7. State of Mind
Hell is a state of mind ... And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind - is, in the end, Hell.
— C.S. Lewis
allposters.co.uk
A state of mind is a lens through which we filter our perception of reality. For many of us, this lens is a distortion that keeps our focus on absence and the strategies we use to avoid absence.
As beings hardwired for presence, we recreate our painful past again and again throughout each day (without knowing it) in order to avoid absence.
The past isn’t dead. Hell, it isn’t even the past.
— William Faulkner
postsecret.com
We do not treat our patients to cure them of something done to them in the past; rather we are trying to cure them of what they still do to themselves and to others in order to cope with what was done to them in the past.
— Phillip Bromberg
Suffering is clinging to our past while doing everything we can to desperately avoid it.
Attachment research adds a new wrinkle. Our unconciously chosen defenses inevitably include some form of relatedness (pick up the phone, turn on Netflix, text someone) to keep us from plummeting into the black hole.
tenor.com
We're desperately doing (emphasizing the word doing here) anything and everything to stay away from "forever empty."