Waking Up

Last year on Spanish television I heard a story about this gentleman who knocks on his son’s door. `Jaime,´ he says, `wake up!´ Jaime answers, `I don’t want to get up, Papa.´
The father shouts, `Get up, you have to go to school.´
Jaime says, `I don’t want to go to school.´ `Why not?´ asks the father.
`Three reasons,´ says Jaime. `First, because it’s so dull; second, the kids tease me; and third, I hate school.´
And the father says, `Well, I am going to give you three reasons why you must go to school. First, because it is your duty; second, because you are forty-five years old, and third, because you are the headmaster.´
Wake up! Wake up! You’ve grown up. You’re too big to be asleep. Wake up! Stop playing with your toys.
Anthony de Mello (1931 – 1987)

In order to awaken, first of all one must realise that one is in a state of sleep. To realise that one is indeed in a state of sleep, one must recognise and fully understand the nature of the forces which operate to keep one in the state of sleep, or hypnosis. It is absurd to think that this can be done by seeking information from the very source that induces the hypnosis.
Georges Ivanovitch Gurdjieff (1872 – 1949)

Pride in many diverse ways is the enemy of love.
Karen Horney (1885 – 1952)

My understanding of that last quote, by Karen Horney, is informed by a definition of `pride´ I picked up from a sponsor while working through the Twelve Steps of AA. He told me that pride is how we wish others to see us while self-esteem is how we view ourselves. Harbouring a great degree of pride while having very low level of self-esteem is a common and truly unfortunate combination.

In this context the quote makes good sense. When still stuck in the neurotic or `false self´, developed as an adaptive response to adversity in childhood, it will prove to be an insurmountable obstacle to our achieving real intimacy (in to me see), and therefore to the ability to engage in truly harmonious and loving relationships.

Horney, whose work in the last century was truly groundbreaking, defined a basic anxiety or conflict as the feelings that arise in a child from being unloved, unvalued, or insecure. To cope with the insecurities and conflict being experienced, the child develops an ideal self image, the false self, which, it is hoped, will finally garner the much-yearned love, sense of value, and security.

In her book Neurosis and Human Growth (1950), Horney listed and further expounded the three broad categories of the neurotic or `false self´, as follows:

Moving Toward People (Compliance: The Martyr)

  1. The need for affection and approval; pleasing others and being liked by them.

  2. The need for a partner; one whom they can love and who will solve all problems.

  3. The need for social recognition; prestige and limelight.

Moving Against People (Expansion: The Victor)

  4. The need for personal admiration; — to be valued.

  5. The desperate need for power; bending wills, achieving control over others.

  6. The need to exploit others, if necessary, by manipulation.

  7. The desperate need for personal achievement.

  8. The need for extreme self-sufficiency; refusal of all outside help.

Moving Away from People (Detachment: The Hyper-Rational)

  9. The need for perfection; having a deep fear of being slightly flawed.

10. The need to restrict life practices to within narrow borders; hiding.

Behind the characteristics listed by Horney, are simply common benign traits of the human condition, when manifested in moderation in the spirit of love. When fuelled by the fear of forever remaining unloved, unvalued, and insecure, however, they overshoot the mark and become runaway trains. They then present as neurotic, no longer of service to a healthy and harmonious life. In the Big Book of AA, Bill Wilson refers to `self-will run riot´.

The neurotic search for glory, as Horney called it, is the inexorable drive toward actualizing the ideal (i.e., false) self-image that will secure the love, value, and security which early childhood had failed to provide. Simply being oneself had not delivered the goods.

In my own case, I cannot remember a period prior to incessant rumination about who I was going to be when I grew up. In retrospect, under ideal circumstances this question would never have arisen. I would have been secure in simply being me. That would have been the sturdy foundation for further healthy growth and development.

In the absence of such a foundation, we develop neurotic tendencies and come to believe in the reality of our idealized self. We begin to incorporate it into all aspects of our lives: goals, self-concept, relations with others. The false self lures us into the belief that it is the only true self. We have been hypnotized, have fallen asleep.

By describing in such minute detail, the characteristics of the false self, Karen Horney helps us in achieving the first step in waking up, highlighted by Gurdjieff, namely the recognition that we are in a state of sleep in the first place. This recognition may come gradually with age, as the seed of self-actualisation breaks through the surface, or may be expedited, as in the case of those suffering from any of the manifold forms of addiction, – substance or behavioural, – `hitting bottom´.

The workaholic gets a heart attack or crashes and burns; the co-dependent relationship of many years suddenly implodes; the substance addict realises that the original solution to life’s problems no longer works; in fact, it turns out to add yet further problems to the already high pile of life’s unaddressed issues.

In my case, at the age of forty-two, it was a combination of all three of these examples.

Whatever the case may be, the bankruptcy of the false self is revealed, and we can begin the work of uncovering (re-membering) the true self within. It had been there all the time, supressed, denied, out of view. This work is not easy, as the supressed and unaddressed pain of many years still awaits our acknowledgement, attention, and treatment.

Most of us will declare we want to wake up, but don’t believe it. All we want the Universe to do is to mend our broken toys, the toys – the people, places, and things – that accumulated as a product of living the false self. `Give me back my family. Give me back my career. Give me back my financial security. Give me back my social standing, my ability to party, my success.´ This is what we want; we want our toys replaced. That’s the easier softer way. Even the best psychologists such as Tony de Mello will tell you that there is a part in most people that doesn’t really want to heal. What it wants is relief; healing is painful.

Especially for those of us who have lived a strategy of pain avoidance for decades, waking up can be most unpleasant, firstly because we need to admit the bankruptcy of our old ideas, our falling for the lies of the false self. This is a major challenge to my pride.

Once we’ve made it through that hoop, we are faced with the reality of the axiom: The way out of hell is through hell. Of course, it is a phantom of the mind, this hell of our own imagination, something unbearable, intolerable.

With the help of others who have already trodden this path and the many resources we have accumulated since, as children, we first conjured up this original image of hell, we find that, while discomforting, unpleasant, and, at times, very painful, we can make it through, one day at a time, without being annihilated.

For addicts in recovery, the entry ticket to healing is the discontinuation of (the perhaps multiple manifestations of the) addictive dynamic, i.e. total abstinence, just for today. The fear of fear slowly dissipates. The failed crops of the false self now become the fertile soil for a new authentic harvest. Transformation has begun.

For any transformation to succeed, it must be recognised that 80% of the process is practice, built upon the 20% of insights that underpin that practice. Most attempts at transformation fail due to a lack or absence of practice. A key asset of the PQ Mental Fitness* modality described below, is that, in addition to the clearly conveyed insights, underpinned by the latest research findings in neuroscience and behavioural psychology, it provides ample motivation and material for sufficient regular daily practice and maintenence thereof.

While some may experience dramatic turning points in the transformation process of recovery, it tends to be evolutionary rather than revolutionary, and open-ended. The main building blocks of the return to the true self include the death of the false self and the grieving of its loss, taking responsibility for and unconditionally embracing this incarnation, learning to tarry in the present moment, developing an attitude of gratitude, relinquishing all expectations, clearing away the wreckage of our past, practicing forgiveness, the re-parenting of the wounded Inner Child, and service onto others.

An important recent beneficial addition to my pool of resources is the daily practice of Mental Fitness, using the App-supported Positive Intelligence (PQ) modality recently developed by Shirzad Chamine at Stanford Business School. In July 2023, after 18 months of daily practice and intensive training, I graduated as a Certified PQ Coach.

PQ defines ten different Saboteur types which roughly corelate to the ten traits of the false self outlined by Karen Horney. The first of three mental muscles to be trained is the Saboteur Interceptor.

The Saboteurs have their origin in the exaggeration of useful common human traits to a point where they become counterproductive, such as the morphing of discernment into judgementalism, or conscientiousness into compulsive control. This happens when our thinking and actions are driven by fear, as part of the process of developing the false self. This (free) PQ saboteur assessment can serve as a powerful first step in waking up.

The five Sage Powers (Empathise, Explore, Navigate, Innovate, and Activate) form the counterpoint to the Saboteurs in PQ. In addition, we have the Sage Perspective in which these powers operate. It states that every situation encompasses gifts and opportunities. The Sage Powers are the more noble human characteristics, which blossom when we operate from a perspective of loving-kindness. In terms of the training programme, muscle number two which requires daily exercise is the Sage Enhancer.

Just as the false self cannot identify itself as false, the Saboteurs cannot recognise themselves as the very source that induces the hypnosis in the first place, or their cunning endeavours to continue to run the show. This can be recognised only from the vantage point of the Sage.

As Saboteur and Sage are located in different areal zones, – the left and right neural hemispheres, respectively, – this brings us to the third element of PQ training which is the training of the Mind Command muscle. This muscle enables us to shift, ideally in real time, from Saboteur to Sage. It is trained by means of brief, regularly executed body-based exercises.

Viktor Frankl spoke about the gap between impulse and response being the key to our liberation, to what we now call emotional sobriety. By engaging in PQ Mental Fitness practice, by the simple training of these three mental muscles, we can widen that gap, thus becoming better able to respond consciously and lovingly to whatever challenges life throws our way, rather than be tricked into unconscious emotional reactivity by the Saboteurs.

This is the stuff of recovery, the path towards attainment of emotional sobriety. Along with my coaching peers and clients, I continue to feel the benefit of PQ as emotional growth and healing continue. More time is spent in ease and flow, Saboteur hijacking has become rare, and recovery time after hijacking has shortened discernibly, resulting in better relationships, greater creativity, higher productivity, and peace of mind.

It is nobody’s business to wake you up if you are asleep. In fact, that would be a disservice of the gravest nature. It is really none of anybody’s business, but yours. For the sake of humanity and the future of life on our beautiful planet, however, collective awakening is indispensable. My contribution is to continue to grow in emotional sobriety and mental fitness, to do my thing, to sing my song, and to dance my dance.

*For a detailed description of the PQ modality, see: https://soberoasis.org/positive-intelligence-pq-mental-fitness/