Self-Deception and Awareness

  

“McPherson found that between 1985 and 2004, the number of people with whom the average American discussed ‘important matters’ dropped from three to two. Even more stunning, the number of people who said that there was no one with whom they discussed important matters tripled: in 2004, individuals without a single confidant now made up nearly a quarter of those surveyed” (The Lonely American, 2).
 In another study: “The total estimated number of people living with depression worldwide increased by 18.4% between 2005 and 2015 to 322 million, according to the World Health Organization. Nearly half of people living with depression live in the more highly-populated global areas...

Another study (2013) reported similar findings:...depressive illness is the disease with the second heaviest burden on society, with around one in 20 people suffering...[This] burden increased by 37.5% between 1990 and 2010...(The Guardian)

More recent findings seem to agree with this trend. This should surprise us in view of the proliferation of mental health services. Instead, they speak to us of the failure of secular counseling. Perhaps instead the answer lies in self-awareness as many have claimed? Carl Jung had written: “Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”

But do we want to awake to face ourselves? Can we truly be awake of our unquenchable addiction to inflate ourselves? Psychologist Harold Sacheim wrote: “Through distortion, I may enhance my self-image, not because at heart I am insecure about my worth but because no matter how much I am convinced of my value, believing that I am better is pleasurable.”

We do not need a psychologist to inflate us with self-affirmation. We already do that quite naturally. Psychologist Shelley Taylor had written:

“Normal people exaggerate how competent and well liked they are. Depressed people do not. Normal people remember their past behavior with a rosy glow. Depressed people are more even-handed…On virtually every point on which normal people show enhanced self-regard, illusions of control, and unrealistic visions of the future, depressed people fail to show the same biases.” (Positive Illusions p.214)

Self-deception is a powerful yet unseen addiction. Nevertheless, it is still pushed in many different forms disguising as self-awareness. Eckhart Tolle, mystic and New Age Guru had written: 

“Wisdom comes with the ability to be still. Just look and just listen. No more is needed. Being still, looking, and listening activates the non-conceptual intelligence within you. Let stillness direct your words and actions.” 

However, Mindfulness Meditation, although exalting self-knowledge, carefully avoids self-knowledge. How? It instructs its practitioners to dissociate from any negative or judgmental observations in favor of the positive. Consequently, the acquired self-knowledge is highly unbalanced. This is reminiscent of the guiding principle of psychotherapy—Unconditional-Positive-Regard—which constrains the therapist to provide only the barest negative feedback but only in the form of probing questions. Sadly, both of these approaches feed our insatiable addiction for affirmation.

They also fill the vacuum created by the rejection of Christian love and forgiveness, which had previously enabled the sufferer to endure their guilt and inadequacies. In contrast, the Bible insists that nothing should remain hidden in our search for awareness

Proverbs 20:5-6 The purpose in a man’s heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out. Many a man proclaims his own steadfast love, but a faithful man who can find? 

But who is capable of drawing out what we have studiously repressed? Aldous Huxley, (1894-1963) had written: “If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful, and we prefer the pleasures of illusion.” (The Perennial Philosophy)

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) also added : There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know oneself. 

The Roman philosopher Seneca (4 BC-65) stated: “Other men's sins are before our eyes; our own are behind our backs.”

 Why do we run from self-knowledge? It is just overwhelmingly painful. The historian Arnold Toynbee wrote:  “Unless we can bear self-mortification, we shall not be able to carry self-examination to the necessary painful lengths. Without humility there can be no illuminating self-knowledge.” (A Study of History)

We live in the darkness of self-delusion: Proverbs 16:2 All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the spirit.

According to Jesus, we cannot tolerate the truth about ourselves: John 3:19–20 …”this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light of truth and does not come to the light lest his works should be exposed.”

These examples are not to say that self-awareness is not important but just elusive and often impossible and is necessary for everything we do and think. These all require accurate knowledge, like the captain who must know what conditions his ship can tolerate and what he can do in adverse conditions.

The Bible provides several illuminating portraits of how the fear of self-exposure is so overwhelming: That we  flee from the truth even to the point of self-destruction: Isaiah 2:20-22: In that day a man will cast away his idols of silver…21To go into the clefts of the rocks, and into the crags of the rugged rocks, from the terror of the LORD and the glory of His majesty, when He arises to shake the earth mightily.

 Rev. 6:15-16” Then the kings of the earth, the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and every slave and every free man hid in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. They called to the mountains and the rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!” 

It is Christ who has enabled me to confront my gross self-deceptions—It was only His love and forgiveness that had sustained me through the terror of slowly coming into His Light—the most painful process I have ever experienced.

OPRAH, INTERFAITH CONNECTEDNESS, AND ONE WORLD RELIGION

There is a great push to unite the people of the world through a shared spirituality. Barbranda Lumpkins Walls interviewed Oprah Winfrey who narrates the Belief film series:

• …which she said is an effort to “connect the dots of every heart’s yearning for something greater than ourselves.” (AARP Bulletin, Oct.2015)

However, Oprah doesn’t simply want to connect dots but also to connect people:

• “I set out to really build this universe of interfaith connectedness, where people could see that other people in different parts of the world are very much like them. Although they might have a different word for the yearning of the heart and the yearning of the spirit that is looking for what I call “God,” it still is the same thing. It is the heart’s yearning to know the origin of its mystery. It’s a heart’s yearning to know the power of the divine in each of our lives. It’s a heart’s yearning to be connected to that.” (“condensed” by AARP)

While Oprah’s idealism is admirable, it requires some examination. We humans already have many things that we share and that should provide common ground. We are born; we die. We have families, and we sacrifice for them. We suffer and find solace in others. We respond to caring concern. We share the same needs for love, appreciation, and significance. Why then must we find a way to meld our religious beliefs or experiences together in light of all the other things we share?

Writing for the Washington Post, author Diana Butler Bass argues that Oprah’s Belief series is a breath of fresh air:

• At a time when many people in Western countries criticize religion as hypocritical, divisive or dangerous, and while large numbers are rejecting religion altogether, Winfrey’s project is a worthy reminder to viewers that religion can heal, restore and transform — and not only fracture. For this reason alone, the show “Belief” deserves respectful attention as it provides a much-needed alternative narrative to the increasing public disdain of faith.

The show delves “into spiritual experience by telling the stories of people within various religious communities.” Notice, it is not about beliefs but experiences. Why only this perspective? It is argued that our differing beliefs have created an impassable chasm, which only bullets can bridge. Instead, both Bass and Oprah hope that our common experiences can bridge the chasm and provide the needed road to inclusiveness:

• In all the world’s religions, older forms of remote and hierarchical authority — not to mention the very idea of a distant and monarch-like God — are being challenged by ordinary people as they pray, worship, walk pilgrimages and seek the divine in nature and neighborhoods…The age of top-down religion is over. That age is being replaced by an age in which even people who faithfully maintain distinctive religious identities are engaging in do-it-yourself spiritual journeys that often lead in remarkably similar directions of love, healing and justice toward a God (or gods) close at hand.

However, “top-down religion” has created community. What makes Bass suppose that this move towards the New Age of the subjective and experiential will provide a better glue? For one thing, Bass thinks that with the move away from doctrine and religious authorities, a “spiritual democracy” will arise, based on everyone’s private experiences.

• As people remake religion for themselves today, they are replacing adherence to fixed doctrine with the personal power of spiritual experience to transform their lives.

But how does this move transform their lives in a positive way? How does it bring world harmony and inclusion?

• The shift amounts to a storming of heaven and dragging the holy here, to earth. All around the world, people are discovering that God — or the gods, or the Goddess, or the spirit of awe — is nearer than has often been taught and that the divine can be accessed by anyone anywhere. Indeed, every person has a responsibility for his or her own spiritual life.

How do we know that we can connect with God through these experiences alone? Perhaps instead, this “storming of heaven,” is actually a storming of the demonic. Sadly, New Age thinking seems to be unwilling to consider this possibility.

Bass seems to assume that, if the old dogma set put aside, we will share common spiritual experiences and will be able to achieve world peace based upon this. However, it is questionable that, as we assume “responsibility for his or her own spiritual life,” we will be drawn together rather than drift apart in our own subjective, idiosyncratic worlds, linked only by the lotus position.

• Ultimately, “Belief” is about the relocation of religious authority and the return to an experiential definition of “belief.” It reveals that ours is an age of spiritual uprising: In every faith tradition, in every corner of the globe, men and women are discovering that faith is an encounter of love and that human beings can trust themselves to find God and grace wherever the sacred might be discerned. 

When experience reigns, the pursuit truth has to be set aside. How do we know when we are discerning the sacred? Well, we are just supposed to focus on the experience itself. However, Bass is giving her own interpretation of the experience as “sacred” but without any rationale. She is imposing her own theology but without any attempt to justify it.

Although there are many common elements in our experiences, is there any reason to believe that this will contribute to human connectedness? It reminds me of the various communist attempts to create a paradise. They built towns where everyone lived in the same apartments and performed the same work. The apartments were purposely constructed with thin walls to bring people together and remove the inevitable barriers. However, this unsustainable system bred alienation, suspicion, and distrust and, of course, the extermination of 100,000,000 in a very short time.

Idealism can have a high price tag. In this case, Oprah’s Belief series is not merely at attempt to find more commonalities but to eliminate the differences. This can be costly. It is also intolerant.

But some destructive differences should be exposed and not tolerated. Some religions promote peace through their shared beliefs, while others teach murder and conquest to achieve their goal of world domination. Wisdom requires us to discriminate among these vastly different religions and not to indiscriminately lump them together under the category of “religion.” Such an unwillingness to appreciate their differences is an unwillingness to understand and to exercise the very justice that will lead to peace.

Why are Bass and Oprah unwilling to make these critical distinctions? It seems instead that they would rather re-invent the wheel and to radically create a new religion characterized by the “relocation of religious authority and the return to an experiential definition of ‘belief’.”

Wouldn’t it instead be better to merely tolerate those religions that seek peace and the well-being of others? Why must they demonize these religions as Bass does:

• “Belief” narrates this often-ignored but startling story: The age of top-down religion is over. That age is being replaced by an age in which even people who faithfully maintain distinctive religious identities are engaging in do-it-yourself spiritual journeys that often lead in remarkably similar directions of love, healing and justice toward a God (or gods) close at hand. 

Are all of these religions “top-down?” Do some also promote “love, healing and justice?” Bass implies that they don’t, throwing them together into the same coffin.

Instead, New Age thought would have us believe that if everyone finds their own corner to meditate to seek their own subjective experiences, the barriers that separate us will suddenly come crashing down. For them, our common experience represents the ultimate model of tolerance and acceptance. Ironically, they too are unwilling to accept those religions that make definite truth claims. However, a close reading of Bass or any New Age thinker reflects the fact that they have their own set of truth claims.

Eckhart Tolle, Oprah Winfrey’s New Age spiritual advisor, degrades ideology (theology), but uses his own ideology to do so:

• If you go deep enough in your religion, then you all get to the same place It’s a question of going deeper, so there’s no conflict here. The important thing is that religion doesn’t become an ideology…the moment you say 'only my belief' or 'our belief' is true, and you deny other people’s beliefs, then you’ve adopted an ideology. And then religion becomes a closed door.

This entire statement is ideological. It is a statement truth, albeit Tolle’s own brand of truth. Tolle complains that ideology creates a “closed door,” but he has just closed the door on many who believe differently.

Do these proponents offer any historical analysis to prove the superiority of experience-based religions? Is there any reason to believe that experiences will promote harmony while believes and certitude about the pursuit of love and justice will not? No!

Instead, in the vacuum created by a religion that demeans objective and universal truth, other ideas and beliefs will inevitably fill this vacuum. We have minds, and they will be thinking thoughts. We can either be proactive, self-reflective, and systematic about our thinking and believing or we can passively and uncritically absorb our thoughts.

Where will these thoughts come from? From society and also from our selfish, self-centered, and arrogant impulses! However, maturity requires that we exercise some degree of self-control over our impulses. Where would this self-control come from after our beliefs about objective love and justice have been disparaged? Well, if experience is the ultimate goal, let’s just act out what we feel!

In contrast to the New Age, it is the teachings of the Bible that have led so many to say “no” to drugs, adultery, hatred, cheating, lying, stealing, and hurting others. These teachings continue to encourage us to overcome our selfish impulses and to put the needs of others before our own.

Logic: A Needless Hindrance if you’re Trying to Influence

Buddhist and Hindu philosophers tend to quote from the New Testament, claiming its wisdom as their own, offering an interpretation that erroneously coincides with their own beliefs. Eckhart Tolle, Oprah’s guru, quotes liberally from the NT. Here’s one example:

• “The wisdom of this world is folly with God” [1 Cor. 3:19]. What is the wisdom of this world? The movement of thought, and meaning that is defined exclusively by thought. (A New Earth, 196)

What did Paul mean by “the wisdom of the world?” He was contrasting the “wisdom of world” with the “wisdom of the God.” He denigrates the “wisdom of the world,” claiming that this arrogant wisdom is blind and fails to acknowledge God (1 Cor. 1:20-21). However, Paul claimed that he was teaching a godly wisdom – a real wisdom - to the mature (1 Cor. 2:6).

The Bible is not opposed to wisdom, but rather an arrogant, human-based “wisdom.” Even the context, from which Tolle quotes, affirms this fact:

• Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a "fool" so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight. (1 Cor. 3:18-19)

Tolle wrongly extracts this verse from its context to argue that Paul writes against all wisdom. However, Paul writes only against an arrogant wisdom that thinks itself wise. Instead, such a man would have to humble himself so that he might really “become wise.” Consequently, it is not wisdom that is denigrated but an arrogant wisdom.

In light of the many biblical affirmations of wisdom, Tolle’s interpretation has to be rejected.

However, according to Tolle, there is absolutely no wisdom, because all “wisdom” relies on thought:

• Thinking isolates a situation or event and calls it good or bad, as if it had a separate existence. Through excessive reliance on thinking, reality becomes fragmented. This fragmentation is an illusion, but it seems very real while you are trapped in it. And yet the universe is an individualistic whole in which all things are interconnected, in which nothing exists in isolation. (196)

According to Tolle and many Eastern thinkers, reality is one, and therefore, one part can’t be separated from the rest. In essence, there are no parts but a single unity. It would be like trying to study the function of the heart by ripping it out of the body, of which it is part, to measure its functioning. Likewise, according to Tolle, our thinking is based upon studying parts in isolation – a distortion of reality.

Tolle then applies his concept of oneness to morality, claiming that we can’t make moral judgments about isolated events. We cannot say that one action is “good” and another one is “bad.”

• The deeper interconnectedness of all things and events implies that the mental labels of “good” and “bad” are ultimately illusory. They always imply a limited perspective and so are true only relatively and temporarily. (196)

In order to support his claim, he tells a story about a man who wisely refused to judge “bad” events. At the end, what had seemed to be bad turned out for good. While it is true that many things that seem to be bad really produce good, his conclusion that “good” and “bad” are “ultimately illusory” depends upon making a moral judgment – the very thing that he claims we can’t do!

Besides, if we can’t make moral judgments because of the “interconnectedness of all things,” then we also cannot make judgments about the physical world. Hence, we cannot do science!

Also, if wisdom and thought are ultimately illusory or even “true only relatively and temporarily,” then what can we make of the books he has written. They are laden with thoughts. If these thoughts are “true only relatively and temporarily,” then we shouldn’t take anything he has written seriously.

If his stance seems illogical, perhaps it is. Perhaps Tolle needs to go back to the drawing board. Meanwhile, some Eastern thinkers retort that logic is the “invention of little minds.” However, if this is so, how then can we assess any claim? I guess all that we can do is to eat, drink and be merry. But I fear that logic is required for even these elementary activities.