NOT KNOWING AS A FORM OF SELF-ATTACK
The illusion of omniscience presupposes that we are both aware of everything and that we know everything. Rationally, this concept is so absurd that we can easily pronounce it invalid, yet we are willing to accept less obvious versions of it that result in unreasonable (if not impossible) goals, standards, and expectations. These subtle versions of sagacity might not sound as grandiose as the word omniscience, yet they are adaptations of it and must be acknowledged as such. This is the case because eventually our inability to attain and/or maintain such overinflated standards (no matter how subtly they are posed) will lead to self-attack.
Such adaptations of omniscience usually involve something we think we should have known either about ourselves, someone else, or a life situation. It can also involve a decision or behavior that we have engaged in. When we hear ourselves uttering the phrase “I should have known,” this is an indicator that we are in close proximity to a belief in our own omniscience. We are either telling ourselves that it was possible to foresee things in a prescient manner (and we just failed to do so) or that we should have had total recall of all that we do know. It also presumes that there were no other impinging factors in play.
In order to get past this idea that we “should have known,” we have to first acknowledge that we have strayed into omniscience territory. We may not think we have, but we have. The second thing we have to do is question our assumption, however subtle, that omniscience is ever a valid possibility. The third thing we have to do is to consider all the other factors that are in play when we are unable to perform to the level that we aspire. Fourth, we have to forgive ourselves for not knowing everything, i.e., we must consent to being human.
Let’s take a look at the assumption that it is possible to be aware of everything. The truth is that human beings are extremely limited in their scope of awareness. Our defense system blocks huge amounts of incoming information, and our faulty thought processes (beliefs, transferences, misperceptions, etc.) skew what does come through. In addition, we are mostly reliant on our five senses, which limits our ability to gain awareness through other extrasensory pathways. Most of us are not even aware that there are other pathways for awareness/knowledge, and those who are aware of them certainly have not yet developed all the possibilities for using them. In fact, humans are more unaware of things than they are aware of them. It is a given; we all lack awareness in one way or another. We all have areas of not knowing.
Not knowing something can and usually does result in behaviors that we engage in from a place of blindness and now wish we had not done. Typically they leave us mortified beyond belief and scrambling to redeem ourselves. These behaviors brought on by not knowing are often seen in one’s youth, but can follow us into adulthood if we fail to gain self-awareness. Oftentimes they result in tremendous self-judgment and self-loathing that can leave us very depressed.
Since these types of unconscious behaviors are not willful, we cannot categorize them as purposeful behaviors. They come from a place of obliviousness and are driven by biological needs, emotional needs, anxiety, depression, pain, immaturity, low self-esteem, and/or inexperience. Here we are unconsciously trying to achieve a sense of physical and emotional equilibrium more than deliberately hurt anyone with our behaviors. While it is true that our impulsive strivings to reinstate our inner equilibrium can result in behaviors we would never condone in our current state of awareness, at the time we are engaging in these behaviors, we are innocent.
Still, we excoriate ourselves for not having known. We deride ourselves for not having been perfect. We attack ourselves rather than face the painful consequences of our behaviors or the specter that someone may find out and judge or abandon us. We attack ourselves because once we have gained awareness, we cannot bear to know that we have hurt someone as badly as we have. We attack ourselves because we are good people who did not act in alignment with our inner core of goodness, and this hurts us greatly.
Oprah Winfrey has shared a gem that Maya Angelou once told her, and that is, “When you know better, you do better.”1 This is so true, for we can only act in accordance with what we know. We should let this truth in.
Not knowing better is not a criminal offense. If we ever really knew the degree of our pain, need, and anxiety that underlies our blind behaviors, we would drop to our knees in deep sorrow for ourselves. We would wail over the wrongful and vicious beatings we have visited upon ourselves, appalled at the sadistic way we have thrashed ourselves over every little imperfection. We would look at ourselves with deep remorse and undying compassion. We would take pity upon ourselves. We would have mercy and understanding.
Yet mercy and understanding are not easy to achieve; it is hard to register just how many disappointments and hurts we have had throughout our lives without blaming ourselves. It is difficult to acknowledge how unloved we have felt, how misunderstood we have been, or how unsupported we have been without experiencing an element of self-hatred. It is harder still to face how broken and needy we may be as a result of all this. It is this broken, needy self that we judge so harshly and that is deeply in need of our love and understanding.
Once we can face the broken self without recrimination, we can get on with life in a much happier way. We can do it in a manner that does not demand fulfillment of unrealistic goals, impossible expectations, and perfected self-awareness. We can do it being the protector of our self rather than its executioner.
Sometimes we ask ourselves why life would bring us experiences that exceed our ability to effectively cope. Given our level of development, such experiences cannot be faced with maturity and knowingness. After all, this pretty much guarantees that we will behave in a manner that we later wish we had not. Upon giving it thought, it seems that learning through our own experience is the only real way that we absorb anything. The situations that we do so poorly with are presented for our growth. They are learning laboratories, not tests. We were never expected to do well within them. If we have muddled through with a new awareness or a new learning, we have done well.
In these learning situations, it is good to be humble. In the overall scheme of things, we are still children figuring out the basics. We are not perfected beings here to prove how unflawed we are. We probably would not even be here on this planet if we were perfected beings.
What gets in the way of our humility? Perhaps it is the way we take in strict religious, parental, or educational training, always striving to be so good and pure. Yet truly perfected beings do not strive simply for good qualities. They are perfected because they have learned that perfection is having all aspects of self and loving each and every one of them. Perfection is not defined by goodness. It is defined by wholeness.
Ironically, when we are attacking ourselves for one imperfect aspect of our self or another, we are way off the path of perfection. Instead, we need to head straight for our imperfections, embrace them, and smile upon them with great tenderness. Then we will be back on the track to both perfection through wholeness and forgiveness for not knowing.
In our quest for wholeness and self-forgiveness, we might consider the possibility that all of life’s situations (no matter how badly we do with them) are part of our established path. We could not be here doing what we are doing if it were not established. It is all part of our intended growth path no matter how badly we think we are messing things up. This alone can be very comforting as we come to realize the level of support this universe provides.
Aside from our religious, parental, and educational training, our own narcissism can make it difficult to give up our obsession with goodness and purity. It is tough to admit that we have little, weak, needy, selfish, out-of-control aspects of ourselves. It can be humiliating and embarrassing, especially if these aspects have been criticized by others in our past. However, we need to remember that our narcissistic strivings are mostly about maintaining an image of glorious, transcendent, non-human perfection, power, and control so that we can feel better about ourselves (not because we are megalomaniacs). It would be better to give up protecting our image and get on with the business of getting to know and accept all those supposedly unacceptable things about ourselves.
Sometimes we look back at all that has occurred in our lives and understandably grieve the lost time, the lost relationships, and all the lost opportunities. Truly there can be a lot of loss that we accrue while we are slowly but surely gaining our awareness. Yet all we can do is keep on moving forward, staying present, and doing the best we can. If we do this, the quality of our lives will improve. More than that, if we can just hold steady, remain grateful for what we do have, and maintain a broad perspective, oftentimes our losses are restored in the most amazing ways.
So let’s not get too carried away with the glories of instant awareness, insisting that our inner child know things it cannot yet possibly know. Let’s be content to be growth-oriented human beings who valiantly seek and patiently participate in our own individualized plan. We must try to be persistent seekers and humble learners.
The deep embarrassment, shame, and self-recrimination that can come from not knowing are all forms of self-attack. Consequently, we must work with them as we would any other self-attacking feeling. To find relief, we have to first become aware that we are attacking ourselves, which can be determined by noticing if we are entertaining thoughts or experiencing feelings that are disparaging to our self. Then we must determine what lies beneath these disparaging thoughts and feelings (perhaps shock, disbelief, betrayal, disappointment, disillusionment, loneliness, neediness, anger/rage, sorrow/grief, fear/terror, or helplessness/powerlessness. We must then agree to stop using our self-attack as a shield against these underlying feelings and consent to experiencing them. They may be intense and possibly painful, but not one of them will feel as bad as the original self-recrimination. None of them will involve our worth or lovability. All of them will feel blessed by our willingness to hear them, and all will be helped by the use of our cognitive tools.
When working with our self-attack, it is important to remember that regret and self-recrimination are not synonymous. Regret manifests as a sorrowful feeling of remorse while self-recrimination involves a charge made against an accused. The latter is usually accompanied by self-loathing, guilt, and shame. This is what we are trying to avoid.
Some of us believe that in order to be truly regretful, we must pay penance through self-denial, self-loathing, guilt, shame, and anxiety (even if our behaviors were due to a lack of awareness). Consequently, we think of our self-recrimination as a good thing — that it is somehow balancing our transgressions. Unfortunately, it does nothing of the kind. It just contributes to more self-loathing.
Sometimes we feel the need to pay penance because we are not aware of the human need that underlies our regrettable behaviors. We do not understand that we may have acted inappropriately, hurtfully, or stupidly because we were deeply yearning for something. Our behaviors may have been motivated by a need to alleviate our deep loneliness, to be heard and understood, or to feel a human connection. We may have been desperate for validation, searching for worth, or aching for the feeling of being special to somebody. We may have even had the need to release some of our repressed anger or save ourselves from something we deeply feared. None of these things demand self-flagellation, especially if we did not know the needs that motivated our behaviors to begin with.
So often we attack ourselves by saying, “I knew better and did it anyway.” However, this is most likely not the case. Granted, we may have intellectually known about the ethics of the situation, but probably did not know about all the underlying emotional factors that led us to our regretted actions. All must be taken into consideration when we start talking about knowing; there are precious few of us who have a conscious, working knowledge of our emotional self. We need to ease up on ourselves for we know a whole lot less about what motivates us than we think we do.
Aside from the way we attack ourselves for our own unconscious behaviors is the way we attack ourselves when someone else behaves unconsciously and hurts us with the things they say and do. This is so common that it might even be considered a universal state of affairs.
Those who hurt us with their lack of awareness do not know what they are doing any more than we know what we are doing when we are bumbling around in the dark. Many of them have no idea how to love. Sadly, they are tremendously lonely people. Yet we relate to them as if they do know how to love, but are just withholding it from us. We then choose to believe that there is something wrong with us; otherwise we would be getting their love. But the reality is that they do not have a clue. We could be perfect and they still would not have a clue.
Much of the time the way they relate to us is from a place of belief about the way this or that should be done (discipline, control, roles played, etc.). Perhaps they relate to us in the way others related to them, which may have been sorely lacking or downright abusive. Then they keep doing it over and over until it dawns on them that they are lonely and this is not working. Sometimes they go a whole lifetime without this realization. Even the most perfect child born to the unaware person can do nothing but provide life experience for that parent from which he or she might eventually learn. We must never measure our own worth against the unaware person whether it is a parent or a friend or a lover. It is such a colossal loss of our time and energy.
Sometimes we strike out to teach these people how to love. We show them what it is. We show them what it looks like. We try to bring them along. Sometimes this works and sometimes it does not. It all depends on their readiness and ability to grow. It also depends on their own life path and the experiences they need to live out. It has no bearing on whether or not we were successful in bringing them along. If they are not ready to know how to love, they are not ready to know how to love . . . period.
It can be hard to realize that some individuals whom we have looked up to all our lives as parents, spouses, or friends have been oblivious all along, empty all along, lacking all along. It can be such a shock to realize that we have imbued them with qualities they never had, capabilities they never had, and awareness they never had. It is never easy to see that we have relied on a fantasy and measured our worth against an illusion.
While it is sad and upsetting to realize this, so much of our self-attack fades away with this knowledge and is replaced by not only a sense of compassion for ourselves, but for the offending party as well. If it is someone close to us that we have previously had issues with, our frustrations melt away in the light of our new-found realization. Our hearts go out to their lonely plight. We feel for them even as we know we must set boundaries with them for our own protection. We are saddened over their having gone through a lifetime of emptiness and isolation. Concurrently we are lifted by the knowledge that we were never lacking to begin with and that our worth is intact.
Whether it is we who have erred from a place of obliviousness and/or inexperience or someone else who has erred for the same reasons, it is always best to go forward with the understanding that when we do not know something, we are truly blameless. We may have to contend with the fallout from our actions, and we may have to take responsibility for any damage incurred, but we should not excoriate ourselves for what we did not know. We can only learn from our experience; that will have to be good enough.