The Four Saboteurs and the Devil that is Guilt.
Well, it’s no longer a surprise that 2020 has been a whip of a teacher. Before we close this year full of adversity, let me share two specific lessons I took from its lashes. Actually, the truth is, I had come across these lessons long before. But boy, had I become lax in observing them as every day realities? Realities that don’t hesitate to kick us in the gut, unless we respect their simple dynamics in both mundane as well as magical applications. With this in mind, let’s put a spell on 2021.
Here is to a most resilient year ahead for you all. And may you treat yourself like you’d treat your best friend.
LVX,
Frater Acher
The Four Saboteurs.
We all breed dreams of grandiosity. Who we’d like to be to the world. How we’d like to be seen, recognized, admired. Whatever these dreams are, at the end of the day their effects on our identities mostly boil down to four simple rules: We all want to look good and be liked; we all want to be right and in control. Being admired and being liked, being right, and being in control. Such a simple recipe to describe the dullest and yet most appealing of all places: the inner circle of our comfort zone. A hypothetical space free of any kind of self-doubt and hostility, but brimming with social admiration and tribal anchorage.
Experiencing these four saboteurs is essentially human. We all encounter them all the time. And yet they are amongst the most powerful agents to undermine any kind of lasting happiness. This is especially true in times of crisis, as the four saboteurs encourage us to lead a highly egocentric and self-involved lifestyle. Rather than engaging with what is going on around us, they manipulate us to use the world as a mirror for a fake version of ourselves. In following their urge the world deteriorates from an open map of adventures into an exploitative tool for making our small selves look good, be liked, be in control and appear smart. Still, trying to comply with the demands of the four saboteurs presents an enormous amount of work, very hard work indeed, and one that wants to be accomplished ideally in every single interaction we encounter. More often than not, we will fail to succeed in satisfying at least one of the four and thus be left disappointed about ourselves or the world around us. The potential for anger, despair, guilt, and self-doubt is endless. This is why these four saboteurs are omnipresent in most of our interactions, while actual happiness remains mostly absent.
Now, the very nature of a crisis is to cut off our ability to successfully cater for these four drivers. Crisis, whether experienced collectively or individually, diminishes our control, it proves our previously held assumptions wrong and throws us into a whirlwind that knocks any graceful performance into crawling and shuffling. From a mystical viewpoint, crises are awesome opportunities. They present the perfect time to shed all skins of ‘I, Me and Mine’, as the radical mystic Johannes Tauler († 1361) called it.
Several centuries later, but speaking from the same spirit, Martin Buber coined the wonderful phrase: ‘Don’t look at yourself, but look at the world.’ What a stark reminder 2020 has been of the power of such an attitude towards ourselves and the world. Maybe in 2021, we should experiment with such an approach towards life more boldly: Let us all look foolish and flawed, let us all be proven wrong and surrounded by chaos – as long as we have each other’s back. Let’s stop competing for momentary adoration and superficial perfection. Let’s smile upon our flaws and failures instead. And begin to treat each other with the gentleness that we so crave to be treated with ourselves.
The Devil that is Guilt.
This is a conversation I have had with countless people in 2020. Trying to escape from the stronghold of the four saboteurs means we need to take care of our own needs first. Growing up to take care of ourselves describes a lifestyle where we no longer wait for others to satisfy our essential human needs, but become masters in doing this ourselves. Only then can we stand free from the expectation to receive something back from the world, and truly encounter its wonder and magic, unveiled from the filters of our own cravings.
Unfortunately though, most of us are overcome by strong sensations of guilt when we attend to our own needs. Ironically, when we actually do the job only we can do (i.e. taking care of ourselves), this inner demon voice tells us we are already treading on the edge of sin and damnation. We can choose to blame our Calvinistic ancestors, Catholic Christianity all up, or, closer to home, our own parents, bosses, or kids. None of that matters though. Because whoever we choose to blame for creating this introjected voice, the only person who can do something about it right now is us. I guess that is what it means to be a grown-up: To be able to differentiate the voice of our consciousness from the voices of inner saboteurs, and then to take the grown-up decision about what we will be doing next. Free will indeed is a burdensome gift.
So here is a suggestion: Next time you do something that is truly good for you alone, freely acknowledge the voices of guilt that might come up, but do not identify with them. Allow these voices to co-exist with you, like bad weather or a torn ankle. These things happen, but they do not need to define us. They can drift into the periphery of our experience, while we hold our space in its center and affirm our intention through action. True courage, they say, is not the absence of fear, but doing what is right despite one’s fear. Similarly looking after ourselves with gentleness and joy does not mean the absence of occasional feelings of guilt; it means doing what is right for us, doing what will make us ready to encounter the world unconditionally, despite our inner co-existence with guilt.
See, at the end of the day this is not going to be pretty one way or the other. As Fritz Perls said, the only way out is through: We can choose to lead our lives unfulfilled, treating the world like a substitute for our own lack of competence in looking after ourselves; or we can do what is right for us, and accept that not everyone will like it. What it is going to be for you? The blue or the red pill in 2021?
After all, the biggest obstacle to becoming the kind of grown-up, who isn’t a constant burden on others, is to responsibly satisfy our own needs whenever it is time to do so. In approaching every day in such a manner, we can become quite okay with the simple but harsh truth that life really owes us nothing.
If I had to distill this down to its essence, it would probably look like this: Four affirmations that have come out of 2020 for me; four spells I am putting on the year ahead; four antidotes against the voices of my inner saboteurs.
“Guilt is the enemy.
Fear is the trigger.
Gentleness is a tonic.
Adversity is an invitation.”