The Muddied Self

If you want to stop a dysfunctional life, put addiction far behind, or simply

feel better about yourself and improve or heal relationships in general the solution

is pretty straightforward. You obviously have to change! So now the question is,

change what? Again a straightforward solution, change everything, the way you

think, how you define and interpret your feelings, many of your behaviors, the way

you perceive life, expectations, the evaluation of who you are, what you believe

and how you react upon all of the above. In short, a psychic change is needed. *

So the solution is straightforward but not simple, however possible and

doable. Here’s an analogy to help calm down your doubts and hesitation. Think of

yourself as a crystal clear glass of water at birth. The glass can be held up to the

light and looked through and you can be sure everything you see appears just as it

is, clear and distinct. Now life begins to happen and the glass slowly gets filled up

with a little sand, some dirt, pebbles, sticks and twigs, and even huge rocks that

knock some of the water out of the glass.

Think of the sand, dirt, pebbles, sticks and twigs, and rocks as that which

you have learned and been exposed to along the way in life. Maybe your care

givers lacked the ability to nurture you. It could have been that those around you

harbored their own fears and anxieties and demonstrated to you their impaired or

abnormal ways of handling life.

Furthermore you might have been bullied. One of your parents may have

smacked the other around or abused them in some way. You didn’t know how to

get close enough to someone to be sexual. Learned that sex is a sin, money is

dirty, and those with different colored skin or religious beliefs and practices are weird and dangerous. Then, when you survived youth and adolescence, adulthood

provided its own forms of abuse and trauma.

Time passes and eventually you stop along the way and decide to pick up the

glass of water, or someone makes you pick it up to save your relationship,

marriage, job, or even your own life, and you look through it. Not so much clarity

now, is there? The water is muddied, what you see, if anything at all, is not clear

or identifiable is it?

Here’s my point. This glass of water is you and represents how the crystal

clear you at birth got blackened and masked in a lot of junk. The truth is that the

crystal clear you still exists in there but just can’t reveal itself, or even see itself,

through all the debris that muddied it up along the way. Exposure to any of the

events listed above is responsible. At the same time these events created strong

emotions you were not prepared to manage and in the attempt to make sense of it

all and maintain your safety and security feelings got buried and inappropriate

behaviors developed. Eventually buried or negative feelings and inappropriate

behaviors became normalized. All the dysfunctional life that you experienced is

you today and is revealed in the form of decisions, beliefs, misinterpreted emotions

and behaviors you deemed necessary in order to maintain the necessary level of

safety and security needed to exist in life.

The causes and effects of these experiences produced the you who shows up

in life today. Notice I said, “who you show up as in life” and not “who you are.”

An important reality to know and eventually accept is that who you are is the clear

water that is still in the glass just muddled, hidden, and choked. The effects of the

muddled, choked, and hidden elements in the glass created the who you are

showing up as in life. It’s you on automatic pilot.

When life turns on you and you realize, or are exposed to, who you show up

as is harmful and no longer working some very common question and concerns arise. How did I get to this point in my life? Why do I do the things that I do?

Who am I? To answer those questions it is important to know that all the above

named and unnamed events were cause and effect factors contributing to the

growth of your life in the form of decisions, beliefs, and behaviors and now a

cleansing is needed. They need to be extracted from the glass so the clear water is

there again.

The cleansing begins by putting the glass of water on a shelf and letting it

settle. This is likely counseling sessions, church or religious influences, behavior

modification programs, recovery centers, twelve step programs and the like. These

are necessary treatments to settle the debris and stop your inappropriate behaviors

so after a while you can pick the glass up and see that the clutter has settled to the

bottom of the glass and at the top there is an ever so slight amount of clear water to

look thru.

That clarity represents the real you showing up again and represents a new

beginning. The dark debris accumulated at the bottom of the glass are your current

decisions, beliefs, and behaviors, your automatic pilot that is no longer serving to

advance your life in the way of healthy growth. Instead it is you defending your

safety and security the only way you have learned how too. The job now is to use

that tiny bit of clarity to help you know yourself and empty the muddled masses

that have accumulated over the years and begin a dis-identification process away

from your automatic pilot.

It’s a shift in how you know yourself, who you are, and how you choose to

show up in life. It begins the psychic change. The transition from making

behavior changes for the sake of gaining better rewards in life, getting back what

you lost or accumulating what you never had, to discovering and knowing the

clarity of who you are and living from that spirit in you.

You may be thinking this is a big impossible job but in reality the process is

not much different than how you accumulated your dysfunctional past. The

difference is that now you become conscious and aware of what is coming at you,

recognize automatic pilot, filter what you take in, and begin to define the new

expression of who you are so that functional decisions, beliefs, and behaviors

develop and take hold. You do this by understanding and using the small amount

of clarity now in the glass and get out the debris so the clarity expands.

Also you now start to identify with the clarity and not the debris, learning

how to make the psychic change. This way you’ll be living for what is often called

your authentic self. The direction and intent are not only to right your wrongs

which is important and necessary, but transition to living your life from your true

heart and spirit. Fears, anxieties, negative thoughts and behaviors can now be

known and changed or healed.

It requires that your adult self be living your life and doing it in the present

moment. All the influence and experiences a person has, or has had, take place in

the present moment and are changed or healed in the present moment. It is the

compilation of present moments that define the past and creates the future. The

future of your past is now all summed up in every present moment of your life and

the future coming at you results from that past present moment. The present

moment is the all a person has to define and reconstruct their automatic pilot.

(Confusing I know.)

Living in the present moment requires being conscious and aware of what

you are thinking, feeling, sensing, what you want, and what you are willing to do

to acquire what you want. This must be accomplished from the newly learned

truths of your authentic self represented by the clarity now appearing as the small

amount of clear water in the glass.

Disidentifying from who you currently show up as in life initiates the

change. Realizing that you are not your thoughts, you are not your feelings, and

you are not your behaviors but you are the observer or director of your thoughts,

feelings, and behaviors and can change them to reflect the person within you are

wanting to grow and develop into a functional human being.

Introspection, dis-identification, developing the ideal model, re-

identification, and properly aligning and strengthening of the will is the path to psychic change.

by Thom Bianco

*William D. Silkworth, M.D., The Doctors Opinion Alcoholics Anonymous, p.xxvii