Lately, I have been exploring cognitive dissonance, projection, denial, and rejection. I have observed certain behaviors in others that have intrigued me. These are behaviors that I previously thought I had understood. However, it became clear to me that I needed to understand these behaviors on a deeper level.
I had the idea of writing about defense mechanisms and what their purpose is. I figured this would bring me more insight as to why we live in such denial.
The first thing I have realized is that there is power in denial. This is not to say that denial itself grants us power. Rather, it takes power to deny things. It especially takes a lot of power to deny (or reject) yourself. As I realized this, I was able to take the power used to deny/reject myself and redirect it toward confronting myself. As I did this, I realized many things.
1.When we deny ourselves, we lose awareness of our whole consciousness. We experience conditional awareness of our reality. This creates the "filter" or "wall" between us and our subconscious mind. When this happens, we become afraid of the "unknown", or rather, the parts of us we have rejected. This creates fear. Often times, this fear is experienced as anxiety. To define anxiety bluntly, it is the continual denial of the present moment.
2. When we deny ourselves, we create a split (duality) between what is "accepted" and "rejected". This may present itself in many different forms. It can be "good" and "bad". It can be "right" and "wrong". It can be "happy" and "sad". The interesting thing is how we can do this in a way that manipulates our feelings. In this way, emotion is created.
3. When we deny ourselves, it creates a split between our intentions through doubt. We create the "powerful" self and the "powerless" self. Note I put power in parenthesis because this is not "true" power. This is external power, or being dependent on your external reality for the illusion of power. When we believe one part of our self to be powerful due to external power, we also believe another part of our self to be powerless because it lacks external power. However, inside this "powerless" self is actually great inner power. In fact, this inner power is present in both parts of our self. Even the "powerful" self has great inner power. This is what I mean when I say that there is power in denial.
In this way, we go through phases of feeling a lot of drive versus feeling very little drive. This is due to us cycling through these two parts of our mind.
4. When we deny ourselves, we become increasingly intolerant of ourselves. This becomes projected out onto the present moment. In turn, we become increasingly intolerant of the present moment and others. We may greet others or the present moment with anger or hatred.
5. When we deny ourselves, we inhibit our ability to express ourselves fully. In doing so, we struggle to create the life we desire because the life we are currently creating for ourselves does not represent our whole self. Furthermore, we will have a constant feeling of not being heard or understood.
6. When we deny ourselves, we inhibit our ability to see things clearly. We become dependent on seeing our reality a certain way. It is incredible how judgmental and close-minded we must be to support this view of reality. We will continually manifest things in our external reality to support these beliefs.
7. When we deny ourselves, we experience an incredible amount of disconnection with the oneness of the world. We feel increasingly separate from others. We lose our sense of empathy. We start to project our issues onto others. We lose our sense of intuition. We feel no sense of purpose.