The AHA experience

[AaronB]

Have you ever had a sudden realization, and then suddenly everything looks different? For me that has happened many times. It is noticeable when I intentionally seek to free myself from a limiting thought pattern. Sometimes I look here I look there, trying to find why I am stuck in such a heavy and repetitive belief. Until at one moment I spot something. I see the man behind the curtain, and I recognize the whole thing has been one big charade. Then I take a deep breath and see the world for the first time. I don't have to rehearse or remember a new way of being, in one moment something was seen, and what was seen could not be unseen, even if I wanted to. It would be like unlearning how to read. In this sense I'm free. Any freedom that requires a constant reminder is more of a self delusion. Delusion requires effort. Freedom doesn't.

So I've been wondering what is it that really goes on in these aha experiences? Why does all of a sudden everything feel radically different? What just occurred?

I notice that emotional responses are reflexive, not cognitive, responses. They occur before we know why they occured. No one has to remember how to feel hurt or angry when a provoking situation occurs. As soon as the situation is recognized, the emotional response arises with it. The two seem to be tied together.

It seems this connection can be formed in a moment. As a child some drastic situation occured and an association is made. That association will continue to show up every time a similar situation arises automagically. One day a new interpretation is applied to the same situation, and the old association is now permanently gone. Nothing needs to be remembered.

So why can't we just reprogram these associations? What protects them? What releases them? It seems the more intense the situation was that produced the association, the more rigid the association becomes. The emotional intensity of the initial situation will show up if we try to look at what is going on, so if something was super traumatic, it can be very uncomfortable to look at the trauma.

While the intensity of the trauma holds this belief in place, what dislodges it? Often for me recognizing that things don't have to be this way is a start. I see other people don't respond this way to the same circumstances, then I realize that there is something fishy going on here. Seeing other people free encourages me to seek out what this limit is. Realizing I don't have to carry this burden around is a great motivator. While it gives me the will to look, it doesn't set me free.

When does freedom occur? When something is seen. Apparently no false pattern, no matter how convincing it is, can be perfectly protected against insight. There is always a flaw, there is a lie somewhere. There is a pointing finger that steers you away from the man behind the curtain. When the flaw is seen it is ridiculously obvious. The whole pattern undoes itself because it cannot thrive in the light of consciousness.

For me it is difficult to remember what just happened when a limiting pattern gets shattered like a stainglass window. The result is I completely forget what the problem was. There is no emotional intensity surrounding it, so it becomes much fuzzier than before it was shattered. The release doesn't give me a new thing to do, rather I realize that I've been already making an enormous effort to do something that is set up to be impossible. Recognizing the impossibility gets me off the hook. If I realize I can't win at this game, and the payoff was a scam all along, then I'll automatically stop playing.