Wacky Questions

Clients will sometimes describe how certain things seem to happen for them in their lives, and by way of softening the blow either for me, or for their observing ‘other self’, they will add in this rider: “I know it sounds weird and you’ll think I’m stupid but ...”

Of course I am just so NOT the person to say weird and stupid to. I always reassure them by endorsing myself thus, “There’s no need to concern yourself about being weird or feeling stupid. In my world anything and everything goes – and I subscribe to and regularly go to some pretty fanciful places myself. Wacky is mainstream in my book – because nothing is real in this world except that real which we are making up in every part of our waking lives.”

When we are in a dream state of unconsciousness some fairly oddball and off the wall things happen there too. But compared to our conscious experiences, which are all REAL aren’t they (?), our dreams can be really odd and wacky.
“I had a really weird dream last night. I wonder what the meaning is?”

Our dreams are a melange of random re-presented occurrences, cherry-picked from recent experience, all interlaced with unconscious metaphor drawn from content or context. Our unconscious gathers together all these ingredients and then blends them together using a particular recipe of choice. It’s a kind of multi-sensual stir-fry, cooked up in a mental wok. No eye-rolling please - I did say I was weird and wacky after all.

So why are our dreams not really real, and yet our waking experience is SO real? That is curious because they are both taking place in our head after all.

Get Real!

“Come on, Pete – the sunshine is real – the pain from the cut in my leg is real – the chair I’m sat in is real. Or are you telling me that’s not so?”

Well, look at it this way - the sun is real out there in the cosmos, but our individual perception of it, and the sunshine, and the warmth, and the light ... is made up. Your experience of all those things differs from mine. Likewise with the chair.
And as for the pain from the cut in your leg - well I can see the cut, the injury, the tissue damage, but I cannot feel the pain. It is YOUR pain - and yet, before you knew you'd cut it, did you feel any pain? Injury usually equates to pain so, for you, did  the pain come first or knowledge of the injury?
Many years ago I injured my knee on a Saturday and never felt any pain until after the operation on the Monday. So where was it in the meantime?
People who have phantom limb pain - where is it all taking place?

"OK, the pain is in the head, in the mind, in the brain - I'll grant you that. But it IS really felt, not pretend. It is quite involuntary so how can you say we're making it up?"

Our emotional palette adds stuff in to the real neuro-physiological message of tissue damage, of injury. That's the 'feel' part of the pain. Plus we can mask or inhibit the 'damage' message as well. That's why the chemical solution works; that's why the hypnotic solution works. The thing about pain is that we can become very familiar with it, grade its intensity, make a whole range of meanings about it; we have a set of beliefs around those meanings as well.
One of those meanings is our 'pain threshold' - the 'made-up' tipping point that turns it from minor irritation to something serious. When we mask, inhibit or diminish the message to a point below the threshold, the emotional palette is not invoked.
No invoke - no pain. No hurt - no cry!

 Do we make it up? Without pretending, and in a somewhat involuntary way as well - you bet we make it up!

Dreamstates

In our dreams we still “feel” the real stuff without ever questioning any of its normality. If, in part of a dream, we are walking along a beach or a river bank, we never question the content unless there’s something ‘different’ about it – like purple water or two suns in the sky, let’s say. We totally accept the reality of the ordinary that takes place in our dreams. And yet – that too is made up. Every thing and everything in our dream is made up.

We replicate all our conscious experiences in our dreams, and some of the imaginary experiences too – the constructs, the what-ifs, the I’d like-to’s. The only conscious construct we don’t really seem to replicate is time, however. Everything that happens in a dream is played out right in the NOW – there is no future or past.

So, at an unconscious level, there are many metaphors populating the landscape, and no time. Interesting.

Wacky Questions

I was coaching with some of our club’s 15 year olds recently and, as is often the case with these guys, some odd comments come out of the woodwork.
“When was the first time a human being milked a cow?” came the question from one, followed shortly by another who enquired, “How did they know it was milk?”

Wacky questions on the face of it – but they do show an inquisitive perspective upon life, context and content. It matches the question I was asked about a year ago at an After School cricket club: “Did Gandhi ever play cricket, and if so was he good at it?”

These instances when the enquiring youthful mind is allowed free expression are something of a liberation, for them, from a world that demands their conformity, and a world that – for them to ‘get on’ – already has, is, and will continue to mould and shape their views.

I feel such a relief when I hear the recurring sounds of thoughts coming off the wall, since it is a reassurance that the “real” world is being challenged. And when it is - new views and solutions to current problems are just around the corner.

Consider the moment JUST as the wheel was invented ...
“Hey guys, look at this weird contraption Leone has just made!” Shouts one of the other inventors at the Ancient Inventors Atelier, as Mr Thick stands proudly showing off yet another masterpiece of “ideas in action”. All the inventors gather round. “What does it do?” says another, and Leone shows them. As he proudly rotates the wheel on the workbench they all start laughing. “Is that it? It just goes round and round? Well that’s brilliant Leone,” they echo with more than a hint of sarcasm. “All we need now is for someone to devise the game of Rolette!” More laughter ensues and they each return to their own inventor’s workbench.

But in Leone’s head a light has gone on – it went on when he heard someone say “Rolette”. “Yes,” he thought. “What happens if I roll it? Let’s see!”
And the rest, as they say, is history.

Did that really happen?
You may scoff – but can you prove otherwise? Is that as real an account of what happened as any of the others purported to be real. In Neolithic times they didn’t have inventors’ workshops, or did they? We don’t know – however, maybe Bill and Ted do!

 So what am I getting at here, really?

Conclusion

We are limited by the conventionality of our thinking; we are beset by the emotional ravages of our thinking; our thinking gets in the way of our doing. In the midst of this thought run riot lies the landscape of much of our modern lives.

And, for some, this riot brings them to my door. Usually by this time they’ve had enough of the riot they’re experiencing – or at least they think they’ve had enough. To paraphrase Bill and Ted. They’ve forgotten how to “Party On Dude!”

You remember I said we made up our reality?

Is the smoking habit I want to give up, real?
I believe I can’t do X – is that real?
I don’t have enough time to do Y – is that real?

“Tell me, Mr Edison, how many attempts at making a light bulb are you going to make before you’ll be convinced it ain’t gonna work?”
“As many as it takes, because I know it’s possible – it’s just a matter of how.”
“Really? How do you know that Thomas?”
“Bill and Ted showed me!”