Being brave enough to look at myself
To be alive is actually nothing strange. Life will in principle manage itself. You just have to follow, which almost all living creatures do without much philosophical reflections. They can’t do otherwise because they are not mentally equipped as we humans are. They have to take what life is giving them. We humans are also able to live in this way if we want, but being equipped with more complicated mental functions we usually get more or less troubled, mentally and physically, by not understanding how and why bad things happen to us. So we also use our mental gifts in trying to avoid danger and the fear it brings.
We seek to understand how to live consciously without too much fear and with a feeling of compliance and wholeness in life. This is not easy. Regardless of how many ”certain” ideas on life we nourish, we repeatedly are forced to doubt the importance and reality of ourselves and things. There are so very many nuances in life which can’t be logically and objectively explained. Is life in essence good or bad? Is man in essence good or bad? Am I in essence good or bad? Sooner or later these questions are coming more close to us and they are very difficult to answer, especially when we are in some sort of chaos. Since ancient days a key to manage these situations has been to train our mental abilities and thereby coming closer to a better understanding of ourselves and our life. By observing ourselves and the world around us, and then reflect on this, we can get a deeper insight into how we work, both as physical and as mental individuals, and how this affects us and the world around us.
Man, like all other creatures, is guided and controlled by genetically acquired physical body functions which stand for self-preservation. Humans will in addition strengthen this with help from certain mental functions which we may call ”ego”. Together these powers provide us with capacities for physical survival. But we also have awesome mental functions which give us the ability to combine body and mind for a more complicated conscious experience of self and life. Since ancient times they have been referred to as ”soul” and ”spirit”. Even if physical functions are seen as basic, these mental functions are no less important and normally are both constantly at work. We know this because we cannot avoid to be aware of their actions within us and through us in the outer world. Of course we can separate these two groups of different and complicated functions in theory, but in their actions they are inseparably linked. We can learn to see them, to some extent understand them, and take them both into account in everyday life. But we can also allow ourselves to be unaware and let only our more basic physical functions control our life.
Ancient genetic programming for physical survival will in modern society often get us into awkward situations and is often judged to be a negative part of a persons behavior. Nevertheless should this physical programming also be seen as useful and good just because its aim is to preserve an individuals physical life. But it should be kept under control since it very often is the cause of negative consequences in our dealings with others of our kind. One individuals active urge for self-preservation, boosted by fear and anger, will stimulate the same reactions in others and that will of course backfire on the first one.
Physical life-preserving functions are much the same in all mammals. But in man they are only one side of a dualism between body and mind which we rarely can avoid to experience and act on, but very often also will lead to mental disharmony and ways of behavior which, in their turn, create suffering and pain for ourselves and others.
The opposite of these physiologic functions in man are those mental functions which stand for the mysterious experience of self-awareness and self-knowledge. They make it possible to see and understand ourselves as individuals and and know that we exist. So far there is no scientific explanation for this strange ability. But it compels us to experience an intrinsic value in ourselves. We know that we exist. Hence we can’t give ourselves an existential value of zero which would mean that we don’t exist.
The problem with this inner knowledge of an absolute value, which every human being will harbor and of course can’t deny any more than she can deny her existence, is that this value can be given a negative meaning by the individual herself or by others of our kind. A collision between our inner knowledge of existential value and our own, or other peoples, lack of acceptance of this will then be unavoidable. This constitutes a mental threat which can lead to emotional strain with secondary stimulation of physical and egoistic survival mechanisms. Especially noticeable will this be in cultures and groups where social rules to a high degree are based on censorious and judgemental moral concepts.
Biologically inherited physical survival mechanisms are usually the cause of many kinds of behaviour which we humans characterize as bad or evil. We respect the forces of nature in spite of our knowledge that they can harm us. We see them as natural without blaming them for evil purposes. But destructive actions by humans, based on active blind response to these inherent genetic survival programs, are often interpreted not as spontaneous manifestations of nature but as manifestations of evil.
Human fear, and its wider aspects of anger and hate, can have very bad consequences. We know that all too well. But in everyday life we do not often reflect on the fact that this has its roots in our basic physiology. We can’t radically transform these ancient biological programs. But we can learn to observe them, understand them and check their effects on us, in order to avoid actions which are destructive to ourselves and to the world around us.
Thus our genetically inherited mechanisms for self-preservation and survival should not be judged as solely evil. They are basically important for physical life in every mammal and must be judged as good just because they serve life. What instead is possible to question, and in humans actually also can be changed, is to which degree we allow these biologic reflexes to influence our actions. Compare with the toxic exhaust from the petrol driven engine of a car. The engine is the vital part of the car. If we remove it in order to avoid the toxic gases the car does not take us anywhere. But we can instead try to alter the function of the engine and so get a less toxic exhaust. This is possible in the case of the engine, but it is also possible with regard to the defence and survival reflexes of man.
In order to do this we have to observe ourselves with some distance and with some indulgence to our reactions and behavior. But this can only be done from the conscious and aware part of ourselves. From here it is possible, without boosting our ego or condemning ourselves, to accept that we exist and and therefore must have a basic value, like all the others of our kind. And from this basis of existential awareness we can see and understand our deepest longing to be accepted by our fellow humans and to have a given place among them. This insight will motivate us to soften our survival reactions.
We can learn to look from our conscious awareness on the more questionable effects of our biological defences and in this experience less feelings of threat to our intrinsic absolute value. From this point of view it is possible to reach the necessary kind of insight and understanding to change actions which cause suffering, doing this without self-pity and recrimination. If this work is done with respect for, and acceptance of, our genetically inherited life-protecting programs we will manage to integrate experience, feeling and action in a better way. And so we will grow as individuals and to a lesser extent be the cause of that which can be called evil.
To deny those basic parts of us which serve physical surviving is not practical. We can’t get rid of them. If we deny them we also deny that we exist and that is not possible. If we feel that we are not accepted by our fellow humans we very often start to fight for our right to be accepted. This is of course a sure way to show others that we exist but also a sure way to be less accepted by them. It follows that if we get stuck in this ancient method of convincing others of our existence there is a high risk that we will manifest a split between body and mind within ourselves.
In summary: if we want to help ourselves towards greater inner harmony and feelings of wholeness we should not condemn that old physical part of us which tries to save our body from danger and death . The result of such an attitude will be less mental harmony and raised feelings of mental split. But we should of course be brave enough to realise when our defence actions are causing harm. The recognition of this part of ourselves is mentally not easy for most of us. Regretting certain actions is of course both wanted and necessary. But we should not condemn ourselves as permanent less acceptable persons. The truth is: we are only humans, not gods.
To strengthen the awareness of our own core-identity and absolute intrinsic value is important because it will increase motivation and energy in trying to master those more primitive feelings and disharmonious actions which produce disturbing results. ”You should not follow your feelings, your feelings should follow you” (Roberto Assagioli, father of Psychosynthesis). Trying to relate to ourselves, and to them around us, in this way leads us eventually to an experience of the fact that we can be positively accepted by others of our kind, in spite of our occasional negative actions of defence. Accepting everyones intrinsic positive identity and absolute human value will then become the prerequisite for a lasting motivation to grow towards greater harmony, within ourselves and in our relations to the outer world. Thus the split within us will heal and the effects of this healing can also heal the world.