As a concert violinist, Linda Edge learned to tune in to her part before she heard the entire orchestra. But her skill at healthy “dissociation” posed larger questions: What caused her to sometimes tune out the world completely? Where did she go?  

I remember myself as a child, lying in stillness before sleep, wondering how to create a coherent picture from three seemingly disjunct puzzle pieces: waking, dreaming, and a dimension beyond the two, an I-ness that seemed to contain them both. Which is more real, I would ask myself: waking or dreaming? And what if neither is real? What if only the I-ness is real and all else is occurring within myself? If this is so, then who, or what, am I? As I engaged in these youthful musings, I didn’t know that they were the beginning of a lifelong quest to uncover this thing called “reality.”

I also didn’t know that most children don’t drift off to sleep with such thoughts. One might explain away such curiosity if I were the child of a philosopher who spoke of the mysteries of life, or the child of saintly parents who assured me that one day I would discover that I was more than my little mind could grasp. But I was a child of abuse.

In the dark of the night, when peace should abound, again and again, my father violated me. In the light of day, when darkness should hide, again and again, my parents were cruel. With unsafe days and unsafe nights, where does a little one rest? I believe that out of necessity, I touched the eternal. I entered my essence, my source. Then, when day was done and night had not come, in that time of quietude, I tried to put the pieces together.

Not that the pieces were clear. My nighttime trauma was altogether forgotten to my daytime mind, as day is forgotten to night. Yet life seemed to hold a secret. I marveled that, while dreaming, my dream characters were as real to me as my waking characters were while awake. Only the continuity of waking seemed to distinguish them. And as waking and dreaming dissolved into one another, it seemed that something remained constant. Had a waking-state character not entered where only dreams should have been, this might not have fascinated me. But he appeared where he didn’t belong.

Life outside my home was not menacing: school, sports, music, friends. I attended church and was taught, “Be as children to enter the kingdom of heaven,” and “Seek and ye shall find.” I didn’t have a clue what “kingdom of heaven” was, but I was asking important questions without knowing that I was. Eventually, I went off to college. There, through my exposure to philosophy and comparative religion classes, to meditation and Eastern thought, I realized I was a natural contemplative. Finding the answers to those early questions about waking and dreaming became crucial.

Many teachings, I learned, expound the notion that all answers lie within the individual. The inner terrain is a microcosm of the universe, holding the whole of creation within each minute part. Ultimately, through familiarity with one’s own inner pulsations, no part of the universe can remain foreign. Somehow, these teachings felt true. Even my child-self had recognized the need to explore what lay behind the scenes of everyday life.

I practiced mantra meditation, pranayama (breathing exercises), and hatha yoga. Meanwhile, life unfolded: marriage, motherhood, and a deep connection to music. My orchestral experiences mirrored my inner search as the violin parts — my primary focus at first — became familiar enough to allow me to embrace more and more of the sounds around me. This reminded me of humanity’s inclination toward wholeness, toward experiencing the self as part of a unified cosmos, connected to and able to know the whole. I was a philosopher at heart and sought the good. I taught meditation and reflected on the purposes of life. Life was rich and full.

After about 20 years of this, I was unexpectedly catapulted into a new way of seeing. A spiritual mentor suggested I do some work around unresolved childhood issues. No, no, no. I had moved past childhood. Remember? I had gone off to college and had embarked on a spiritual quest. My conscious memories of long-ago cruelty had been relegated to the land of forgiveness. What was unconscious was still unconscious. All seemed fine. But I trusted my mentor, so I met with a therapist for two extended sessions and completed a monumental piece of work. I discovered that my conscious memories were paired with unconsidered fear, pain, sorrow, and anger. After the excavation came confrontation, integration, and later release. On the heels of release came peace, insight, greater self-awareness. I was pleased.

Months later, due to a physical discomfort, I sat with a hands-on energy healer who asked me a magical question — magical, it seemed, because it propelled me into stillness, into deep silence where time stopped. It mattered not that another human being was awaiting a response; rules of etiquette did not exist. I was in reverie without content, aware without thought. Eventually, I spoke: “What just happened?” “You dissociated,” I was told.

Dissociated? This was a new word for me, but the experience was familiar — both ancient and profound. Interestingly, the question had been about my childhood. Analysis told me that my unconscious mind had been touched, propelling me into the transcendent, into the realm beyond mind-body, the comfort zone of my childhood. This was the zone that protected me from the horrors that no little one could comprehend. The event inspired contemplation that years later coalesced into my doctoral dissertation.

What Is Dissociation?
A predominant theory during the era of Freud was that memories came into awareness through the association, or binding together, of ideas. Dissociation, therefore, referred to the process of rendering memories unavailable to the mainstream of awareness. This occurs through rigid compartmentalization — unconsciously walling off mental contents. Separate systems of mental functioning can thus develop, which, in their most complex forms, interact with the external world as distinct personalities. Such a predicament, once referred to as “multiple personality disorder,” is currently called “dissociative identity disorder.”

This psychopathological view of dissociation softened as the field of psychology matured. The concept now refers not only to the repression of memories, but to incongruence among the many components of self. For instance, when criticized, a person may be calm in speech and demeanor, unaware of the presence of strong emotion, while the body — oblivious to the fact that the emotions are dissociated — breaks out in a rash.

Dissociation can also refer to cutting off external stimuli — for example, tuning out surrounding conversations while reading a captivating book. This can become problematic when we “mindlessly” nod in affirmation to a request to take out the trash and later insist that we never heard the request! A more dangerous common occurrence is driving a car on “autopilot” while conversing with a friend. As long as we get to our destination safely, we ignore the split between mind and body.

Importantly, though, narrowing awareness can also serve us. As a violinist, when I first learn an orchestral score, I follow only my part, with scant awareness, and therefore little recollection, of what is happening in the orchestra. With diligent practice, however, my awareness expands, and I can hear and fully participate with the other instruments. This cannot be accomplished without dissociative processes.

Recognizing Mind, Body, and Consciousness
As I learned about dissociation, I understood walling off memories, emotions, and other impulses while going about business. I grasped the ability to function in the outer world without properly attending to it. But my experience with the hands-on healer seemed different. Rather than compartmentalizing within the mind-body unit, I had retreated into stillness, into a reality beyond thought, action, time, and space. I recalled my childhood musings — how wakefulness slipped into dreamland through a window of I-ness that seemed to contain both. I recalled my studies of Eastern philosophy, and my meditations. Time and again, during meditation, body boundaries had melted away, yet I remained. Was this the same stillness I had retreated to during dissociation? Is meditation dissociative? Is enlightenment — the simultaneous apprehension of the individual and the cosmic — associative? It was time for psychology to broaden its view of dissociation. It was time for me to do so.

Convinced of a supportive realm beyond mind-body, referred to in ancient texts as “Consciousness,” I made a commitment to integrating all aspects of myself. Thus, the deep work began. I listened to inner guidance, bringing it forward into activity. I kept an eye toward my own dissociation, both in and out of meditation. I paid attention to my body, to subtle somatic impulses, to arising feelings. I noticed my thoughts. To the best of my ability, I set aside my fear of the unknown and allowed it to present itself. And as my mentor had foreseen, I bumped into unresolved childhood issues — the deep unconscious memories born of the darkness of the night. Difficult as this was, as I reclaimed my memories, my spiritual clarity increased. I was able to recognize truth when it presented itself around me, while falsehood and deceit became more transparent. My joy increased.

I came to understand the life-enhancing and life-destroying potential of dissociative processes. Sometimes we must fragment to become whole. Sometimes we fragment — period! I began to map our evolutionary journey in terms of dissociation and association, fragmentation and subsequent integration. I wanted to understand the potential gifts of dissociation while recognizing the pitfalls, so as not to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Mapping Consciousness
To test the validity of my map, I incorporated it into my doctoral research. Through extensive interviews, I set out to discover how eight research participants, who had reported transcendental states, experienced dissociation. They described a dimension of vibrant, creative, intelligent, and nurturing impulses. They reported that as their awareness of mind-body faded, they encountered eternal time where past, present, and future merge. Some described an all-pervasive network that provided wisdom and inspiration, which they then incorporated into their art, music, research, writing, teaching, and healing.

In some of their stories, I recognized my own meditation experiences. More important, as they told me how easy it was to prefer the comfort of the transcendent to the challenges of everyday life, I recognized my own “retreat to stillness.” Yes, I understood! When challenged to remember my childhood, I had effortlessly glided into timelessness. In the face of such a frightening topic, I sought a familiar haven — familiar not only because my child-self had inadvertently frequented this realm but also because of my years of meditation.

One of my hunches about dissociation was being confirmed. Consciousness, nurturing as it is, can be visited as an escape! My “retreat” did not transpire within mind-body, as the prevalent psychological theories had proposed. I had dissociated from mind-body into transcendental stillness. As I rested there, I avoided my memories — mental and cellular. Yet they continued to influence my life. Once I had committed to full integration, my journey required allowing Consciousness, which had clearly enriched other facets of my life, to support me in the resolution of my pain. Simply being cradled there — a necessity during childhood — was no longer enough.

My research participants concurred. Most of them had struggled to soften their preference for transcendental states in favor of wholeness. The integration process inevitably involved peering into pain-filled internal spaces to release what was hidden there.

Moving toward Wholeness
My continuing journey into wholeness — healing, it may be called — requires openness to what is transpiring in the moment coupled with a contemplative stance. It requires a willingness to know that which is knowable, even if it is painful. And it requires balance among mind, body, and Consciousness.

Before conducting my research, I knew that when we protect our limited self-concept by refusing to acknowledge what transpires within, pain results. This can take many forms, from illness and somatic symptoms to relationship problems to feeling physically and mentally disconnected from the source of all life. What came as a surprise, though, was the realization that there is yet another way to protect a limited self-concept: over-commitment to spiritual techniques!

Habitually entering the realm of Consciousness as an escape from life’s challenges throws off the delicate balance needed for growth. This too leads to pain. Now, in my practice as a clinical psychologist, I assist others in finding and maintaining the mind-body-Consciousness balance.

I teach that there are many keys to the prized kingdom of heaven that my child-self contemplated. Engaging dissociation only as a stepping-stone to association is one of them. Maintaining the nonjudgmental curiosity of a child, even in the face of pain, is another. For me, the deepest value of scriptural and philosophical writings is the validation of one’s own experience. Seek and you shall find.

My childhood search for “reality” has become a search for the extraordinary — for the integration of waking, dreaming, deep sleep, and transcendental states. All that had been stored in my body — the terror, the confusion, the lack of trust — continues to unwind. All that I am as Consciousness continues to unfold. With each step, I become more alive.

Mind, Body, and Consciousness
The Full Spectrum 0f Dissociation
Mind and body, with emotions flowing through them as rivers flow through the earth, give rise to our sense of self. This self, I believe, is incomplete without an aspect of being that both permeates and exists beyond mind-body. In keeping with Eastern thought, I refer to this aspect as Consciousness — the collective whole of all energies in existence.

As specific expressions of Consciousness, each of us can be viewed as a separate entity, as a crystallization of divine qualities. In reality, though, we are not separate. We exist as part of the One that is manifested as the many. Thus the whole of self, the possible unit of association, is a trinity: mind, body, and Consciousness.

Through a variety of dissociative processes, it is possible to wall off constituents of mind or body, placing them outside awareness. In the same way, we may wall off constituents of Consciousness, or even the entire realm of Consciousness. Common is the belief that we are nothing more than mind-body. Yet those who intentionally and clearly contact Consciousness attest to its glory.

For my doctoral dissertation, I developed a “spectrum of dissociation.” The spectrum distinguishes four types of dissociation and provides for the classification of integrated moments, moments of Oneness, under the category “association.” Recognizing the characteristics of our experiences can help us to maximize the wisdom contained within them.

Pathological Dissociation: Consistent and deep denial of impulses and sensations that dance within us can result in instability in self-concept and extreme ineffectiveness. Often, repression of traumatic memories is involved, leading to pathological states. Less frequently, habitual escape into the realm of Consciousness plays a role. The great spiritual teacher Ram Dass once said, “A great many people have just gone into outer space and not come back