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This book helps you to get to know yourself in a fundamental yet concentrated and simple way. You can simply read it or you can engage with it. With the help of numerous "exercitii", you are repeatedly invited to observe and experience yourself from two perspectives. On the one hand, there is your learned story, which began early in your life and with which you began to adapt in order to be loved or at least tolerated. It has something of an inner atmosphere that has become a habit for you and that determines your everyday life in a somewhat mechanical way, constantly repeating itself. This inner atmosphere helped you as a child to maintain your place in the family, but the older you get, the more it becomes an obstacle to you living your other side, namely your radiance, your Essence, your actual individual nature. Whenever you have the feeling that "this can't be all there is," something in you remembers this forgotten and buried erotic power. Such a dichotomy can be found in many psychological and spiritual teachings. The special feature of this book is that both sides are brought together to a central denominator. A simple red thread runs through both your learned story and your "Essence", which accounts for your unmistakable individuality on both sides. You have not learned to perceive it, because complexity and confusion almost always have a preserving and stabilizing function in the old story. The book invites you on a journey that can increasingly bring you into contact with the simple, constantly recurring basic formula of how you create pain, fear and suffering in your life. At the same time, the ability to "remember" your splendor and radiance may become stronger and stronger within you, opening the doors to a different perspective in which an unfamiliar lightness and joy form the basis of your life. However, all of this will only happen if the desire to come home to yourself is stronger than the mechanical compulsion to maintain your usual daily routine. The book is an invitation, but not a promise.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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RAINER PERVÖLTZ
THE CENTRAL
A TRANSPERSONAL GUIDE
Translated from the German by Dennis Johnson
© 2024 Rainer Pervöltz
Cover & Illustration: Ana Castro Carrancho
German Editing & Proofreading: Tobias Schwaibold, Cornelia Eder
English Translation: Dennis Johnson
Printed and distributed on behalf of the author:
tredition GmbH, Halenreie 40-44, 22359 Hamburg, Germany
ISBN
Paperback
978-3-384-32004-9
e-Book
978-3-384-32005-6
The work, including its parts, is protected by copyright. The author is responsible for the content. Any use without his consent is not permitted. The publication and distribution are carried out on behalf of the author, who can be reached at: tredition GmbH, "Imprint Service" department, Halenreie 40-44, 22359 Hamburg, Germany.
Table of contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Initial Thoughts
Part I: The Old Central
Everything is Always in Balance (Or at Least Trying to Be)
Are You Aware That You are Living in a Story?
The Mechanical Person is Always a Victim
The Nature of the Old Central
Are You Living Out Your Parents' Script?
The Neurotic Balance
Pressure
How Everything is Upside down
Love Begins Where It Ends
The Thing about God
First Encouraging Thoughts on the Sixth Chakra
The Law of Monstrous Transformation
The Ego Imitates the Essence – and What Result from This
The Tragic Law of Ambivalence
What Do You Think about Abraham and Isaac?
The Liberation of the Mechanical Person – If It May be Considered
And Drama is Always Tempting
The Neurotic Logic
Part II: The Individual Essence
Introduction
Difficulties Getting Started
Remembering
Please be More Primitive!
Letting the Body Dream
My Journey to Myself
Part III: Living with the Individual Essence and the Old Central in Everyday Life
Painful and Joyful Quantum Leaps
You Radiate Even without Enlightenment
Clipboard
Becoming Whole – Coming Home
Are You Married to Yourself or Living in Divorce?
Using Fear for the Essence
You See What You are – and You Become What You See
Let Your Magical Powers Play
The Two Basic Atmospheres
On the Threshold
The Nature of Magic
This is Where the Book Ends (Slowly)
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Index of Exercitii
The Central
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Initial Thoughts
Index of Exercitii
The Central
Cover
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As a child, you wanted to live yourself,
but they refused to agree.
They were unable to agree,
because they knew only what they knew.
A poor attempt that they made
was to integrate you into society
while equally promoting your uniqueness.
But they failed.
(Because they knew only what they knew).
You half accepted it,
maybe even thought it was right …
Behind the veil, however, there remained
a vague, vulnerable unease
that, like this, it couldn't be right
and that you'd get lost in the disguise.
So you made something of it,
somehow lived the way as they and you wanted it.
At least then you belonged.
Or so you thought.
Along the way, you found a strategy
to continue living your uniqueness
in a shady weird way.
But this dodgy production
was only a poor copy …
A copy of what was really alive inside you,
yet so crazy out of touch
that you became your own enemy.
(Because you knew only what you knew.)
Unfortunately, you insist on
calling all this imposed stuff
de facto your being and Essence,
and don't come to realize
how much you've abolished yourself.
You, the real you, that's someone else.
Initial Thoughts
This book is about how humans lose their radiance and how they can rediscover it. There is no doubt that we are all luminous beings, and we will certainly never lose that light completely. But we can believe that we have lost it, and then we usually shine less brightly.
For, unfortunately (or fortunately), all that we love, think, and reject is never about what is, but about what we believe.
This book, too, and what it will say, is not something in itself, but only something that you, dear reader, will perceive in your own special way. And what you experience is always only what you perceive. The way you perceive becomes your world. (You have to question even that and see if you want to believe it.)
You know, as the author of this book, I have to admit to you right at the beginning that I am in a considerable dilemma. For ten, maybe twenty years now, I have disliked books in which one person suggests that others should see the world as he or she sees it. This is often intelligibly disguised, for example, when a young, naive person meets a strange woman or an eccentric old man who pretends to put him to the test and at first rejects him bluntly. This is explained by the fact that the boy must really be sure of his worthiness to receive wisdom. As a reader, of course, you know that sooner or later things will get going; after all, the author wants to bring his wisdom into the world, and it would be nutty if the young, naive boy stopped appearing in the second chapter. So it always turns out that after a short or long struggle, the simple Simon realizes that he has ended up with someone who is infallible about where things are going.
And here's my dilemma (which could easily be mistaken for flirtatiousness): I'm going to say things that may sound true to some of you. But my intention is only to offer them as impulses, as playful forms, so to speak. This is how I invite you to understand it: take these offerings as opportunities and make your own truth out of them.
This applies to almost every sentence in this book. I hesitated for a long time whether to write it. It is, in a way, the (provisional) harvest of my therapeutic work and life, the fruit of my later years. Provisional because, despite my relatively advanced age, I still see myself as completely unfinished, and in a few years I will almost certainly see and say many things differently than I do now. You may think (not without reason), well, if he has nothing to say that has any substance, then he should keep quiet, there are already enough books in the world.
Exactly. I actually agree with you. But I hear this small voice inside of me that says there is something to this question of the Central. I've spent so much time trying to figure it out and went through the process of discovering the truth with so many people that it would be a shame if it never got recorded and documented. And then maybe one day it will have disappeared altogether. And again you can say, well and good, but the world will get over it.
Yes. You are right. You realize that I can't leave my narcissism out of it completely. Narcissism always has an upside and a downside, both "Oh, how wonderful and unique" and "My goodness, did you have to behave like that?" That's why the only authentic justification for me is the very serious offer that if you read this book at all, you should use it as a play form, as an impulse. My truth serves as an impetus, as a tool, as a means of transportation. The only thing that matters is that you find your own truth along the way.
I say this so emphatically because if you really want to get involved in the whole thing (the tricky business of getting to know your own Central), you may well be faced with a series of painful, shameful, sad moments (or periods). While the joy of finding yourself is usually greater than the toil and agonizing drudgery in the end, unless you're fooling yourself, you're not really getting anywhere if you're trying to avoid pain.
No one can tell you what will make you radiate. But please understand, that's why you're here. That's why you're alive in the first place: to remember who you really are. How could anyone else remember in your place?
***
Do you think it is possible to leave your own story behind? To break free from decades-old, lifelong habits? (I say habits a little provocatively here, you could also call it the drama of life.) For example, the way you withdraw and pout when you're offended or things don't go your way? Or your unique personal way of beating yourself up over and over again? How easily you get hurt when someone else finds fault with you, or how you blow up when someone touches your sore spot? That you can be endlessly stubborn, narrow-minded, and inflexible on certain issues? And that all of this could stop, gradually, but noticeably, fade away, fade out, be over (before you leave this earth): Do you think that's possible?
After all, these are just attitudes, thoughts, movements, and feelings that you have become accustomed to. Even how you have sex, how and what you eat, how you approach people, how you feel at parties, how you think about God, and how you are fussy about many things – all ways of dealing with life that you were not born with, but that you have become accustomed to. Did you ever choose them? Perhaps as an adult you have experimented with yourself, explored and tested yourself, and believe that you have some control over yourself – but as a child, did you choose to sit at the table this way or that way? To be afraid when you went to sleep? How you should react when your father scolds you or ignores you?
Well – I hope we can all agree on this: you never, ever had any kind of choice (although you certainly thought you did as a child – and perhaps today you still think you did). Rather, you reacted, you responded – to what they did to you, and always in such a way that you could be reasonably sure that they still loved you (or that they didn't reject you, depending on your domestic circumstances).
And now you're stuck with them, your habits, or rather, they run through your ordered life every day, every week. Perhaps you have arranged it so that you are relatively convinced that you are an appealing personality. Perhaps you are pleased to hear people say that they would live their lives exactly the same way again if they had the choice, and who believe that they have said something nice about themselves with this rather careless and somewhat insubstantial statement.
Anyway, there you have it. And maybe you'll never consider that all of this, the whole smorgasbord (your story), is nothing more than a bunch of habits. Just acquired things, learned mechanisms. Maybe you think – deep down below the level of communication – that all the wars, all the corrupt excess, the pollution, the exploited earth, the violence and oppression, the terror, that none of this really has anything to do with you, because after all (if you are honest) you are what one would call a more or less decent person.
The same is true for me.
But this is – I dare to say to you and to myself – a handsome howler. We've made all this together, some on a larger scale, others in a seemingly more private way. Just think about how many so-called running battles you've been involved in over the last month – with the people around you who just don't get it. Or the whole running battle with yourself to begin with. That's already enough.
Because you know, the way you treat yourself is the way you treat the world – without question. It's like a cosmic law, there's no other way. If you're in a bad mood, you're in a bad mood, in one way or another.
It may look different towards the world because you are more disguised there. But just think about all the thoughts you keep having: "Why did I just say that … What a terrible taste he has … She still has a lot to learn … How strange people are today … Why is my smile so awkward when I speak … He could be a little more polite …" And so on.
It's unbelievable what arrogant and/or self-deprecating garbage you and I think up every day. How unfriendly and – even if it remains concealed – hostile it comes across, both to ourselves and to the world. We've just become so used to it that we don't even react with shock and shame when we notice it.
For a long time I thought, well, that's just the way we are, and we don't need to play the moralist. But believe me, that is not my view anymore.
It's so clear how belligerent we all are. You could argue that gloating over my neighbor and dropping bombs on an enemy country are two different things. To be honest, I don't see much difference. When we live within the framework of our learned habits, we are mainly mechanical beings, dependent on our environment and circumstances. If someone says something nice to me, I lighten up; if they carp at me, I darken. If I think I'm responsible for a whole country and its protection, I'll drop a bomb on the country that criticizes us.
***
You may already realize that – as long as we are talking about human relationships in the context of habits – I have few joyful expectations. Maybe I used to. But over the course of my life, I have descended with too many people into the depths of their learned programs to believe that there is much flexibility there. You may object that I sometimes work with people who lack the skills to cope with life (and therefore seek therapy). However, I would disagree. I believe that everything in our world is upside down. And if you have never considered taking a closer look at yourself with the help of another person (whether "therapeutic" or not), you will most likely remain in your habits until the day you die. We usually change our habitual ways of living only when we suffer too much from them.
And sure, you don't have to. In the end, it all depends on what your soul has in store for you.
I like to take this "tolerant" point of view, but I also have to tell you (and can we please keep this between us) that I am increasingly reluctant to spend long periods of time with people who are consistently satisfied with themselves. People who "happily accept themselves as they are" and who "have everything they need." I know my rejection sounds outrageous because, of course, in the finally liberated form, this is exactly where we want to go. But as long as it's part of the mechanical repertoire, it's just annoyingly boring to talk to someone who always knows the way things are and what's right and what's wrong. It's a little creepy to sit across from people who seem to have reached the end of evolution.
To be honest, I never really believe that's true. I mean, not even for the people themselves. It's true when they have an opinion about themselves, but it's absolutely untrue at certain other times, when something like a historical consciousness penetrates – perhaps only minimally: an awareness of their own history. Then there are strange longings and sadnesses, strangely kitschy reveries of "if only" or "if only I had," childish spiritual immaturities like "there must be something greater" and "this can't be all there is." Very often, of course, the fear of death hovers over the whole thing.
We all have a history and a story. We have a history, a past, something that was and is over, and we live in our own story, our own narrative: with a beginning, a novel-like course, and an end. And whenever we approach this novel level with our consciousness, something happens in our self-awareness. We enter a kind of delicious distance from ourselves and the entirety of our novel. This is the moment when significant changes become possible. We suddenly step out of the routine of our daily mechanics and briefly awaken to the possibility of freedom. It can happen just like that, out of nowhere, when what we really are (behind all our habits) is unexpectedly remembered. But we can also learn and train ourselves to bring about such historical awareness more and more often.
Then we understand more and more that the whole (his)story is just a (his)story, a pretext so to speak, a template from which we can detach ourselves and come home – home to who we really are.
This is usually a long, beautiful, and often painful journey, and that is what this book is about.
PART I
THE OLD CENTRAL
Everything Is Always in Balance (Or at Least Trying to Be)
All living things exist in a state of balance; everywhere you look, two sides are balancing each other out. Therefore, all of us live in a kind of neurotic1balance: Whatever is out of balance in our lives must quickly find something to balance it – and that something will be equally out of balance, only to the other side. If you are addicted to cleaning, for example, you have definitely created a balance with something else in your life, and of course there are numerous possibilities. You may be remarkably sloppy and stubborn about creating emotional clarity in challenging relationships. Perhaps you are unable to make "clean" decisions about the smallest details. Perhaps you experience a mysterious satisfaction in being a dirty slut in your love life … Whatever it is, it has to do with the central issues of your personal history. What was "first" – which side of the balance came first – and what is the compensation is often difficult to see.
In the end, I can't really say why the neurotic balance exists as it does. It just seems to me that God has in mind a certain dynamic that occurs when two opposites have to deal with each other.
(By the way, when I speak of God, I am referring to a being within me – or rather: also within me – that has a greater perspective than I do. So it is also me, so to speak, but not the one I would describe when I say "I." For me, God has neither characteristics that are punishing, jealous, vengeful or kind, forgiving or redeeming, nor is God male or female. "He" (?) is just unfathomably more intelligent. (I'll stick with "he," perhaps out of old habit. "It" is totally inappropriate.) I talk to God quite often – because I am always better informed and feel better afterwards.)
If you are touched by spiritual or religious viewpoints, then you will certainly have repeated difficulties concerning the questions of why your life flows the way it does and why you had to make great efforts to learn all those things that you are now trying to "let go of." Why do you have to leave paradise to make your way back to it?
I understand this more and more as a matter of constantly creating a new sense of balance. First, you construct a relatively messed-up story (or it is constructed for you) and live within that story with a questionable and ever-changing addiction to compensation. But then, for some spiritual reason, you are urged to undo the whole thing – and this now with increasing oscillations between heightening bouts of joy and deepening phases of melancholy.
Perhaps this whole process of ups and downs is the optimal way for life to become aware of itself. The intelligence greater than myself surely has a better understanding of why this process, which does not always seem intelligent, is an ingenious method of evolution. Creative and playful as it is, this intelligence does not get so upset about the so-called blows of fate, as we generally tend to do, but perhaps sees everything more as a big joke. Humor, as we know, is one of the highest levels of spiritual development. Perhaps God dwells on a level of humor that we can only with great reluctance recognize as such.
***
Everything seems to be based on this mysterious balance, which must always exist in one form or another. Life threatens to fail especially when this balance can no longer be restored, even in the most neurotic form. Then you end up in a hospital (where they often help you to rebuild the neurotic balance you were just trying to leave behind).
With so much basic urge for balance, isn't it obvious that any form of self-development should also take into account the highest level of harmony (of this balance)? A "therapy" that focuses primarily on what is going wrong and what you are doing wrong is just as one-sided as one that focuses primarily on spiritual devotion, love for all living beings, a heartfelt relationship with God, and turning towards the light.
Each one-sided approach has its logic. If I become who I am now, says Gestalt therapy, then I will change. There is something to that – and more: it is certainly inevitable and necessary that you fully engage with what you don't like about yourself so that it can change. When you fully allow yourself to be who you "repulsively" are, then the war in you ceases, a deep sense of calm often sets in, and the compulsion to be who you repulsively were is often released.
But that doesn't mean that you are living from who you really are, your Individual Essence, your true Self, and all such various concepts. This seems to me to be a naive idea that came about half a century ago: that all you have to do is recognize and experience deeply enough what is holding you back, let go of it, and then your luminous being will appear on stage all by itself.
Equally naive (but far more annoying) is the idea that you only need to cultivate your spiritual virtues, and your learned forms of manipulation will dissolve by themselves. This is still a widespread (and helpless) approach in some spiritual circles and is similar to the oppressive behavior of organized religions. They, too, seldom encourage the deeper path of individual self-exploration and have long punished it directly or indirectly. Getting to know ourselves also always means taking the risk of entering into concrete experiences that we had previously forbidden ourselves.
Of course, past-oriented therapy does not prohibit such steps, but it usually has nothing better to offer than the restoration of a wellfunctioning mechanical system (even if it would probably not call it that). The fact that there is a completely different dimension within us, something that goes far beyond average well-being and which in its extraordinary luminosity daringly contradicts the usual bourgeois notions of modesty, is rarely part of the repertoire of traditional personal therapies. How could they possibly focus on it? Although every human being experiences their true Self several times (usually briefly) in the course of their life, this often comes about involuntarily, that is, in moments when this Self can break through the usual protective wall of learned self-suppression. These experiences are called peak experiences or moments of grace, events over which we have no influence. And how can a therapist with such an attitude help to influence them?
So my suggestion to you is to keep this in balance as well: get to know yourself on the one hand, in your habits, in your old system – down to the subtlest details of your learned history. As I said, in their lived form they have little to do with who you really are, even if you find yourself completely contained in them and refer to them as "I." And on the other hand, dare to step into the unknown land where, paradoxically, you are at home.
***
We must not ignore an unpleasant aspect here: the fact that you are addicted to your learned mechanisms. If you don't believe this, then the next time you have an argument with your husband or wife, try to react fundamentally differently. Or when you feel rushed and restless, try not experiencing the usual stress. Or just stop thinking your usual thoughts or feeling your usual feelings when you are once again feeling "not good enough."
Let me rub it in again with emphasis: You are addicted. Like most of us. And like almost all addicts, you have a cheesy longing that one day this or that will miraculously change. That one day you will not want to drink alcohol, that one day you will be more relaxed, that one day you will walk into a room with a completely different presence, and so on. All addicts have these corny ideas.
But the fact is, in order to get clean, addicts need something (tangibly) better than the addiction. Hence the idea of a gradual rebalancing: Throughout this book, you will get to know your Old Central (which we will discuss in much more detail in a moment) from every angle – mentally, emotionally, and physically – and at the same time begin to remember yourSelf. (This, too, and how to do it will be discussed in detail.)
So when I say that addicts need something better than their addiction to break free, I mean experiences. Very concrete experiences of something better. Not simply a longing for it.
1 I understand the term neurotic in a very broad sense. We are all neurotic, the character structure is a neurotic system. Someone who is not neurotic can establish and maintain Good Contact with himself and others without having to deny himself or tense up. Any chronic tension in the body is first and foremost an indication that we have forgotten who we are.
Are You Aware That You Are Living in a Story?
All stories of a good storyteller that will captivate his audience are about The Central. Nobody would be interested in a story in which the main character goes to Paris, meets his uncle, and then breaks his leg in a skating accident without some connection between the different situations. Why would anyone want to subject themselves to a series of relatively unimportant episodes in life that lack any kind of coherence? There have always been movies that claim to reflect life realistically, in which the protagonist does this and that, here and there, because precisely this lack of coherence seems to be a realistic reflection of life. I find most of these movies not only boring and dull, but anything but realistic.
I also find therapy sessions boring when the conversation turns first to difficulties at work, then to the father's beatings, and finally to the client's recurring erectile dysfunction at the beginning of every new relationship. If the work remains at this fragmentary level, then all you can do is try to find solutions for each situation. For example, how he can better defend himself against the malicious gossip of his co-workers and how he can perhaps act less like Superman with his next girlfriend.
Such an approach has its place, but I find it rather uninteresting for my work. I also remember that in my early years as a therapist, I often had to fight an overwhelming fatigue. I think I would not be a therapist today if I had continued to try to find solutions with my help-seeking clients in this way.
A truly realistic representation of life would be if my (fictional) client and I understood that his father tried to make him a man, but that the humiliating beatings had the opposite effect. That he kept telling him and made him increasingly believe that he was a wimp, a nobody, and a pussy. And that we finally understand that this is exactly what he projects at the office – precisely because of all his grim efforts not to look like a failure. The darned Law No. 25a says: You always get what you try hard to avoid.2 And precisely the same thing is happening with his girlfriend, whom he is trying to impress in the most heroic way possible. Except that his (masculine!) penis doesn't play along, because it is unworthy of such drama.
(By the way, the penis is one of the most intelligent parts of the male body, and every man would do well to maintain a friendly and sincere relationship with it.)
The whole thing stops being boring when the client realizes that the same story is playing out with his father, at the office, and with his girlfriend. I call such a recurring theme The Old Central. For only when he can admit to himself that he feels fundamentally insignificant in the world, and at the same time tries to hide this fact from the world and himself with the help of fake forms of masculinity (neurotic balance!), only then can a truly fruitful and dynamic development begin.
Once again, in many situations it is necessary and perhaps appropriate to find a superficial solution to a problem. If you have been in a state of silent war with your neighbor for years, it is probably not a bad idea to work up the courage (or overcome your pride) to approach her and talk to her. That is reasonable.
So if you don't know any better, it's a good idea to just do things this way. But there is a catch. Such patchwork repairs are often not very effective. They may last for a while, but then they gradually fall apart because something essential has not been understood or addressed.
If, on the other hand, you approach the situation with some historical awareness (that is, an awareness of your own story), the chances of a fundamental change in your relationship with your neighbor are greatly increased.
***
Let's stay with the patchwork solution for a moment. Let's assume that the man we are talking about manages to successfully defend himself against the malice of his colleagues in the office (for example, by appealing to the employee representatives or by "earning respect" through assertive behavior). Can he believe that his life has changed?
Perhaps.
You say he has finally done something he did not dare to do before? And that such a step is likely to have a positive effect on his selfconfidence?
Perhaps.
I would say that his life has changed when his penis starts to perform differently. Then the whole neurotic balance has shifted. He will no longer be trying not to be a loser. He will allow himself to be one.
Then he is no longer at war.
Then his penis is happy.
2 (Everything is upside down.)
The Mechanical Person Is Always a Victim
Do you think of yourself as a mechanical person?
Of course not.
I don't either.
That's too close to the edge of what is bearable. Mechanical means that I can only do things one way and not another. The more abstractly I think about it, the more I see myself as a free person. You probably feel the same way.
However, if my email client doesn't respond and no one is around to fix it immediately … If I can't receive emails for, let's say, three days (but the whole world thinks I can), I start getting really anxious.
I have practiced a lot of meditation in my life. I can influence the activity of my chakras, and I can enter deep states of peace – but when I get up and the email client still doesn't respond, the anxiety returns within seconds. (You may be different and be able to accept this with great equanimity. But that doesn't mean anything. It just means that you are wired differently than I am. Or I could say that you have a different Central than I do.)
You were about to deal with the question of whether you are a mechanical person or not. Let me repeat it: by "mechanical" I mean that you cannot help it, even if you wanted to. And I mean in your normal everyday life, not when you are on the Titanic.
I'll give you some everyday situations:
If you like (!) watching TV: Can you turn it off in the middle of a good movie if someone wants to talk to you?
If you like to eat sweets: Could you stop today? (Ditto: wine, beer, coffee, meat, smoking, pot, and so on.) It's not about what would be better for you. It's just a question of whether you could stop.
If you are jealous: Could you be big-hearted tomorrow when your sweetheart is chatting with this other person in an unusually charming way?
If you beat your wife: Could you stop (when you feel she has pushed you to the limit again)?
If you want to have sex every day: Could you consider the possibility of accommodating your partner's needs (really accommodating them, not just as a compromise)?
If you haven't had sex in your relationship for three years and you wanted to: Could you start again tonight?
If you watch sports regularly: Could you give it up for a few weeks?
If you are an exceptionally tidy person: Could you start letting things lie around a bit and not do the dishes tonight?
If you constantly worry about your children: Could you, once in a while, leave them unguarded in a "critical" situation?
If you have a habit of nodding and saying "hmm" in agreement with the person you are talking to: Could you stop doing that?
If you tend to be insecure in certain encounters: Can you present yourself more confidently?
If you have been meditating every day for years: Could you stop for a while?
If you are always smiling and kind: For a week, could you say no whenever you don't want something, maybe even with a frown on your face?
I could go on and on with this series of questions. And you can make up your own situations, you know yourself best. Don't pick out examples where you can. Of course, there are many things you can do because they don't fall within the scope of your Old Central. And don't get hung up on the moral or philosophical question of whether one is better than the other. It's not about that at all, as I said. It's just whether you're a free person. If you can only be how you think you are, then you are not. Because that's what your Old Central does: It keeps you in the prison of the same and the familiar. Whether you see it that way or not.
Your Old Central is a system of adaptations you learned as a child to survive your environment in the best way possible. Each adaptation requires you to abandon yourself in some way. Children do this (as you can see and hear everywhere) with the greatest reluctance, but since they are dependent, sooner or later they have to submit and betray themselves. (And we hear again and again of children who leave home at the age of four or seven, never to return. The fact that the police bring them back the same day is – in their childish understanding – an unfortunate abuse of state power.)
***
Now we come to a touchy point. Since you, as a child, did not establish this delicate system of adjustments voluntarily or consciously, the whole process (even with possible outrage) took place more or less in the background of the operating system.
This transformation
was done to you,
but you experienced it
as if you had done it yourself.
This is the tricky part. The delicate point. When someone uses torture to force you to embody something unwanted, you (usually) still know your own truth. If the same thing happens in an environment where nobody really knows what they are doing (usually referred to as normal circumstances), then – until around puberty – the externally induced alienation merges so seamlessly with you that you think you have undertaken the transformation process yourself, even if you have resisted it. And that is why, even today, you believe that you are you and not the learned result of a forced alienation process.
And even if you understand
all these processes
theoretically and conceptually,
you still think/feel that you are you.
***
Everything is organized so that you don't get confused. On the one hand, there is the whole acquired repertoire of ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving that (in your opinion) make you who you are: the way you talk, the way you make contact, the way you react to what comes your way, and so on. You call all these habits "me."
And then there may also be this other, this for the moment utterly different world within you. If you are aware of it, you may have classified and filed it under "non-ordinary states of consciousness" or "extraordinary experiences." And so you have protected yourself from all disturbing questioning.
Because of course you have had such experiences: moments when you stepped entirely out of the everyday and the familiar (without being stoned), moments when the world and things appeared different without a doubt. And if the experiences didn't freak you out too much, then there was probably also a deeply felt sense and knowledge that everything was fine as it was.
As I said, you carefully and strategically filed that away under "That's not really me." You attributed it to external circumstances: a particular situation in your life, an incredible sunset, an unexpected stroke of luck. Then you were more or less off the hook, you didn't need to be confused by what was going on inside.
***
What makes you so sure that these experiences were initiated from the outside? I don't know your life, but let's say one day you were in the mountains with a good friend. You had reached a fairly high altitude, above the tree line, with barren, rough rocks and fresh air, and most of all, an incredible sense of peace that was so intense and strangely exhilarating that you suddenly felt the strong urge not only to stop in your tracks but to get ready to "stop the world."
So you both sat down on a warm piece of rock.
Then something ineffable happened: something was suddenly absent – or present. Something was absent, and that allowed something else to become present. Some sort of filter through which you normally perceive things and people seemed to cease to exist, and so you had a perception that was both disorienting and blissful. That little stream down there, a few steps below you, suddenly appeared in such intense luminosity that you thought you might be going crazy in the happiest way. And when you looked up at the rocks, the mountains, the bushes, and the sky, they had this unfamiliar vividness, a splendor, and an unexpected novelty. And despite the unfamiliarity, you felt close and at one with what you saw in a strange and touching way.
So. And later you probably said that it was the extraordinary landscape or the clear blue sky that sparked such a perception in you. Perhaps it was the closeness to your friend with whom you were up there. But strangely enough, when you mentioned this extraordinary experience to your friend that night, he nodded in agreement and said: "Yeah, it was a nice day today."
You may have wanted to deny the uniqueness of your experience, and so you preferred to file it away as a case of symbiotic joy. And then just raved about it a little bit and let it go in the end. But if you had wanted to think about it more, you would have realized clearly and without hesitation that only you had this extraordinary experience. And then you'd come back to the tricky part: If only you saw the world differently, then it couldn't have come from outside. Then it wasn't the mountains, the air, and the sky, but something inside you that came alive or awakened and broke through to change your perception.
As a mechanical person, you (ridiculously) want to cling to the idea that you are nothing but a reaction, always and everywhere. Sure, that makes things convenient in a twisted way, once you have "decided" to feel like a victim. Then you don't have to feel responsible for the evil that just happened. (I think it is almost a primal instinct to reflexively blame the other person in an argument, for example. Even if you say out loud that it is, of course, all your fault.)
But it becomes twisted and abstruse when you do this in the mountains too. You would probably not call yourself a victim here, but it comes down to the same thing, a form of dependency: you might call it a moment of grace – a blessing that somehow unexpectedly came out of nowhere. There is nothing wrong with being grateful for such an experience – but to whom do you direct your gratitude?
What are the options? To nature? To God? Or perhaps … to yourself? Not your everyday self, the one who decided to venture into the mountains that morning. That self can think of such exquisite experiences as a substitute and imagine them as a makeshift, but it can never initiate the kind of experiencing you had up there. Only another aspect of you, one that dwells and resides behind your learned mechanics, can do that.
This may sound shocking at first, but I want to suggest here and throughout the rest of the book that this other aspect is you. Your Self. Your true nature. Who you really are. Everything else – everything you think you are – is just acquired material. It may have helped you survive and feel loved in the past, but today it's holding you back from living that life you think of when you secretly sigh that this can't be all there is … (which, if you're honest, you regularly do in one form or another.)
Because you are certainly not one of those people who have everything and lack nothing, and who would not hesitate to live their lives in exactly the same way again.
(Between you and me, these are the most difficult therapy clients. They "lack nothing," they are happy and content, except that their doctor referred them to therapy "because of a heart condition." Personally, they don't know why they are here.)
While it is certainly not a universal law, it seems to me (as I have said before) that only those who have experienced great suffering set out on a journey of self-discovery. (That is still a harsh statement. I am really wondering if I should write something like this. I will leave it as it is, for now.)
So my suggestion to you is to join me on this journey to discover your true Self. To gradually, with a bit of guidance, leave behind the story you have learned, and to gently get to know your true Self – once you have a taste of it. To nourish it, to nurture it, and to let it blossom.
For in the end, you are what you feed within yourself.
The Nature of the Old Central
The Old Central is like a basic atmosphere that is almost always present in you. With minor variations, sometimes lighter, sometimes darker. Usually you experience it as "normal." The Old Central runs like a red thread through your daily life, like a piece of music that keeps repeating itself.
Because you do not want to see yourself as a mechanical person, you are likely to focus more on the differences between the individual aspects of your character than on what they have in common. This complicates things. Seeing what they have in common simplifies your understanding of yourself.
Now I want to help you get in touch with your own Central. But I am also wondering how best to proceed. It would definitely be advantageous if you could sit across from me, if you could be present with your body and your feelings in the same room as me, because the whole thing is easier when two people are involved. The reason for this is that you are, in a sense, relatively estranged from yourself – blind, if you will. Over the years you have become too familiar with yourself, and the refreshing contrast of a first encounter is missing.
And things keep getting stranger. It's almost as if you don't really want to know yourself – and even less to be reduced to a basic tendency, the Old Central. You think of yourself as a complex personality with a wide range of life experiences. How can you allow your entire history to be traced back to a single thread?
It can be done. Why it can be done is anyone's guess. After all, we're not really talking about you, who you really are, but about your learned story. Countless ancestors have contributed to that story; behind you stand two long lines of women and men, all of whom have passed on their respective Old Central to their children – and they, in turn, to their children.
The children have taken it in, perhaps taken it on unquestioningly, or – as is often the case – rebelled against it, trying not to be like their parents. But it was always about the inherited issue (which was rarely recognized as such) – and whether as a child you are for it or against it is ultimately of little consequence. The older the children grew, the more they realized that they were partially living like their father and mother again (if they realized it). With some variations and elaborations, of course, and perhaps with elements of neurotic balance (the father was stingy, the child is overly generous). But the same basic issue continued. The mechanical person remains in the inherited mechanics, even across generations, though it doesn't necessarily look that way. Only the liberated person can transcend it.
It is a moving spiritual image that all – or many – of your ancestors, with all their different yet similar stories, are now gathered behind you, looking at you with hope or fear or trust, as you stand there at the front with the matter now in your hands. For regardless of the story and the awareness with which they lived, all of them were always concerned with the question of liberation, even if they did not know it in their lifetime.
Your great-grandfather dealt with it by going to sea, your great-great-grandmother by being one of the first to fight for women's rights. Someone in the 18th century may have refused to take over his father's farm, a very distant female ancestor may have dealt with it by fighting her way into a school, even though it was considered inappropriate for girls.
And another was a submissive servant all her life, allowing herself to cry and suffer from her dependence only in very rare moments. Another was an obedient soldier under Frederick the Great and seemed withdrawn and melancholy in his spare time.
But all of them have had their moments of soul-searching, whether openly or behind the scenes.
So (perhaps) it is the case that many of your ancestors are now standing behind you and watching you. They all know now (from a very high perspective) that they had the choice of approaching the liberation available to them, or living a painful life of bondage. Only your ancestors themselves know how many of them succeeded. But (maybe) they are very eager for you to make it a little further.
(I don't know if that's really the case with our ancestors. But it's a nice image, it feels good, and it helps us move forward.)
***
I suggested earlier that the most difficult clients are those who feel perfectly happy and "lack nothing." And I also said that I don't think such people really exist. In fact, it often turns out (sometimes right at the beginning of therapy) that such people have created this pseudo-image over the years, often out of a deep sense of resignation. Maybe because there was nothing else to do.
There are very few happy people. There are alive people who are sometimes happy and just as often desperate. And, of course, there are a lot of people who try to convince themselves that they are happy.
As I said, you shouldn't try to take away their beliefs.
So how can I help you get to know your Old Central without you sitting across from me?
No one can tell you what your Old Central is. I couldn't either, even if you were sitting across from me. Maybe if we got to know each other a little better, I could make an educated guess and some assumptions. But in the end, you have to figure it out for yourself. For only you know the exact "clause," and when you have discovered it, you will breathe a sigh of relief, and your whole being will agree.
Instead of torturing you with more theoretical thoughts, I could tell you my own story and how I found my way to the central theme in it. I think that's what we're going to do. Then you'll have a concrete template that will lead you to your own questions. I don't want to tell you my whole life story, that's not necessary. I'll tell you what led me to understand my own Old Central:
I was born at the end of World War II. My father was deployed in Russia, and my mother preferred to give birth not in Berlin, which was being bombed daily, but in the mountains of Silesia, where my grandmother came from and where she still had relatives.
With me in her belly and my mother in tow (who was highly hysterical, screaming at the slightest provocation, and with whom she had never gotten along), she set off for Silesia. As you can imagine, this was not an easy task at that time.
My mother had had an abortion before me, also a boy, she said. She had not given birth to him because she did not feel capable of being a mother. So she was determined to have me. Her marriage was still standing, as they say, but she had already realized that she would not find lasting happiness with my father. That is why she so desperately wanted a son to fill her life. She looked forward to my birth with great joy and was very anxious throughout the pregnancy. Her husband was at war, Berlin was in ruins, and no one knew if they would live to see another day.
You may be familiar with the following lullaby:
Maikäfer, flieg,
der Vater ist im Krieg,
Mutter ist in Pommerland,
Pommerland ist abgebrannt, Maikäfer, flieg.
[English translation:]
May beetle, fly,
father is at war,
mother is in Pomerania,
Pomerania is burnt down,
May beetle, fly.
When I was four or five, all the children in my street knew this song. I know that I often sang it without even remotely understanding what it was about. It only became clear to me 30 or 40 years later.
It's a strange lullaby. I know that I've always liked it, that it has always touched something in me. I think it really describes the first nine months of my life. And probably also the first year after my birth, with the difference that I was out of the womb and no longer experienced the strange comfort of the lullaby, which I had probably felt repeatedly in my mother's womb, despite all the dangers.
That is how I came into being. My mother was always afraid and worried – most of all, I think, she was afraid for me, that something might happen to me and that the fulfillment of her life might never see the light of day. I can still feel her firm determination to bring me into the world, no matter the cost. Undoubtedly, I felt this firm determination in my mother's womb again and again.
When I was born, we had to flee from Silesia to escape the Russians. My mother often told me stories about that flight back to a ruined Berlin: how we almost starved to death, how in every town we reached, she went from house to house begging for food. If they had one potato for two women and a small child. She always took me with her, because she wanted to provoke pity. And later, with a terribly pleasant shudder, I heard again and again how the cruel farmer slammed the door in our faces with a fat ham sandwich in his hand.
Here, too, there was this iron will to keep us alive – and, as I said, especially me. Even as a child, I sensed that she would not have made such a fuss about herself. Her own life was not terrible, but it was not worth preserving at all costs. She emphasized this indirectly again and again. But she would have defended her son's life against a whole regiment of Russians.
That was the atmosphere in which I came into being. An atmosphere that, as I am sure you will realize as you read, is not exactly a cause for celebration, and not only because of the war. Even now, as I write about it, this maternal love causes a feeling of tension in my diaphragm. The fear, the iron determination, and the triumphant maternal love are the strongest feelings I first experienced in my life.
Exercitium 1: Concomitant Effects of Your Origin
Under what circumstances did you come into being?
What was the relationship between your parents like?
In what social and political context were you "borne"?
With which feelings were you expected?
What was your birth like?
What else do you remember happening before, during, and after your birth?
What was the atmosphere around you at the time of your birth?
I was born in this small Silesian mountain village with an old midwife in the house who, after 20 hours of labor, desperately threatened my mother that she would have to take her to the district hospital if it didn't happen in the next ten minutes.
