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.

CAN WE FIND SELF-KNOWLEDGE FROM WITHIN?

It is undeniable that we can find truth by looking within ourselves. We can detect our pains, tight muscles, and feelings. We also have the capacity to know right from wrong. As many agree, we are wired to know moral truths. However, can we attain wisdom and accurate self-understanding by looking within?

Here is where we encounter great differences of opinion. The highly acclaimed spiritual guide and mystic, Ken Wilber, comes out in favor of finding the truth within:

·       The mystics ask you to take nothing on mere belief. Rather, they give you a set of experiments to test in your own awareness and experience. The laboratory is your own mind, the experiment is meditation…the whole point is to re-member, re-collect, and re-discover that which you always already are. Indeed, the soul's duty in this life is to remember. The Buddhist smriti and sati-patthana, the Hindu smara, Plato's recollection, Christ's anamnesis: all of those terms are precisely translated as remembrance… And so, the soul that finally remembers all this, and sees it however vaguely, can only pause to wonder: How could I have forgotten? How could I have renounced that State which is the only Real State.

Any self-knowledge depends on remembering, but are we able to do this without bias?

In “Stillness Speaks,” mystic and New Age Guru, Eckhart Tolle, suggests that wisdom and self-knowledge are attainable merely through stillness and self-observation:

·       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.

Although, self-knowledge is theoretically available from within, these writer claim that it is not so easy:

·       “Sometimes, when you don't ask questions, it's not because you are afraid that someone will lie to your face. It's because you're afraid they'll tell you the truth.” (Jodi Picoult)

·       “The human brain is a complex organ with the wonderful power of enabling man to find reasons for continuing to believe whatever it is that he wants to believe.” (Voltaire)

·       “The author concedes that humanity had the fatal tendency to shape truth to our beliefs rather than beliefs to the Truth.” (Frank Turek)

Why do we run from self-knowledge? It is just overwhelmingly painful. In “A Study of History,” Arnold Toynbee expressed his reservation about self-knowledge:

·       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.

As many point out, true self-knowledge is humbling. It shows us who we truly are. As a result, many psychologists have observed that normalcy is self-delusion. One representative study reported:

·       “In one study of nearly a million high school seniors, 70 percent said they had “above average leadership skills, but only 2 percent felt their leadership skills were below average.” Another study found that 94 percent of college professors think they do above average work. And in another study, ‘when doctors diagnosed their patients as having pneumonia, predictions made with 88 percent confidence turned out to be right only 20 percent of the time.’” (Abcnews.go.com; “Self-images Often Erroneously Inflated,” 11/9/05)

Many such studies demonstrate that self-delusion is pervasive. Although we have the inner resources for self-knowledge, we seem to lack the willingness to make use of them. In “Positive Illusions,” psychologist Shelley Taylor sums up the evidence:

·       “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.” (214)

Perhaps pain isn’t so bad? Perhaps it’s even necessary! Sadly, once the psychological torment passes, these aggressive tumors return.  Taylor confesses:

·       “When depressed people are no longer depressed, they show the same self-enhancing biases and illusions as non-depressed people.” (p.223)

This demonstrates that these “self-enhancing biases and illusions” are entirely human and serve to explain why we flee from self-knowledge. We are simply addicted to the pleasure of having an inflated self-esteem, and we will reject anything that might threaten our comfortable addiction.

Psychologist Roy Baumeister has extensively researched the relationship between high self-esteem and performance:

·       For three decades, I and many other psychologists viewed self-esteem as our profession’s Holy Grail: a psychological trait that would soothe most of individuals’ and society’s woes. We thought that high self-esteem would impart not only success, health, happiness, and prosperity to the people who possessed it, but also stronger marriages, higher employment, and greater educational attainment in the communities that supported it. (http://imaginefirestone.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/RethinkingSelf-Esteem.pdf)

• Recently, though, several close analyses of the accumulated research have shaken many psychologists’ faith in self-esteem. My colleagues and I were commissioned to conduct one of these studies by the American Psychological Society, an organization devoted to psychological research. These studies show not only that self-esteem fails to accomplish what we had hoped, but also that it can backfire and contribute to some of the very problems it was thought to thwart. Social sector organizations should therefore reconsider whether they want to dedicate their scarce resources to cultivating self-esteem. In my view, there are other traits, like self-control, that hold much more promise.

Baumeister, Wilber, and Tolle each share the same goal – having accurate self-knowledge. However, it seems that this goal is obstructed to such a degree that the disciplines of remembering, self-reflection, and stillness are incapable of breaking through, and perhaps we don’t even want these disciplines to break through.

This is where Jesus’ words can offer us a renewed hope. One night, a Jewish member of the Sanhedrin, Nicodemus, came secretly to question Jesus and was told that he wasn’t even ready to hear the answers:

·       Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (John 3:3)

According to Jesus, real truth, although available, is not attainable unless we are reborn of God. Elsewhere, in His final moments, Jesus startled His disciples with a teaching that must have seemed over-the-top to them:

·       Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. John 15:4-5)

It is terribly humbling to learn that we “can do nothing” apart from Him. It is something that we will not allow ourselves to see, without entirely destabilizing our lives. At all costs, we will resist it.

However, this truth, embraced by AA, has made the difference in many lives so broken that they were ready to receive it. Let us all be so broken!

AUTHENTICITY

In a world of mask-wearing, we yearn for authenticity.

I like being authentically me. Why? I don’t like to expend energy to hide who I am. It’s much more fun to be able to be transparent and laugh at myself. It’s part of the liberty that I have in Christ.

Liberty? Yes! I don’t have to prove myself. I don’t have to become the ideal person so that others will love me. Why not? I am really convinced about the Bible’s truth that my life is no longer about me and my trying to be somebody that I am not:

·       I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20; ESV)

This raises an important question – “What does it mean to live authentically?” For the artist, this might mean letting our feelings hang out. After all, aren’t we our feelings? Don’t they define who we are?

Perhaps, but not for someone who has the privilege of serving Christ. Who then am I? I am a servant of the Lord before all else. Does this mean that I am denying my feelings? Certainly not! But it does mean that these do not define who I am. I am His and He is mine. That’s who I am.

Yes, I struggle with powerful feelings of anger and even that horrid and sickening feeling of jealousy, but they are not essentially me. My life in Christ is what is authentically me! Therefore, authenticity does not require that I act-out, but that I live faithfully for the Truth, while I laugh at my pettiness.

But what is the highest truth of someone without the Savior? Themselves! Namely, their feelings! However, he cannot authentically live them out without incurring rejection, even self-contempt.

How then can he live authentically and connect to others authentically? He cannot. Instead, he must find a new face by suppressing the old selfish one. Consequently, he becomes an idealist, a do-gooder to convince himself and the world that he is good.

This is especially needful in the professional world where he is hired to implement programs to help others, where he must wear professional attire and manifest professional concerns, even as he carries a concealed dagger.

While underneath, he is a carnivore, he must live deceptively as an herbivore. Meanwhile, it is becoming increasingly clear to him that he is living a double-life. He is not the herbivore as he presents himself. He finds that the mask cannot be reconciled with who he truly is. He wants to believe that he is a good and caring person, but it is becoming increasingly clear that he is not. He is no longer able to believe in his life and what he is doing. Therefore, in private, he cynically talks about “playing the game.” Cynicism becomes the only glue that can hold these two conflicting identities together.

I am all for doing good, but why? If we wear a mask, a deceptive front, to “prove” that we are a good and worthy person, holding forth our resume of good deeds, we are living inauthentically and the real self will continue emerge, to our chagrin, from behind the mask. It will not remain quiet but will continue to demand stage-center.

How to control it and to live authentically? We have to give the dark-side its own space. However, when it manifests, we can laugh at it and take responsibility. It’s like a pit-bull we have on a leash. We can’t hide it, and when it breaks lose to bite someone, we must take full responsibility. However, we can be transparent about it, denying it the power to operate in the darkness of denial.

“Out of the depths of the heart, the mouth will speak,” but we can humble ourselves and apologize for its words. We can allow ourselves to become accountable.

But how can we laugh at so destructive a force? How can we accept its presence? This is to admit that we are not a good person. It is like admitting that we are a pauper and not a prince. It is to surrender our good feelings about ourselves.

Who can endure such a crash, a fall from such great heights? We have to find our significance elsewhere, from above. Only when we are convinced that we possess something more valuable than our self-esteem – a Savior who has died for us and loves us despite our unloveliness – can we be authentic!

Besides, authenticity and self-acceptance pay great dividends – ability to accept others and even criticism, humility, other-centeredness, and non-defensiveness. By the grace of God, I can be who I truly am.

THE ELUSIVENESS OF SELF-KNOWLEDGE

Self-knowledge is to the wise as eyes are to the race-car driver. As the driver will crash without sight, any ordinary person will eventually crash without self-knowledge.

If it is true that to manage anything well, we must first understand it, it is also true that we need to understand ourselves. If we lack the knowledge to put the gas in the gas tank and the water into the radiator, our car will soon become inoperative. Should not the same be true when it comes to managing our lives!

Many have observed that self-knowledge and self-examination are critical to our lives.

The psychologist, Carl Jung, noted that:

·       Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”

We might even add to Jung’s observations that we will not be able to understand others, their motivations and actions, until we first understand our own. Consequently, we have to look inward.

This is the message of most world religions. The Book of Proverbs exalts wisdom and self-examination:

·       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? (Proverbs 20:5-6)

Proverbs hints at the main problem of self-knowledge. We really don’t want it. We would rather think thoughts that are comforting like, “I am a wonderful person.”

In “Stillness Speaks,” mystic and New Age Guru, Eckhart Tolle, suggests that wisdom and self-knowledge merely through stillness and self-observation:

·       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, it seems that far more is necessary. Many of our pundits have commented on the difficulties of acquiring self-knowledge:

·       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, Aldous Huxley (1894-1963))

·       There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one's self. (Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist and philosopher)

·       Make it thy business to know thyself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world. (Miguel de Cervantes)

·       Other men's sins are before our eyes; our own are behind our backs. (Roman philosopher Seneca (4 BC-65))

Why do we run from self-knowledge? It is just overwhelmingly painful:

·       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,” Arnold Toynbee)

As many point out, true self-knowledge is humbling. However, with this humbling process, there can be no illumination.

As a result, many psychologists have observed that normalcy is self-delusion. One representative study reported:

·       “In one study of nearly a million high school seniors, 70 percent said they had “above average leadership skills, but only 2 percent felt their leadership skills were below average.” Another study found that 94 percent of college professors think they do above average work. And in another study, ‘when doctors diagnosed their patients as having pneumonia, predictions made with 88 percent confidence turned out to be right only 20 percent of the time.’” (Abcnews.go.com;; “Self-images Often Erroneously Inflated,” 11/9/05)

There findings are pervasive. In “Positive Illusions,” psychologist Shelley Taylor sums up the evidence:

·       “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.” (214)

Perhaps pain isn’t so bad? Perhaps it’s even necessary! Sadly, once the psychological torment passes, these aggressive tumors return.  Taylor confesses:

·       “When depressed people are no longer depressed, they show the same self-enhancing biases and illusions as non-depressed people.” (p.223)

This demonstrates that these “self-enhancing biases and illusions” are entirely human and serve to explain why we flee from self-knowledge. We are simply addicted to the pleasure of having and inflated self-esteem.

But is this addiction harmful? Taylor and others believe that an inflated self-esteem is necessary to get us going in the morning. But doesn’t this addiction also exact a high price?

Psychologist Roy Baumeister has extensively researched the relationship between high self-esteem and performance:

·       For three decades, I and many other psychologists viewed self-esteem as our profession’s Holy Grail: a psychological trait that would soothe most of individuals’ and society’s woes. We thought that high self-esteem would impart not only success, health, happiness, and prosperity to the people who possessed it, but also stronger marriages, higher employment, and greater educational attainment in the communities that supported it. (http://imaginefirestone.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/RethinkingSelf-Esteem.pdf)

• Recently, though, several close analyses of the accumulated research have shaken many psychologists’ faith in self-esteem. My colleagues and I were commissioned to conduct one of these studies by the American Psychological Society, an organization devoted to psychological research. These studies show not only that self-esteem fails to accomplish what we had hoped, but also that it can backfire and contribute to some of the very problems it was thought to thwart. Social sector organizations should therefore reconsider whether they want to dedicate their scarce resources to cultivating self-esteem. In my view, there are other traits, like self-control, that hold much more promise.

An inflated self-esteem is also associated with arrogance, lack of humility, self-righteousness, and also heightened relational problems. How then to break this addiction?

First of all, we need to become aware of the heightened price we are paying for our self-delusions. This can only come through suffering. However, more than suffering is needed. As Taylor had written, once the pain passes, so too does an accurate assessment of ourselves.

I found that facing my weaknesses, inabilities, and failures is so painful that I had to run from them, even after the intervention of five highly recommended psychologists. Instead, it was only through the love, forgiveness, and assurances of Jesus my Savior that I could begin to endure the truth.

People will kill when they are dishonored. This should give us some appreciation of how tenaciously we cling to our honor and high self-regard. Jesus had to show me that there was something better than my distorted self-appraisal. He showed me that I would do far better by living for Him than for myself.

I am still pained to see myself as I truly am. However, He reassures me that it is no longer about me but Him:

·       I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)

May He always remain first in my life!

SELF-ACCEPTANCE vs. THE FLIGHT FROM THE SELF

To not accept ourselves as we are is to go into hiding, a refusal to see who we really are. It’s even more than a matter of hiding from ourselves; it also entails the creation of a new self to take the place of the real one. It is this new self that we hold up to the world—and even to ourselves—as the real thing, even though it is but a mere façade, a front, a mask. It is an image that we demand the world to accept in place of reality.

How do we construct this new image to make it believable? We do it in many ways: through the designer clothes we wear, money, success, influence, power, popularity, the clubs we join, and even our educational attainments. We will do anything that will hide the real self and promote the new, idealized self. One dear friend—I’ll call him “John”—even passed out recently when his real self, with all of its warts and failures, began to emerge in an embarrassing social situation.

This quest to prove oneself is endless and life-controlling. It pits the two selves against one-another in trench warfare. The real self, although suppressed, is always trying to emerge. It is like an air-filled-balloon trying to rise to the surface in the ocean as we strenuously try to keep it down and out of sight.

In The Significant Life, attorney George M. Weaver documents this endless struggle in many ways:

• Salvador Dali once said, “The thought of not being recognized [is] unbearable”…Lady Gaga sings, “I live for the applause, applause, applause…the way that you cheer and scream for me.” She adds in another song, “yes we live for the Fame, Doin’ it for the Fame, Cuz we wanna live the life of the rich and famous” (7).
  

Comedian Al Jolson had achieved fame, but it was never enough to insulate him from jealousy:

• According to his biographer, “He once had a team of performing elephants fired because he thought the audience liked them too much” (59).

Weaver also documents people who have committed heinous crimes, especially against celebrities, so that they too could achieve some degree of notoriety and significance.

However, all our attempts to establish a new and significant self are doomed to fail. Ultimately, in the process, we alienate ourselves from who we really are and even from others. Relationships require the common ground that only being real can provide. When we offer an image instead of who we really are, there is little of substance with which to engage. It is like inviting a friend over for an imaginary meal.

When we accept ourselves and are no longer interested in designing a bubble—a bubble which we will allow no one to burst—we are offering our friend a real meal.

However, self-acceptance—confronting and receiving the truth about ourselves after years of self-deception—can be nearly impossible. It can be so painful that we would rather pass out than take a deep look at ourselves. However, avoiding who we really are is not a viable option. If we choose to live this way, we are forced to live as creatures of the darkness and the lie.

The battle between the darkness and the light can also bring on severe depression. It did with me. I had tried desperately to hold on to my constructed, idealized image of myself. However, in the midst of failures and rejections, it had become increasingly difficult. These setbacks plunged me into deep depression. Meanwhile, I continued a fruitless and exhausting war to keep my real self submerged.

This struggle brought me to several psychologists. However, they did not know how to lift me from my rut. Instead, they confirmed and tried to restore my constructed, idealized image by building my self-esteem. However, this served no purpose other than reinforcing my defensive bunker against the assaults of reality.

My friend John was told that he would need a pacemaker to keep his heart beating normally and thus avoid passing out. He almost had the pacemaker implanted until another specialist advised him that a pacemaker would not really address his problem. His heart was perfect. Instead, he had a psychological issue.

John now understands that his real problem was a failure to fully accept himself—including his failures and inadequacies. He has also come to understand the answer to his dilemma. He explained that he now accepts the fact that he has failed at so many things and freely admits that he has some embarrassing weaknesses.

How was he finally able to accept this truth about himself? He had returned once again to the fact that Christ accepts him just the way He is. Yes, he is inadequate—just like all the rest of us—but he has now re-embraced the truth that he has a Savior who is entirely adequate. This Savior cries out:

·       “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30; ESV).

We are all “heavy laden” and we all need His rest. Without this rest, we will continue to labor, fighting against ourselves, to maintain a costly self-delusion.