Swimming in Your own Sauce — about Delusion

Swimming in Your own Sauce — about Delusion — Swimming with Delusion — there is no escaping our delusions. It’s the water we swim in. But hey, it would be nice to notice…

---

I was plan­ning on writ­ing an arti­cle about get­ting lost in our minds, and came across the top image, (from a free image ser­vice I like.) I thought to myself, “Self, this is a great image for the arti­cle, pro­vid­ing every­one gets that it’s a metaphor.”

I sup­pose I’m a bit stuck on this top­ic,
as I do spend a lot of time exam­in­ing what I’m swim­ming in.

Believe it or not, what occurred to me was “FISH!”

Well, actu­al­ly, fish and water. As in, “A fish is not aware of the water it swims in.” Much as we are not (nor­mal­ly) aware of the air we breathe.

In a very real and important sense, Delusion is “the water we swim in.”

When you think about the present polit­i­cal cli­mate of the world, and specif­i­cal­ly in Trump’s Amer­i­ca, you’ll see my point. No mat­ter which “side” you’re on, you like­ly can’t fig­ure out how “the oth­er side” can be so… stu­pid… so… deluded.

What seems so obvi­ous to you is opaque to “the oth­er.” I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that you are, and “they” are — swim­ming in delusion.

The Zen Buddhist position is that this is how it is. What we can train ourselves to do, though, is notice the sauce we are swimming in.

The key to all of this is aware­ness. To always swim with a flash­light in one hand and a note­book in the other. 

That I am delud­ed is a giv­en.
That I am unaware that I am delud­ed is plain stu­pid­ness.

But com­mon. And easy to fall into. Because our egos love being stuck in their own stuff. And you know you’re stuck when you either think or say, “But! But! That’s just the way I am!”

The plain, sad truth is that you are nev­er more than your delu­sions. Your belief pack­age con­cern­ing… well… every­thing… is a mile wide and a mile deep. You’ve been dig­ging your ditch since your par­ents fin­ished their work on it, and hand­ed you the shovel. 

There is no escape. But there is… this moment… and choice.

The choice is to notice. To pay close atten­tion to the sto­ries you tell your­self, and catch your­self just before you dive, once again, into your sauce.

A cou­ple of exam­ples of Swim­ming in Your own Sauce:

This one is generic. 

Sev­er­al of my friends are deeply engaged in try­ing to fix their par­ents. Some are still try­ing well into their 50s. 

• Each one (their sauce-swim­ming place) has an image of how their par­ent “ought to be.” 
• Each one “tests” the par­ent by doing some­thing, and expect­ing the par­ent to behave accord­ing to their “ought to be.”
• Each express­es amaze­ment, hurt and bewil­der­ment when the par­ent reverts to form — to doing what they always do.

“Why can’t I have what I want instead of what I have?” Because what you have is real, and what you want is your sauc‑y delusion.

---

A dear friend describes her­self as the “girl who nev­er says no.”

Now, ele­vate your think­ing for a bit; 

• she means that she choos­es to say “yes” to every request that comes her way, so that she seems “nice.”
• Then, she calls her mom and com­plains about how noth­ing is going her way. 
• And then… next request, back to say­ing “yes.”

---

The “dan­ger of cog­ni­tive therapy.” 

Sort of. One exer­cise that can be help­ful is to exam­ine your way of think­ing about a sit­u­a­tion, or about your­self. But only, IMHO, as a means to see­ing the fun­da­men­tal silli­ness of much of what we think.

It’s easy, though, to make a religion of self-examination

By this I mean end­less­ly re-hash­ing the con­tents of the sauce‑y swim­ming pool of our minds. Round and round we go, and noth­ing changes. 

Take the sec­ond exam­ple above. 

• She says “yes.”
• She means “no.”
• She thinks oth­ers will think she’s “nice,” so she con­tin­ues to say “yes,” while mean­ing “no.”

• She gripes about it to me, to Dar­bel­la, etc.

But because the con­tents of her mind tells her, erro­neous­ly, that yes = nice, and that (the hid­den agen­da) if she says “yes” to oth­ers, oth­ers will say “yes” to her, she swims, while chok­ing on her sauce. 

And she repeats it, again and again.

This is what hap­pens if all you ever do is to look at your mind–your judge­ments, your beliefs, your prej­u­dices. You can per­suade your­self that you are actu­al­ly doing some­thing ben­e­fi­cial. But you’re not.

Because… doing

The pur­pose of self-exam­i­na­tion, whether from a psy­chother­a­peu­tic or Bud­dhist per­spec­tive, is to learn to go inside, look around, and… get this!… say, “Yup, that’s me, crazy-mak­ing again.” Period. 

The “logic” of our internal theatre is definitely tilted toward maintaining the status quo. 

In our “nice” exam­ple, our friend “wants” to believe what she believes, even though her “game” gets her lousy results. She’s stub­born, and will go so far as to say, “I’m not going to change, because that’s the way I am, and besides, I’ve decided!” 

The weight of the sauce is in its depth and length. The things in there are as old as you are, and were ini­tial­ly cre­at­ed by your fam­i­ly, tribe and cul­ture. It’s old, it’s dys­func­tion­al and it’s very pow­er­ful. To see it for what it is, is to deny its log­ic and in a sense to deny your identity.

This is not, then, a game of fight­ing with your­self. It’s a game of accep­tance, rue­ful­ness, and then choos­ing (each time, for­ev­er) anoth­er direction.

A lit­tle Wayne-sto­ry, for your amusement

A while back here in Cos­ta Rica, some­thing hap­pened to our rel­a­tive­ly new cook top. I’d just spilled water all over the cook top, and was grum­bling loud­ly at Dar­bel­la for leav­ing a pan of water there — “not my fault! Blame Dar!”

There was a “Lock” on cook top, and I could­n’t get it to unlock, so no cooking.

I could feel my anger ris­ing, and an angry Wayne is not a pret­ty sight. I tapped but­tons — noth­ing. I made myself angrier. 

I walked over to the break­er box while Dar stared at the cook top. One by one I clicked the break­ers off, then on. Each time, Dar said, “Nope.”

I could feel myself los­ing myself and my ego was build­ing a blame sto­ry… a dis­as­ter sto­ry… an “it’s bro­ken” sto­ry. My chest tight­ened, as did my throat. I could feel the edge of a meltdown.

Famil­iar ter­ri­to­ry, and the sauce I swim in. And after all of these decades of self-work, still there, right on the sur­face of my being.

I’ve learned to lean into it, accept it as “me”, and to have a breath before I do some­thing stupid.

So, I breathed.

Not real­ly effec­tive­ly, not real­ly well… but enough to real­ly notice the dra­ma I was swim­ming in. I could see my delu­sion… my anger and my sto­ries were keep­ing me stuck… AND! Because I was lost in delu­sion, the cook top was­n’t get­ting fixed.

I sighed. I thought the sit­u­a­tion through. Then, still stomp­ing a bit, I want over to the lit­tle build­ing where the elec­tric meter is, and turned off the elec­tric­i­ty to the con­do. Then, back on.

The cook top reset itself, and I heated dinner.

I still grum­bled a bit… But a moment or two lat­er, I was over myself, and the thing I’d been swim­ming in was as obvi­ous as hell.

The game I was play­ing with myself would esca­late — get worse — if I chose to stay unaware of my game… my delusion. 

I stopped the game when I noticed the delu­sion I was swim­ming in.

---

So, think about this, and think about your­self. What things are you aware of think­ing about your­self that get you caught in your own sauce, but that you feel all right­eous about, because you’re “work­ing on it?” 

Except, you’re not.

How often are you stuck in your head, swim­ming in your own sauce — end­less­ly going over the same stu­pid sto­ries, and then doing the same stu­pid things? 

My exam­ple “yes” friend, were she wise, might con­sid­er exper­i­ment­ing with “no.” She might decide, say, for a month or a year, to say “no” when she means “no”. Not once or twice, but as a full-blown experiment. 

If she does this, her inner voice is going to go nuts, and start scream­ing, “No one will like you if you are not a nice lit­tle girl!” She would need to acknowl­edge, then ignore, that voice. 

After sev­er­al months, she will dis­cov­er that every­one still likes her (or the ones that dumped her were not worth keep­ing around) and she has not done things she did­n’t want to do. Or bet­ter put, she has done the things she want­ed to do.

Each of us has something we can experiment with.

• If you get angry with your kids “for their own good,” spend 6 months stop­ping your mouth, qui­et­ing your­self, and then hav­ing a calm discussion.
• If you think your part­ner is the one to blame for every­thing, have a breath, and invite your part­ner to talk about what’s real­ly going on.
• If you can’t fig­ure out what’s up with your body, exper­i­ment with actu­al­ly liv­ing your life dif­fer­ent­ly. Change some stuff — diet, exer­cise, sleep — and see what hap­pens next.

Instead of helplessly swimming in your own sauce, do something geared toward doing your life differently. Give it a bit of time, laugh at your head games, and see what switches.

---