Disjuncture

Disjuncture is an emotional state of unease, disquiet, discomfort, often accompanied by guilt and shame, caused when an individual engages in Wrong Thought and Wrong Action, or that lives within/creates Wrong Environments that are not in Alignment with Highest Self. In the most serious cases of misalignment, intense feelings of guilt and shame can ensue.

Syncretic Terms

Disjuncture > Adultry, Anrta, Death, Drug, Druh, Hell, Infidelity, Sin, The Hellish Marriage

Related Terms

Disjuncture > Evil, Push-Pull

Notes

Disjuncture is a Lightning Path concept that refers to the disconnect between your Spiritual Ego and your Bodily Ego. If you think of your spiritual ego as a bright, eternal light, and your bodily ego as the ego of your physical body, disjuncture occurs when the two are “out of alignment” and, as a consequence, Disconnected. When your spiritual ego and bodily ego are out of alignment, communication and energy flow between your spiritual ego and bodily ego are interrupted.

Disjuncture arises when there is a disconnect between what Spiritual ego wants its Physical Unit to think/do, and what the Physical Unit is actually thinking and doing.

Disjuncture and the disconnection which results can be quite painful. Guilt, shame, hopelessness, and despair may build up in a physical unit experiencing even minor disjuncture. The only way to end disjuncture is to pursue perfect alignment between the spiritual ego and bodily ego.

There is evidence that humans experience disjuncture when engaged in wrong action, for example, eating meat.

You find the concept of disjuncture in the world's literature.

Tolstoy discusses disjuncture as a "contradiction between our life and our christian conscience." His Chapter V provides an extended discussion of the painful disjuncture as caused by lack of Alignment.. See the Discussion page for more. "Our whole life is in flat contradiction with all we know, and with all we regard as necessary and right. This contradiction runs through everything, in economic life, in political life, and in international life.

One can be disconnected but not in a state of disjuncture. An individual can follow an Alignment Rule Set to maintain a semblance of Alignment.

A root, disjuncture is caused by Wrong Throught seeded by the Ideological Deceptions which are a part of the Toxic Socialization required for System Maintainence.

Many forms of disjuncture may impact the physical unit. There may be behavioral disjuncture (i.e. a disjuncture between how Consciousness wants the body to behave, and how the body actually behaves), cognitive disjuncture (i.e. a disjuncture between how Consciousness want the body to think and how the body actually things), and even emotional disjuncture. There more disjuncture there is the more likely a Dark Night becomes.

Disjuncture causes the Highest Self to use Steering Emotions (like guilt and shame) and other forms of communication in an attempt to steer the Physical Unit in a more aligned direction. In severe cases of disjuncture, guilt, shame, and anxiety may give way to anguish even mental and emotional collapse (i.e. a so-called Dark Night of the Soul, and even suicide. When an individual is in the depth of disjuncture, suicide prevention hinges on head on acceptance of the disjuncture, non-judgmental support of awareness, and expert guidance designed to reduce disjuncture and encourage alignment.

The correct healing response to disjuncture is always to improve Alignment and work towards strong Connection. See the LP Alignment Rule Set for initial guidance.

Chronic disjuncture and repression lead to Pathology. Chronic disjuncture leads to stunted physical, psychological, and emotional development (since energy otherwise necessary for development and health is turned towards activating and maintaining repression and other Defense Mechanisms) and, in serious long-term cases, neurosis, psychosis, disease, and even death. It is thus in the best interests of the physical unit to identify disjuncture and deal with it directly itself into alignment with its own Highest Self.

Maslow felt there were psychological costs to disjuncture: "But there is also another element in conscience, or, if you like, another kind of conscience, which we all have either weakly or strongly. And this is the “intrinsic conscience.” This is based upon the un­ conscious and preconscious perception of our own nature, of our own destiny, or our own capacities, of our own “call” in life. It insists that we be true to our inner nature and that we do not deny it out of weakness or for advantage or for any other reason. He who belies his talent, the born painter who sells stockings instead, the intelligent man who lives a stupid life, the man who sees the truth and keeps his mouth shut, the coward who gives up his manliness, all these people perceive in a deep way that they have done wrong to themselves and despise themselves for it. Out of this self-punishment may come only neurosis, but there may equally well come renewed cour­ age, righteous indignation, increased self-respect, because of thereafter doing the right thing; in a word, growth and im­ improvement can come through pain and conflict."

Maslow: "It seems quite clear that personality problems may sometimes be loud protests against the crushing of one’s psychological bones, of one’s true inner nature. What is sick then is not to protest while this crime is being committed."

Maslow has some comments on the psychological utility of shame: What healthy people do feel guilty about (or ashamed, anxious, sad, or regretful) are (I) improvable shortcomings, e.g., laziness, thoughtlessness, loss of temper, hurting others; (2) stubborn remnants of psychological ill health, e.g., prejudice, jealousy, envy; (3) habits, which, though relatively independent of character structure, may yet be very strong, or (4) shortcomings of the species or of the culture or of the group with which they have identified. The general formula seems to be that healthy people will feel bad about discrepancies between what is and what might very well be or ought to be...."

Footnotes

References