The Dynamics of Falling Upwards - I : The Beauty and The Beast

It is a fearful thing, to fall into the hands of the living God... Hebrews, 10:31

I often use the expression "false self", or "dear self", or "shadow", and I wonder if I am making clear what I am speaking about. So I will attempt to explain it, because this notion is important for our understanding of who we really are, and where (more or less) we start when we find ourselves falling upwards. 

Here is a helpful clear description of the notion of “psychological complex” from the book by Dr Polly Young-Eisendrath, “Women and Desire: Beyond Wanting to be Wanted”. The author is an American Jungian psychanalist. Italics are mine.

“Psychological complexes compel us to repeat the emotional themes from childhood, especially in our adult partnership and parenting. Unless we become conscious of these complexes, they rule us through subjective impulses and images that seem to be reality. Complexes are the psychological karma that we bring with us from our families of origin. We came by them honestly when we were dependent on others for survival and sustenance.”

This is what Fr Thomas Keating in his book “Open Mind, Open Heart” calls “a false self”: emotional and behavioural patterns set in motion in infancy and childhood, when the needs determine and shape our existence. He distinguishes three main “centers” of the false self: the need for security/survival; the need for power/control; the need for affection/esteem. Around these – legitimate! – needs the false self is constructed by the ways we find as children to adapt to the world in order to have them satisfied, and to cope with frustration when these needs are not satisfied. For Fr Keating, the task of our life is to grow out of these patterns, to surpass and integrate our needs in order to reach our full human maturity which alone enables us to stand in direct, real, reciprocal, free relationship of love with God and fellow-creatures.

“When our complexes are hidden from our awareness, they can become monstrous, dampening our vitality and motivation. The experience of pervasive discontent and a futile kind of inner emptiness are symptoms of hidden complexes in their uglier forms. Unacknowledged longings and fears manifest themselves as strong drives that may appear in dreams and fantasies as demons, snakes, floods, earthquakes, threatening intruders or hungry ghosts who could consume us. They may appear in waking life as addictions and compulsions that make no logical sense”.

We often think that complexes are symptoms of mental or psychological illness. When we say that such-and-such is “full of complexes”, we imply that he/she is not normal, and sometimes secretly congratulate ourselves that we are not “like this”. In fact, being “full of complexes” is either pretty normal, or we are all sick: complexes, shadow, false self, patterns, whatever we call these parasites, are present in all humans just because… Yes: here comes the dreaded notion of the original sin. Just because we are all born under the spell of the original sin, the false self, like a tumor, envelops and strains our true identity, our soul – Godlike, mighty, free. 

This happens in all of us, although not to the same degree nor with the same violence. There is nothing abnormal or exceptional about it, and nothing shameful either – although the Church “helpfully” promoted this feeling and maintained people in a state of guilt for ages… But in reality, this is just the way it is, that’s all: a fact of life.

We are in the same boat. The beauty and the beast in you will fight until you die; but at least, you can choose to fight for your life on the side of the beauty. This is not simple nor easy choice, because your true soul and your loving heart are hidden from your eyes; just like the Saviour, who changes forever the face of the world, is concealed in Bruegel’s “The mill and the cross” in the middle of the crowd, and for the same reasons.