As a kid I spent a lot of time thinking there was
something wrong with me. I was totally convinced that my lowly opinion of
myself was true, and there were plenty of so-called facts I could use to back
up my claim. I wasn’t a happy bunny. It was only when I discovered psychology
and Buddhism that I began to deconstruct the ideas that were making me
miserable.
For a while I blamed my upbringing for my woes. And then I
blamed society and the culture I grew up in. Then finally I realised that the
culprit was closer to home – it was inside my head. I suppose you could blame
it on human nature if you had to pin it on something, but we’re all wired for
delusion. Thankfully, there’s a way out.
Fall from Grace
We all end up with a sense of being wrong or that we lack
something, regardless of what our parents do or don’t do. This feeling of lack
is what happens when you move from a state of unity where your needs seem to be
met magically – which is how we are in the womb and for a little while after
we’re born – to the realisation that life doesn’t actually work like that.
One way or another you become aware that you’re a separate
person. It’s the classic fall from grace and can’t be avoided. It creates a
split in the mind and this is what causes all our woes. The mind polarises into
subject and object – me in here versus the world out there – which means we
can’t see ourselves clearly. This creates blind spots because you can’t see
everything at once, so you end up feeling incomplete, defective, uncertain,
anxious, and self-conscious.
Uncertainty is scary, especially when you’re small, and we
try to find ways to avoid it whenever possible. Nobody wants to feel insecure
or insubstantial. You want to know yourself with certainty but you can’t, so
you pretend. You try to become as complete and certain as you can. You recoil
from what you see as weakness, failure and inadequacy. You smile through your
teeth and say brightly, “I’m fine!”
when anyone asks. But underneath you feel unreal, unsure, uneasy – exiled from
yourself.
But self-consciousness feeds on itself. When you turn
yourself into an object in awareness every thought becomes self-referential.
You can’t see yourself clearly because you’re caught in a hall of mirrors,
searching for the truth in reflections of reflections of reflections of
reflections…
Twin Fears
We’re caught between two fears that are reflections of
each other: Fear of life and fear of death.
Fear of
life is when we fear separation and want to hang on to that
early sense of unity with the whole. We don’t want to feel isolated so we avoid
becoming ourselves, which leads to conformity and going along with the crowd.
Fear of
death is when we fear the loss of our individuality once we’ve
finally attained it. We don’t want to give up our independence or
self-sufficiency, which makes us want to be in control.
Most of the time we wobble back and forth between these
extremes – frightened to hold on and frightened to let go.
"From the very beginning, the human infant is vulnerable to an unfathomable anxiety that survives in the adult as a sense of futility or as a feeling of unreality. Hovering between the two opposing fears - one of isolation and the other of dissolution or merger - we are never certain of where we stand." - Thoughts Without A Thinker, Mark Epstein
This ‘unfathomable anxiety’ is the fundamental uncertainty
at the heart of human nature. To deal with it we try to make ourselves more
solid or real. We literalise the sense of self. In other words, we confuse
ourselves with ‘something’, with an object.
This is the cause of more or less every problem a human
being has ever had. It means we split everything into dualities – for and
against, black or white, right or wrong. Rather than seeing reality as complex
and messy, we simplify it and seek absolutes.
Because everything constantly changes, and we feel so
small and unable to deal with it, we try to pin things down, to make them more
solid and enduring. We want pleasurable things to stay and painful things to stay
away. Although going with the flow means being free, we fear freedom because it
undermines our sense of solidity and control. When things aren’t perfect we get
anxious and want life to conform to our wishes. Like overgrown toddlers, we get
cross and rage at life, “it’s all gone
wrong, it’s not fair!”
This need to have everything go the way you want – to have
certainty – is what makes us see ourselves and others as solid, fixed and
permanent. And the desire for certainty, security, and perfection is just
another way of trying to get back to that primary state of unity.
Identifying yourself with ‘something’ is one way to gain
certainty, but it can also be achieved through identifying with ‘nothing’ – the
death wish. If you know you’re nothing then there’s no doubt and no change. And
no uncertainty.
Overcoming Uncertainty
Fear of death leads to a desire for certain existence,
while fear of life leads to a desire for certain non-existence. On the one hand
we cling to life which makes us grandiose, and on the other we deny life which
makes us nihilistic. We either pump ourselves up with self-inflation and
aggrandisement, or we denigrate ourselves with self-hatred and destructiveness.
Our beliefs about life reflect our fears and can cause
even more confusion. Belief in an eternal, meaningful existence – such as God,
heaven, or a True Self – is just as problematic and misleading as belief in the
meaningless random futility of the material world.
If you think there’s a true self, unchanging and
idealised, then you fall into grandiosity. If you think there’s no self, you
fall into alienation and despair.
We either idealise or deny ourselves, but we’re deluded.
There is neither self nor no-self.
Concepts like Universal Mind, Absolute Reality, True Self,
cosmic consciousness, void or emptiness, are still subtle versions of the idea
of the self, i.e. something, or nothing, with which to identify.
When my mind stopped in satori it felt more like an
absence. There was no presence of any ‘thing’ to which I could have got
attached. But as soon as my mind kicked back in, thoughts arose searching about
for something to hold on to, a way to make sense of it and make the experience
substantial and pin it down. Because our minds work by conceptualising it’s
very hard to avoid that tendency to concretise experience. It’s what the mind
does.
Even writing this perpetuates the problem and I should
stop, but first…
The Cave of Delusion
The solution isn’t about not thinking. It’s not a call to
return to the trees and regress to our animal instincts. We don’t have any
choice about that – we have to think.
But it’s only us humans who think we have to be in control and end up getting
stuck in our heads driven half mad by our own wilful blindness to reality.
The solution is to see through your thinking. The mind
confuses and confounds itself, but it can also see through or transcend itself.
Enlightenment, awakening or satori involve seeing through the self, which
brings unconditional freedom, compassion and joy.
Don’t stop thinking, just don’t take what you think so
personally.
The twin fears that circle each other in our minds help us
to create a sense of self through which we face the world. But our vision is
obscured from the start. In reality Plato’s cave of shadows doesn’t exist, we
just think it does. I’ll leave the last word to Zoe Popper, summarised from Addled: Adventures of a Reluctant Mystic:
“We create these stories about ourselves. Stuff happens
and you weave it into a narrative, a grand drama with you at the centre of the
action. And as you tell your story, you create yourself. The problem is you
think your story defines you. You tell yourself tales and then believe your own
bullshit. You build yourself a cage then lock yourself in. Why? Because you
think, I’m so small and the world is so big, I’ll be safer locked in my cage,
I’ll be safer if I’m in control.
You think you’re trapped. There you are, you think,
shackled in a cave watching shadows on the wall, shadows you take to be
reality, because everybody else does too. But reality is outside the cave. You
need to come outside, feel the sun on your face and listen to the birds sing.
You shake your head at me and rattle your chains. No, you cry, I’m happy here,
I’m safe here, you’re crazy, there’s no such thing as sun and birds, sit down
and stop making such a fuss.
But here’s the tragic, glorious truth: You’re already
outside. There is no cave, no shadows and no shackles. You’re outside in the
sunshine telling yourself there is no sun and that you can’t hear the birds,
even though there’s a blackbird sitting on your shoulder singing its heart out
right into your ear.
We forget we’re not what we think. We build traps for
ourselves in our minds. We feel caged, exiled, but it’s all in the mind. You’re
only trapped because you think you are. In reality, you’re already free.”
Image: Shadows
