Electra: Justification Sandwich

JUSTIFICATION SANDWICH

EXM - 46
3 March 1992

There is another smaller sandwich inside the No Sympathy Sandwich called the Justification Sandwich. It goes as follows.

A person commits an overt act (No Sympathy) and regrets it. This leads to pulling in some overwhelm or chronic condition with which he justifies or explains away the seriousness of his earlier overt act. But now he has this strange chronic disability that he can't easily explain, so he needs to justify THAT. This allows him to continue to commit more overt acts along the same lines.

The Justification Sandwich

       OVERT - JUSTIFICATION - CONDITION - JUSTIFICATION - OVERT

There is a BEFORE justification and and AFTER justification. The CONDITION is sandwiched between the two.

For example, let's say one day you are driving down the road in Vietnam during the war and you see a little Vietnamese boy in the middle of the road. Rather than slow down you decide it would be fun to scare the hell out of the child so you hit the gas and go after him. The child however gets confused and doesn't know which way to run and ends up running right into your front tires, getting crushed beyond repair. You get out of the jeep and try to comfort him. But his back is broken and he screams for half an hour and dies looking at you with terror in his eyes.

You never MEANT to kill the child, you just wanted to have some (cruel) fun. Now you feel sorry. The last look of those sad eyes is YOUR memory forever. What's that cute Nurse you been dating back at the camp going to think? You going to take his crushed body to her? You wish to hell you had some justification to explain why you did not see the child in the road or were unable to avoid hitting him. Having bad eye sight fits the bill. Suddenly your eyes are not feeling so hot and your vision is a little blurry. You go to the doctor and he gives you a prescription for eye glasses. Your Nurse friend gives you sympathy, she 'understands what you have been through.'

So there is the OVERT (killing the child), the false JUSTIFICATION (couldn't see well) and the CHRONIC OVERWHELM CONDITION (bad eyes). But then one day you cross paths with one of your old buddies who remarks about your new eye glasses and how you used to have the eyes of an eagle. Suddenly you feel horrible inside because he is missing your withhold that you killed a child in fun.

So you explain to him how your father had bad eyes, and how it's genetic in origin and runs in your family. This is the AFTER JUSTIFICATION of the condition, a condition which you are using to make yourself feel less responsible for having killed the child. Claiming that bad eyes is genetic makes it OK to have bad eyes and wear glasses. It allows you to survive with this condition and keeps others off your case about the anomaly.

However once you have claimed that wearing eye glasses is right and not your fault, the door is now open for you to start a business manufacturing and selling eye glasses to others and making your living from it. Thus you become involved in continuous present time overt acts born of your earlier before and after justifications.

     OVERT                - Killed Child.
     BEFORE JUSTIFICATION - Couldn't see well
     CHRONIC CONDITION    - Bad eyes and wearing glasses.
     AFTER JUSTIFICATION  - Bad eyes are genetic not engramic.
     OVERT                - Making a living selling eye glasses
                            rather than pulling people's withholds.

That is the Justification Sandwich which you are trying to run off a case.

Now any person will have possibly many of these things, but there will be a central one, a first one, a biggest and worst one on his case. You know, the one that is HIM. It makes him who he is in his eyes, the screw ball who...

It is his ruin in life, and may even be his ruin in all of Eternity.

THAT is the one you want to find.

One way to handle this is as follows. First you get the person to state and recognize what the central condition is on their case. A condition is any disability or illness or chronic unwanted condition. The word unwanted must be understood thoroughly, because your pc may be very glad he has glasses on the surface but just under the surface his eye problem is a very unwanted condition and just earlier is a VERY unwanted regret.

The condition you are looking for is NOT the original overt act he committed, it is NOT the justification he used. It is the condition that he pulled in engramically to provide the justification for the overt act. The condition will exist on all 4 planes of existence, physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.

Physical conditions will be illnesses or aches and pains or disabilities or compulsions or inhibitions in the functioning of his physical body and his relationship to the external physical universe.

Emotional conditions will be unwanted feelings, or inabilities to feel things.

Mental disabilities will be things like not being able to think or remember, hallucinations, no mockups, etc.

Spiritual disabilities will manifest themselves as a total inability to take responsibility for or exercise responsibility over some sphere of being, doing or having in the lower 3 planes.

The condition may be some thing he has in relation to other people, such as BEING UNWANTED or it may be something he has alone such as BEING FORGETFUL. These are just examples.

The condition may be very poetic like the following:

"Well, I'm sort of a bottom of the barrel, marked down, last one on sale with no buyers, kind of girl."

That's a condition, don't you see?

The condition that you are looking for will have all 4 planes represented in it's disability.

One way to find this is to audit on an E-meter the following question until you find a blow down item with relief, humor and VGI's,

     'What is the central condition on your case?'
     'What is NOT the central condition on your case?'

For example, let's say he finally says 'there is something too ugly to look at!' So that's a chronic condition, every time he makes a mockup, IF he manages to get one to appear, it immediately turns into some ultimate horror show of hideousness and he wonders where all the ugliness comes from. He is worried he might DIE if he manages to look at it too long.

He is also just sure that no one in their right mind could ever MAKE such a thing, so his responsibility on the subject is quite low.

So it effects him physically because 'he might die' if he looks at it too long. It effects him emotionally because it's hideous. It effects him mentally because he can't understand it, it's just totally alien to him. And it effects him spiritually because he feels he could not, would not, should not have created it.

So once you have his central condition, or a condition he is interested in running you then can run alternately in any order,

     1.) 'How have you justified having this condition?'
     2.) 'What have you used this condition to justify?'

     1.) 'What justifies this condition?'
     2.) 'What does this condition justify?'

You see, the first question asks for the AFTER justification, and the second question asks for the BEFORE justification.

This should go a long ways to breaking up his Justification Sandwich. Eventually you should find some regret and the earlier overt he has been 'solving' by being deaf, dumb, blind, fat and stupid.

If during this or after a win, your pc wishes to go deeper and find a new more central condition to his case, by all means run it as above.

Conditions can be things like, being mortal, can't remember, don't dare look, can't work, I'm too ugly/beautiful, drug addiction, I'm too poor/rich, etc.

If you are having trouble getting your pc to state a condition that he considers central to his self respect, get him to run the following. Have him consider that some great being is coming to earth to look everyone over, and they are able to see everything there is about anyone, and they are looking at your pc, very intelligently, dispassionately, objectively as an observer. Get your pc to list what this person would think about him, or see or observe if he could see all. If your pc's name is Susan, you might use as your auditing question,

     'What is it about Susan?'

Run it as long as it makes the TA go up and down, don't stop at the first win, or chuckle. What you will get is a long list of valences, beingnesses in a condition. Eventually you will get nearer to your pc's central condition.

Electra