At the Core Essence, Beyond Morality: Who Are You Really?

That last blog really got some fantasies going about who we might be if we didn't have our morals. I got emails and comments from folks who talked about the myriad truck drivers they would scrap off the road, and like hellish day dreams. Yep, it got us to thinking. But what it got us to thinking is what I find fascinating. I got not one single comment from anyone who said: If I didn't have morality, I could find out who I really am. Not one that said: If I didn't have all the shoulds and should-nots I might find out what my heart really wants to give.

And that, my dears, is the sad nature of our good/evil complex. We have so enamored ourselves of the idea that everything is either good or bad, or worse, evil, that we cannot even imagine without it. Some would say that this is a good thing, because perhaps it meliorates our basic depraved nature in some way. But I would disagree. We don't find out who we are at the bottom-line core essence of ourselves when we operate out of an internalized external agenda.

Without going into any religious arguments it is pretty easy to see that we formulated our original moral codes around a need to bargain with the gods or universal forces. The bargain went something like this: IF I sacrifice this lamb, THEN I'll have a good herd next year. We do have a basic sensitivity to the rights of others, so the bargains evolved eventually to something like this: IF I am good and kind to others, THEN good things will come my way. And those bargains are still a part of our archetypal memory—which is why one of the first things that occurs to us when we try to wrap our heads around a recent crisis is: Why is this happening to me—I've been a good person!

So, when we take away morality momentarily in order to experiment with this concept, the first filter we are going to have to walk through is fear. Fear that IF we stop being moral, THEN we'll become bad, and deserve our punishments. Of course, we get said "punishments" anywaybut we're not thinking about that. We are just being afraid. Have you ever been so afraid you couldn't think straight, so that someone else had to do your thinking for you? Well that's how we get when it comes to subtracting the moral code from our minds—even momentarily for an imaginary experiment.

We assume that without our morals, we'll just fall down into our default position of depraved evil—ergo, we'll be scraping truck drivers off the highway. But—and here's the $64,000 question—what if our assumptions are wrong?

What if because there were no morals, we could stop repressing what we consider to be morally unacceptable, so that we could hold the tension between action and thought long enough to understand a given emotion's underlying message? What if we could actually find greater levels of compassion and understanding by getting rid of the shoulds, the have tos and ought tos? What if we were to be able to find the hero within, simply because we've deliberately and consciously chosen to explore the deeper essential regions of the psyche while suspending all judgment?

But here's the big problem with that: We are afraid that we won't be able to hold that tension between the thought and the action. So, we have an angry feeling and we repress it because we just know that if we don't we'll act on it, and that will create all kinds of problems, not the least of which is a negative image of ourselves. So, we have a vindictive thought and we fear that if we don't repress it, we will eventually act on that terrible thought.

So, we've come to believe that the only difference between us and those who act out these terrible murderous thoughts is morality. But what if that's not really the difference? What if the difference really has to do with the willingness to empower the initiative to hold the tension between the thought or the feeling and the act long enough to see the underlying message to us, for us and about us.

The simple fact is this: True self-exploration must, by its very nature, suspend all judgment in order to do its job. The only way to suspend such judgment is to suspend morality at least momentarily, until the self-exploration is complete.

So, having said that now, we are ready to begin the process of going below morality to find out who we really are. How do you do that, you say? Next blog. Wait for it.