I don't see the world as it is, I see the world as I am. My perception of the world is based upon a conglomeration of many things: intelligence, ethnicity, experience, age, education, religion, gender, physical attributes, culture, upbringing, and occupation. Those are the obvious characteristics, surface identifiers of some aspect of self; not the complete self. I also have emotional and spiritual aspects that perceive the world uniquely as well: sensitivity, empathy, compassion, love, affection; characteristics of my heart and soul. Throughout my recovery I have defined myself narrowly by relating to one or two of my characteristics predominately. I am Irish Catholic; I am a certain age; I am a contractor; I am an alcoholic, etc. That mentality, though understandable, is narrowly descriptive but shallow in true understanding; but it is an clear indication that my life is fragmented and I define myself in a limited way.
I have encountered philosophies that claim that there is no real world out there; there is only a world in here, filtered, defined, organized, sanitized, and projected outward onto everything I see or experience. If that's true, then there is no real world because we all project onto the world our own individual selves. The real world becomes a collection of individual projections. Interesting and kind of unnerving to think that that may be true. I believe it is true. Two people can witness the same thing and come to entirely different conclusions, emotions, explanations of what they saw. That's is why all successful self healing focuses on the interior self not on changing the exterior situations. Change the inside and the outside will be better, more acceptable, and healthier. If I change myself than the whole of the world is also changed. Makes logical sense, don't you think? A good example of differing perceptions would be someone blinded from birth. They have never seen and have no visual frame of reference to relate to. Blind people perceive the world through sound, smell, taste, and touch. It is easy to see that they certainly perceive in an personal and unique way. Their unusual perceptual difference is obvious to comprehend; but our perception and projection is really no less unique than theirs. We all perceive individually and veneer that on the outside world, and we call that reality. That means that there is no set reality; but simply individual projections of our interior realities outward. Now you can see why communication between people is so vitally important. We come at any situation armed with an individual reality that needs to be openly expressed and defined in order to be understood. That is what intimacy is: allowing projected self to be seen, defined, related and responded to. That's where understanding and genuine communication lies.
You and I are in conversation; who is talking to who? Which interior aspect was triggered in you for you to chose the projection that you put forth towards me? Conversations may seem trivial and innocuous but they are always a case study in projection. It becomes childishly obvious that our perceptions and projections rule our relationships. In order to relate, I must be aware of the interior reality that I am putting forward upon the person I am communicating with. The problem is that we relate our reality to others unconsciously having no real awareness of its origin or intention. It flows out without our knowledge or control. I need to be aware of and understand; where projections come from, what they are, and what they are telling me about myself and the world in which I am involved. What interior reality is being perceived and released at that very moment.
I know that I am emotional, physical, intellectual and spiritual in make-up. I, like all others, are a highly complex mystery of components. But something within me, some place is driving my perceptions. Where can I look to find the source of these projections. Where do they come from? I claim they all emanate from the wound that I carry. The wounded complex is a place where I have stored all the pain, abuse, trauma, shame and neglect that I have endured throughout my life. Primarily the abuse from childhood. That's when it was created and why it was created. To protect and defend. It is the enclosed spiritual dwelling place designed to protect my heart, innocence, beauty and soul. I see the wound as being wrapped around my heart and soul, housing them in a cocoon. The wound is alive and contains powerful energies that it interprets, modifies and releases into the psyche. I respond consciously to its dictates but have no idea what they are, or where those dictates come from. Its automatic and happens almost without thought. Impulse driven. The wound has a world view and an age, usually when the trauma occurred. It has one overriding intention, to keep me from getting to the pain and the shame it contains. The wound is a guardian, sentry, interpreter, manager, perceiver, protector and communicator. The wound speaks for me from its interpretation of any given situation I may be in. It uses denial, blame, and avoidance as its chief psychological tools. Through the protection of my shame, the wound projects false impressions out into the world: I am competent, strong, cool, happy, sober and successful. It is always manufacturing an exterior image to look normal, in control and acceptable. It tries to appear that it has no shame whatsoever. It may seem to me that my intellect is engaging you, but really it is my pain using my intellect to front for its intentional avoidance. The wound feeds the intellect the information it wants it to have in order for it to respond the way it desires. The intellect is a perfect place for the wound to operate because our minds don't feel, nor do they want to. My mind just likes to think, detach, analyze, and interpret at arms length. The wound is always protecting my feelings and my shame from exposure, primarily from me, and only secondarily to the world. Anything that keeps me away from my heart or from my conscious awareness will be used by the wound. The wound is not my enemy, it is a misguided and disfigured friend. It is not trying to hurt me, though it will derail, restrict and limit me if it senses that I am getting too close to my shame. Be acutely aware that the wound operates through me unconsciously; I am completely unaware of its power, reach and influence. As children we had no defense against abuse; innocent and helpless victims. The extent, duration and intensity of the abuse we endured was chronicled by degree and held by the wound. It acts like a sealed container holding all that pain and shame. It encloses our hearts and souls. Our hearts and souls were what was in jeopardy as children. The pragmatic spiritual solution to our survival came from wrapping them within the wound itself; to protect them from further assault and to keep them from awareness. That's why we can be emotionally numb; the wound protects us from feeling the pain or sensing the shame we are in. The problem is that it also makes us numb to all feelings. Because the wound comes primarily from my childhood, it sees life and others like a child; worse yet, an abused child. It is concerned with protection and safety almost exclusively. It covers up, denies, avoids, and reacts impulsively. It feels danger constantly and abides by instinct primarily. The wounded animal analogy fits well. So it perceives like a child, reacts emotionally, protects automatically, communicates dishonestly, and feels its survival is its only goal. It defines, controls, restrains, informs, relates, decides and speaks for us based upon those childlike characteristics and impressions. It is a master emotional controlling mechanism. Any alcoholic who reads this will understand it intuitively. I just described us in a nut shell. Every AA meeting is a room filled with wounded and broken children unconsciously reacting from their brokenness. The AA program is effective at dealing with, exposing, and healing that very brokenness. The primary job of the wound was to seal us against a brutal world; and shield us from the reality of our situation and the shame that was created because of it. It worked, we survived arbitrary and horrifying childhoods. But the way the wound sees the world is no longer useful or functional for sobriety and living happily with self and others. If we were not alcoholics, then investigating the wound would probably never happen. Why would someone openly invite visiting such a painful place unless you had to in order to stay alive? That's the paradox of alcoholic spirituality. The gift of faith lies in our rejection. The gift of freedom lies in our bondage; the gift of wholeness lies in our brokeness; the gift of happiness lies in our shame.
All the denying, avoiding, running away, reactivity, impulsive, addiction, self hate, resentment and rage can be traced back to the wounds we carry and the imperative to avoid knowing consciously what happened to us. It is that simple. But what an indictment of our lives and personalities! So what do we do with this information if it really is true? What can we do, if anything, to get better? This is where spiritual recovery is found. Working the steps will open up the wound and allow us to begin to see it more clearly (4,5,8,9) Finding and trusting a workable God is of the utmost priority (2,3,6,7,11). Our character defects are really no more than survival mechanisms we needed to create in order to stay alive. Alcohol was one of those mechanisms but it went out of control and eventually became a powerful addiction. Now the wound had a chemical ally to aid in its avoidance. It allowed us to not feel or perceive the horrendous situations we were in as children; we did not have the psychic ability to see the truth during our childhoods. It saved our sanity for us. Second step, restore to sanity means just that. We were sane until we stepped into our homes and met our parents.
So there is no outside world, only one I project. My projections are skewed because they come from the wounded part of my psyche in an attempt to keep me safe, shameless and unaware of my real pain. Unconsciously I act and react from the denial of my interior pain onto the exterior world. If the only tool in your toolbox is a hammer, then you see all things as a nail. It makes life predictable in that I will react the very same way to the same stimuli, over and over again. The wound not only holds our pain and perceives our world, it also contains our true emotions and soul and becomes the mechanism of our spiritual life and the recovery we seek. It is the kingpin to a meaningful, sober and happy life. The alpha and omega; the pain and the release; bondage and freedom, hate and love, profane and sublime; where that elusive thing called serenity exists.
What do we do? It's time to move from intellect into feeling; from numb to expressive; from denial to truth; from self doubt to worthiness. How do we do that? We decide. We decide to wake up. We decide to be aware, no matter what. We decide to take full resposibility for our lives and our relationships. We decide to allow our hearts out in the open. We decide to take Gods hand and move directly into the pain and terror we carry. That is where God is found, it is His courage that we will be borrowing as we go. We decide to seek truth, no matter where it leads. We decide to feel all feelings not just the "good ones". Feelings are just that, I need to stop putting a value judgement on them; this is good, that one is bad; they are all good and have a needed place in our complete human emotional make up. We decide to allow others to see our shame (4th and 5th steps) and be continually honest about who we are. We decide to live in authentic accountability. We decide to become aware of our reactions especially in relationships that are valuable to us. We decide to be conscious of decisions, resentments, self pity, rage, manipulation and our obsessive need to control. All pain and wound driven behaviors and attitudes. We decide to be aware of those reactions and begin to learn to trace them back to their origins inside the pain we carry. It is taking complete responsibility for our behaviors and actions. No one can make us do anything unless we let them. Surrender, allow God to show you the path to take; get the hell out of the way; quit dictating to God your wants and ask Him for His desires; quit playing God. Realize that this life does not belong to you any longer. Once you walked into AA, what you want, need, and desire doesn't matter any more. You are in His hands; let go and trust that He knows what He's doing. I'm pretty sure He does. Scottish Truth: the courage resides at the wound; go there. Spirituality is the realm of the heart and no amount of thought can get you to your heart. AA's spirituality is designed to move you from your self to your God, from your head to your heart, from isolation to humanity, from reaction to response; from blame to accountability; from bitterness to compassion; from resentment to love. That's full emotional and spiritual sobriety. It is a process that begins by us simply saying yes; deciding to move forward. Remember: You either deal with the wound or the wound will deal you.
The idea is to open up the wound, and all its pain and allow it to engage and respond to the world of feelings in self and others. In that process God is not only found but trust is discovered as well. We become His instruments of love and recovery. This process is where true happiness, usefulness, and wholeness is found. God is there the whole way; just decide on this path and ask. I promise you all the help you need will be provided.
Yours in kinship,
Mike C.
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