Experience as a Layered Reality: Reality as a Layered Experience

Monday, December 22nd, 2014

For some time, in my work with my analysands, I have been exploring time as being a stacked,  multi-layered experience. I have considered non-sequential time as a way of moving between psychic states associated with subjective and objective reality. Our past, dreams, fantasies, and non-ordinary energetic experience create layers of meaning that influence our conscious experience at any given point in time, as well as in the relational energetic field we all share. Much of the research on disassociation in psychoanalysis supports the concept of soul loss – when parts of ourselves can become split off, fragmented and frozen in time during psychological and physical trauma.

Almost two months ago, I was in a serious car accident and was told by doctors and the police officer who arrived on the scene that I should have died.( These actual meaning of these words didn’t really sink in for me then.) Immediately after the accident occurred I was aware of experiencing some physical pain but continuing to my destination, was my primary focus. Although I have always experienced fortitude and endurance, it was not until later that I became aware that I had been in shock and was reacting in a “fight” response.

Over the days that followed physical pain began layering in. Yet I was aware of a deep psychological pain that was lying underneath the surface of my soma and psyche related to the series of events surrounding the accident that I did not have access to. I had strong intuitive reactions to the people and events that were happening around me post-accident. Although I was unable to feel them emotionally or think about them rationally – I was able to experience their truth.

Over time in quiet periods of reverie and meditation parts of the experience that I had only been able to access intuitively began emerging in various layers simultaneously. They were different yet related. I started to form a deeper, more comprehensive narrative about what had happened to me.

It wasn’t until about six weeks later when I fell accidently (I had been using a walker to get around) and cracked my temporary front teeth AGAIN (that were there to replace my front teeth that had cracked during the accident), I had an intense psychological reaction to the acute physical pain. I found myself sobbing from a place in my physical body that had been reawakened, and the experience became a cleansing release.

I am still not sure what all of this means and anticipate I will be processing these experiences for a while. As I am unwinding the layered reaction to the events, I can’t help but wonder if all experience that occurs in a time space continuum is layered – when we take the time to sit with it and unpack it.

There is a deepening realization growing inside of me, that this experience was an initiation. Yet surprising to me, the initiation was not completed after the accident, when I rallied for the spiritual retreat with the Andean brothers that we had planned for over a year. The initiation took place when, in a state of connection I realized that I needed to let go of all of this in order to be free and move forward.

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