derive from some form of forgetting.
[2] All forgetting involves the mind going blank.
This is why we can’t prevent mistakes: blankness keeps us from seeing them.
[3] Blankness has only one cause: too much information.
This makes blankness the psyche’s protective fuse: when we’re blank, no more can come in.
[4] Blankness has two onsets: gradual and sudden.
Sudden onset blankness is the cause of all wounds.