You Are Not Book.indb - Stephen H. Wolinsky Ph. D.

Questions and Answers & exercises / 57
“you” or the “I” “you” call yourself. Stay with I
AM; discard all else.
Question: What about patterns?
Wolinsky: There are no such things as patterns. There is
an “I” thought, which believes in patterns and
sees patterns as a way to imagine that it can
secure survival. Seeing and believing that the
future mimics the past is a trick of the mind a
habit that the noted philosphers David Hume,
and later John Stuart Mill, call a “habit of mind,”
to paraphrase: “The mind [nervous system]
will create the illusion and make it appear as
though the future mimics the past, and will take
whatever measure it must to make it appear so.”
Why? Because it aids in the illusion of control
and better future survival, if I imagine that the
past mimics the future, then “I” (imagine) by
knowing the past (as in psychotherapy) “I” can
control the future (relationships, money, etc.)
and survive better.
There is no pattern that independently exists separate from
the perceiver or observer of the pattern.
“YOU nEvER pUT YOUR fOOT
in THE SAME RivER TWiCE.”
—Heraclitus
Your mind (nervous system) makes “you” think it’s the
same river; it’s not the same river.
This is the reason psychology has such a problem. Freud
was accurate on a physiological level that the nervous system
will “organize trauma into chains of earlier similar events,” so
that “You” survive better, but it is not an accurate organization.