Incidents, Conditions and Belief


Popular psychology, aided by Freud and Hubbard among others, has discovered the wonderful value of "incidents".

The theory is essentially that a sequence of event (a period of time perceived to be related as an event from start to end) can have aberrative value. Regression therapy which proves wonderfully workable in many cases works on causing awareness to re experience event. This is done by guiding the awareness of the "self" through the past event as though it were reoccurring, called regression. Doing this a number of times through reduces the encysted emotion and force, uncovers the aberrative postulated views on life and generally frees the person of this influence. This is called "Traumatic Incident Reduction" in Metapsychology.

The mechanism of an individual becoming more aware of his "past events" collection often includes the gradual discovery of lives prior to the present one, which release longterm fixed attitudes and emotions when reduced, and leads eventually to the clearing of one's whole time-line of charged incidents. Somewhere along the line, having reduced all these packages to understanding and shed the ill effects of them, the being discovers he is actually creating these records, and has been all along, including the aberrative force in them. Until they are reduced, the theory says, one feels emotions, impulses and dramatic urges not related to the present moment.

This leads to the theory of "adult children of alcoholics" dramatizing their parent's dysfunctions, of abused children dramatizing their childhoods, of posttrauma aberrations. All these things can be found statistically to occur, so it proves itself out. Gradually the world can be expected to learn a standard of address , a methodology of regression and reduction of charge that will uniformly produce better results. Hubbard's Dianetics, 40 years ago, was a groundbreaking effort in that direction.

But what's wrong with this picture?

For one thing, there are anomalies. There are comparable cases who have suffered similar abuses and who have stood up and gone on creating their lives, having forgiven the past. There are cases who have had no abuse to speak of who yet seem seriously disabled and limited. Anomalies are by far the most important bits of any body of data because they open the door to the more inclusive view. Shutting out anomalies (a symptom of fatigue or immature thought) is a way to ensure that one stays in an understanding that is incomplete.

Anomaly: some cases in generally good condition do not find all these pictures haunting them. This can be explained. But the explaining adds complexity to the model.

Anomaly: some cases guided to recognition of the fact that the past is their own creation, done to support their creation of the present, immediately find themselves able to discontinue creating pasts which are counter to their wellbeing.

Anomaly: In some cases recognizing a central, personal goal which has provided the keynote for whole segments of past experiences over lifetimes is enough to defuse any reactive power in those segments even though the heavily emotional or forceful incidents in them were not specifically examined by the viewer.

While this is not an exhaustive list, we are steering into a conclusion that the structuring of incidents and histories (compounds of incidents) is an elective; that it is done by choice in order to fulfill certain beliefs and that, less those beliefs, the mind is not obliged by incident.

This leads us into an enquiry about the actual nature of an incident. Theoretically a traumatic collision of force (say breaking a leg in a traffic incident) could be practically lethal, an overpowering incident to one point of view; while to another it might be a minor perception, a gnat in the scope of consciousness while considering goals across a span of millennia. (Even within the already limiting beliefs of space and time).

From the aspect of consciousness any incident is a whisker flicker in the face of nova explosion, not exactly of comparable magnitude. Incident, rather than being an evolved container of one's being, a cage of moments in which one wrestles against event, is more like an artistic hologram created by the fine, intuitive design and generation of belief.

These constructs of space, force, resistance against force, time of great or small magnitude are built of beliefs.

Like an endless series of nested Fabergé eggs, the delicate constructs surround each other, layer upon layer. In the heart of all these gemlike laceries of created conviction, one finds the ultimate crystallization of conviction: event time, motion, story, incident Hurray.!! If you ever wondered why "these things" kept "happening" to you, you may have found an answer.

...An old salt reaches slowly through the neck of a bottle to adjust the rigging on a fullrigged clipper model he has built within.

His attention carefully focuses on the tweezers, the little yarns that make up the t'gal'ant halyard, the miniscule blocks, the wee crow's nest with a brave and tiny sailorman standing lookout.

In his mind he slips to the point of view and becomes, for a moment, the wee sailor man, feeling the shiver of yards and spars as an unexpected thrust hits the ship and seems to rattle her rigging. As the little lookout, the thought can be clearly felt, a wondering what is happening in the mysterious bosom of Nature. Just then the tweezers ring lightly on the neck of the bottle, and consciousness again asserts a "normal" perspective. A moment's flight of fancy, is all. The old salt puts his tools by.


# # #




Previous Essay / Next Essay / Table of Contents