Feel with Neil

The ‘Egology’ of Relationships (HONESTY part 4 of 5)

[4 minute read]

Earlier in this series:

“People who hurt you deserve blame for hurting you, but they do NOT deserve blame for causing you to hurt them back.” [2]

“It’s not even necessarily that I see it and deny seeing it, it’s that my mechanisms for protecting myself from seeing certain aspects of myself are so effective that I’m blind to them.” [3]

You have already grown weary of telling your loved one(s) that they are hurting you, and they keep doing it anyway. It seems pointlessly exhausting for you to keep telling them, and the natural human fear of vulnerability becomes too much to bear. So you retaliate in secretive and/or manipulative ways, because your vocalized defenses, protests, and even retaliations are fruitless. In fact, one form of these retaliations is withdrawal from relating to your loved ones. Distancing. Protection.

They repeatedly hurt you, so the protection must get stronger. It cannot be your fault that they repeatedly hurt you, so you blame them, justifiably. But you cannot blame *them* for dragging *you* down to their level. That descent is not something you do involuntarily. You stoop to that level purposely.

Besides your repeated offender, is anyone else hurting you?

Are you hurting your own self by scoring secret retaliations?

Your psyche flees from that question. That is a very deep dive into your own imperfect heart and soul. It is not something done easily or quickly. Many never do it in a lifetime. Sadly, you know this unconsciously. You do. It is certain. That knowledge emerges from the junction where full self-awareness meets your subconscious. This junction is the battlefield within you where you feel the value of honesty missing in relationships, and inside your own self. It’s the interface of your ego and soul, and its width measures shame.

A loved one hurts you, so you hurt them back because you feel powerless to otherwise stop them from hurting you. You have become a hypocrite in its darkest sense. In desperation, an eye for an eye is the only answer—-and we desperately need an answer. The answer cannot be that everyone hurts everyone, and everyone is hurt by everyone. We can’t stomach the answer that bidirectional hurt is absolutely and undeniably inevitable. That reality is too dark to abide.

Repetitive secret retaliation is how resentment and contempt take root and evolve, in the tragic ecosystem (egosystem) of shame.

This seeming complexity is why loving your enemy (anyone who hurts you) — not performing loving actions toward your enemies — seems like such an intractable ideal [To believe you are a loving person (HONESTY part 1 of 5)]. I believe very deeply that the only classroom for John Doe to learn these lessons is exclusively inside the soul of John Doe.

John can easily live a lifetime of delusion if he thinks that a merely cerebral understanding of these things is sufficient. John has a monumental library of textbooks on all of these topics. But he keeps it behind a monumental wall, opens the door occasionally, looks inside, thinks about stepping over that threshold, has gotten help from a therapist to do that, but everything about that metaphor will fail to fulfill John.

By this metaphor, John must not only step into that library; he must demolish the wall.

Do I think it impossible for imperfect mortals to be ever-conscious of their potential to hurt another? Yes. I do.

John Doe wants and needs a stark answer to the question of what he wants “done unto himself.”

When he is an enemy, he wants to be loved.
When he hurts another, he wants to be lovingly forgiven.
When he hurts himself, he wants to lovingly forgive himself.

There is no other doorway to love: John cannot forgive himself if John cannot confess his transgressions to himself. The more he does that, the more porous the junction, the interface, the barrier between awareness and the unconscious. The more honest Self-talk flows from the soul to comfort the ego without threat, without triggering defenses like dishonesty, denial, suppresssion.

Like every mortal, when he peers into his unconscious, he will find a mixture. In that mix is certainly darkness, his own imperfection, hypocrisy, mountains of secrets, shame, and resentment. He must face that mixture if he is to see within it his true self. Raw reality. Not as he wishes it to be, but as it is. He cannot avert his eyes.

We all hold real love in high esteem, so why don’t we consider it — readily EXPECT it to be — enormously difficult? Have you heard the aphorisms about courage not being the suspension or absence of fear, but acting in the full light of one’s fear? What can possibly require more courage than looking honestly at the person we know best?

This is NOT a place of psychic comfort! We are most conscious and aware of realities with which we have become comfortable. Psychotherapy and psyche-ology are therapies for the soul, not the ego; therapy NEVER makes you comfortable at first. It if one’s ego doesn’t let its soul love it, the Self never feels comfortable, ever. We become more aware of real reality — the home of the True Self — when we learn to be comfortable with the messy mixture of who we really are.

Real love has to come from a place of comfort if it is to be real. From the full true self, not a dishonest persona. The unmasked ego must stand naked, in its soul’s embrace.
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Index of this 5-part HONESTY series

Next: There’s only 1 real sin? (HONESTY part 5 of 5). Preview:

One must face reality to learn how to be comfortable within it. Step one: Face the real you. To do so demands that you learn about your inner self, and *seek* exposition of your darkest flaws…Whom did Yeshua chastise openly? The ones who were, ostensibly, morally superior, but who were secretly hypocrites.

The misTery of Twelve Step truth requires true love (HONESTY part 3 of 5)

[1 minute read]

[No words here are Neil D’s. See source at end.]

Jesus said, “The truth will set you free,” (John 8:32) and I always feel compelled to add, “But first it will make you miserable.” There is no other way to describe the humiliation and grief that comes from seeing your own failures and weaknesses clearly, perhaps for the first time. Only in the presence of Great Love do any of us have the courage to attempt that kind of inventory…

…[Dad] began to cry. “Dad,” Tony said, “Why are you crying? There’s nothing wrong with me. It’s just my Earth suit that is having trouble. Nothing is wrong with me.”…

The truth sets us free. The first step?

We’ve been lying, distorting, denying, hiding from the truth. The first step is a truth-telling step. We admit who we are…

Where my “persona” is the me that is presented for the world to see, my “shadow” is the undiscovered or undisclosed me (often unseen even by me). Shadow is a concept much like “denial” in the recovery context. It’s not even necessarily that I see it and deny seeing it, it’s that my mechanisms for protecting myself from seeing certain aspects of myself are so effective that I’m blind to them.”

—From Richard Rohr and Ron H.

Prequel: Who hurts more: Your partner or you? (HONESTY part 2 of 5)

Next: “The ‘egology’ of relationships (HONESTY part 4 of 5)”

Index of HONESTY, a 5-part series

Who hurts more: Your partner or you? (HONESTY part 2 of 5)

[5 minute read]

Expressed in the literary / cinematic art masterpiece of The Shawshank Redemption is this:

You cannot erase the injustice you committed. You know that. You desperately wish you could, and so that desperation cultivates a subtle delusion that forgiveness does undo your infraction. But the impossibility is a raw exposition of your imperfection (even forgiveness does NOT undo it). And you have built essential survival habits to defend your psyche, to separate what you can consciously behold from what you know deeply inside…

You hurt others. Repeatedly. When you let that knowledge rise fully into your consciousness, it is overwhelming. If you think it isn’t, then why do you think you have developed your defenses?

Have you apologized every time you have wronged someone?

Or have you felt justified in some retaliatory cases because of how badly you were wronged yourself?

And if you know that, you have to face the rawness of how you fail at (and may slowly kill) authentic loving.

The people with whom you interact most frequently are likely your loved ones. They are your loved ones because you have special relationships with them. They likely make you feel good about yourself much more often than not (or they once did). That is a context for you to act freely, which is to say, less consciously. Likely with less vigilance. Which means it is the context in which your offenses do most damage. Which is to say, the means by which repeated failings pile up into mountains which your psychic defenses battle to suppress.

As these unconscious mountains swell, our defenses get thicker and more rigid. A callous heart is developing. NOT because our loved ones are incapable of forgiving us, but because we have denied the magnitude of our imperfections. We have been radically dishonest with ourselves, and therefore, others. Some of our unjust or bad actions or thoughts or feelings are unknown to anyone but us, and our psychic survival defenses against those must be the strongest of all. Or we will crumble. Some sources call this the “shame spiral.”

Can you ask for forgiveness of the mountains of secret infractions that you have stockpiled? Because you have been cyclically deceptive for too long, your psyche screams, “No way!” How do you continue to carry that fear of exposure? You suppress it, avoid it, ignore it, run from it. Your psychic habits suppress it into your unconscious so you don’t have to think about it and be overwhelmed by its magnitude.

You distance your unconscious shame from your consciousness. The tragic consequence is that you are becoming an expert at distancing. And loved ones can unconsciously — but solidly — sense distance in intimate relationships. You are growing apart from them because you are growing apart from your own true self. How can it be otherwise? You actually know this unconsciously, deep down inside, behind mountainous defenses. That is shame. By trying to hide your imperfections you have tragically become more imperfect.

“Something has to break our primary addiction, which is to our own power and unworkable programs for happiness and security… those who support and contribute to others’ disease are ‘enablers’, sometimes sicker than the addict, they do not know what to do when the addict enters recovery… The Twelve Steps refuses to reward any moral worthiness game, or to punish weakness and failure.” (Richard Rohr)

What can possibly elicit ill thoughts and feelings as powerfully as being hurt by an intimate loved one?

The seeds of these defensive mountains were likely offenses against you. Psychology affirms this with certainty, favoring childhood traumas. You have hurtful thoughts and feelings toward others because you have been hurt. You return an eye for an eye. Though not physically. You pay back by subtle and expert manipulation of relationships in which you are an expert.

You keep secrets. Many unconsciously. This may be what lies behind the exhortation to “speak your truth,” which gets largely distorted into making positive declarations of who you are, to the exclusion of confesssions that you are radically imperfect.

You know your loved ones are keeping secrets from you because you are very familiar with secret-keeping yourself. That is how you secretly — and largely unconsciously — retaliate. Doesn’t it easily let you blame anyone who hurt you? You are being hurtful because you are being hurt! You are projecting blame for your unloving, onto someone else who hurts you.

They deserve blame for hurting you, but they do NOT deserve blame for causing you to hurt them back. Hypocrisy is another imperfection, not an excuse.

The title of this article is, “Who hurts more: Your partner or you?” Our universe is a tango dance hall with enough space for every relationship. Hurt happens in no vacuum: Not a one of us is a stranger to hurt—-experienced, nor caused.

Prequel: To believe you are a loving person (HONESTY part 1 of 5)

Next: “The misTery of Twelve Step truth requires true love (HONESTY part 3 of 5)” Preview:

Jesus said, “The truth will set you free,” (John 8:32) and I always feel compelled to add, “But first it will make you miserable.”

Index this 5-part series

To believe you are a loving person (HONESTY part 1 of 5)

[6 minute read]

I’m struck by an obviously common core in the profiles of mid-lifers on dating apps:

“I’m an honest, fun-loving, kind, positive person who knows what I want, and values honesty and the Golden Rule… No drama please!”

Selection menus surely underlie some of its recurrence, but much appears in sections of free-form self-descriptions, as if there’s a common media source for the expressions. There’s certainly a core of wounds suffered by many mid-lifers, but that seems insufficient to account for the common language used.

Certainly, some persons must have unconscious affinities for drama. I’m not sure anyone gravitates toward dishonesty, but some are unconsciously dishonest with themselves. So I’m very intrigued by how self-deception makes it easier on one’s conscience to be dishonest to others.

Explicitly articulating desire for honesty and aversion to drama strongly suggests you have been wounded by these. I’m very interested to hear what you have learned/ are learning about your own self by looking back on your being in dishonest/ dramatic relationship(s)—besides that you value honesty and dislike drama:)

It’s hard for me to imagine even the most theoretically dreadful person declaring that they hate fun and honesty, and like drama and boredom.

I commonly see sentiments like these coupled to expressions about desire for a partner who “has their shit together,” and knows what they want. I haven’t seen many profiles that say, “I don’t know what I want in life yet.” It again seems to me as if these authors were challenged by a common media source with the question, “What do you want in life?”

In honest exchanges, I’ve heard expressions like, “I’m not sure what I want, but I’m sure what I do not want.” Meaning, another malevolent partner that causes me pain. Explicitly declaring that you know what you want is no evidence that you do. So adding generalized value statements may be a way of softening self-deception? You know it’s critical to answer that question, but don’t know how, so cannot let it linger.

So you declare that you are fun-loving, non-dramatic, honest, compassionate, kind, etc. Those, to me, reflect what EVERYONE wants, quite likely the same wants as persons who have wounded (/may wound) you. You may very well know your self deeply, but these expressions are not evidence of that. If you are honest with your own self, you must know that every relationship inevitably encounters difficulties because a partner is no less complex than you are.

The power of positive thinking is illusory if it rests atop ignorance and/or denial of the unconscious self. You don’t know what you don’t know. Yes, I do think positive thinking (like an attitude of gratitude) is a habit that helps us tend more toward awareness of the unconscious. But, when not tempered with moderation, positive thinking—like all things immoderate—is not praiseworthy.

When positive thoughts become an end unto themselves, you have developed an unconscious habit, and denial and avoidance are irresistible temptations to serve that habit addictively.

A good has become an idol.

If you think you are immune to those temptations, you are unwilling to confess to yourself your own imperfection, which leaves no choice but to project blame elsewhere. That may not be the same as the coping defenses we developed in childhood and adolescence. But blame projection is indeed a defense mechanism—typically obvious to everyone except the blamer.

You cannot actively live in any relationship without healthy awareness of your imperfections, so that when they arise—as they inevitably do—authentically humble contrition fertilizes ground for repeated forgiveness, and, in turn, cultivates your own forgiving heart.

No solitary rule for living can be a good rule for living. You are seeking clean simplicity in a messy world of the imperfect, which includes you. The Golden Rule is an extremely difficult ideal which, you must confess, very few mortals ever achieve well. If you isolate its Christian formulation from the rest of its Christian context, it is a very, very dangerous and bad rule, because it is impossible. Let’s examine it in a simple example by contrast to another unconditional exhortation of the same gospels: Love your enemy.

Many of us think we follow the Golden Rule often and well. I contend that’s rubbish. The first word in the rule is the imperative, “Do…” It connotes action, and let’s admit we most readily consider action as physical and external. We *do* acts of kindness. Often perhaps, even toward our enemies. So let’s re-state a prior thesis: The power of kind/loving acts is illusory if it rests atop ignorance and/or denial of the unconscious.

Acting lovingly, and loving acts… Are they the same as loving? Most of us know they are not, as much as we wish they were. Acts of kindness have the same pitfalls as positive thinking. They can become addictions, unconscious habits, and—except for the benefits to the beneficiary—those acts tempt the actor to believe that acting lovingly is synonymous with loving.

Loving is not an exterior, physical action. What, then, is it that we are exhorted to do to our enemies? What is it that we should “Do unto others…”? What is it that we should want “…done unto us”?

We know that answer when we know our own selves. Enumerating our imperfections, faults, flaws, etc. is not enough. Even confessing in a generalized way that we are imperfect is not enough. How can we be perpetually loving if we are not perpetually vigilant of the potential for our failure to love? You will inevitably have an ill thought toward someone. That is part and parcel of your imperfection. You are mortal.

When you hurt someone in your thoughts, if you recognize your ill wishes, what is it then that you want? It is the same thing you want when you hurt someone by your exterior physical acts. You cannot undo the thought any more than you can undo such an action. You want forgiveness. Every great wisdom tradition advises that you seek it. It is not hard for us to appreciate the benefit of apology to the recipient. When we get hurt, we feel better when an apologizer acknowledges our pain. But…

What is the benefit to the apologizer? That is not a question to be trifled with. It is a profound question. If it were not, it would not be a universal formula in every wisdom tradition of humanity’s history. Societies grapple very poorly with this profundity in their penal justice codes. Here is that notion expressed in art—the literary and cinematic art masterpiece of the Shawshank Redemption:

The 36-second video of the scene is here. And this is the transcript (1-minute read):

[parole board]: Ellis Boyd Redding, your files say you’ve served 40 years of a life sentence. Do you feel you’ve been rehabilitated?

[Red]: Rehabilitated? Well, now let me see. You know, I don’t have any idea what that means.

[parole board]: Well, it means that you’re ready to rejoin society…

[Red]: I know what you think it means, sonny. To me it’s just a made up word. A politician’s word, so young fellas like yourself can wear a suit and a tie, and have a job. What do you really want to know? Am I sorry for what I did?

[parole board]: Well, are you?

[Red]: There’s not a day goes by I don’t feel regret. Not because I’m in here, or because you think I should. I look back on the way I was then: a young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him. I want to try and talk some sense to him, tell him the way things are. But I can’t. That kid’s long gone and this old man is all that’s left. I got to live with that. Rehabilitated? It’s just a bullshit word. So you go on and stamp your form, sonny, and stop wasting my time. Because to tell you the truth, I don’t give a shit.

[Red is then granted parole.]

Next: Who hurts more: Your partner or you? (HONESTY part 2 of 5)

Index of HONESTY, a 5-part series

HONESTY – “Dark” Index

A dark treatise on Christ’s condemnation of hypocrisy. Think you are not a Pharisee?

…one must face reality to learn how to be comfortable within it. Step one: Face the real you. To do so demands that you learn about your inner self, and *seek* exposition of your darkest flaws.

—From “There’s only 1 real sin?” (HONESTY part 5 of 5)

Here is a “dark” index of challenges for those who believe their constitution strong enough for shadow work on their soul (IMHO). It includes the “lite” topics in each 5-minute article of this 5-part series (except part 3, excerpts from another author, which is 1 minute). Alternatively, here is the “Lite” index of topics by itself.

To believe you are a loving person

part 1. “Lite” Topics:
Your values of honesty and optimism/ positive-thinking.
Real and true love in actions.
The Golden Rule.
Apology and forgiveness.
The Shawshank Redemption.

Shadow challenges:

You value honesty because YOU lack it with your self.
Positive-thinking is an unhealthy addiction to avoid your true self and numb yourself to the stark reality of your radical imperfection and hypocrisy.
You delusionally perform ostensibly loving acts devoid of real love.
You value the Golden Rule because of your own shame.
You think you know what apology and forgiveness are but are deathly wrong, because you are NOT honest fundamentally.
YOU are the parole board Red condemns by speaking the universally known truth of humanity’s hypocrisy in The Shawshank Redemption.

Who hurts more: Your partner or you?

part 2. “Lite” Topics:
Apology and forgiveness, continued.
Defense mechanisms and shame.
Suffering hurt by loved ones.

Shadow challenges:

You can NEVER erase your plentiful transgressions; that’s NOT forgiveness.
You are radically unconscious of your dishonesty and shame.
You are absolutely imperfect and an insidious player in the blame game.
There is nearly 0 chance that you are actually a loving person.

The misTery of Twelve Step truth requires true love

part 3. [1 minute read]
All are excerpts from Richard Rohr and Ron H.

The ‘egology’ of relationships

part 4. “Lite” Topics:
You suffer vengeance.
Victimization is exhausting.
The ‘egosystem’ of shame.
Meet your soul.

Shadow challenges:

You give up on voicing your pain to your loved ones; YOU are the quitter because you’re exhausted. Boo-hoo for you, victim.
Retaliation re-victimizes YOU.
You are radically unaware of how deeply you hurt your self, so you project blame on to everyone else.

There’s only 1 real sin?

part 5. “Lite” Topics:
Forgiveness, continued.
Living with your self.
Recognizing reality.
The problem of suffering.
The engine of judgmentalism.
Yeshua in the gospels.
The only real sin?

Shadow challenges:

True love and positive comfort cannot be found separate from suffering; whether that’s a “necessity” is irrelevant because it’s an empirical reality lived even by Yeshua himself.
What, really, is the only sin explicitly condemned by Yeshua, and why?
Are you a Pharisee? Every single one of us is.

HONESTY. A 5-part series

…one must face reality to learn how to be comfortable within it. Step one: Face the real you. To do so demands that you learn about your inner self, and *seek* exposition of your darkest flaws.

—From “There’s only 1 real sin? (HONESTY part 5 of 5)

Here is the “lite” index of topics in each 5-minute article of this 5-part series (except part 3, excerpts from another author, which is 1 minute). Alternatively, here is a “dark” index of challenges for those who believe their constitution strong enough for shadow work on their soul (IMHO).