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Bonds That
Make Us Free, Part 15: The Darkness of Our Eyes
by
C. Terry Warner
Back
to Part 14
Begin Reading Part 1
Losing Our
Way
Black
Elk, the holy man of the Oglala Sioux, said, "It is in the
darkness of their eyes that men lose their way." When we are
stuck in a troubled emotional state, unable to see our way forward,
we think it's because darkness shrouds our pathway. In reality,
the darkness is in ourselves.
We can express
and amplify Black Elk's point in the language we have been using
in this book. This will enable us to review what we have just learned
about collusion:
As long as our
feelings are accusing, whatever we do will smell of accusation.
*
* *
Others will
detect little clues of tone and expression, revealing how we really
feel, even when we take pains to pretend otherwise. And as we learned
in the chapter on collusion, they're not likely to respond gratefully,
but more likely to accuse us in return.
*
* *
And then we,
in turn, will take offense, convinced by their accusing response
to us that we were right to accuse them in the first place!
*
* *
Thus we will
have lost our way—not because something evil has befallen us
and deprived us of a clear view of the path that we should walk,
but because of the evil toward others in our own hearts. "It
is in the darkness of their eyes that men lose their way."
Now, if this
darkness were outside of us instead of inside, our predicament would
not be so terrible; we would not feel utterly helpless. But because
the darkness is within, we can't see how to escape it. With
every effort to find some way forward into light, we carry the darkness
with us. It does not matter how generously or kindly or uprightly
we try to act, we will do it accusingly. As the title of a Jon Kabat-Zinn
book has it, "Wherever you go, there you are." We are
like prisoners who try to escape by digging a hole in the wall of
their cell and, crawling through it, find themselves in another
cell. Self-betrayal and the self-deception and collusions that come
with it are a kind of mental and emotional imprisonment.
Counterfeiting
Goodness
We may not be prepared for all the implications of Black Elk's
insight. Among other things, it means that as long as our hearts
are wrong, we can't do right. Being I-It, we cannot act in an
I-You way. Our actions can never be more than counterfeits of generosity,
kindness, or consideration, for they will bear the taint of our
impatience, resentment, suspicion, anxiety, fear, or whatever accusing
thoughts and feelings we may have. In the hardened I-It condition,
we are temporarily incapable of a completely caring response. The
darkness in our eyes keeps us from seeing how such a response would
be possible.
In a letter
he sent to me, a young man named Ethan told of discovering that
certain things he had done, which he thought of as acts of goodness,
were in fact counterfeit. He was working, at age twenty-one, in
a volunteer organization. This is part of what he wrote:
I have only
a few more months left of my work here. I have learned that I
am here to love and not just to work. When I began I thought my
purpose was to do the work, and everyone here thought me the hardest
worker. It took me a long time to realize that this was an excuse.
Loving is
much harder for me than work. With work you are satisfied right
away with your efforts. When you come back to your quarters to
sleep at night your body is all worn out. You know you have made
a sacrifice. Until now I thought this was all there was to what
I am supposed to be doing. I -couldn't have been further from
the truth. I have been given a personality through which I could
love people, and I have not used it.
To put it
bluntly, I had a kind of physical gratification in the exhaustion
I felt from working hard, but I wasn't giving myself completely.
And my joy was not full.
I remember
my family took a trip to Scotland a few years back, when I was
eighteen. I was the one who went to work two days before departure.
I packed all the bags. I cleaned and packed the car and made sure
everything was in order. I prepared meals when we were travelling.
This work ethic served me well when I was in construction; I was
the hardest worker and everyone told me so. Anyway, it was in
Blackpool, on the way home, that I began to discover how inadequate
my life plan was. Someone asked me to do one too many jobs, and
I blew up. I had the perfect excuse. I had been doing all that
work. I had the physical exhaustion that backed up my case. But
I had not given all of myself; I had only worked. Because I did
not love I did not know what joy is.
But I'm beginning
to know that joy now.
Think of the
various "kindly" things Ethan tried to do. If we speak
of them superficially enough, so that we give no hint of his resentment,
we can make them sound genuinely kind. We can point to the fact
that he packed everyone's bag, cleaned and loaded the car, and prepared
the meals. But even though he worked hard to get these things done,
the "kindness" in them was counterfeit. The summons or
prompting he had felt required him to do them in a truly considerate
spirit, and this he did not do.
Fable: Speaking
and acting according to our feelings is always the right thing to
do.
Fact: If our
feelings are not right, then expressing and acting upon them won't
be right either.
We Fool Only
Ourselves
It doesn't take much reflection to realize how warped the world
is for those of us whose actions are morally counterfeit. We think
we're doing what's best, all things considered, when we're not.
We think others are treating us maliciously, or at least inconsiderately,
when that may not be true. We think that their wrongdoing toward
us will somehow make our conduct right. What should we call such
irrationality? I call it self-deception.
But generally
speaking, other people are not taken in by our self- deceived,
counterfeit actions. Those who are not self-deceivingly stuck
in their own accusing thoughts and feelings will see our public
presentation of ourselves for what it is—an insecure, self-conscious,
anxious striving to make a point about ourselves that is always
a bit excessive, like bad acting. And even those who are deep in
self-deception themselves will pick up on our accusing attitude
and will interpret it in the worst possible light, as we learned
when we studied collusion: They will tend to perceive it not as
defensive but as offensive and will readily take offense.
To illustrate
the way others see through our counterfeit sincerity, consider the
efforts of two colluding people to "communicate" about
their differences. Glen (see Part
13) says to Becky: "Let's talk about what we'll be doing
for Christmas this year." His voice is as sweet and soft as
he can make it. Does she think Glen has changed? Not likely. Despite
the tone of his voice, his accusing and self- excusing purpose can
be felt in his speech. Becky can sense it, so she thinks, "Here
it comes. Another sneaky effort to get out of his responsibilities."
Becky says,
"All right," as cordially as she can, trying to hide her
deep suspicion. She has read recently that you can influence people
most effectively when you listen before you speak. "What activities
do you think we should plan?" she asks. But she's thinking,
"Activities for the children, Glen, not for yourself."
Does Glen think she's changed? Does he believe she's ready to compromise?
No. He feels the edge in her voice; she cannot conceal it. "New
tactics," he thinks, "same old strategy." And he
braces himself for the demands he's sure are coming.
Thus "communication"
solves nothing when it's mistrustful, and on self- betrayers' lips
it is always mistrustful. In fact, it makes things worse; it collusively
escalates the negative responses it is supposedly designed to stop.
In truth, it cannot qualify as real communication at all; it's a
different sort of act altogether. It might better be called "verbal
sparring."
The same holds
true of other counterfeits of goodness. They perpetuate collusion.
Groveling for others' approval doesn't make them more accepting
or appreciative. Adopting a certain body language to make others
feel comfortable is quickly seen to be manipulative. Claiming one's
rights in an accusing spirit may win lawsuits, but it will alienate
most people.
Freud and his
followers say that on a "conscious" level we do not comprehend
why we act as we do, but "unconsciously" we know full
well. But I believe we have no such unconscious self-knowledge;
we possess no deep awareness of the truth. In fact, the truth concerning
our self-betraying conduct is always out in the open for all to
see, and to the degree that they're free of self- deception themselves,
others perceive it. We are the ones who comprehend it least, because
of our self-betrayals.
Even Conscience
Gets Corrupted
When we self-deceivingly counterfeit the considerate I-You responses
required of us, the condition into which we have put ourselves can
properly be called moral blindness. In this condition, we
use words like good and kind and upright to
describe behavior that merely appears to be good. Consequently,
we are left with no words to describe genuine goodness, kindness,
and uprightness. And when that happens we cannot tell the difference
between the counterfeit and the genuine; we cannot avoid mistaking
the counterfeit for the real thing. We become helpless to tell right
from wrong anymore. This is what I mean by moral blindness.
How do we blind
ourselves so? Think about how, when our hearts are open and sensitive,
a prompting to treat someone considerately comes as a gentle invitation
to do something we have nothing against doing and indeed welcome
doing. It may invite us to comfort a child, help an elderly person
onto the bus, cheer up a friend who is down, or assist a spouse
with a Christmas project. I know how these promptings feel because
I have felt them when my heart has been right. We jump forward willingly,
even when what is required seems difficult physically or mentally
or even financially. Such willingness expresses our innately considerate
and generous nature. When our hearts are right, the obligation we
feel to treat others generously comes to us as an opportunity.
But when we
betray ourselves toward others and accuse them in our hearts, the
way we experience the prompting changes in quality. Since we are
sure others are mistreating us, going out of our way for them seems
burdensome and even costly—and our now-perverted conscience
backs us up. Thus does self- betrayal turn a potentially delightful
opportunity to serve other human beings into a chore, a drudgery,
a duty onerous to be borne. As we learned in Part
7, in the I-You mode serving them may be hard, but in the I-It
mode it is hard to bear.
You can see
this by imagining yourself in the place of a self- betrayer—Jennifer,
for example, whose story we read in Part
7. You feel you ought to visit your hospitalized aunt. You decide
to watch television rather than go right away—only the first
part of the program, you tell yourself, and then you'll go. You
get absorbed in the show, perhaps even more than if you had not
needed an excuse for not going to the hospital. You may feel bothered
by questions about what you're doing. Why haven't you jumped up
from the couch, turned off the TV, grabbed your jacket, and started
out the door? You think about not knowing your aunt very well. You
remember how she seemed disinterested in you the last time you met.
You worry about the awkwardness of trying to start a conversation
with her. As you think these thoughts, the summons of your conscience
persists: Visit your aunt!
But now that
summons feels different. Why? Because you have been noticing,
or inventing, negative qualities in your aunt you had not focused
on before—qualities that might make it difficult to visit her
and therefore give you an excuse if you didn't visit her. And,
therefore, what you now feel summoned to do is not to visit with
a person who needs your company but to visit a person who in all
likelihood will be disagreeable. Earlier, you were almost looking
forward to the visit, and now you feel pressured by your obviously
absurd sense of duty to do something that will cost you a lot in
terms of time and self-respect! Why, you ask yourself, should you
sacrifice for someone who doesn't deserve it?
In no time at
all you have so twisted things, so distorted your conscience, that
the wrong thing to do has actually come to seem acceptable and perhaps
even right. We can almost hear you (Jennifer) saying, "It's
just not right for me to have to spend one of my precious evenings
with a person who probably - doesn't even want me to come and who
certainly wouldn't do the same for me!"
By such rationalizing,
our conscience can become so distorted that even learning about
self-betrayal may not untwist it—I have even heard people say:
"Well, I can see now that I've been betraying myself by not
telling so-and- so what a jerk I think he is!" For such people,
the right thing seems so costly—since it would be done for
people they think are mistreating them—that they conclude it
must be wrong.
So what you,
in your imaginative role as Jennifer, would have accepted as right
had you not betrayed yourself—visiting your hospitalized aunt—you
have come to believe to be wrong. And what you would have thought
wrong—staying home—you have come to think of as acceptable,
maybe even right. Your self-betrayal and the accompanying accusation
in your heart have corrupted your conscience. You can't see straight
or think straight about your situation with your aunt anymore. In
that regard you have become morally blind.
During the Christmas
scenarios Glen, too, went through contortions that corrupted his
conscience. The good he felt prompted to do became infused and infected
with his accusing and resentful way of being. All the kindness he
could muster got twisted up with his unkind feelings toward Becky.
Consequently, treating her kindly became a hardship instead of a
welcome opportunity. His grudging efforts to cooperate became an
expression of his unkindness toward her instead of a genuine kindness.
He even remembered thinking, "This is crazy" and "Giving
our lives to these feverish and all- consuming projects just can't
be right."
Similar things
might be said about Becky. Her offense-taking had made her as morally
blind as her husband.
In self-betrayal
our moral sense or conscience becomes untrustworthy. In the darkness
of our self-absorbed, suspicious thoughts and feelings, we cannot
discern the way forward. We may think we know how to alleviate our
troubled emotional condition, but we don't. Just how this happens—how
we corrupt our conscience through our self-betrayals—we will
examine in the next section, and there we will begin the discussion
of what we can do to reverse the damage.
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