A Letter to Simon* from Mike Zerbel

Hello Simon,

Your words regarding depression, “It’s like a part of me enjoys the mental torture, at the same time thinking “I want it to end,”* strike me as such a good depiction of Fred’s, “The pattern can’t get out of the pattern.” (The struggle itself being part of the pattern.)  Since there is still a wanting of a better state, that desire is the driving force, as well as the self-created shadow that you seek to escape. But the attempt to escape makes that shadow appear all the more real, and can drive us to a bottom of despair. It was one of my bottoms. I call it a free-will bottom. It is the amount of suffering we are willing to endure for that particular experience of Oneness as that individual. No one can force advice in these circumstances.  But ironically, at that free-will bottom, willingness to receive advice and help from others is then a seeming way out.

The pattern in me that wants to help this “person” is not what helps anyone. It would actually lure me further into the pattern. A main “ding” for me is that I’m seeing a separate person. I’m using the suffering “they” are in to further hide that basic schism. I’m using it for my own ends to affirm the reality of that suffering, and therefore them, and therefore me.  See! It’s all a circular pattern that is not meant to get out of itself! But although suffering is within the pattern, it can reach levels where the pattern is no longer wanted.

An essential aspect of real helping is experienced in 12-step recovery, where people share their experience of hitting bottom.  Dreaming uses that “help” to scare others. But the inspiration of the recovery movement is that bottoms can be raised. In relating to another’s story, a person might recognize where they are headed and choose not to go there. The help actually comes from the person recognizing the lack of separation between people. We don’t have to hold onto the same attitudes or repeat the same behaviors anymore; that’s already been experienced by consciousness, over there, to ill effect. In offering the story as experience and not as the one who has it all figured out, that offering is the shared story, uniting two people who had been defining themselves as separate. It reformats the chains of suffering and personal story as a free experience in the moment, given and received freely (no advice forced or needed).

That’s the essence of true help. It is available at all times, with no stipulation as to when or from whom it comes. But our beliefs may prevent us from seeing this.  In the dream, these belief patterns are usually slow to unravel.  The recovery movement does not consciously use the concept of no separate self, and so the shifting of beliefs through sharing tends to be gradual.  But for those for whom it works, it is certainly faster than beating their heads against the brick wall of addiction. To see the world this way takes the burden off the world having to change in order for Me to reclaim Myself from me. It is sometimes said that suffering is time used to delay. It’s another link in the chain; the desire to continue experiencing separateness makes the experience of delay a part of the pattern.

Separateness is not Now. So where else could it be? We are not trying to find Ourselves, we are trying to find something apart from ourselves. That’s the pattern we play to ourSelf. And the (“higher”) part that could never be in it is always there to help the part that wanted to see what it would be like to be lost. But “it” has to stop “thinking” of itself as a part before that help can be evident – Now. And it will be seen as always helping, by offering a mirror of a life separate, and ever harder, to what has taken Itself to be separated.

* Letter from the Field: How Do I Remain in Clarity? (With an Answer)