COGNITIVE DISSONANCES AS THE WAY TO TRANSFORMATION
What if you had in this text the keys to end with almost everything that you do not like?
The life change that many need is related to stop living according to the lie (the external) and start living according to the truth (the internal). The concept of “Radical Honesty” proposes being honest all the time with everyone, but what I am proposing is not socially oriented but fundamentally towards oneself. When we begin to delve into the personal lie we realise that our life is not authentic, it is not ours, and is not all that we want, and that the model by which we live has not been created by us, even as we pay for the mistakes it has and the problems it generates. This produces a huge dislike in minimally conscious people because they can realise that it is a model designed by others and to their own benefit. In light of this reflection emerges the possibility of being honest and present deep changes. The relentless questions appear: Change what or towards what? How to do it?
For this reason ideologies have always imagined utopias of new life models not yet realised (idealised) but that inspire a lot of people to try to live them, driven by the discomfort they felt with the life model in which they were. Others have created and lived new life models proving that they work and are better, which they then propose to others as life models to follow. None of these two proposals represent what I am proposing from this blog and other retreats that we organise, but the possibility of stop living according to the model implanted by others, to then activate our creative capacity and our own pure values, in a way in which we can naturally become authors of the very model in which we want to live. I have created my own, it took me many years, now I live it with immense satisfaction. I do not expect that others follow my model, because it is something impossible in the sense that it is unique and unrepeatable, but I am creating an ideology that allows the structure of creative bases of new models for many people, and also offering a technology of transformation supported by tools, methods and approaches that support and accompany the individual who wishes to perform this kind of change in his/her life.
A lot of people ask me “What do I dedicate myself to?” I always respond and reaffirm that I love offering those who come to me and our retreats the possibility of changing the life model by another one created by each person that asks, as long as he/she is feeling unsatisfied or unhappy with the one they are living. Otherwise it is unnecessary. There are many people who just want to ease the symptoms of the dissatisfaction they feel while living an external model, or that want to repair the faults in the model in which they live to keep living more or less the same without suffering so much. There are endless ways of changing one’s own life, and there are models more or less superficial or profound. Some redecorate spaces, others perform a redistribution of the whole house, others do some reforms, and others decide to destroy the house to rebuild it according to their own need. This last thing is what I did, but I do not expect others to do it, but I love that all possibilities of change are considered, even the possibility of a total transformation. If this is your case, I can give you some practical suggestions that will help you start or accentuate the process. I am the self-taught architect of my own house.
I said in the previous article that the dethroning of the main character in the novel of our life is indispensable to make a deep model change, because every model is adjusted to this character that acts like a tyrant giving orders of how one must live. This voice the tyrant emits I call the VOICE-OVER, it is like the voice of a GPS that guides us through the way to only one destiny. This voice can be more or less intense, authoritarian, soft or delicate, depending on from whom it was learnt, but it is the one that shows the path to every moment and decision. It is not only the voice that takes us to only one destiny, but it is the voice of Destiny. That destiny, as we know it and live it, is slavery; freedom means that everything we decide comes from ourselves. Freedom is breaking that destiny of suffering. Therefore, it is evident that a great shift is required in relation to the orders we receive from outside, even if they are installed within us, or better said, orders that come from the internal part that obeys others. We are facing the real possibility of changing the destiny, in the sense of abandoning the one that is unreal to throw ourselves into another one we do not know yet, but that we sense is in accordance with what we really are. It is nothing more and nothing less than accessing the mystery of this life.
CONSCIOUS DISOBEDIENCE AS A METHOD
Disobeying the main character is a great challenge, it puts us in contradictory situations because the tyrant has always given the orders and will not accept the occurrence of any cognitive dissonance, because he/she is who dominates and will not give up the power because when that happens all the alarms will activate. Supposedly one can never go against the characters that directs life. He/She is the boss and one can never go against him/her. In this sense, allowing internal contradictions when we do not obey the character can be a strategy of self-confrontation to remove its power.
The main character is accompanied and supported by many other internal and external characters, they all work as a team to maintain the power of directing and deciding all. They are wildcards of the lie. It is fundamental to know their way of acting, and detect their shortcuts. All of them are organised to acquire three types of attitude that guarantee survival and supremacy:
1-REACTING: It is an attitude of alertness that allows the identification of all external danger to defend the integrity of the character, and if necessary, attack those who confront him/her. It will never allow the weakening or destabilisation of its frail balance. Because of this it creates all kinds of defence mechanisms: rationalise, justify, deny, explain, protect, attack, interpret, deform, lie… are some of them, and function as a praetorian guard. Almost impenetrable.
2-PROJECTING: It is an attitude of liberation that throws upon others what belongs to oneself. Everything the character refuses to deal with is placed outside, like a projector that needs screens on which to project the own internal movie. They are generally excess of emotions that cannot be handled or controlled and are exteriorised when the person or situation that activates it appears. The internal temperature of the character rises, it becomes heated and becomes unbearable, and then it is transferred to external heat dissipates. Thus, it becomes almost untouchable.
3-STRENGHTENING: It is an attitude of self-affirmation to show who rules, who is right, who has the power. The character needs to feel sure of him/herself, for that reason he/she creates servient characters that make him/her believe he/she knows him/herself and is accepted, there are even spiritual characters or of apparent realisation or transcendence because what matters is the strengthening of the idea that one has about oneself. Thus is obtained a force that is almost indestructible.
These three attitudes are strategies of great intelligence, but sustained by a big fundamental lie. That is why those who maintain the character alive and dominating, are authentic slaves of a script written by others. The lie is that we believe we are what we believe to have chosen, but in reality we are the impressions of what others have done in us. We have registered everything that came from outside, we have let it in, we recorded it as if we were recorders, we made it or own and then we have created an identity based on that lie. Now we dedicate ourselves to reproduce the usual music and songs, we are not allowed to step out of the ideology created by the characters, because whoever does it can have harmful consequences; feel guilt, fear, confusion, rage, hate, unbalance, and even many of these things combined. It is obvious that to avoid it we end up becoming handlers, it is the easiest way to avoid a tragic ending of the character.
Every time we believe we are going against ourselves, we must feel and meditate on it profoundly because most of the times we are actually going against the character and in favour of our true Self. But we cannot see that it is the character that resists by being alienated by him/her. The character makes sup believe that we cannot do anything against his/her harmony and balance. He/She convinces us with thousands of arguments.
Going against the character is a task of high engineering, a tremendous confrontation, at times an internal fight takes place, almost schizophrenic in the sense that if we face it there will be two parts arguing and fighting to see who decides. Given the identification we have created with the character, we perceive the cognitive dissonances as aggressions that we cannot accept, but on the other side it resounds in us as a great liberation to not give in.
Given that the strategy of the character is “almost” impenetrable, “almost” untouchable and “almost” indestructible, during our lifetimes there are crevices that open and through them we can access the essence in a direct way, to awake the Self the lives within us and make it realise that it is asleep, and in the hands of others. When this happens, the individual can start to externally summon people, relationships and situations that will destabilise the his/her own characters, (the anti-wildcards) and make the crevices open more every time. In this way the Self acquires more power from the inside and dares to expose itself in a thousand ways to dethrone the tyrant character that directs life.
The character is not killed, rather a trap is created for him/her to fall by him/herself, the trap is a hole in which he/she falls and leads to confinement, a peripheral place where it is impossible for him/her to have exert any power or influence. Characters have accompanied us during our whole lives, one day if we undergo a transformation process, give up and retire by themselves, because they can no longer do anything to dominate us, but they never leave forever, they just stay relegated to the background, in which they can be used whenever it is necessary, but they can never have the power of deciding and much less make us believe we are that.
Being an architect in our own house allows us not only to rebuild it having expelled the squatter, but it gives us the opportunity of creating an authentic home, warm and welcoming, directed by the heart’s sensibility, respecting every moment how we feel, where we will feel so pleased that there will be no place outside of our lives where we want to go. As great teachers say: It is the day we have come home.
Welcome to the possibility of changing destiny.