Chapter 3
By Dr. Steve Frisch, Psy.D.

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There once was a man who was sentenced to die. He was blindfolded and put in a pitch dark cave. The cave was 100 yards by 100 yards. He was told that there was a way out of the cave, and if he could find it, he was a free man.

After a rock was secured at the entrance to the cave, the prisoner was allowed to take his blindfold off and roam freely in the darkness. He was to be fed only bread and water for the first 30 days and nothing thereafter. The bread and water were lowered from a small hole in the roof at the south end of the cave. The ceiling was about 18 feet high. The opening was about one foot in diameter. The prisoner could see a faint light up above, but no light came into the cave.

As the prisoner roamed and crawled around the cave, he bumped into rocks. Some were rather large. He thought that if he could build a mound of rocks and dirt that was high enough, he could reach the opening and enlarge it enough to crawl through and escape. Since he was 5’9” and his reach was another two feet, the mound had to be at least 10 feet high.

So the prisoner spent his waking hours picking up rocks and digging up dirt. At the end of two weeks, he had built a mound of about six feet. He thought that if he could duplicate that in the next two weeks, he could make it before his food ran out. But as he had already used most of the rocks in the cave, he had to dig harder and harder. He had to do the digging with his bare hands. After a month had passed, the mound was 9 and one-half feet high and he could almost reach the opening if he jumped. He was almost exhausted and extremely weak.

One day just as he thought he could touch the opening, he fell. He was simply too weak to get up, and in two days he died. His captors came to get his body. They rolled away the huge rock that covered the entrance. As the light flooded into the cave, it illuminated an opening in the wall of the cave about three feet in circumference.

The opening was the opening to a tunnel which led to the other side of the mountain. This was the passage to freedom the prisoner had been told about. It was in the south wall directly under the opening in the ceiling. All the prisoner would have had to do was crawl about 200 feet and he would have found freedom. He had so completely focused on the opening of light that it never occurred to him to look for freedom in the darkness. Liberation was there all the time right next to the mound he was building but it was in the darkness.
-Unknown

How many times have you found yourself in a similar situation as the man in this story. Seduced by what appeared to be the easy way out, he worked and worked, but in the end, self-destructed because of his refusal to explore the darkness of the unknown. Instead of daring to walk into the unfamiliar, choosing only to work towards what he could see while not considering what he couldn’t see, he remained inflexibly loyal to his one path, never exploring what other choices he had. As a result, the man sabotaged his attempt to save his life, dying mere feet from a different path that would have proven to be the path to his salvation.

Are you anything like the man in the cave? Do you remain loyal and true to what’s familiar and safe rather than dare to step into the darkness of the unknown?

Have you become a prisoner of your supporting cast members because you’ve fallen in love with the stories you’ve invented about them in order to justify their existence?

Have you become a prisoner of your character defects
 because you’re afraid to live life without them as they currently
exist?

Have you become a prisoner of your supporting cast members because you’re afraid to live without the safety that their habitual conditioned reactions create for you?

Have you become a prisoner of the relationship that you’ve created with your character defects because you don’t know who you might become if you transformed your relationship with them?

Have you become a prisoner of all the energy that you invest in disowning your supporting cast members rather than [re]connecting, [re]claiming, and reconciling with your supporting cast members?

Up to this point in time, you’ve probably tried every way imaginable to keep your character defects at arm’s length, out of the view of your conscious awareness. Denial, blame, projection, minimization, rationalization, chaos, running away, self-medication, and disowning are but a few of the strategies you’ve likely employed to rid yourself of the awareness of and connection to your character defects. Although these strategies have protected you and kept you “pain-free,” your character defects have remained operational just outside of the sight of your conscious awareness. By disowning your character defects, all you’ve really accomplished is to enable them to take on a life of their own, wreaking havoc, sabotaging your emotional and spiritual well-being outside of your conscious awareness and control.

That’s why it’s so important that you [re]claim your supporting cast members back, because of rather than despite their qualities and characteristics. For it’s only when your character defects are consciously [re]claimed that you can control the influence they exert on your life, stop investing energy in
hiding them from your Self and the people in your life, and
transform them into the highest parts of who you are.

For those of you who are seeking to spiritually heal your character defects rather than expunge or deny their existence, you’ll need to develop some specific skills in order to spiritually transform your relationship with your character defects.

First, you’ll need to create the appropriate environment in which to bump into your character defects.  To do so you’ll need to learn how to create an internal and external sanctuary.

Second, you’ll need to [re]establish a connection with a part of your Self that I refer to as your Witness. The Witness is the part of your Self that non-critically, non-judgmentally observes you and your interactions with the moment-by-moment experiences of your life.

Third, after creating the appropriate environments in which your work can safely unfold, after [re]connecting with your Witness, you’ll next need to become skilled at connecting to the present moment.  

Fourth, along with being connected to the present moment, you’ll need to be able to critically self-examine who and what your connection to the present moment awakens within you.

Fifth, the most paradoxical, most powerfully healing aspect of our work together will be mastering how to reveal to yourself and others what your deepening and expanded understanding of who and what the present moment awakens within you.

Let’s take some time to discuss in a little more detail each of these five skills. First, let’s focus on the internal and external sanctuaries. To completely and thoroughly experience and examine the depths of who you are, it’s necessary for you to create both an
internal and external sanctuary. Not one or the other, but both! One without the other is simply not sufficient.

A sanctuary is a holy place in which one seeks refuge from elements that they experience as threatening as well as a place to fellowship with other searchers in order to inspire, enrich, and uplift one’s spirit. In order to transform the relationship you have with your character defects, you must have a safe place, a place of refuge where you can bump in to and sit with those parts of yourself that you’ve discarded--emphasis on safe, emphasis on refuge, emphasis on sit with.

An internal sanctuary is a safe space of refuge that you create within yourself. This safe refuge within is a place for you to retreat to so that you may soothe, nurture, recover, heal, and [re]claim the bruised and unwanted parts of who you are. It may help you to think of your internal sanctuary as:

A safe place that shelters you from the emotional and spiritual violence that you perpetrate upon yourself.

A safe place that protects you from the emotional and spiritual violence that others perpetrate on you.

A safe place to retreat to so that you can be a Witness to rather than a judge of who you are and what you’re not.

A safe place that emboldens the disowned parts of who you are to reveal themselves to you and the rest of your supporting cast members.

A safe place that empowers you to embrace the disowned parts of who you are without judgment from yourself and retribution from others for so doing.

A safe place where you experience validation for all of who you are rather than approval for only those parts of you that others are most comfortable with.

A safe place where you can repair the aches and pains that you’ve accumulated over the course of your day-to-day life.

A safe place to release the frozen emotions that you’ve prevented yourself from experiencing and expressing.

On the other hand, an external sanctuary is a place of refuge that exists outside of yourself. More specifically, an external sanctuary is a community of people who are dedicated to not only enriching and uplifting their lives but also to empowering and supporting your efforts to do the same. You can infer from this that I believe that you can’t go this journey alone. Involvement with a community of people is an important agent of both healing and change. You simply can’t explore the places within yourself that you need to explore by being a lone wolf.

Why is active participation within a community of people such an important catalyst for transforming your relationship with your character defects? Active participation in a community of people provides for you much of what you’re unwilling to provide for yourself--acceptance of your character defects, normalization of your supporting cast members, and a refuge to experience and express your needs and emotions.

You can infer from my emphasis of active participation that it’s necessary but not sufficient to merely be a member of a community of fellow searchers. Beyond being a member of a community of searchers, you must be an active participant, for, it’s only when your search has been stimulated by your experiences and interactions with that community of searchers, that you can most fully go to the places within yourself that you need to go. Ultimately, active participation in a community of fellow searchers will enable you to fulfill your need to:

Belong to a community of people who are committed to supporting your growth as well as theirs.

Experience who you are within the context of a safe community of people rather than solely through the lens of your distorted, self-serving perceptions and interpretations of yourself, other people, and the circumstances of your life.

Connect to the emotions, behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, and disowned parts of who you are that can only be awakened by your interactions with other people.

Experiment with being less guarded, more vulnerable; less defended, more emotionally honest; less artificial, more authentic; less constricted, more expansive.

How does one create these sanctuaries? An internal sanctuary is created through the integrated use of the following techniques: 1.) breathing exercises; 2.) progressive relaxation techniques; 3.) creative visualization; 4.) self-hypnosis.

An external sanctuary is created by becoming an active participant in a safe community of people that will empower and support you to [re]claim the discarded parts of who you are.

One example of a safe community of people is Experiential Group Therapy where the exclusive focus of self-examination is each group member’s connection to the present moment and what and who that connection awakens inside of each group member. By participating in Experiential Group Therapy, you can:

1.) Develop the skills necessary to connect to the present moment.
2.) Learn how to attend to what and who the present moment awakens within you.
3.) [Re]connect, [re]claim, and reconcile with your
supporting cast members.                                                                                     
Having created your internal and external sanctuaries, next you’ll need to refine the eyes, sensitize the ears, and amplify the voice of a part of your Self that I refer to as the Witness. The Witness is the part of your Self that does nothing more than observe you--the parts of you awakened by the present moment, their interactions with the people in your life, their interactions with the circumstances of your life, and their interactions with your spiritual practice. Now when I say does nothing more than observe, I’m saying a mouthful. For what is to be inferred from this statement is that the role of the Witness is to:

Observe without prejudice all of who you are.

Observe without judgment the people in your life.

Observe without shame the wants and needs of your Self.

Observe without grief all that you have lost in your life.

Observe without pain all that has harmed you in your life.

Observe without attachment all that you need to let go of.

Observe without regret all that you’ve sabotaged in your life.

Observe without envy the circumstances of your life as you compare your life to other people’s lives.

Observe without fear the inevitable losses that you’ll  experience as you let go.

Observe without intolerance the differences that exist between you and the people in your life.

Observe without resentment the wants, needs, and expectations of others.

The role of the Witness in the process of transforming your relationship with your character defects is to serve as a neutral
country in the war that you wage with your Self. The Witness is like Switzerland. It never takes sides in your internal war. The Witness is devoid of qualitative judgment. It never adopts a position of favor or disfavor. The Witness never offers thumbs up or down. The Witness holds no opinions, suggests no preferences, offers no suggestions. It merely watches, notices, observes. It’s mission statement is to uncover and clarify; not to serve and protect. The Witness never opines about the goodness or badness of something. The Witness merely notices and acknowledges that someone or something JUST IS.

The Witness never turns red in the face from embarrassment, green with envy, or hot under the collar from anger. The Witness never experiences the disinterest of apathy, the emotional charge of feeling provoked, the craving for what it does not possess. The Witness never experiences the joy of victory, the agony of defeat, the self-satisfaction of a job well-done. The Witness merely shrugs it’s shoulders at what it observes of your interactions with the present moment. Emotionally detached from what is unfolding in your world, your Witness is forever faithful to nothing more than the journey that lies beyond the next bend in the road.

The importance of connecting to the eyes, ears, and voice of the Witness is that:

Only the Witness is capable of inviting your supporting cast members to appear in your internal sanctuary.

Only the Witness is capable of acknowledging the presence of your disowned parts in your internal sanctuary.

Only the Witness is capable of addressing your previously uninvited guests to your internal sanctuary in the manner that they
deserve to be addressed.

Only the Witness is capable of lowering the volume on the booing and hissing that accompanies your character defects wherever they appear.

Only the Witness is capable of creating a safe environment in your internal sanctuary for your merry bunch of marauders to dare reveal who they are to you.

Once your internal and external sanctuaries are created, once you’ve fine tuned your radio to the frequency on which your Witness broadcasts its observations, you’re now prepared to tackle  the third skill you need to adopt. That skill is connecting to the present moment. Being present to what you’re experiencing emotionally, cognitively, motivationally, physiologically, behaviorally, and spiritually to each unfolding moment of your life is critical to spiritually transforming the relationship you have with your character defects. This means that you must be present to and connected with each unfolding moment of your life as it is happening.

In order to do so, you must be present to what each experience in your life awakens within you. There’s no escaping this one essential fact. You can’t possibly transform the relationship you have with your character defects without being available, without being open, without being connected to the moment-by-moment events that are the DNA of the circumstances of your life.

Now that sounds obvious, almost inescapable. Yet, stop and think about it. How much of your day is spent on autopilot, just going through the motions? What are the devices you use to self- medicate, to numb yourself to the impact of your day-to-day
existence--excessive drinking, drugging, working, achieving, sexing, raging, spending, gambling, isolating, controlling, caretaking? How much of your life have you sleepwalked   through--detached, uninvolved, numbed out, removed from all that swirls around you? On the other hand, how much of your days are lost because you’re flooded with emotional reactions to everything that happens? How much of what you think and do is nothing more than conditioned responses, automatic reactions, well-rehearsed scripts that preclude any remnant of spontaneity from appearing in your life?

Why is being connected to the present moment a catalyst for transforming the relationship you have with your character defects? Because everything that happens in your life presents one more opportunity for awakening--awakening from the deep sleep brought on by living life through your automatic, conditioned reactions to the events of your life, awakening to the presence of all that you have disowned, all that you have discarded about who you are. Every single experience you have provides an opportunity to choose between denying or acknowledging the existence of these innate parts of who you are. It’s this very moment-by- moment awakening to what you have denied about who you are that enables you to begin a process of deep spiritual healing that leads to wholeness.

Along with mastering the art of connecting to the present moment, you’ll also need to develop a disciplined practice of rigorous, honest self-examination of who and what the present moment awakens within you--emphasis on present moment, emphasis on awakens, emphasis on who and what, emphasis on YOU. Simply put, your self-examination should be:

Internal rather than external focused.
I rather than you focused.
Your choices rather than your problems focused.
Your feelings rather than your circumstances focused.
Taking ownership rather than placing blame focused.
Awakened disowned parts rather than self-critical focused.

Why the need for rigorously honest self-examination? There’s an admonition that I offer to each and every one of my clients, “Don’t fall in love with your story.” Everyone of us creates any number of stories in our minds about who we are, who the people in our lives are, and how the circumstances of our lives have come about. We treat these stories as the truth. We treat these stories as reality. We treat these stories as the one and only authentic version of who we are and therefore what is real about ourselves, the people and circumstances in our life. The problem with this is that our stories are shaped and distorted by emotional and intellectual dishonesty, self-serving perceptions, confused interpretations, and self-deceptions. Because you’ve spent a lifetime judging who you are, you’ve invested a lifetime in:

Concealing who you are.       
Denying who you are.
Masking who you are.
Inventing who you are.
Making excuses for who you are.
Lying about who you are.
Hiding from who you are.
Disowning who you are.
Discarding who you are.
Creating parts that are not you.
Resenting others for withholding from you any and all things that you believe that you’re entitled to.

Being disappointed in others for possessing what you perceive as their failings and weaknesses.

Belittling others for possessing the very qualities that you refuse to acknowledge exist within you.

How can you stop the misperceptions, distortions, self-deceptions, and self-serving stories and explanations?

Here’s my formula:

1.) Stop falling in love with the stories you create to explain you to you.

2.) Stop believing that you’re an expert on you.

3.) Stop believing that you’re an expert on the people in your life.  

4.) Stop believing that you’re an expert on the world at large.

5.) Become involved in a process of self-examination that demands rigorous honesty about your connection to the present moment and what that connection awakens within you about who you are, what you feel, and the choices that
you make.

6.) Be open to accepting and embracing the totality of who you are.

7.) Be open to accepting and embracing the totality of who the people in your life are.

8.) Be open to a process of rigorous self-examination through your active participation in a community of people.

Let me [re]emphasize this last point--it’s just that important! There are many legitimate helpful techniques to use for self-examination. Journaling, meditation, prayer, self-hypnosis, yoga, quiet time, individual psychotherapy, reading books, listening to audio tapes, watching video tapes are all valid, useful, oftentimes necessary tools for self-examination.

However, a thorough, complete self-examination can not be done in a vacuum. If your self-examination is done solely through your own eyes and ears, you may be able to peel back some of the layers that you’ve constructed to insulate yourself from the world, but you won’t be able to go to the deepest, purest, most hallowed parts of who you are.

To go to the deepest, purest parts of who you are, to uproot the most deeply held prejudices that you hold about yourself, to heal the wounds of neglect, abandonment, and unfulfilled needs that fester inside of you, to begin to touch the holiest parts of who you are, your self-examination must be done through active participation in a community of people. Without involvement in a community of people, you’ll fall prey to the same fears, distortions, misperceptions, and self-deceptions that have left you estranged from your Self your whole life.

Once you’ve created your internal and external sanctuaries,  begun to attend to the voice of your Witness, become practiced at connecting to the present moment, undertaken a process of rigorous self-examination, the skill to master is revealing to yourself and the world all of who it is that you are. Let me forewarn you. Revealing yourself to you and the world will be the most challenging, painful aspect of your spiritual practice. Breaking down internal walls that you’ve constructed between the different parts of who you are and your Self is a monumental job. Stepping out from behind the self-deceptions that you’ve created and the barriers that you’ve erected between you and the rest of the world is equally difficult.

For you’ve become comfortably miserable hiding from yourself and the world. All the devices that you’ve adopted that have created your quiet desperation-- numbing your emotions, deceiving yourself and the people in your life, self-medicating
your pain with alcohol, sex, serial relationships, success, knowledge, fortune, fame, blame, chaos, drama, wealth, the good life, all of it has spared you from having to expose who you really are.

Yet, there is no more potent agent of healing and change than acknowledging your character defects, exposing your supporting cast members, revealing to a community of fellow searchers all of who you are. Quite simply, transforming the relationship you have with your character defects is predicated on one simple act and one simple act only--revealing all of who you are to your community of fellow searchers. To do any less in the context of your spiritual practice is to ensure that your relationship with your character defects will remain exactly as it has always been--toxic, judgmental, self-condemning, shaming, and self-sabotaging.

I hope you’re beginning to understand how important it is that you be ready, willing, and able to reveal yourself to you and the world? For the foundation of your emotional and spiritual well-being is your ability to genuinely reveal yourself to another person. What does it mean to genuinely reveal yourself to another person?

Is it an act of exchanging information about yourself?

Is it an act of explaining yourself?

Is it an act of justifying yourself?

Is it an act of hiding yourself?

Is it an act of protecting yourself?

Is it an act of masking yourself?

Is it an act of pleading your case?

Is it an act of expressing your best intentions?

Is it an act of getting your way with another person?

Is it an act of tearing somebody else down while building yourself up?

Is it an act of expressing what you believe others want to hear you say?

Is it an act of transforming yourself into what another person wants you to be?

Is it an act of controlling another’s impression of who you are?

Is it an act of preventing another person from rejecting or abandoning you?

Is it an act of emotionally sanitizing your interactions with another person?

I say NO to all of the above. Genuinely revealing yourself to another person is an act of articulating in a congruent manner your deepest, most expanded awareness of your experience of the present moment. How?

1.) Attend to what and who the present moment awakens within yourself.

2.) [Re]claim what and who the present moment awakens  within yourself.

3.) Articulate in a congruent manner what the present moment has awakened within yourself.

Mastering these three simple steps will liberate the spirit that you imprisoned all those years ago. Stepping out of the shadows, stopping the self-deception, putting an end to your hiding by revealing who you are to a community of fellow searchers is the ultimate act of embracing, forgiving, and loving your entire Self.

Since revealing yourself is the ultimate act of spiritually transforming the relationship you have with your character defects, just what is it that you need to reveal? At the risk of being redundant, you need to reveal your deepening and expanding awareness of who and what the present moment awakens within you. More specifically, you need to reveal to your Self and others your awareness of the internal self-talk, beliefs, emotions, physical energy, and emotional needs of your supporting cast members as they are awakened by the present moment. And as a reminder, by my way of defining things, your supporting cast members are your character defects--those varied, underdeveloped, bruised, frightened, unloved, unwanted, fragmented, disowned, discarded, unacknowledged parts of your Self that enter your conscious awareness when awakened by your connection to the present moment.

Who are your supporting cast members? How do they define who they are? What do they feel? How do they relate to your Self and others? How do they experience the way that others relate to them? How do they view the world outside of you and their place in it? What interpersonal tensions awaken them? What internal
fears do they possess? What kind of physical energy is activated within when they are stimulated by internal and external tensions? The answers to some of, perhaps, even most of these questions is what follows in the next few chapters.

G.B.U.

Steve

Dr. Steve Frisch, Psy.D. is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Chicago, Illinois and Northfield, Illinois. You can contact Dr. Frisch, Psy.D. at drfrisch@aliveandwellnews.com  or at (847) 604-3290. Recover from chemical dependency and its toxic impact on family members. Raise your children to choose to be alcohol and other drugs free. Learn how to in Dr. Frisch’s, Psy.D. Recovery book series.