Cursing as a Clue to Context
THE REAL PROBLEM with cursing (swearing, cussing, maledicting) is not the affront to others’ fine sensibilities, but rather to our own creatorly essence.
Whenever I find myself inveighing against something or someone, I regard it as a red flag that helps me know I’ve strayed from a framework of ownership—ownership of, at the very least, my take on my own perceptions—and that’s enough to get me back on track.
And usually that simple rerecognition of my agency (as to my experience, emotions, outlook) leads me immediately to a state of gratefulness.
“Grateful” is a useful place to come from (context to live from) because it tends to be solution and possibility oriented. One of its natural byproducts is happiness.
Curses as Contexts
All a curse is, is an unreckoned context. That is, it’s a chunk of code that exists (and runs) in isolation, without contrast.
As soon as at least one form of contrast (an alternate context or framework) is added, the erstwhile “curse” no longer has effect.
The trick lies, first, in recognizing the “chunk of code”; second, in recognizing it for what it is—a chunk of code; and, third, in actively generating at least one additional context that can sit alongside it.
Consider a cultural relic such as “the evil eye”—a malevolent gaze or supernatural intent to be feared and protected against, usually with some kind of talisman or amulet at the rescue. Or the broken mirror that promises seven years’ bad luck. Or the last-minute fairytale edict to the child protagonist, by the parent who has to go away, “not to open that third door” lest bad things happen.
All of these things hark back to that “good/bad” binary without calling for an examination of (1) what those terms “good” and “bad” mean, (2) who actually assigned those terms and meanings (ultimately, oneself), or (3) what other meanings might be derived which transform “bad” into “good” by “mere mental magic.”
It’s the nonexamination of the root meanings that leave the “accursed” in their prescribed states of vague fear, uneasy feelings, doubt, suspicion, etc. Yet all it takes to defuse the operation of the curse (a context) is being present in the here-now and finding the usefulness or benefit of a particular event or occurrence. The implementation is as simple as asking a question like “How is this useful?” Even asking such a question breaks the “curse” because the very asking of it establishes a second context.
Life Contexts as “Curses” (Curses Foiled, Again)
If, as noted above, the trick lies in first recognizing a “chunk of code” that’s running, how does one capture that code, exactly?
Code tends to run past pretty fast, so fast that we tend not to see it go by, let alone slow it down and take it apart. That is, once a “program” (a “how to do something”) is well embedded in our human physical and mental systems and operating smoothly, we tend not to go back and examine it.
Knowing this, much modeled hypnotherapist Milton Erickson would do things like bend down to tie his shoe in the middle of being about to shake hands with a subject. Because a handshake is actually a complete, working set of separate snippets of code that have been bundled into a single “app”—like riding a bicycle or driving a car or any number of other things relegated to coconscious processing—the person would go into an altered state. Erickson’s unexpected action simply interrupted the person’s in-progress handshake program. Since that program could not run to completion, the interruption left the “machine” hanging, without a next implementable step. In other words, it left the person in a trance state in which various other “programs” could then be recoded.
In seeking to identify life contexts (programs and code) operating outside my conscious awareness, I’ve found it useful to pay attention to my state of being and the attendant feelings, grab onto them as best I can when they’re flying by, and identify them in words. (Feelings are surprisingly fleeting—just try hanging onto them, if you can!)
Once I have those words on paper, I can delve deeper if I want to. I’ve done things like look up their etymologies to get at the base meanings tied to the experiences they represent. In fact, I’ve successfully used that method to dismantle a few unwanted contexts, such that I noticed the “landscape” of my reality change around me. Whether or not it was reality or merely my perception of it that changed is another matter. Either way, I share it as a discovered process, one that has led me to larger sets of options.
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