Awakening

The transformation of protective dissociation into mindful presence, from Chapter III: Mind

When the mind cannot process or integrate the experience, its memory and emotional imprint are compartmentalized, providing distancing from anything that could cause harm.

In early childhood, my mind responded to traumatic overload with dissociation — one of the mind’s protective mechanisms ensuring survival. This way, I felt less involved; over time, that distancing nevertheless spread from external traumatic events to all happenings, both negative and positive — to all people, love, and eventually myself.

For decades, my mind operated this way, feeling untouchable whatever the dangerous situations, gradually pushing the limits of my survival. It felt as if I was a distant observer, a part of the self that watches from a distance, far behind the eyes, somewhere in the back of the brain, strangely disconnected from the immediacy of happenings. While this state felt safe, like being in the calm eye of a storm, the ultimate cost of this convenience was too high — a mental universe of unresolved pain within profound abandonment.

The perceived safety of this state became a form of quiet entrapment, where my life was sacrificed for an illusion of control. My mind was generally running on autopilot, performing with excellence even in complex situations, providing remarkable outcomes, a world where being praised had become the norm. Until the final collapse uncovered that beneath were actually only shattered remnants, somehow magically holding up this high-performing facade, while my system had, in fact, completely failed to navigate a proper way of being.

The journey since has been a slow process of discoveries, where the greatest achievement was that the very mysterious calm center, a mindful presence, was a real thing. It naturally started with pure observation (well, literally nailed to the bed, there was little else to do), recognizing the difference between consciousness and subconsciousness, naming conscious choices, and discerning automatic reactions from mindful responses. From the beginning, it was a complex blending of faith, psychology, psychiatry, and neurology — and I am thankful for everything I have learned throughout my life, now fitting together into a beautiful puzzle.

By observing, naming, accepting… yes, the most generous outcome was the acceptance of each and every part of myself: each thought, emotion, each cell and impulse of my body — as I slowly observed and understood that everything was an integral, justified part of me. Everything was me. Thus, I could finally stop fighting the unwanted, accept myself in sacred wholeness, and begin cultivating the internal conditions for freedom through being present in God.

The central process of the entire healing journey has been a movement from resistance to acceptance.

Achieving peace was no longer pursued; it became a natural outcome of mindful presence. I must admit — I have no clue how much of it was an optional conscious process, and how much was sheer exhaustion so profound that any effort to resist was impossible and eventually abandoned. As a reminder — even after the final collapse, totally knocked out, I was still trying to be performative for the whole following month. Thanks to the collapse, giving up marked the end of a lifetime of performative endurance and the humble recognition that this mode of operation both existed as, and brought me to, a total mess.

It took me a few months to realize the profound difference between being tired and exhausted. I could not get enough sleep and rest because the issue was not merely a sleep deficit. After decades of strain, my body carried a global, systemic nervous system depletion that persisted despite rest. Furthermore, an immense effort was required to restore everything. Only then did my unrelentingly-hyped mind’s impatience finally meet my body’s desperate reality — both body and mind were performing enormous unseen work, and stillness was the best I could offer — a valid and deeply productive state of integration.

This led, thanks to my psychiatrist’s advice, to another key distinction in the concept of rest — not doing anything is not enough. I was meant instead to “do nothing.” By acknowledging that my need for extensive rest in an external-stimulus void was a biological necessity for repair, my rest finally became a deliberate, conscious self-regulation strategy, one I could fully take responsibility for. My nervous system could finally exhale, a stillness of presence, free of any agenda. A single task remained: to breathe.

The acute crisis brought me from observation to a “why-not-try” meditation, or rather a spiritual practice combining meditation and prayer. Unable to engage in any other activity, I was practically meditating for entire days. However, this began to bring forth a massive and overwhelming influx of new knowledge and insights, assembling a new puzzle in shockwaves of revelation. After several months of this literal brain-storm, I gradually became able to hold that complexity with a sense of steadiness, when my mind emerged crystal clear, perceiving and handling thoughts like pearl beads.

Peace arose at times, usually during my spiritual practices, and I learned that having this crystal clear, calm mind may paradoxically coexist with distressing emotions and bodily symptoms. There will be a whole chapter on meditation; for now, the key is that:

An open awareness can naturally transform one’s relationship with thoughts and emotions by simply observing them as they arise and pass, without judgment, in acceptance.

The entire healing journey has been dynamic, but from the perspective of the early stages, it has been disappointingly slow. Even significant changes appear so imperceptibly and seem so subtle that they are often going unrecognized for months. Now, after one year, I see tremendous benefits, and therefore I have dedicated another year to writing this book.

Finally, I have to add that after several months of trying to name each error and lie observed during my spiritual practices, I realized that decades of running on the autonomous conscious mind had effectively turned it into an unrepairable wreck. Rather than patching together the old me, I have, therefore, decided to start from the beginning — by observing and naturally stripping away old selves, especially those connected to conditional existential purpose — and to build, from the foundation, an unconditional existence.

Next Tuesday, we will briefly talk about our social dimension.

**From the chapter Mind of the tetralogy Spiral.**