I think we can all see, now, that it is very common to be addicted to the emotions of outrage and emotional violence. The raw tinder is provided by people skilled in the knowledge of what will burn brightest and longest–nearly always lies and willful misrepresentation based on preexisting stereotypes and biases–and social media is the wind which spreads it. I’ve given you one appropriate word to describe this.
I watched this interview with Hugh Jackman the other day, and he talks about resting in pain and discomfort as perhaps the essence of how we relate to God. Finding equanimity in a cold shower.
As I pondered it, I’ve seen this concept many times. Kum Nye, in its apparently original form, uses it. If you take a simple posture–say raising your arms over your head–and hold it longer than you think you can, and relax into it, underlying energetic patterns loosen. If you can comfortably do it a minute, but do it 2 or 3 minutes, and FOCUS on accepting the sensations, and relaxing into the sensations, some rigid, holding part of you softens, and life becomes easier.
Much of our trouble in life comes from self pity, from saying “I should not have to do this”, or “this hurts and I should never hurt”. If you can learn to laugh at that sort of thing, honestly, without pretense or force, you will be much happier.
Soldiers, as one obvious example, more or less have to learn to tolerate this sort of thing. This is to the good. But the nature of the sheer volume of pain they endure often makes them mean and even cruel. That is not good. I’ve said this before, but a TRUE warrior is a killer. He or she is someone who, seeing a target, kills them instantly and without hesitation or remorse. This is, to be sure, something which is sometimes regrettably necessary, but none of us should aspire to this as an ideal.
I would say, rather, that learning to accept life’s inevitable pains is a part of the process simply of becoming human. In the same sense that giving black berets to all members of the Army did not make them elite, calling oneself a “warrior” does not make one equal to that title.
I say this as someone who feels a bit of that grizzled asshole in me. Cuts everywhere, spewing hatred and venom, spewing I will fucking hurt you don’t fuck with me. It’s unattractive. Hell, maybe I am just discussing myself. I don’t know. It’s not spiritual, other than that it is not complacent, is very alert and aware, and is willing to suffer.
As a more abstract point I’m not sure how to make, but will try anyway, I was pondering for the umpteenth time the nature of the difference between good and evil, as we construe them. It is most likely true that no one is purely good or evil, but it is OBVIOUS beyond the possibility of discussion that some human being enjoy inflicting death and pain on other people (and animals, and indeed the Earth itself) for the sake of the thrill it gives them. Sadists exist, and evil is as good a word as any.
It is a truism that the evil reject God and God’s Law. This is thousands of years old.
What I want to suggest this morning is that they find themselves utterly unable to find rest in tension. They cannot accept the necessity of restraint. Laws mean nothing to them. They cannot see the souls of other people, feel them, care about them.
Why? This is the question I am asking myself.
Evil comes from trauma. I am very sure of that. Trauma is an inability to relax on a deep level, consciously. You can get away from the trauma through dissociation, which amounts to hypoarousal, which amounts to a disengagement with life, a listlessness, and lack of a rudder.
But when dissociated, you cannot consciously be yourself. No spontaneous feelings are arising, no viable sense of self. We feel our unique selves by what we value and reject, and the quality of our own feelings. If you feel none of that, you never feel a sense of a unique self. All of this is subtle, like the aromas of skillfully prepared meal, or in a bouquet of mixed flowers. But all of us have our own unique footprint, our own unique energetic gestalt.
And what I feel is that people that are destined to become evil–take as an image serial killers, who have become large in the popular imagination, but who are sick people who enjoy inflicting pain and eventually murder on strangers, and who relive their crimes often in their imagination–are people for whom the word no has been conditioned to provoke hyperarousal and what might be termed traumatic shock.
In my own case, nothing I did was good enough. There was no safety, no shelter, or none that I remember. I don’t really know why I am not crazy, or crazier. Even if I have moments of meanness and even cruelty, they are few and far between, and it doesn’t take much to keep them in check. And I have many moments of genuinely spontaneous generosity and kindness. I don’t know why. I must have gotten just enough love. Just enough that I kept my sanity.
But not everyone does. Little babies are often driven mad before they are 2 years old. Their life paths, emotionally, are set by that time. They are dissociated, which facilitates cruelty, which alternates with bouts of rage and violence.
In some respect, evil has got to consist in punishing “the world’ for crimes committed against that person that they can’t even remember (and of course, in many cases, ones they can).
But at root, I think the root anger is that of being unable to accept the world, unable to rest in difficulty, unable to accept life as it is, because every time they try, the same rage comes out.
At root, evil is an inability to rest, to come to peace, to become coherent and eu-adaptive to the world as it is. It is a restlessness and homelessness. It is a ship in a stormy sea, denied entry to all ports. It is a punishment meted out on the world for denying it comfort and succor. This punishment breeds pleasure because it makes them feel alive as individuals, as people. It is their way of telling the world they exist, and in turn of FEELING that they exist, which is an enormous relief.
Looked at this way, sadism is not that hard to understand.
Would masochism then consist in rest within powerlessness? Rest within formlessness?
Oh, this is all very complicated and deep. That is enough for today.