Reaching the Plateau! Part II
Reaching the Plateau!
Part II
by Leslie Gaddy
“The artist must be sacrificed to their art. Like the bees, they must put their put their lives into the sting they give”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The most intriguing (however difficult) aspect of self discovery is losing yourself in the process. Such a dramatic statement! And intimidating! Behind this is RAW TRUTH, however. When we consider names like Mozart, Bach, or Beethoven, their personal experiences or stories are simply background noise. One could say they poured their heart and soul into their music, yet the raw truth is that the soul took the lead and expressed itself through the music. We label them as great minds, yet it is the soul that is actually great. We label the greats as evil geniuses or maybe we call them weird or crazy. This stems from the lack of or little to no exposure to spiritual truths or the inability to learn it when we are exposed. Our lifetimes are full of inverted meanings and knowledge and in our journeys we embed the inverted meanings and knowledge into the egoic mind who is unable to perceive differently. The scientific term for this is cognitive dissonance. Psychology Today defines cognitive dissonance as,
“... a term for the state of discomfort felt when two or more modes of thought contradict each other. The clashing cognitions may include ideas, beliefs, or the knowledge that one has behaved in a certain way.”
In the simplest terms, when we learn something new that goes against everything we have learned, felt, believed or known, then we experience extreme disbelief. A very good example is a person saying, “How can there be a God if people are suffering”, or “What kind of God would allow this suffering” or “Why do all the good people suffer and the bad people experience the good things in life”. When we ask such questions, it means we have been exposed to limiting information that has embedded itself into the egoic mind. We develop an inability to see outside the parameters of good and bad and assign a humanistic label to God. This includes those who “believe in God” and those who adamantly proclaim “disbelief in God”. For example, God is often seen as a man with a long white beard living in the clouds. Logically this concept makes no sense. If the holy bible tells us that God is all knowing, in all places, at all times, then would it not make logical sense that God is everything, consisting of the animals, plants, air, fire, water, earth, space, suffering, ecstasy, lack, abundance, etc.? How, then, can we logically believe God could be this bearded cloud dwelling man? Would negative experiences and people not then be a part of God? Would God not include the good and the bad? From this perspective, we can reasonably conclude that all that exists IS God and is part of God. We can derive that the labels of good and bad only create barriers that prevent us from understanding this, or rather, create cognitive dissonance. We can then begin to understand that it is our experiences that create comfort or discomfort and put away learned misconceptions that we are being controlled from outside forces, or by a jealous angry bearded cloud man. We can begin to develop neural pathways that lead to unfamiliar concepts, lessening the state of discomfort. We begin to develop compassion for the suffering we notice in others, since we can better understand our own suffering. We begin to discontinue placing other people, ideas, concepts, theories, or beliefs into categories and instead observe from a place of neutrality. We can understand that God, being all that is, does in fact exist, though not in the way we have previously understood. We progress.
The plateau has a way of exposing cognitive dissonance within us, giving the egoic mind an enemy to fight against. Of course the mind of the ego needs an enemy;its job is to ensure survival. Survival at all costs becomes its mission. The new knowledge we gain during self discovery sends us into a state of survival because we do not have the neural pathways established to provide a clear understanding, creating a “state of discomfort” that feels like stuckness, disorientation, denial, doom, and in extreme cases, psychosis. Each plateau we reach brings with it cognitive dissonance and is a sure sign that you are in this phase. On a positive note, as we continue on, we can utilize our comfort levels of cognitive dissonance to gauge our progress. The most potent is always the first, but as we progress we begin to understand it is simply a tool that lets us know we are about to learn something unfamiliar and that the only way to learn the unfamiliar is through experiencing.
Another difficult aspect of self discovery is the inability to communicate our newfound understanding to the people around us. Through moments of clarity we gain a new and more accurate look at the world around us and somehow feel compelled to share these discoveries with the people we care about only to be met with extreme resistance. This can become a very desolate and lonely place to be. You find that no one around you “gets” you, the home you live in feels foreign, your job feels all wrong, crowds of people create anxiety, and the very body you inhabit feels as if it belongs to someone unknown. It is easy to get caught in a trap of depression and despair if we “become this experience”. The experience of feeling desolate and lonely is meant to teach us how to readjust our lives to accommodate the new version of ourselves. We are never meant to take residence here or to become trapped into a state of depression. It could mean we need to move to a new home, change the way we present ourselves to the world by wearing different clothes, perhaps enjoy intimate gatherings with a small group of like minded people, or even change jobs.
We also experience the polar opposite, wherein, people begin to ask for advice on various topics. They begin to see you as someone who has all the answers, then unload their problems onto you expecting you to solve it for them. This is a trap we get caught in very easily for a number of reasons. It creates a feel good when we have something tangible to offer others, it gives us a new purpose to utilize our new skills and share our new knowledge, it reinforces the raw truth discovered, and it temporarily satisfies the egoic mind. The trap we begin to find ourselves in happens when the egoic mind becomes satisfied and hungers for more success. We have created a new mode of operation that works and we are ready to put it into action. The new level of understanding creates trust from those seeking answers, thus providing us the mountain we want to shout it from. These trusting people become the core group of dependent individuals and all others are assigned the role of enemy. We assign ourselves titles, such as, spiritual guru, then create a new persona to fit the title; we develop a new egoic beast that can rarely be discredited by those who seek our expertise; we begin to conjure up new schemes to make money off the seekers; we don our bodies with extravagant robes and royal attire, adopt a trending diet, such as veganism, without proper education or guidance, leaving our bodies depleted of what it needs in this moment; and lastly, we again lose sight of truth, which can only be accessed through the soul via the mind of the heart. We are not meant to take up residence in this state of grandeur. We are, instead, meant to learn humility.
The last trap we may fall victim to is the trap of victimhood. This can happen when we lose sight of our own personal needs and embark on a quest to save the world armed with a new outlook and new knowledge. We tell ourselves that relaying the message is more important than self care. This manifests as overworking, not getting enough rest, not eating foods that provide proper nutrition, consuming too many foods that give temporary bursts of energy, not getting adequate exercise, or in a nutshell, not providing ourselves with the basic essentials required to thrive. We give so much that we have nothing left for ourselves and become closed off to even receiving it. We are not meant to take up residence in martyrdom. We are meant to learn how to establish healthy boundaries, care for our own well being, and then provide services to those who can benefit from it.
The plateau teaches us unfamiliar concepts through our experiences. We can have a knowledge of concepts through study, however, in order to understand those concepts we must experience what it is that needs to be learned, otherwise we operate in a state of cognitive dissonance. The plateau teaches us to depend less on the mind of the ego, operating on lower level emotions, and instead, depend more on the mind of the heart, operating on the higher level emotions; the mind of the heart is capable of understanding these complicated happenings that the mind of the ego cannot. It teaches us compassion through suffering and teaches us the interconnectedness of all that exists. Lastly, throughout our journeys, we will experience many plateaus and will gain a little more from each, building upon one another, leading us into higher and more elevated states of being.
May we all live in peace, harmony, and joy for the remainder of our lifetimes here on Earth.
Works Cited
Psychology Today. “Cognitive Dissonance.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers, LLC, 2021, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/cognitive-dissonance.
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