Tuesday, May 16, 2006
LANGUAGE AND LIBERATION
I have been examining for some time the causes and reasons for what I now would term “internal jackal speak” and feel as though I am coming to a realization. I’ve looked at the internal critical dialogs within myself and heard that dark and (seemingly everpresent) voice watching over my shoulder, waiting for any opportunity to chime in with criticism….
You suck. What a selfish piece of shit you are. You’re such a dumbass. Why did you do that? You don’t deserve to live. At the very least you should remove yourself from the lives of those you love – you don’t want to contaminate them with your presence. Oh look – you fucked up again – what a surprise. You stupid fucking bitch.
On and on and on. It took me years to hear the voice consciously; it took another five years to wrestle my destiny out of its hands. But oh… the liberation….
I was somewhat shocked and surprised to find that my Internal Jackal was not particularly peculiar to me, was not just a clinical manifestation of PTSD, but rather a seemingly wide-spread cultural phenomenon. Though we are conditioned not to talk about it, we also seem conditioned to internalize its presence, to allow it to reverberate in the dark places of our minds, always lurking, always criticizing, always there to tell us why we don’t deserve happiness. We are told that we are bad, that we are selfish, that we don’t deserve love from others and most assuredly not from ourselves.
Though Tibetans have a word for remorse, they do not have one for guilt – their closest approximation is a term that means self-hatred. In Tibetan Buddhism there is no sin, only insanity, that which is not life-affirming. Self-hatred defeats the first law of human nature, that all beings desire and move toward a state of happiness and away from suffering. In my observations, self-hatred causes a gravitation toward suffering, an almost addictive badgering toward spiritual annihilation.
And why, oh why, is it there? I have asked myself, looking for its causes in order to be able to find its antidote. Could it really be a linguistic tool of control? A conditioned use of language which ushers us down the road to a self-induced hell? Both for ourselves and the world at large?
I notice more and more how life-alienating so much of our society’s typical communication is and how that surely effects our internal environments – the way we speak and internalize language IS the way that we think – the two arise together. In other words, if we don’t have a word for something, we cannot really think about it, much less communicate about it with others. How many years now have I been looking at that? Saying things like “To control thought, control language. To free thought, free language.”?
Yes, it is possible that all of our “should’s” and “have to’s” are the key to our control, the key to keeping us in our places, the key to our belief that our fate, future and present lie in the hands of some (ambiguous) one else....
I should do.... I need to go.... We have to get.... Everyone has to..... There are just things that you've got to.....
If I am the slave, then what is my master?
I once asked a Tibetan Rinpoche if Samsara could be looked upon as an addiction, i.e. that we continue to suffer because we are addicted to suffering. He thought about it, then laughed out loud – yes, Samsara could be looked upon as an addiction to suffering.
Having had an addiction, I know that letting go of it is no laughing matter… though in another sense, it is *exactly* a laughing matter. (Skillful application of joy is the antidote to much suffering.) But where is the addiction? Meaning, to what are we addicted and how do we take that substance into our beings? It would be something we use all the time, that we ingest regularly enough to cause a compelling reliance, something we couldn’t imagine ourselves without.
I am beginning to wonder if it isn’t the language which causes the underlying roots of the suffering we impose upon ourselves, and subsequently others. I came to the belief six years ago that self-hatred is the root of all evil, meaning that the hurt people cause to others is the manifestation of the hurt that they cause within themselves. It is why, regardless of how “unworthy” I might have felt at the beginning of the journey, I knew that I *had* to find and pull out the roots of my own self-hatred, for not doing so would most assuredly lead to the hatred of others. Hatred is hatred and only leads to more hatred; to hate myself is no different than singling out any other person or group to hate.
Is it really the language? I’ve known for some time the power of language – its ability to transform and create reality, so why not? Could it really be that simple? That complex?
The should’s, the have to’s, the judgments of ourselves and others, the lack of empathy, the obsession with presenting our side and “winning,” the comparison, the competition, the criticism, the denial of responsibility, the internalization of blame, the disapproval as a means to coerce conformity, the veneer of nice spread thin over teeth clenching rage, the control The Control THE CONTROL….
You suck. What a selfish piece of shit you are. You’re such a dumbass. Why did you do that? You don’t deserve to live. At the very least you should remove yourself from the lives of those you love – you don’t want to contaminate them with your presence. Oh look – you fucked up again – what a surprise. You stupid fucking bitch. Sit down. Shut up. Do what you’re told. Or else….
Fuck. That.
I would fight the Jackal, but the moment I fight is the moment I lose. Rather, I will let go of any fear or hatred of the Jackal, will empathize with the pain it must be feeling to lash out like that, the powerlessness, the rage, the incomprehensible sorrow that comes from pain inflicted by the Jackals and Jackals and Jackals before that….
Samsara had no beginning, but it does have an end.
I want to liberate the Jackal, to love it so much it loses its need to bare its teeth or bite anymore. We come from a history of violence, a history of suffering, a history of competition, a history of needing to control others in order to survive. But that world of scarcity is over – I want to tell the Jackal It’s safe now – you don’t have to be afraid anymore – there is no need to bare your teeth.
It may take a while for it to believe me, to stop growling and come over here and eat the bowl of milk I’m offering, but I’m a patient woman; I’ll wait. And while I wait I’ll do my best to not be intimidating, to stay low to the ground so that I don’t tower over the Jackal and frighten him anymore than he is already frightened.
Love isn’t so scary, really, after all – it’s just a matter of learning to trust that the hand that feeds you really won’t slap you afterward, just because it can.
posted by fMom at 3:13 AM
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