Many of us roam the earth with hungry eyes, a part of our unconscious mind on alert for evidence that we are being unfairly treated in a cold, malicious world. Instead of using our eyes to see beauty or to experience enjoyment in the present moment, we look for ways to recreate familiar feelings from our past of injustice, neglect, and deprivation. We may be doing this if we are avid readers of fashion and celebrity magazines or fans of the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Then we are like pretenders to the throne, coveting what we are emotionally invested in feeling deprived of. We are also peeping when we compare ourselves or judge others in order to feel either inferior or superior to them.
Let us say that Brian, a boy with low self-esteem, is convinced emotionally that he is disliked by a group of fellow students. If he is a negative peeper, he will subtly spend time at school watching intently for evidence that others really do dislike him. Those other students, however, may not be thinking about him at all. But Brian, through his self-centeredness, is either convinced they are, or he is convinced they ignore him because (1) they are, from his point of view, insensitive and mean-spirited and (2) he is unworthy of their attention (claim to power). Either way, he is on the lookout to catch them in the act of rejecting or ignoring him.
If it were true that the other students did indeed dislike Brian, he could be provoking their dislike through the previously mentioned negative exhibitionism. This exhibitionism might arise from his unconscious compulsion to act out being seen in a negative light. For instance, he might act out being a “geek,” a “nerd,” or a jerk, when being that kind of personality is a grave disservice to who he really is. Or he might show poor judgment in sports or stammer when talking.
As a negative exhibitionist he might offer up this unconscious defense: “I’m not looking for the feeling of being rejected. It really does happen. They don’t want me; they actively reject me because I’m clumsy and awkward.” But now, to maintain this defense, he has to really believe in his alleged defectiveness. In self-sabotage, he will maintain and even exaggerate this ineptness or lack of social aptitude, as he fails to learn how to become more graceful or socially adept.
His negative acting-out is a consequence of his emotional attachment to the feeling of being rejected. Brian can become aware of his secret attachment to rejection by catching himself in the act of negative peeping, meaning he would become conscious of how he has been actively looking at situations involving other students for the purpose of generating within himself feelings of being rejected, excluded, or devalued. In other words, his understanding of his negative peeping enables him to overcome his self-sabotage.
Brian is under the influence of cause-and-effect thinking. He believes he feels bad because he is rejected, when all along he is co-creator of the situation. He feels bad because of his attachment to self-rejection, not because the students are making him feel that way. Through his eyes he cultivates feelings of being rejected, overlooked, excluded, and seen as having no value.
Exercise. When you look at the world, how do you feel? Do you see others getting more than you? Do you see people who are indifferent to your existence? One example of negative peeping is the child who watches closely to see whether his brothers and sisters get more love from Mom and Dad than he does. Unconsciously, he is using his eyes to feast on the feeling of being deprived or unloved. A peeper sees others being more popular or more privileged than he. In doing this, he is using his eyes, unconsciously, to feed feelings of being overlooked and unimportant, which is precisely how he feels about himself and what he is attached to feeling.
The remedy is (1) to become aware of this unconscious compulsion to look for the negative in yourself and in life; (2) to recognize the specific negative emotion that you are feeding on; and (3) to identify your resistance to seeing the good in yourself, in others, in nature, and in your life. Once these three steps are processed, we have more ability to take in beauty, to see the wonder of things, and to feel gratitude.
3) Critical Inner Voices and Feelings. Lesson number three involves the battle to neutralize the inner critic. As mentioned, we are all plagued with critical inner voices and feelings. This inner harassment can leave us convinced that, “No matter what I do, it’s never good enough.”
Through these inner voices and feelings we often make accusations against ourselves that are worse than anyone else would ever make. The voices represent a negative caricature of our parents, in which the commands and requirements they directed our way in the process of raising us are rendered in the extreme. As mentioned, this system of “inner torture” is set up before the age of three when we believed that our parents’ dictums, commands, and requirements are what we ourselves want and have asked for. We internalize the voices of our parents, and we end up repeating to ourselves those old maxims and reproaches—intensified in the negative—long after we have left home or our parents are dead.
You can learn not to buy into the message of these voices. To do this, you need to see the voices for what they are, like random quirks in our internal operating system that are set off by life’s static charges. More specifically, you become aware of how you feel about yourself, how you resist thinking positively about yourself, how you mistrust, abuse, and neglect yourself, and how you avoid measures that would promote your highest good.
Sometimes the inner voices or feelings are unconscious and so quiet we don’t know what is happening. All we know is that we are depressed or anxious. It’s hard to figure out what’s going on. We have to become a detective in our own psyche, and listen to ourselves and observe our feelings. We also observe our mind’s contents to see what we are defending against with our thoughts and feelings.
Here’s an example of my detective work. Twenty years ago I caught myself defending against my choice of four new tires. I bought them at a tire outlet that was close to home but didn’t carry the brand of tires I would have preferred. The new tires, I thought, didn’t ride quite right on the road, so I went back to the tire shop and left my vehicle for a test ride. Later, the attendant who tested the car said that, without a doubt, the new tires were just fine. Nevertheless, I continued to feel irritated and anxious, even after accepting intellectually that the tires were all right and that I would keep them. While I didn’t perceive the inner accusations at that time, I realized later that I had been “hitting myself up” with inner thoughts and feelings, to the effect that: “Look at you, you fool, you paid too much for the tires! You allowed yourself to be taken in by their sales pitch. To return them now would make you look like an idiot who doesn’t know what he wants.”
I was clearly under an accusation of paying too much for them and being passive with the store attendant. Once I figured out the inner accusations and remembered my emotional willingness to take on such feelings of doubt and criticism, I could see that I was using this situation as another opportunity, through my inner critic, to put myself down. Soon I was feeling fine again. The tires transported me safely and adequately, and they were no longer an emotional problem.
Inner voices were a problem for a man I once met for lunch at a restaurant. As we walked outside after eating, we approached his creaky old, chrome-adorned Oldsmobile. My first thought was that it had a certain unpretentious charm. Suddenly, he made the car the focus of attention and piped up: “It’s not new but it’s got a new motor in it. You wouldn’t believe how well it still drives. Hey, cars are way too expensive nowadays. I’m going to get my money’s worth out of this baby. Besides, I need to save enough to play golf.”
The man was entertaining the feeling that I had judged him in a lesser light based on the appearance of his automobile. I had done no such thing. He must have imagined that I was thinking: “Look at this car! It’s a worthless pile of junk! What kind of person would drive an old junk-heap like this?” In a hidden corner of his psyche, he was resonating with the feeling of being less worthy as he transferred on to me the expectation I would see him that way.
Exercise
Try
this procedure for deflecting inner voices. What is it your inner voice has said to you recently that left you feeling bad about yourself? This is tricky. If you can’t come up with anything directly, try to imagine what you commonly criticize yourself for. Maybe you made a mistake at the office, and for days or even weeks you have nagged at yourself for it. Maybe you said something you regretted to a friend or an acquaintance and inwardly you are being nagged at for being stupid or foolish.
Imagine you are sitting in a movie theater. The critical words of your inner voice are being projected on to the movie screen, and you can see the words as they pass across the screen. Are you absorbing the negativity? How does it feel to allow yourself to be harassed in this way? Monitor yourself: Are you feeling criticized? Are you prompted to defend yourself? Are you tempted to play down the significance of the words? Don’t try to stop the words or thoughts or even judge them. Just watch them. If you become inwardly defensive, you are only feeding the conflict.
Imagine what it feels like not to defend, not to react, but simply to be present to yourself, immune to the inner accusations. Can you find a place of inner knowing, a sense of self who sees the words as empty and irrational. Perhaps from this position of inner strength you can feel free of the need to be defensive or reactive. Observe yourself watching the words and try to feel detached from them.
The critical words or feelings can be deflected or neutralized instead of piercing you in the heart. You just need to be aware that the words or feelings constitute impersonal self-aggression that you are unconsciously willing to absorb. The words and the aggression were picked up in your past, and they will continue to operate inside you, chugging toward you like an indestructible old steam-engine, if you don’t consciously put a stop to them. The words and the aggression have no relation to truth. They have nothing to do with who you truly are. It’s the secret masochistic part in you that wants to take the words to heart. Emotionally, out of ignorance, you have been willing to absorb them, even when the accusations are invalid, exaggerated, or irrational.
It can also help us to create a distance, a separation, from our thoughts. We allow our wisdom to develop as we see which thoughts and messages have value and which ones don’t. Especially watch out for those wicked incantations from the inner critic that are nothing more than concoctions of self-doubt, self-reproach, and self-condemnation.
Many of us identify with our minds. And so we don’t separate ourselves consciously from the messages or thoughts produced by our minds. This is a consequence of being disconnected from our feelings and from ourselves. We are much more than our minds and much more than what our minds produce.
Many of us are so inwardly passive that we can’t imagine standing up to our inner critic. Remember, the critic will continue to operate as our inner authority when, in our self-doubt and unfamiliarity with our authentic self, we create a vacuum that enables it to take over as the master of our personality.
As we become more conscious, we start to take responsibility for what we think, for what we believe, and for how we feel. We see more clearly where our feelings and thoughts come from, and thus we can discriminate among idle speculation, desires, dissatisfactions, self-aggression, and genuine creativity. The inner forces that produce self-sabotage have been tamed or neutralized.
Chapter 8
Inner Passivity Produces National Sabotage
In the following overview of some of America’s problems, my intent is to show how national dysfunction is the responsibility of each of us. We co-create the society we live in. We are not separate from what’s going on around us. The corruption we see in politics and business is the corruption we carry in ourselves. Society comes back at us with all the flaws we contribute to it.
This doesn’t mean we are to blame for the nation’s decline. No one is being blamed. We are simply exploring the unconscious dynamics of self-sabotage because that knowledge will make us wiser and smarter.
Plain, old, everyday human shortcomings can be the ingredients of national self-sabotage. When we are dissatisfied with ourselves, or preoccupied with what we don’t have or what others aren’t doing for us, the nation is soaking in the same feelings. When we are angry at a neighbor and refuse to talk to him or her, our society remains fragmented and hostile. When we are self-centered and self-absorbed, society is cold and lacking in civility, business lacks dedication to quality and service, the arts and media are indifferent to higher values, education can’t inspire us, and government leaders are more self-serving than nation-serving.
In my view, passivity is the main reason for America’s decline. Two interconnected varieties of passivity contribute to our national crisis. The first variety, a kind of civic apathy or avoidance, is more on the surface of our awareness. Many of us know we feel powerless and that, ideally, we ought to be more engaged in the democratic process. Yet usually we don’t make a conscious decision not to get involved. Instead, we coast along with a glimmer of awareness that we don’t care enough about ourselves or the country’s fate to get involved. Sometimes we feel as if we’re not important enough to have a say. We expect that others will figure out what to do. Often we don’t feel guilty about this passivity. It just feels so natural, and we can’t imagine ourselves being any different.
The other variety is inner passivity, which has been discussed at many points in this book. It is the source of the first variety of passivity and is more insidious. It is the reason we can’t access our full value as sovereign citizens who are, let us say grandly, the flesh-and-blood constitution of the United States. Through inner passivity we feel like small players in the national drama. Because it is mostly unconscious, inner passivity can harden like cement in our psyche to become a feature of our identity. We are comfortable with it, know ourselves through it, and revert to it as a default position. Inner passivity is accompanied by two derivatives that particularly contribute to our decline and are discussed throughout this chapter: our emotional attachment to feeling unworthy and our weakness in self-regulation.
Why do we have this passivity? It is a remnant of our experience of childhood, and we have been unable to outgrow it. As mentioned, we have an aversion to the knowledge and the processes that eliminate passivity. We won’t know ourselves without our old identity; hence, we are afraid of personal power, inner freedom, and fundamental change. While we have embraced superficial change such as upgrading technologies, we have been slower and less eager to upgrade human nature.
For this chapter, I’ve selected just a few of the many personal behaviors and social issues that illustrate the insidious effect of passivity on national life. Many of the topics discussed in this chapter deal with obvious self-sabotage. Yet even the healthiest among us can carry emotional baggage, particularly in the form of inner passivity’s many manifestations, into the social fray. Even goodness can be a problem when it is compulsive. Some people adopt compulsive goodness as a defense because they are afraid, through inner passivity, of being attacked by the inner critic for allegedly not being kind and generous enough. If they can’t stand up to their inner critic, they likely won’t stand up to forces of oppression, except perhaps in a pseudo-aggressive manner comparable to teenage rebellion.
Obvious problems dragging us down include the widespread incidence of poverty, obesity, injustice, crime, educational failures, behavioral and substance addictions, and debilitating emotional difficulties. Less obvious problems abound, as well. Patriotism, for instance, can produce self-sabotage when it hides out behind our self-image. Our nation is home to many pseudo-patriots who bolster self-image by identifying with an idealized nationhood. If their country is perceived to be strong, these individuals infer that they too are strong. If in their minds their country is the best in the world, they recognize this emotionally as a tribute to their own person. Hence, they feel offended by discussions of the nation’s flaws. This kind of patriotism, which is inbred with inner passivity, makes it difficult to regulate and moderate the military-industrial complex.
The kindest and sweetest people among us, those who appear to be model citizens, may be doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, thereby limiting their potential. Someone devoted to helping the poor may be identifying with feelings of deprivation and impoverishment out of an unhealthy attachment to such negative emotions. Compassion for the poor is one thing, and identification with them is another. Identification with the poor can be motivated out of a secret willingness to feel deprived, controlled, and cast off as having no value. The healthy person does not identify with the neglected or oppressed, because to identify with them in their plight means to choose unconsciously to suffer for nothing. Compassion is more of a loving feeling than a painful one. Out of compassion, a healthy person is more likely to reform a bad situation or ease the suffering of others. This person may act for the sake of justice or out of concern for our common well-being. But he or she does not identify with the victim or alleged victim.
Inner passivity has its roots in our biology. The human child is helpless and then dependent for many years during which time the child’s emotional attachment to inner passivity is “hard-wired” into the psyche. In comparison, ordinary or superficial passivity (the first variety of passivity mentioned earlier) is more of a factor of learned behavior, affected by the quality of parenting and teaching, yet dependent, as well, on genetics and the effects of toxins in the environment. In varying degrees, both forms of passivity can be unlearned and eliminated from our psyche as we assimilate self-knowledge.
Through inner passivity, we maintain a parent-child model of interaction with the government. We transfer parental authority on to the institution of government and its leaders. Now we’re in danger of being too passive to handle our democratic responsibilities. Like teenagers, we react pseudo-aggressively when the government feels parental, complaining that it is becoming too controlling and intrusive. At the same time we display childish entitlement when we feel the government isn’t taking better care of us. But the government is not a parent and it can’t save us from ourselves.
Freedom From Self-Sabotage Page 17
