I profess to being frustrated...frustration can lead to self-criticism...which in turn, if exasperated enough, can crystallize into self-hate....This process involves 'climbing the abstraction ladder of self-recrimination'...and the secret to undoing this process and its negative focus, its negative crystalization, is to backtrack exactly the same way that you got to where you are dwelling in your self-depression, self-despair, self-anger, self-rage, and/or self-hate.
Regarding the first -- self-depression -- we need to know this right up front and off the bat.
Self-depression is 'emotional constipation' -- depression is to grief like resentment is to anger and/or rage -- both depression and resentment involve a 'hanging on bite'. Plus they are usually interconnected -- resentment feeding depresion, and depression feeding resentment.
You remember the old saying, 'Poop or get off the pot.' Well, such is the deal with both depression and resentment -- and anxiety is another 'hanging on' emotion in the same category. Depression needs to find some closure in 'grief', just as resentment needs to find some closure in 'anger and/or rage'. To the extent that we keep either and/or both of these hanging on emotions locked up inside ourselves with no release -- well, that is like keeping our 'poop locked up inside us with no release -- no detoxification'...The poisonous toxins associated with these 'unreleased emotions' keep circulating inside us and in the process poisoning our whole personality, from top to bottom...In effect, they end up 'poisoning our soul'...
More concretely, how do you undo this negative, self-created, process?
Let's start with the statement: 'I hate myself.'
Well, David Hume would say that there is no such thing as 'self' -- that it is just an arbitrary and convenient abstraction that man has created to talk about a whole array of individually unique thoughts, emotions, impulses, restraints, value choices, decisions, and actions...
There is some truth to this perhaps, but even if there is, I like the 'abstractive convenience' of being able to talk about 'myself' or 'my self'...regardless of whether my 'I' or my 'self' -- or both -- are abstractive conveniences or 'phenomenal realities' that are the 'proactive or reactive generating force behind all of my thoughts, emotions, impulses, restraints, value choices, decisions, and actions...
Still, if you are David Hume, or Zarathrusta, or any good psychotherapist or priest or friend or family member...the obvious first therapeutic questions become: What do you hate about yourself? or, Exactly, what part of yourself -- and/or your behavior -- is it that you have come to hate about yourself? And, How long has this 'self-hate' been going on?
You see, part of the object of psychotherapy is to get from 'the intellectually abstract to the emotionally real, concrete, and contactful forces that may sometime (or often) lead us up the wrong (neurotic, psychotic, pathological...) problem-solving and/or conflict-negotiating channel...'
As both Alfred Korzybski and Fritz Perls have asserted in no uncertain terms: We can kill ourselves with abstractions that prevent us from 'engaging contactfully' with either both ourselves and/or with others around us. This 'lack of direct and concrete contact' can prevent us from both 'closing our emotional issues' and also solving our problems and/or resolving our relationship conflict issues...
.......................................................................................................................
Zarathrusta speaks: Exactly what part of yourself is it that you have come to hate?
A Poisoned Soul speaks: I hate the fact that I have not become the person I wanted to be at this point in my life...I hate the fact that I have perhaps spent my entire adult life working in a 'false career' (although parts of it I have enjoyed). I hate the fact that I am supposed to be smart and yet I feel economically, financially, and professionally stupid... I hate the fact that I always seem to choose the 'path of least resistance' because I despise jumping through 'Establishment Hoops'...I hate the fact that I seem -- by past and recent experience -- to be terrible at marketing my own skills and abilities... I hate the fact that I did not properly protect a job that was at least paying me a decent middle class income that covered my bills with some 'disposable income' left over, an evening job to boot which left me all day, every day, to write an essay or two in Hegel's Hotel... I hate the fact that I am now working two jobs -- both day and night -- that are paying me less than the one evening job was paying me before, and now I have barely any time, maybe the weekend if I am lucky, to write in, and build Hegel's Hotel... I hate the fact that almost all of my time and energy is devoted to simply paying my bills -- and barely doing that...and perhaps more than anything, I hate not being able to financially help out my parents at this point in their lives when they need it most even though they spent huge amounts of money supporting me through my university years...and now I am not returning their favor...
Zarathrusta speaks: How do you really feel?
The Poisoned Soul Speaks: How do I really feel? I just spilled my guts to you and you ask me how I really feel? I feel enraged. I feel like I want to strangle you. You are supposed to be my philosophical Guru. I reveal to you almost everything that is poisoning my soul and you have the nerve to ask me how I really feel -- as if everything I just spilled out to you in raw emotion doesn't mean anything to you, or to me in terms of my rage against myself? What kind of philosophical Guru are you? I want you to nurture me, encourage me, feel compassion for me, and show me how to become a Superman -- the Superman I know I am capable of becoming...but am failing miserably at. I want you to show me how to improve my 'Will to Power' and my 'Will to Self-Empowerment'...I want you to be my Philosophical God...
Zarathrusta Speaks: God is dead....and if this is what you want from me...I am dead also...I do not exist except as your False Idol...Worship no False Idols before you...that you hold above you...Be your own God...Be your own Creator...I am but a Mirror to Your Self...I am a Mirror of your own Projected Self-Ideals....the Projected Self-Ideals that you are too scared to live up to....and thus, you thrust them on me...saying 'daddy, help me'...
You engage in your books and in your writing at the expense of engaging directly, face to face, with people....a well educated man...a self-educated man....chasing more and more philosophical Gurus....chasing more and more books...
At what point do you stop this chase for more and more wisdom, more and more education...At what point do you stop looking at me as your Guru...and your God...and turn to yourself for leadership...
You want me to be your Superman...the Superman that you are afraid to be yourself...Looks inwards my dear man, turn the mirror of the Superman back upon yourself...and then express your Superman, once you have found him, outwardly from yourself.
Be your own Guru.
Whether God created you in his own image, or you created God in your own image...it doesn't matter...the philosophical message is the same:
Be your own God...Be your own Creator...Be the compassionate, kind, ethical, and courageous person who you want your God to be...Chase no False Idols outside of you when the existential answers you are looking for are to be found inside of you....they only need to be unlocked...by you... No one can do this for you...The 'existential courage' you seek from the outside can only be found inside of you...
You torture yourself because you are not being 'all that you can be'....And if this is what you need to do in order to draw attention to this fact, then so be it...You are waist deep in a quagmire and looking for help...perhaps daddy to help you out of your quagmire...But daddy has his own quagmire to deal with...and is not here to help you...Indeed, if you every get out of your own quagmire, perhaps you can help him get out of his.
Or you can moap around all day in self-resentment and/or self-pity...or you can scream and plead all day looking for 'environmental help' that may or may not ever show up to help you...This is the 'waiting for the bus' syndrome...
But in the end do you have the courage, the strength, and the direction of movement to pull yourself out of your own quagmire, and set yourself free again...free to be creative again...free to show your own leadership, free to express your own Godliness...through the kind of work that lifts your Spirit again?
The mirror of Your Own Self-Idealism that you call 'God' is Reflecting Back at You...
And telling you to solve your own problems...
God may or may not be dead outside of you...(Is there life without death -- even amongst the Gods?)
But His/Her/Their Creation -- and Reflection -- is very much alive inside of you...
And just waiting for your self-awareness and self-courage...
To set your Creative Internal Godliness
Free...
Transform your poisoned soul into your celebrating soul...
Just by following the wisdom and the talents of your Internal Creator....
Thus Spoke Zarathrusta...
-- dgb, Oct. 10, 2010.
