Nothing is Bad
It's just in the wrong place.
As I’ve written about before, a properly functioning body is invisible. You don’t think about it. Day after day, minute after minute, hour after hour, you live your life and go about your day without ever for a moment thinking about your little toe. It’s healthy so it’s not there. Not part of your conscious attention. Stub it on a kitchen chair though?
Huh.
Suddenly you’re aware of it every minute for a week.
The parts of the body only speak to us when they’re hurting. They are only drawn to conscious attention when something isn’t right. Whenever they have needs. The stomach doesn’t make a fuss unless it is hungry. The skin is quiet unless it has a rash.
…
What was the fall of Man?
What does that mean, exactly?
A fall from what? A fall to where?
The mind was not designed to be the object of its own attention. You were not meant to be so self-conscious. So anxious and worried. Your powers and abilities were meant to be focused outward, into the world, and onward, up into the sky.
The Fall was a collapse.
The Fall was an inward turning.
Like the little toe and the stomach and the skin, if your mind was working properly you wouldn’t think about it. The fact that you always are means it’s hurting. The Fall was an absorption into the self. All the virtues turned inwards towards useless self-criticism, towards comparison, towards status seeking and shame. Inwards rather than upwards and outwards toward the Love of others and the Glory of God.
You think about yourself because you're hurting.
The soul is broken.
You’ve really, truly come to believe that you… what you are… is a little tiny voice locked inside your head. A small bit of awareness located somewhere behind the eyes.
You’ve shrunken. You’ve shriveled.
Like the poor unfortunate souls who sold their souls, their voice, their logos, to Ursula, you’ve become a polyp. A desiccated shell of your true, divine self.
You see it all the time. The “Will”. The Ego. That little voice behind the eyes you’ve come to believe is all you are. It thinks oh so highly of itself. Doesn’t it? Making decrees. Grand plans. Sweeping resolutions.
“I will simply eat less.”
Hmph.
As though such a little voice could ever actually be in control.
“I will just not give in to lust.” “I will just be better.” “This year I’m going to be more generous and worry less.” “I’m going to be kinder.” “I’m going to a better friend.” “I’m not going to let wrath get a hold of me any longer.” “I’m going to be more patient and more selfless.” “I’m going to simply start telling the truth.”
How’s that working out for you?
“I’ll just have one piece.”
No. Says the stomach. We’ll have two.
Who wins?
Correct.
Who wins when the ego declares it will no longer look at pornography? Who wins when the ego decides to stop worrying? Who wins when the ego wants to be nicer and not fly off the handle so much?
Right.
Why?
Well because you’re actually not just the ego.
There are other parts of you, and those parts get a vote too.
To a rough approximation, all those other parts of you that get a vote are what Jung called The Unconscious. The Not-Conscious. What we aren’t aware of. All those little pieces of ourselves which never rise to our conscious attention but which nonetheless move us and direct the courses of our lives. With our conscious mind, our ego, we construct an image of ourselves, an icon. We make an idol of ourselves that is Clean and Good and Kind and Loving and Brave and only and always wants the best for everyone… and we do that in no small part by repressing all the other stuff within us that wants the opposite. By putting it aside. By pretending that’s not us. Those are just… system errors. Rouge emotions. Intrusive thoughts. We aren’t really like that. We’re good. All that… that… stuff… Well. That’s just not me.
But it is.
We turn in horror.
Both Freud and Jung believed repression was a defense mechanism. A survival strategy. They believed that the depths of the darkness within us was so great, so taboo, so anti-social, that it could not be expressed without turning oneself into a social pariah, being made an outcast of the group. Herd animals at heart, our lives depend on our ability to conform to the norms of those around us and so as we grow and develop we learn to dissociate from any feelings or desires which we believe our fellows would reject.
…
… …
But that doesn’t mean those feelings and desires go away.
It just means we stop identifying with them. It just means that we stop calling them ourselves.
In large part, this is the source of demons.
Although I believe the demonic has a reality of its own outside the human psyche, much of what is called demonic is merely the other parts of ourselves bubbling to the surface and warring with the primary psyche for bodily control. The Greeks believed Anger was a god. And Lust. And Hunger. They believed this because these things came over you and made “you” do things that “you” didn’t necessarily want to do. They possessed you. They wrought control of your body from that little voice behind the eyes who’s a good person and made you scream and kill and cheat and lie.
Standing… panting… soaked in blood.
“I… I don’t know what came over me. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to do that.”
So it goes.I will let you in on a secret.
One they seldom teach you in Church or in Divinity School.
Largely, and unfortunately, those are institutions of The Ego. Intellectual. Like colleges and universities they are filled with books and reams of paper declaring Should and Ought and Will as though all the people reading them really believe they have control over themselves. I mean, haven’t you ever noticed? Is it not true that every sermon on earth always amounts to nothing more than “Dear people… please be good.”
But we can’t.
After two-thousand years you’d have think we would’ve learned that.
The Ego can’t make the self do what it wants because The Ego is not the self.
At least… not the full self.
But…
The secret is that that’s okay.
The secret is that Theology is but a dim reflection of Biology. That the body is the cosmos, the true and final temple of God.
An oak tree is True.
The doctrine of The Filioque?
Who knows?
Man is the measure of all things and you, now, today, are the entire universe in…
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