This is the LP version of this idea that if we don’t have connection with self (which is the definition and consequence of trauma), there is a tendency to seek that connection with other, either other people or other stuff, things external to the self, and wind up sucking the other dry.
TL;DR how to reconnect with Self
An insight is emerging out of some tension that has been plaguing the family for the last week or so, and a very valuable lesson:
when we don’t have connection with Self (which is the definition and consequence of trauma) there is a tendency to seek that connection with other, either other people or other stuff, things external to the self;
and this pursuit is doomed to fail and cause suffering in the same way trying to lace your shoes with an apple will always fail ~ the other is not a substitute for the self, and our repeated attempts to make something other than it is (to meet our need for connection to self by attaching to other) is delusional and therefore a recipe for suffering
when suffering is getting what we don’t want or not getting what we do want, and delusion is mistaking illusion for reality (that other can meet the needs of self is an illusion, sometimes very convincing).
Suffering is not such a big deal if we’re wanting cake and get a banana instead, but is kind of a big deal when we want to connect with self and we keep missing the mark because we are mistaking the other for a suitable substitute.
This is the ultimate form of Buddhist ignorance.
Thinking cake will meet our needs and therefore being disappointed when we get banana instead 👈🏼 that’s one level of relatively mundane ignorance, but mistaking other for self is a whole other level. You’d think it would be obvious that the self is not other, but if it were obvious why would we be trying to complete ourselves by finding Mr or Ms Right or by getting the right car, job, holiday, biscuit.
I’m sure there’s literature around this and I am interested in seeing that documentation but for now the insight feels real enough to not need validation.
On that note, when we have connection with self we don’t need external validation to know our worth. (Of course, to some extent we know ourselves in reflection from other, but this operates on the more-mundane level of personality, whereas the connection to self I’m talking about here is more about the sacred level of transpersonality. When we are connected with our transpersonal self, we don’t need others’ favourable opinions of us to be favourable for self-worth to be known.)
So how do we have connection with self? How do we restore the connection with self that was severed as a response to adverse experiences?
We reconnect with self by recovering from or releasing trauma, integrating our exiled parts, and through contemplative transpersonal practices (because by ‘self’ I actually mean ‘the part of us that transcends personal identification’).
My need for solitude, privacy and timespace must be met for me to feel connection to self, but once I feel that connection I am more able to spend time completely with other and not be distracted by my needs.
That connection with self meets all my psychological needs and once this connection is fulfilled I am able to show up in the world with service and giving that does not syphon from others. When I give/serve without that connection, I syphon from others because I am trying to get from them something I cannot get from them ~ namely, connection to self.
It sounds paradoxical, but I think this is true: when we try to give or to serve others (without connection with self), we often end up doing the opposite of giving, which is sucking, taking, draining … that’s why the image of a syphon feels appropriate, especially because once momentum has been created in a syphon, it is hard to halt the flow without causing a huge mess.
We end up sucking from others when we are trying to give, if we aren’t anchored in Self, because of a metaphysical void or vacuum where our connection with self once was ~ we become a psychological blackhole, syphoning from others what we can only truly get from connection with self.
The formal term for this is “being an existential suckhole”.
This means that all expressions of love ~ if they are coming from a place of disconnection from self ~ are manipulative, because they are trying to meet self-needs through other. We all adapt ways of relating with other to ensure our attachment needs are met, at the expense of our authenticity but also at the expense of other, which we exploit to meet a need it is impossible for them to meet.
This is presumably unconscious ~ I can’t imagine anyone doing this deliberately, but I believe everyone is doing it unconsciously to some extent because everyone has a degree of trauma in our culture (Maté & Maté, 2022).
We reconnect with self by recovering from or releasing trauma, integrating our exiled parts, and through contemplative transpersonal practices (because by ‘self’ I actually mean ‘the part of us that transcends personal identification’).
How do we release trauma and integrate the parts of ourselves that we exiled during events we found traumatising? I cannot articulate that right now but it’s a central aspect of the Heartwards modularity.
And for now it’s something to think about:
when we don’t have connection with Self (which is the definition and consequence of trauma) there is a tendency to seek that connection with other, either other people or other stuff, things external to the self;
and this pursuit is doomed to fail and cause suffering in the same way trying to lace your shoes with an apple will always fail ~ the other is not a substitute for the self, and our repeated attempts to make something other than it is (to meet our need for connection to self by attaching to other) is delusional and therefore a recipe for suffering.
Kokoro 心 Heart 