15. THE FUNDAMENTAL ILLUSION: BLAMING OUR FEELINGS ON OTHERS

by Dick Rauscher

Abstract

"Why is it that most people are simply unable to stay happy?"

The desire to be happy has been described throughout history as the single most important motivator of human behavior. No other human desire receives more attention and energy than the pursuit of inner peace and happiness. And yet, despite the enormous energy most of us expend searching for happiness, it continues to remain the most illusive of all our human emotions.

Why is it so hard to simply be happy; to live a happy life?"

I have spent a significant part of my professional career in psychotherapy wrestling with this question. In fact, it was my own frustrated quest for happiness that finally led me into my own personal therapy, and it certainly has been one of the primary goals of virtually every client in my practice over the last twenty years.

There are a number of things that cause us to be unhappy, but I have come to believe that the primary cause of unhappiness is the simple belief that other people and events create our feelings. I call this false belief the fundamental illusion. It is a very dangerous belief if our goal is intimacy and happiness. In fact, this universally accepted belief is the artesian spring from which the muddy waters of unhappiness have poured since the birth of the first human mind.

In other words, if happiness is our goal, challenging the fundamental illusion by learning to own our own feelings, is beyond a doubt, one of the most important spiritual practices we must master on our life journey. Simply stated, no person and no event have the ability to make us feel any emotion that isn't already inside of us.

We challenge the fundamental illusion when we begin to recognize that the overwhelming majority of our feelings come from our childhood and other early life experiences. When we discover that our day-to-day life experiences can only remind us of the powerlessness, the hurts, and the fears of childhood.

To illustrate the fallacy of the fundamental Illusion, I ask my clients to take the Snake and the Rabbit test with me. I pretend to reach behind me to pull out an imaginary snake. Then, without warning, I pretend to hold it right up close to their face. I ask them what they are feeling? Most people admit that if my snake were real, it would scare them.

Then I put my imaginary snake away and pull out an imaginary little baby rabbit. Again I hold it right up close to them and ask them how they feel. Most respond by saying how cute it is and then humorously ask if they can hold it.

Just to be certain, I put the rabbit away and pull out the imaginary snake again. They affirm again that I am indeed able to scare them with my imaginary snake. I point out to them that I was unable to scare them with my baby rabbit because they obviously have no fear of baby rabbits anywhere in their memory.

The purpose of the test is simple. It illustrates clearly that I simply do not have the power to scare them with my imaginary snake unless they already have a fear of snakes somewhere in their memory. In other words, it illustrates that I do not have the power to scare them with my imaginary snake, but I can easily remind them of a fear of snakes that they already have.

Thus, to summarize, if it's not already in our memory, no one can make us feel anything. Unless there is a real physical threat to us, the people and events in our life are not creating the feelings we are experiencing, they are only reminding us of feelings and memories we already possess. This is a very difficult truth to fully embrace in day-to-day life, but it is indeed a reality.

When our goal is happiness, we must develop the skill of owning our own feelings. Until we do, we will continue to be unhappy and helpless. Powerless victims to the hurtful behavior of the people and events in our lives.

Dropping the fundamental illusion and learning to embrace reality will eventually lead to happiness, but embracing change is often frightening. Sometimes change can mean that we will no longer fit so comfortably in our community or culture. It can even lead to the judgment and rejection of friends and family.

I try to illustrate to clients how difficult it can be to let go of cultural accepted beliefs. I remind them that had they lived in the middle ages, they would have grown up believing that the world is flat. Everyone in that culture knew that the world was flat. They would have accepted without question the idea that if you rowed a boat to the horizon, you would fall off the edge of the world. Had someone tried to suggest that the world was actually round, they would no doubt have thought that he or she was literally crazy.

It's hard for us today to believe that at one time people actually believed the world was flat, but this was indeed a commonly accepted belief in the middle ages.

The fundamental illusion is a very similar modern-day "flat world" belief. In our culture, virtually everyone assumes the fundamental illusion to be an accurate belief. We blame our feelings on the weather, the government, taxes, our spouses, our children, our boss, the fact that we didn't get a raise, the stress of too much to do, not enough money..the list is endless. It's like a sad country and western melody we walk around humming called "I'll be happy when________". Sadly, most of us are experts on getting ready to be happy, but we never quite seem to get there.

Besides unhappiness, there are two additional hurtful side effects that result from accepting the fundamental illusion as truth. The first is a deep feeling of powerlessness and anxiety. Because we have no real control of anything other than our own behaviors and attitudes, the fundamental illusion leaves our ego emotionally at the mercy of the entire universe. It's no wonder we feel frightened, unhappy and depressed.

The second wounding side effect of the fundamental illusion is called blame. When we are blaming, our ability to create a safe intimacy with others is severely impaired. When we blame others for our feelings, they experience us as both critical and hurtful. Even dangerous. But because they too believe in the fundamental illusion, they quickly blame us for making them feel criticized. We of course insist that it was them who hurt us. And so the conflict grows.

This cycle of mutual blame caused by the fundamental illusion soon leaves us lonely and cut off from the very people we turn to for our intimacy needs; our friends, our families, our spouses, and our children.

Until we learn to own our own feelings, we will continue to bring conflict and suffering into the world. We will continue to create our own loneliness and unhappiness. The enemy is not our neighbor; it is our own false beliefs.

When the Fundamental Illusion is replaced by reality, our work becomes curiosity; learning to ask the question, "I wonder where this feeling energy is coming from within me?". In other words, our inner-work begins to shift from angry, powerless blaming to a less-reactive internal exploration of the various feelings that we experience from moment to moment.

When the fundamental illusion is replaced by reality, we no longer need our old defensive counter-attacks and blame. Paradoxically, we become non-reactive and more compassionate of others pain and suffering when we no longer accept responsibility for their feelings.

When the fundamental illusion is replace by reality, we begin to grow spiritually. We begin to live more authentically and to experience the happiness that has always been ours to experience. The mystics remind us that when our lives are grounded in reality, we are able to experience all the happiness there is.

What we put out into the world is our karma. What we give to the universe we will get back multiplied. As a species, we must learn to be responsive and less re-active. Our karma is too often that of pain and suffering for those around us.

To have a compassionate world it is necessary for us to learn to have appropriate subjective emotional responses to the objective experiences of our lives. In other words, we have to learn to stop over-reacting to things that we experience.

This skill begins to develop automatically when we learn to own our own feelings and focus our attention on the beam in our own eye before we worry about the speck in our neighbor's.