We said in an earlier blog, entitled "Authenticity: Good or Evil" that we will encounter these concepts of good and evil as archetypes when we begin to work on finding the Authentic Self. What we didn't say there was that for all of us collectively and for each of us individually, the archetype of good and evil has become a complex.
A complex is a cluster of beliefs-often contradictory beliefs-accompanied by hopes, fantasies, thoughts, emotions, body sensations and reactions that can be triggered either externally or internally. These complexes can run our behaviors.
An example of a fairly common complex is the mother complex. However we reacted to mother as a child might become how we react to her today and to anyone who even mildly reminds us of her. We just go into blind reactive mode. So, for example, if I've lived as a child fearing making my mother mad, then as an adult I might fear making anyone mad-to the point that I become an extreme people pleaser. Or perhaps it is just women I need to please, or authority figures. Whatever that reaction is, it comes from that cluster of beliefs, emotions, thoughts, fantasies and body sensations that become a behavioral reaction.
In that same fashion the good/evil complex operates. So, we've all grown up with parents informing us of what was good and what was bad; what was really, really good and what was evil. Our parents told us to "be good," and we were not always certain what that meant, but we knew that when we were not good our parents and others told us so and perhaps they even punished us. Through overt and covert responses to us they taught us when we should feel guilty and when we should feel good about ourselves. In other words, we learned to measure our behaviors, thoughts and emotions. And we learned to measure them based on external approbation, affirmation and condemnation. In the process, we were learning to measure our worth. We became worthy to the extent that we were able to win the approval of significant others, and unworthy to the extent that we were unable to do so.
Now, some would say that this is what a parent is supposed to do. Parents are supposed to teach their children "values," we say. They are supposed to raise children who know the difference between "right" and "wrong." And so we've been doing this thing, just this way for centuries, and if we look around we'd have to admit that perhaps all of our efforts are for naught. For our world has not become less savage or brutal as a result of any of these teachings. Basically, what we are doing is passing down the good/evil complex.
We fear, however, that if we don't do this, we will raise evil children, who "don't know the difference between right and wrong." But that's just the opposite polarity. It is possible to support the compassionate and truthful responses of a child and to discipline the harmful or disrespectful responses without making it a measurement of a child's worth. But because we, as a collective, have not yet learned to do that, we still have many people who are operating out of the good/evil complex.
And as we learned in that previous blog mentioned above, we can often identify with this complex so that we live our lives to know ourselves and to be known as "good." Or, we can live our lives identified with "bad" or "evil" because to not do so is tantamount to ceasing to exist. For example, I may run my life based on the belief that good people always serve and protect others. So, that's what I do. I always serve and protect others, and I don't permit myself to think much about myself, for to do so would mean that I'm not a good person. Later, of course, I may run into the wall of my resentment over and over again until I get it that good is not necessarily authentic. Or, I might live my life in fear that if I'm not bad no one will notice me at all, and without that mirror, I don't think I really exist. Raised by parents who didn't see me unless I am bad, I become bad as a way of being seen. Being seen, to an infant and toddler is the source of our identifications. So, unless I'm seen, I can't find an identity--therefore I feel I don't exist. Dependent on the severity of this and the rigidity of the parental responses, this child could grow up to so identify with badness that he must behave worse and worse in order to continue to believe he exists at all.
Those are just two of many examples, but the point is that if they didn't have "good" or "evil" to identify with, these children might have chosen a more middle way. The good/evil complex makes our choices for us in subtle and unconscious ways all day every day, so much so in fact that we hardly even know it's happening. And if we were to notice and question it, we might even say that it is "right" for us to have this complex. Indeed, we might even believe that the complex is our helper.
But that's only because we haven't imagined a life without it. So, just for a few minutes, I'd like to challenge us to imagine it. What if our responses could come from our genuine sense of self, so that we were free to give because we genuinely wished to give, rather than because we ought to give. What if we could feel our anger and recognize it as simply a message telling us that there is something amiss that needs correction, rather than a bad or negative feeling that ought to either be acted on immediately or pushed out of conscious awareness? What if "badness" were not an option for an unattended child-what would he do then? Is it possible that without those powerful archetypes hanging around out there for us to choose between, we might just be forced to consider authentic responses? For example, if little Johnny were not being taught that he was bad for seeking attention in the ways that he knew his parents would give it to him, couldn't he be free to say something like "Why don't you look at me?" And if he did, and badness were still not an option, wouldn't parents have to at least consider that maybe he had a point?
I'm just sayin' is all. Think about it.
