The Great Mind Fuck

Recognizing and Escaping The Transformation Trap

The Transformation Trap aka The Great Mind Fuck (T.G.M.F.) part 1

“Man’s mind, once stretched to a new idea never goes back to its original dimensions.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Self-realization is an acquired taste. The shift from working to change the world to conform to the fantasies/desires of our self, to working to change our self so that our desires conform to the truth/nature of the world — is profound, and has profound consequences. Once we have tasted of this hidden-in-plain-sight fruit, once we have acquired an appetite for Self-realization, nothing else will satisfy (at least not for long :-).

The benefits of Self-realization are many and manifold, and are promoted by teachers around the world and throughout history. The hazards are more elusive, in part because the nectar of Self-realization is a heady brew. I will speak of one of them here which I call The Transformation Trap or, The Great Mind Fuck (terms I will use interchangeably).

Realization as Insight and Integration

The process of Self-realization can be understood to be driven by Insight and Integration. The relation of these two processes form the pinchers of The Transformation Trap.

The first step in Self-realization is insight, or seeing-in to new possibilities of how things can be, of who we can be. These insights sometimes stretch our current understandings to higher/deeper levels, sometimes introduce new dimensions that were heretofore undistinguished, sometimes both. When we behold this new potential, it changes the range of possibilities in which we understand and evaluate our actual behavior—it changes our standards; it raises them.

The second piece of the Self-realization process is changing our behavior so that it is increasingly consistent with this raised standard. We integrate the insight into our skills/habits/self. We make real the possibility we have identified. When we integrate the insight, we create a new foundation of self on which to identify and integrate new insights, up-spiraling the self.

Insights Grow Exponentially; Integration Grows Arithmetically.

Insights happen in moments and often interpenetrate one another. In a single seminar on relationships, for example, we might get insights into:

•  how our unconscious expectations for our partner lead us to act self-righteously with them;
•  how we oscillate between self-sacrifice and inflexibility around our boundaries;
•  how we justify avoiding vulnerability with our partner because we don’t trust ourselves to hold their vulnerability;
•  and a dozen other game-changing possibilities, each of which compound the impact of one another.

While these insights raise our standards at an exponential rate, the work of integrating those insights into our daily choices is a pain-staking and incremental process. We can make steady growth, but the gains are typically hard-won and harder-kept.

Insight happens in an instant. Integration happen through time, effort, and discipline.

And this difference is the heart of The Great Mind Fuck. While our insights _multiply_ one another and grow exponentially, the integration of those insights into our behavior _add_ to one another and grow arithmetically, which leads to the following graph:

Interpreting The Transformation Gap

The more we refine our understanding of what’s possible, the deeper our insights into human potential, the greater the “transformation gap” between who we want to be and who we are.

The question then becomes, “how do we relate to this transformation gap?”

We can examine the answers to this question on a spectrum ranging from seeing that gap as a failure, leading to frustration and shame, or seeing it as an opportunity, leading to inspiration and hope.

Often, when an insight is fresh, when it covers new ground or opens new dimensions of potential, we interpret the gap between where we are and what is possible as an opportunity, and get inspired or hopeful. After we have habituated to the new insight, or have failed to integrate it a number of times, we will tend to view the gap as a failure on our part, and experience frustration and shame.

The inspiring phase of an insight or accomplishment tends to be short-lived and decay in strength, while the frustration and shame phase grows through time. The more we cultivate insight, the faster we raise our standards, the wider the gap, and the greater the shame.

And, once you have the taste for Self-realization, the natural solution to the shame is to seek more transformation, which in turn increases the gap, thereby increasing the shame, leading us to seek more transformation.

This is The Transformation Trap, The Great Mind Fuck.

And insights-on-demand are online and on sale (with limited scholarships!) in our modern spiritual marketplace. There are an endless number of books, workshops, and 10-day retreats on offer, each promising to bridge the transformation gap, all the while deepening The Transformation Trap. Caveat Emptor!

The Integral Twist

The Great Mind Fuck is especially challenging for the Integral community, largely because Integral includes so many dimensions of development and Self-realization. If there is a theory about how you can develop in some dimension, Integral adds that insight to the list, adding another potential multiple to the gap. (see chart 1A in Integral Psychology :-)

Integral delineates first-tier mindfucks of self-improvement, outlining how you can develop or fail to develop on a dozen or more lines, at multiple levels, through various types, and in various states. It also clarifies second-tier holistic mindfucks of self-development, recognizing how our overall psychograph of levels/lines/states/types can be balanced or unbalanced across the 8 indigenous perspectives. Finally it promotes the ultimate, third-tier mindfucks of self-transcendence and enlightenment, where even if you achieve high levels of balanced development across the psychograph, taking pride or identifying our self with those changes is all understood to be an illusion, i.e., a failure.

In what I like to call The Integral Twist: You are damned if you don’t, and damned if it is “you” that does.

In the next article in this series, I will offer 3 sets of ideas that can free us from The Transformation Trap and leverage our natural values in service of Thriving.