Gabriel Mohr

is spreading positivity and conscious information!

Word Analysis Philosophy (WAP), What It Is, and How/Why It Works

by Leave a Comment

Quick Fact

-Word analysis philosophy is a technique I created to help with negative thought patterns! It works since we focus on the core words within each thought pattern and study them, thereby learning their true meaning and origin, thereby placing attention on them, thereby transcending them!

Intro

Perhaps I’m in a different position than most, but I often fall into negative thought patterns that can last for days, weeks, or months on end. These negative thought patterns are often unconscious (oh boy, how fun) and they almost always consist of words that have a negative connotation in society, such as “terrible,” “shameful,” “useless,” and the like; words that are meant to degrade my being and make sure I never get back up again.

In response to my own turmoil I’ve created a new branch of philosophy called ‘Word Analysis Philosophy.’ Its purpose is to take a particular word, break it into smaller pieces, find out exactly where it comes from, exactly what it means, how it could be said better, and what exactly the ‘it’ happens to be that I’m trying to explain.

For example, a word that’s bugging me at the moment is “useless.” I could let this word roam around in the back of my mind and leave it unchecked, but that would lead to a lot of suffering since me telling myself “I’m useless” is a bad thing, right? Maybe, but I’m not entirely convinced that this is the truth. Let’s take this word, “useless,” and analyze it a little further instead of simply taking it at face value.

The Process

If I break the word into smaller bits and pieces I find that it’s made up of two words; “use” and “less.” Just breaking the word apart sends a different message than “useless;” instead of suffering to no end I now receive the message that I should “use less” of my computer/phone since I’m on them all of the time for work and play.

Now I take the two words “use” and “less” and find their origin. After all, the cultural context they were created for at the time is everything, and if a word is created in a different context than what we’re experiencing today then it could have a completely different meaning than what we think of it to be in the present day.

A quick search from www.etymoline.com gave me this: ” use (n), c. 1200, “act of employing,” from Anglo-French and Old French us “custom, practice, usage,” from Latin usus “use, custom, practice, employment, skill, habit,” from past participle stem of uti “make use of, profit by, take advantage of.”

Also, “use (v), c. 1200, “employ for a purpose,” from Old French user “employ, make use of, practice, frequent,” from Vulgar Latin *usare “use,” frequentative form of past participle stem of Latin uti “make use of, profit by, take advantage of, enjoy, apply, consume,” in Old Latin oeti “use, employ, exercise, perform,” of uncertain origin.

This Latin root, “uti,” certainly has its place in the English language; utilize, utensil, inutile, usury, and use all come from this stem “uti.” So immediately we think of a tool, a device, something we take advantage of, etc, etc.

Looking up the word “less” I see two different definitions, the first being “Old English læs (adv.) “less, lest;” læssa (adj.) “less, smaller, fewer” (Northumbrian leassa), from Proto-Germanic *laisizan (source also of Old Saxon, Old Frisian les “less;” Middle Dutch lise “soft, gentle,” German leise “soft”), from PIE root *leis- (2) “small” (source also of Lithuanian liesas “thin”) + comparative suffix,” which is a complete mouthful for someone who is not etymologically inclined. However, the second definition made a little more sense to me;

-less, word-forming element meaning “lacking, cannot be, does not,” from Old English -leas, from leas “free (from), devoid (of), false, feigned,” from Proto-Germanic *lausaz (cognates: Dutch -loos, German -los “-less,” Old Norse lauss “loose, free, vacant, dissolute,” Middle Dutch los, German los “loose, free,” Gothic laus “empty, vain”), from PIE root *leu- “to loosen, divide, cut apart.”

If we take the first part of this definition (modern English “-less”) then we get a word that spells “useless” which generally means “lacking utility,” “cannot be taken advantage of.” If we move to the Old English root -leas then we can spell the word “useleas” (or dare I be so bold to spell it “uselease”) which means means  “devoid of advantage,” “false utility,” or even “free of use.” Moving on to the third part of this definition (the Old Norse root -lauss) we get the word “uselauss” which means “vacant utility,” “dissolute advantage,” or even “loose utility or “loosely advantageous.”

The older the root, the less sense it makes when we combine it with modern English, but right away we can see a few choices when we take another look at this word; we can choose to see the word “useless” as meaning “free from use, unable to be used,” as “lacking utility, devoid of advantage,” or even as “use less” (as in using something less than usual).

If you’re like me and this word runs through your head every now and again the first definition will most likely be the most freeing out of the three since we usually assume the second definition by default. The third way to see this word is useful if we’re doing something more than we should be. 

Now that we have the definitions out of the way we can get a little more philosophical on the matter by asking questions such as, “What exactly is the thing that is useless?” “What is the opposite of ‘using’ something?” “Why do I feel bad when this word pops up again? What does it mean for me?” The longer we ask questions about a word (or a sentence or a phrase) the sillier it becomes. If I answer the first question by saying, “Well, me! I’m useless,” then I’m forced to ask the question, “Which definition do you mean?” Then I might say, “The second definition. I am lacking utility; I am devoid of advantage; I am completely and utterly useless to society in every possible way.”

What I have done there is made the unconscious thought pattern completely conscious by forcing myself to give a straight definition as to what it is I mean exactly.

Sometimes just attending to a subconscious thought pattern is enough and you’ll start to feel much better. In this case, though, my initial assumption hasn’t left; it appears to be very, very grounded in reality.

From here I could ask a few different questions; “Is this assumption grounded or ungrounded? If so, why?” “What skillsets should I develop in order to change this reality, and why exactly?” “Why is this a core assumption that’s been in the background for so long?” “Am I doing something I shouldn’t be doing, or not doing something I should be doing?” 

I won’t type my follow-throughs for the sake of time, but in the end, it became quite clear that some of my fear, anxiety, sadness, and guilt stem from a core assumption of the feeling named shame if I conclude that I’m not being useful enough to the people around me. Of course, now I should examine the word “shame,” and I probably will after this post.

Conclusion

WAP is meant to help over-thinkers like myself calm their minds with a bit of effort and a bit of brutal honesty by accepting the thoughts as they are.

It’s not necessarily a step-by-step process because the answers will be different for you and me than they will be for everyone else. But looking into a word (or a sentence or phrase) for long enough will reveal its silliness to you, and it may reveal another secret that cannot be said… I’ll leave that one for you to figure out!

Why Your Dreams Are Important, and How They Can Help You Become Healthy

by Leave a Comment

Quick Facts

-Dreams can be used as a window into your subconscious! This is extremely useful for shadow work, and otherwise enjoying ourselves!

-We can either take control of our dreams and consciously use them to become more mentally healthy, or we can let the dream take control and write down the events when we wake up. 

-Then, we can deduce what we want to change, and change it!

Intro

First, I recommend you read/listen to Carl Jung’s work titled “Approaching the Unconscious” and then his following work “Man and His Symbols.” Carl Jung has studied this subject in far greater detail than I could ever hope to cover today, and after you read them you may even find that you don’t need to read this post at all!

Second, if you’ve come back after reading his work, I would like to remind you that dream interpretation is still very new and it relies on a highly intuitive process that has little (if no) scientific basis whatsoever. We cannot exactly explain how or why dreams give us the pockets of meaning that they do, but we can definitely talk about what dreams are, why dreams are important, what they try to tell us, and how we can receive these pockets of meaning for ourselves.

What Are Dreams Exactly?

It seems as if the best modern-day answer for this question is something to the extent of, “a series of images that are created by the mind” or any kind of variant thereof. However, I’ve observed dreams to be far more than this, and I will attempt to answer the question as best as I possibly can:

Dreams can be enjoyable, unpleasant, or a neutral environment in which something must be learned from. They’re messages from yourself to yourself about something you need to attend to in your waking life, and what you remember from each dream is more important than what you don’t remember. 

The reason for this definition is because of my personal experiences of having a dream, interpreting it for myself, realizing what I need to realize, and then learning a lesson that I can consciously integrate throughout the day. I haven’t found dreams to be neither random phenomena nor synchronized with waking life, but are phenomena that express their ‘lessons to be learned’ through symbolic representation, and that applying the lessons hidden within are the sole purpose of every dream that’s existed, ever. I will carry this realization through the entirety of this post.

Why Bother?

Why shouldn’t we ignore our dreams and focus on our daily, waking lives? Why can’t we ignore the lessons they’re trying to teach and carry on with what we’re already preoccupied with?

Ignoring the subconscious (aka the part of you that produces the dream and is the dream itself) will only make it scream louder. If screaming doesn’t work then it will control your life from the inside out until you consciously acknowledge the (usually unpleasant) results that it (you) produce(s). Sounds scary, right?

Well, the reality is almost every American alive right now is primarily controlled by their (either repressed or unrealized) subconscious fragments, and that they (the subconscious processes controlling the people) will not stop until they become realized in one way or another.

We get to be this way, of course, because we grow up in a society that doesn’t value imagination, intuitive knowledge (any knowledge?), dreams, or genuine expression of self. Since dreams are experiences meant to inform us of (first individual, then collective) neuroticism then the reason dreams exist is that we stand in the way of our own (and even worse, each other’s) nature enough to become confused, disoriented, and unsure of “the meaning of life.”

But we don’t pay any mind to this so of course more dreams appear and help guide us along the way, but we continue to ignore them as we become more neurotic and unstable, and the cycle can continue indefinitely.

This is why it’s important to listen to the messages your dreams give you and learn as much as you can from them (you). We’re living in a society that doesn’t value mental health, but we as individuals can begin to listen to ourselves and heal from our own personal trauma and then begin to experience and heal the collective trauma. These disturbances, of course, are most likely to be discovered when dreaming and/or day-dreaming. If we do this then we are one step closer to a fulfilled life and a society that truly values health as it is.

How Can We Learn From Our Dreams?

If we read Man and His Symbols we’ll know that each and every part of a dream is a symbolic representation of a part of the self (yourself). Jung was able to say that these symbols represent different “archetypes,” of which cannot be seen, heard, felt, or touched, even after knowing which archetype is represented by each symbol.

I want to simplify it a little bit by adding that what you remember to ask yourself about the dream is what matters the most, since losing the memory of a part of a dream (or even an entire dream) is a sign that you’ve either completely ignored it or processed it in its entirety.

Since what we remember about our dream is important the question arises, “Is the entire dream important despite our emphasis on the parts of it that are important?” The answer is yes; after all, you’re having the dream, and simply losing the memory of it does not necessarily mean that the energy behind the dream has disappeared or even become less important. This is why it’s important to remember as much as we can about every dream – the environment it took place in, the people that were in it, any object that felt like it had significance, etc etc.

When we remember a dream it’s important to ask questions about it in our waking lives. If a person/environment/object feels important then you will answer yourself immediately, and when you put all of the answers together you will have one, integrated, meaningful realization that will probably help you feel amazing for the rest of the day, and will certainly be one more step towards an integrated self. I’d like to give an example of a dream I had the other night that held some significance for me so that I can show you what I mean.

It was nighttime. I was in a very small, swampy area with trees and brush surrounding me on every side except my left side. On my left side was a small, unclimbable hill. There was a cage next to this hill and it held several kinds of animals only two of which I remember – a monkey and a snake. A mysterious man owned the cage and the animals within, and we met and spoke for a while before he disappeared into the brush. I was left alone with the animals, and I could only stare at them before I awoke with the strong urge to interpret the dream.

Every detail in this dream is important – I could have merely mentioned that I was in a swampland but I felt like I had to include the time of day, the brush surrounding me, and the hill that was on my left side. After asking myself the necessary questions I found that the nighttime represented calmness and tranquility, the brush represented a barrier to prevent my possible escape, and the hill represented the nostalgic feeling of climbing it just to see what’s on the other side. The reason it was on my left side was that the right side was beyond the brush and therefore meant doom and suffering.

The cage represents relief since it bars the animals in and prevents them from getting to me. The mysterious man represents a person who is highly evolved, wealthy, and out of reach to me, the common man. He owned the animals. The monkey and the snake represent parts of myself that can further be described as primal action in both the intellectual and physical parts of life, respectively.

Each piece of the dream has been individually interpreted, and now I must put it all together. The tranquility of the situation was a clear indication that the brush surrounding me wasn’t that big of a deal, and simply meant I had to stay there in order to learn something, which is a big step for me since I value freedom very strongly. The hill also aided in the setting of the scene since I enjoy the feeling of nostalgia described above. Since the cage represented relief, since the man who owned the animals was “out of reach,” and since the monkey and the snake both represent primal intellectual and physical activity, the realization to be had here is that I’m relieved that another part of me is taking care of the primal urges so that I (the conscious self) don’t have to.

Of course, the lesson to be learned is that I must integrate with this “caretaker” since he appeared separate from “myself” inside of my dream, and I must take care to consciously notice my primal urges when I’m living in my waking life as well.

Now I have my “duty” for the day and I’ll work at integrating the caretaker into myself. Of course, as a bonus, I get to feel indescribable relief throughout the entire day! Had I simply ignored the dream and gone about my day I would’ve also missed out on becoming more integrated and more developed as an individual, and the more developed and integrated you are the more peace you will experience throughout your life (I’ll explain this further in a future post).

Conclusion

It requires building trust with yourself and being brutally honest with what’s going on, but I can promise you that integrating the lessons learned from your dreams is very beneficial in the short term and the long run alike. I definitely recommend you start interpreting your own dreams as soon as possible so that you may realize yourself more and more every day. Have an amazing day!

What Is Meaning? A Look at Meaning, What It Is, and How To Find It For Yourself

by Leave a Comment

Quick Facts

-Meaning can be experienced as a felt, emotional experience, one that many people seek to feel every day.

-You can decide what is meaningful for yourself! On the same token, you can ‘disidentify’ from the belief that anything you consider to be void of meaning is, indeed, void of meaning; this greatly helps our emotional states!

Intro

Some of us are unaware of it; some of us are searching for it; some of us have no idea what we’re doing, and some of us already know what meaning really is.

Today, we’ll explain meaning. We’ll clear up any confusion that exists in the present, and we’ll definitely clear any potential confusion that may exist in the near future!

What Is Meaning?

We all know (or have seen) certain people who are inexplicably “brilliant” in one form or another. Maybe they have a charismatic personality, maybe they are very interesting to talk to, maybe they seem very emotionally intelligent, etc, etc.

They tend to “light a fire” within us for a brief moment while we’re in their presence, and then we go about our daily lives and the feeling has vanished. What’s happened here is you talked with a person who has discovered their own path to a meaningful life and has followed it to some extent.

Unfortunately, “piggybacking” off of someone’s meaning can only happen while you’re in their presence; if you haven’t found your own path to a meaningful life it will fade into who you’ve been up until that point (hopefully with a slight change towards the positive).

These people aren’t special, they aren’t necessarily gifted, and they certainly aren’t worth bowing down to or making a religion after. Rather, these are people who live in the felt experience of meaning. They have (mostly consciously, sometimes unconsciously) found what means the most to them in life and they simply go for it and see what happens. (This usually works out; there are rare instances where it doesn’t, but for people who don’t find meaning in the things they consciously pursue they find it in another area of life.) 

In one of my more recent posts (The Primacy of Spoken Language) I mention how words are keys that unlock certain images and/or feelings for an individual. However, these realities are mostly realized when you decide you want to realize them.

I can say that a meaningful life is a life lived while feeling the felt experience that the word “meaning” points to, which seems to be more or less the same experience for everybody the more and more they chase meaning, but it doesn’t mean anything to you unless you feel it for yourself.

With this realization, you can start to visualize what a meaningful life may look like for you, and this is a good segue into the next paragraph.

Meaning Is Found Within Yourself

Intuition is you telling yourself information that you ought to know. If you find something or someone meaningful then you’re telling yourself that this thing/person is good for you and that you want (or even need) more of it/to spend more time with that person. Since intuition is mostly a subjective phenomenon we can conclude that meaning is to be obtained by looking within.

I put great emphasis on this because some say that looking within does not provide anything helpful for them and that it may indeed make their current situation quite worse. Usually, these kinds of people’s life journeys center around learning about intuition and learning how to listen to it, as their resistance is quite strong. However I must fully disagree with the statement, “Looking into myself will only make things worse,” “Medication is a bunch of bogus,” “I’ve tried that before and nothing happened” or any variant thereof because of the nature of the argument itself.

If someone goes into a meditative state while “doubting that it’ll work” they probably will not grow in this area of life because the doubt is actually an intention. And, of course, if you intend to make something work (or to keep something from working) you will be as diligent as possible to produce your desired outcome, consciously and/or unconsciously. You have more power than you suspect :). 

It may seem strange that a doubt is the same as an intention, however, the word “doubt” and the word “intention” have the possibility to point to the same felt experience which can be aptly named “maliciousness.” If “maliciousness” is prominent (either consciously or subconsciously) within an individual their doubts and their intentions must consciously be separated from one another in order for their maliciousness to become realized. Once this is done intuition may flow freely if the individual consciously gives it any level of prominence in their conscious mind.

We’ve probably heard this before, but maybe we haven’t; as soon as you consciously decide to live a meaningful life you have taken the first step towards living a meaningful life. This is done by thinking the words, speaking the words, writing them out… “I choose to live a meaningful life.”

It’s usually a quiet choice with little involvement from other people, and from then on you’re searching (whether consciously or unconsciously) for meaning.

This is when you begin to separate the wheat from the shaft… “I don’t like my job because it’s pointless, but I do enjoy playing the guitar… Maybe I should do that more often.” This may go on for a while until you begin to listen to your intuition and do the things/be around the people that help you feel better about your life.

Once this goes on for a while the very thing that gave you life may now only give you suffering, and then it’s time to ask yourself what the next step is. “I used to like playing the guitar, but now I want to go into public speaking.” This can happen infinitely until a (or multiple) higher realization(s) takes place, one of which may be that meaning is an end result of listening to your intuition. 

This is an important realization because at this point you will have felt meaning and gone back to your old ways. If this happens then the realization that intuition can guide the way back to the feeling the answer is relieving since the path is known once again.

And That’s It!

I emphasize this because “meaning” is simply a word that points to a feeling. The feeling itself can change, sometimes rapidly and sometimes over a long period of time, but it is simply an emphasized feeling. Trying to over-complicate it only leads you further away from meaning, and this is very important to know at all points throughout your life. 

This (quite short) post is a launching pad to start your own journey towards living inside of meaning. If you’ve already begun then I suspect these words will only be like music instead of an enlightening experience, and if you’re already there then I suspect reading this felt like a timeless void of bliss, just like everything else does. Have a great rest of your day!

What Is Self-Integration, and Why Is It Meaningful?

by Leave a Comment

Quick Facts

-Self-integration is the process of integrating every part of your personality into one, whole self!

-Resistance, created by ourselves or picked up from others, often keeps us from being our whole selves. Self-integration is the “cure” for this. It is also the cure for ignoring and/or suppressing yourself.

-Participating in self-integration makes you a whole human being since you’re conscious of your entire personality!

-Self-integration can be painful and scary, but it’s more than worth it!

-Going through self-integration gives you more self-control and more enjoyment of your life the more you do it.

-Asking yourself questions about yourself speeds up the process and makes it easier!

Intro

Self-integration is the process of consciously disidentifying from your subconscious processes, seeing/feeling them completely, and consciously integrating them into your personality. This is a way to go about psychological healing as it helps you bring up and properly process trauma/unwanted thought patterns so that you can “face your fears” and release them into the ether!

What I’m about to tell you may seem like it’s all sunshine and rainbows – and some of it is! But some of it requires looking deep into yourself and shining a flashlight on the parts that want to stay hidden within your psyche. These parts (the psychic processes that exist within our individual subconscious minds) are usually the “nasty feelings” we feel if we’re going about our daily lives and we say something that we’re “not supposed” to say, or if we’re sitting in our home and suddenly thoughts start racing through your head that you don’t want to think about, or if you become angry while you’re at work, or if you’re anxious because you’re about to go out on a date.

The good news is every problem you have is your own and, therefore, solvable! From what I’ve observed, the most effective way to solve these problems is by consciously integrating all of your psychic processes so that you may form a complete perspective of life (perspective is everything, after all), experience an abundance of mental health, and much more!

The Decision to Integrate

Integrating yourself is no easy task unless you choose otherwise. Once you decide to go down the path of integration there will be a fair amount of suffering and a fair amount of pleasure – however, both experiences will be meaningful and will lead to a responsible, healthy lifestyle that will draw other people toward you like a magnet (in a good way)! If you haven’t made the choice then it’s ultimately your decision – you can decide to live your life the same as you always have, or you can choose to see all of your personal subconscious (even unconscious) processes you’ve suppressed and/or see the collective subconscious mind and the meaning therein! I will not persuade you in one direction or another since both kinds of people (the integrated and non-integrated) will find their lives to be meaningful, albeit in very different ways.

I will, however, speak the truth; needing/wishing to realize yourself will ultimately lead to you realizing yourself in one way or another, and integrating your subconscious psychic processes into your conscious personality will help you realize yourself! It is one of many paths but I speak of it because it has personally aided me immensely and because I’ve come to understand that integration will help anyone who is willing to undertake the process, you included! It’s also important to note that if you make this decision you won’t be able to turn back; that is, you normally cannot fit back into your old personality once you’ve gained the wisdom and knowledge that comes with integration until you are very advanced in this area of life!

It’s Important To Have An Open Mind

When integrating yourself it’s extremely important to know that you’ll come across psychic processes that will appear to be one thing and really be something different. Here’s an example:

“An image comes up from the depths of your mind. You are on the street, but nobody else is. It’s dark, misty, and smells faintly of homeless cats. Out of nowhere a man jumps out of the bushes and rushes towards you.”

At this point, most people would block this image out since they have a strong fear of death! They would dismiss the image as “a nightmare” or a “terrible thought” (depending on if they’re awake or asleep). However, in this hypothetical scenario, the person experiencing the subconscious image has decided to have an open mind and see what it really is they need to see, and so the story ends as such:

“As he rushes towards you you remain calm. Frighteningly calm. When he’s just about to tackle you, you move to the side and he falls through the ground into a bottomless void, lost but not forgotten.”

When you ask yourself, “Why do I feel this way” you will (likely) tend to answer yourself through what I like to call “mental videos,” and these “mental videos” are going to feel unpleasant until they are truly realized (in other words, until the video ends without any prompting from yourself). It will feel even more unpleasant to ask yourself this question and then proceed to consciously suppress the image as it comes to your attention, although this is quite common when you’re first starting out.

If you’re reading this post then you (probably) have an open mind! However, it is always important to consciously open your mind by saying something to the extent of “I choose to have an open mind” as often as possible so that the integration process isn’t unnecessarily painful! If you do this enough some of these subconscious processes may approach you without the need to search for them, and this is the ideal state to be in – a state of complete acceptance and trust in your self (your thoughts, mental videos, images, beliefs, feelings, etc)!

Societal Boundaries

Some of our repressed qualities come from accepting or denying parts of life that other people accept or deny. When we’re born we’re told what we can and cannot do, and then we grow up and tell other people what they can and cannot do. This has led to a society that (as a whole) accepts certain things (such as football) and (as a whole) rejects/doesn’t know much about other things (like spirituality).

Unfortunately for us Americans, many of us do not live in a society that values (or is even knowledgeable about) mental health, so following the crowd will almost always lead to compliance and suffering, but most of us have followed the crowd enough to be psychologically damaged and in need of integration.

We have the church, for example. One of the biggest rules of the church is to refrain from sexuality until you are married and to only have sex with your partner. However, if there’s one thing you don’t want to do it’s repressing a desire that you feel. This doesn’t only apply to sexual desire – it can manifest as a desire to see a movie, travel, hang out with a certain group of people, etc etc. The reason for this is that repression always leads to an increase in neuroticism (the personality trait). Invariably. All the time.

However, the church isn’t the only social construction that has the potential to rob us of our mental health – almost all social constructions exist to turn a profit (politics, government, most corporations, etc) and/or are misguided in their ways. Some of them (like the church and the government) are even interested in asserting and maintaining control over our minds, and this is a big part of the “social awakening” that you could be going through right now. I won’t get into this much further (I’ll cover it in a future post) but watch for any organization that imposes boundaries on other people in one form or another, and ask yourself if they have imposed such a boundary onto you, as this may contribute to your need for integration.

We also have these deadly things called social norms, and they (usually) don’t explicitly tell us what we can and cannot do (like the law does) but people who follow these norms live by an assumption that looks something like this: “If you do this a certain way, we’ll accept and respect you. If you decide to do it a different way we’ll have to pretend we don’t know you, we may even treat you with disgust, and we certainly won’t be able to accept you as you are.” Many, many people fall into the trap of following social norms since most of us have the need to feel accepted, but what they don’t realize is that they’re rejecting certain parts of themselves when they conform to society’s standards, which in turn creates neuroticism inside the individual’s psyche that needs to be healed.

In order to move outside of “the circle of society,” we must become aware of our society’s customs, norms, dos and don’ts, and what’s acceptable and what isn’t. It’s also important to be aware of the norms and dos and don’ts of the community (whether that be your church, your school, etc) you grew up in and the community you’re living in now (provided you’ve moved at one point or another). Being aware of these rules will help you understand the people who live(d) by them, and particularly how the people in your community treated you while growing up as a child. Once you know the dos and don’ts of your community, then you can get a pretty good idea of which parts of you you were taught to suppress, and these are the parts that are asking to consciously be integrated into your personality.

It should be noted that time is mostly wasted by mourning the past; that is to say, we can blame other people for the problems we have, but the hurt we feel comes from the expectation that such people were supposed to do better and treat us better than they did. In reality, we are the ones who control ourselves, even if someone has convinced us that we should control ourselves in a certain way. If you didn’t know that before, you know it now, and now you have the choice to ignore this fact or to keep it in mind as we move forward to the next section!

Personal Experiences

There is another kind of neuroticism that can take place, but this is more of a personal nature than what I’ve described above. Let’s say you’re a small child, and you’re about to go on your first airplane flight. You may be excited because you’re going to do a big grownup thing that you’ve only heard about up until this point. Your parents give you a window seat, the captain announces take off, and before you know it you’re soaring 40,000 feet above the ground! You decide to look down to see what it’s like and suddenly you’re stricken with a stifling fear that makes you quickly look away, and this fear (albeit unconsciously) stays with you until adulthood as a somewhat common “fear of flying.”

Obviously, the possibilities are infinite, but I will point out that personal neuroticism is usually much more meaningful to overcome than social neuroticism. It is usually the case that one awakens to the state of their community before awakening to their own personal trauma within. It’s also easier and better to heal personal trauma since by doing this, you (usually) skip the step of being angry at society for causing all of your problems anyway!

Subconscious Repression

Whether suggested by society or simply because of personal preference, repression is done by ourselves to ourselves. This fact can be easily conceptualized, but it can be very difficult to fully realize since most of us are very used to repressing the parts of life we don’t agree with. But this is good news in the sense that we have the ability to find the parts of ourselves that are repressed and integrate them into our conscious lives!

It will become apparent that healing your repression gives more meaning than healing socially encouraged repression, however, both sources of repression must be addressed by you and it can be found to be one or the other by your own judgment, and both can be healed through your own power.

Here is the process:

1. Sit in a quiet environment, away from others. The reason for this is so that you can observe the thoughts/feelings running through your mind, heart, soul, and body.

2. Feel the feelings and think the thoughts that you deem uncomfortable. There is no need to do anything except breathe during this stage, and I recommend that you attempt to see the pictures and/or mental videos that are associated with such thoughts/feelings in your mind.

3. It may go down in intensity on its own, or it may not. Either way, it’s best to consciously accept these repressed/unintegrated parts of you and see anything they have to show you in your mind’s eye. This can simply be done by saying “I choose to accept these parts of me and treat them with love and compassion.”

4. Disidentify from it by saying, “I choose to disidentify from this belief/feeling.” Then, ask yourself, “Why do I think or feel this way?” The answer you receive is an intuitive answer (I.E. it will be from yourself to yourself) that may lead to more questions. Answering these follow-up questions until no more questions are asked is the doorway to realizing the next subconscious process that is asking to be integrated.

5. Repeat as needed!

It’s important to note that you aren’t trying to get rid of these parts of yourself; instead, you’re trying to accept them, knowing that they are a part of you (you can even choose to mature these parts of yourself)! This can either be depressing or liberating, depending on where you are in your development, but if you find this depressing then it is most important to ask yourself, “Why do I feel this way?” And this is where I start the next section.

Asking Questions

Asking yourself, “Why do I feel what I feel?” is the most important step after realizing what you feel. If you simply feel your subconscious pain you will see the images that accompany it, and that may be enough, but if the “problem” still lingers then the next step is to ask questions. If, for example, I’m feeling depressed then I can say, “I wish to feel this depression and accept it for what it is.” However, then I can ask, “Why do I feel depressed?” and come up with an answer; “Because I feel lonely.” Then I ask myself, “Why do I feel lonely?” only to find that I don’t have any real friends in my life. I can go even further and ask, “Why do I lack real friends?” and answer myself with, “Because I’m not a real friend myself.” So then I ask why that is, and I can answer myself by saying that I stay too busy to spend any quality time with genuinely good people.

The more you question your current state the more answers you will receive. Some of these answers will be welcome and some will be painful, but if you wish to integrate yourself then it’s best to find the root of an issue by consciously accepting the thought/feeling and then asking questions regarding it so that you may travel deeper into the root or find another issue altogether (both are possible).

Asking questions about your dreams will help you in this regard as well, and it’s easy – it simply involves asking yourself the significance of the dream that you remember from the previous night. If someone is particularly notable in your dream you may ask, “Why do I remember that person?” or “What was so interesting about that box?” The answers you receive will eventually point to a part of yourself that would like to be recognized, accepted, and integrated, but it’s time to end this quite lengthy post.

Conclusion

The steps and conceptualization are documented here but the experiences you have will make one of the greatest adventures of your life. Paying attention to your inner life is the first step towards healing yourself, and cultivating a loving attitude towards yourself (and life in general) is a very meaningful (and adventurous) path to take if you so choose to! If you enjoyed this post, you’ll probably enjoy the post I’ve written about emotional suppression as well!

Hey – do you feel like you need an abundance of love? Check out the surprise hiding behind this link! Have a wonderful day! 

On Disidentifying From Thoughts and Feelings

by Leave a Comment

Quick Facts

-We can ‘disidentify’ from thoughts and feelings! This helps us take control of and change the subconscious parts of ourselves that aren’t good for us.

-Doing this for every thought and feeling that controls us gives us a kind of peace, enjoyment, and self-control that is unrivaled!

Intro

Sometimes our thoughts and emotions get the better of us, and we don’t know why we think and feel the way we do. Disidentifying from these thoughts and emotions is an amazing way to analyze and control them so that they work for us instead of the other way around. Read on to find out more! Enjoy the article!

The Basic Info!

It’s very common to have an image that we like to have for ourselves and put out to the world. Some of us identify with our favorite sports teams, some of us with the state we’re from, some of us with certain phrases that stuck with us from childhood, some of us with the things we own, some of us with our bodies, our minds, our friends, our family… The list of possibilities is infinite.

When we say that “so-and-so has a big ego” we’re pointing out that so-and-so identifies with their set of particular thoughts and feelings very closely, and if you say anything that sounds like you might be devaluing any of their favorites they’ll defend themselves as if you personally attacked them with the intent to hurt them (depending on how closely they’re identified with such thoughts/feelings).

Of course, if you’re identified with something you can always disidentify from it. It can be difficult to fully disidentify from some of the things you’ve identified with over the years (especially if you brought them on as a child) but we’ll go through why you should disidentify and how you can disidentify.

It’s important to note that disidentifying from thoughts and feelings, in particular, doesn’t mean you’re suddenly free from feeling these thoughts and thinking these feelings. The opposite is the case; disidentifying from a thought or a feeling will often increase its intensity for a short while, but instead of this thought/feeling happening in the background without your conscious knowledge of it, it can be fully observed and seen/felt for what it is. Once a subconscious process is seen for what it really is it no longer has any control over your thoughts or feelings, and every subconscious process disidentified from is one step closer to peace. It’s also important to note that you can only disidentify from thoughts and feelings – attachment to physical objects, people, and activities aren’t possible, it’s only possible to identify with and disidentify from the thoughts/feelings that are produced by such people/things/perspectives/activities. 

How To Disidentify From Your Thoughts and Beliefs

From what I can tell there are three ways to approach this. The first and easiest way is to disidentify from something when it pops into your mind, even if you didn’t consciously search for it. This can be anything from a thought (“boy I hate it when so and so doesn’t do the dishes”) to a physical object that produces an emotional reaction (“that gun looks scary”) to an entire perspective that provokes a bothersome feeling (“what’s the point of life anyway?”). How you disidentify from the subject in question is you form a coherent sentence (“I hate it when such and such doesn’t vacuum the carpet”) and you think of a coherent sentence that is meant to separate your conscious self from whatever you’re disidentifying with (“I choose to disidentify from that thought”).

Sometimes an emotion or a thought may pop up that you have trouble putting into words; if/when this happens it’s important to stop what you’re doing and focus your energy into putting the feeling/thought into a sentence. Once you’re able to fully articulate the feeling/thought it will be much easier to see it for what it is, and therefore it will be much easier to disidentify from it. Again, the point is to feel the feeling and/or think thoughtfully, not turn away from it.

The second way is by consciously searching for things that bother you and disidentifying from them. This can be tricky since you cannot find what you’re looking for by thinking in a linear, direct path; if you wish to search for subconscious forces you’ll have to let your mind take you wherever it wants to go, and the thought/feeling you end up with may not be the one you set out to find, but it will probably still need to be disidentified from nonetheless. For example, you might set out to find the root of your anxiety but your mind may take you to the root of some unexpected sadness instead, and it’s best to go along with it and feel what your mind takes you to instead of resisting it with your conscious intention.

The third (and possibly best) way is by utilizing your dreams to clearly see the parts of you that you need to separate from. I had this happen just last night – I had finished eating pizza before I went to sleep, and in my dream, I was in the car with a very fat man who was eating everything he was given by other people in the car (mainly donuts). What I learned is that there’s a part of me that likes to eat without caring about the consequences, and since I didn’t disidentify from it had more or less controlled me up until the next morning when I woke up and properly disidentified from it.

Either path you take, any thought/perspective you want to disidentify from must be done consciously. After you’ve expressed conscious intention to disidentify from xyz there will probably be resistance in the form of thought and/or feeling – after all, you’ve kept this part of you for a long time and it’s served you well, why should you give it up? However, staying awake and aware will allow you to fully process the subconscious thought/feeling, and you’ll either feel worse (which simply means there’s more work to do) or you’ll feel better (which means your job is done, at least at the moment). Both results are fantastic, and doing this even once in your life will bring you one step closer to genuine peace.

This is also known as “integration.” Disidentifying from and fully processing thoughts or feelings is the same as consciously acknowledging the parts of yourself that you neglect and integrating them into your life.

Why Is Disidentification Important?

Chances are you get angry and anxious. Everybody gets angry and anxious at one point or another, but there is something we can do to help this. If you’re a clinically healthy person (in other words if you haven’t been clinically diagnosed with general anxiety disorder or any of its variants) chances are you get angry and/or anxious because, somewhere down the line, someone has threatened a part of you that you’re identified with and you feel the need to defend it/yourself. If you have been clinically diagnosed then you’re probably going to need more help than I can provide in this post; however, it’s possible this may help you (the clinically diagnosed) as well, I’m not entirely sure.

Disidentifying will also help you find your bliss (some might say “source” or your “center”). Imagine what it would be like if you disidentified from everything you’ve identified with along the way? If you did this you wouldn’t be afraid of death, and if you aren’t afraid of death you are truly free. As a side note, try disidentifying from the fear of death; it’s very hard, but the benefits are endless.

Lastly, disidentifying from your “favorites” helps open your mind so that you can see the psychic processes that go on within you. This is part of finding your bliss but I put it as a separate benefit because it’s an entire journey in and of itself, one that’s certainly worth completing due to the massive amounts of meaning felt while discovering such things.

Becoming less angry and anxious? Becoming blissful? Opening your mind to the reality inside of yourself? If you want all of these things, you can buy my overpriced book that beats around the bush for 3/4s of the time and gives you a useless solution at the very end! Only $49.99! Buy now!

What Should You Disidentify From?

Everything that bothers you, and everything that’s detrimental to you. If you feel dull, sad, angry, anxious, etc and you don’t know why there’s usually something you haven’t fully realized that’s trying to come into conscious attention, and that is what you disidentify from. You shouldn’t worry about disidentifying from the “wrong” things because anything you feel the need to disidentify from is worth disidentifying from for one reason or another, and you’ll know exactly what they are once you begin the process for yourself.

Is There Anything Else?

I’ve done my best to provide the concept of disidentification in this post, but the felt reality of it can only be experienced if you try it out for yourself. And so I close with the promise that this path does eventually lead to bliss even though it is the path less traveled, and even along the way you will begin to feel complete and realized as a true individual. Have a wonderful day!