Reverse Thinking

What to do when you meet a guru

In Reverse Therapy we teach people that no one is wiser than anyone else. That the only expert that there can be on your life is you. Bodymind and your Personal Genius should be your sole teachers (along with those very few partners and friends who understand both).

Gurus are people who claim to know more about how you should live your life than you do yourself. Some of them have good advice to give; most do not. And even those who know something you don't may not know an awful lot of things that you do.  But the worst problem is that many gurus are, in fact, undesirables. Like:

          Gandhi (Bully, Nazi-supporter)

          Gurdjieff (Alcoholic/food addict)

          Stalin (Alcoholic)

Adolf Hitler (Sexual pervert)

Mao-Zedong (Sadist)

L. Ron Hubbard (Sexual abuser)

The Maharishi (Sex pest)

Osho (Sex addict - also had unresolved Chronic fatigue syndrome)

Charles Manson (Murderer)

Jim Jones (Sex addict).

The list isn't just restricted to these famous names. There are many therapists, self-help experts and politicians out there with similar attitudes. I also know of a few famous (and not so well-known) gurus still alive whose private activities have little to do with their preachings.

If you set someone else up as your guide to life then you are giving away your power, your self-respect and your mind. You are forcing yourself to wear somebody else's spectacles. You may even have become a member of the herd that follows that particular leader. I have written before about how slavery can be bad for your personal health. In another post - Murderous obedience - I described how psychological experiments have mapped out the steps through which exaggerated respect for authority can lead to murder.

When you deliver your judgment over to a guru, you are also creating an idol out of that person. And glossing over the fact that that person will be at least as much screwed-up and (sometimes) clueless as you are. In a way that is different from you but just as real.

But the problems that Gurus have as human beings is really by the way as far as you are concerned. The problems they have belong to them, not to you. Your mission in life is to work to reduce your own personal weaknesses while at the same time fulfilling your mission for being here. And no one else can show you how to do that.

Here are some useful clues that will help you spot a guru:

• Claims to have access to a special revelation denied to other people
• Is always right
• Tries to look different to everybody else (flowing robes and uniforms are a favourite)
• Has some weird ideas, mingled with some common-sense ones 
• Claims to have unique powers denied to the rest of us
• Talks a lot about spirituality and/or her god-given mission
• Claims to be saving people from bad forces
• Complete inability to laugh at himself
• Works hard at putting across a 'charismatic' personality
• Will never talk about her private life
• When criticised will either get very aggressive or condescending with you

And here's what to do if one of them comes on to you:

Watch the Mike Myers' movie, The Love Guru (3 times), before parting with your money, your virginity, or your sanity. This will also help recover your sense of humor.

Hire a private detective to find out more about their private life

When they start to preach, laugh  (they will conclude either that you are an idiot or a competitor, and will lose interest either way).

Ask lots of questions. And go on questioning the answers you get.

Keep reminding yourself that no one can know more about your life - and its unique problems and experiences - than you do.

Trust in your Personal Genius.

Why guilt is useless

Guilt is a delusionary state. It doesn't serve you at all and is a creation of the imagination; of Headmind's drive towards conformity.

Here's how Headmind creates Guilt:

1. Headmind is stuffed full of judgments about the person you could be, should be, should not be, etc. Those judgments were not originally your own but inherited from other people. But gradually you internalised them and they became self-judgments.

2. These judgments are re-activated by parents, teachers, priests, employers, children and partners who may be exploiting you.

3. Your Headmind buys into those judgments because it seeks acceptance, conformity, and admiration (even from people who don't deserve your respect).

4. Dwelling on occasions in which guilt comes up - and Headmind judges you - creates uncomfortable Bodymind reactions: cringing, agitation, distress. Although Bodymind creates that discomfort in order to warn you not to indulge in guilt, Headmind interprets this as a signal that you are, indeed, a 'bad' person, worthy of punishment.

Here's another way to understand 'Guilt':

1. Earlier societies did not recognise a psychological state known as 'guilt'. For them 'guilt' was simply another word for 'debt' (as in the German/Saxon word: 'gultig'). It simply meant that one person had harmed another and was unable to put things right. For example, one person stole another person's property but was too poor to pay it back - therefore he was 'guilty' and subject to the penalties of the community.

2. Religious influences gradually changed this original meaning of guilt into 'personal sin'.

3.  When Psychology started up in Germany and America in the 19th century it took over religious ideas about 'sin' and reinterpreted them in terms of 'good' and 'evil' actions. So doing one 'bad' thing made you an 'evil' or 'guilty' person - instead of someone who simply made a mistake.  

4. Mistakes and 'bad' actions you committed in the past were based on the knowledge you possessed at the moment you committed them, no matter how daft. For example: you shop-lifted, knowing you couldn't afford something but that you 'had' to have the item anyway. You let the Headmind state of greed get the better of you.

5. Therefore your past mistakes were based on inadequate knowledge (you thought it was ok to steal, or that you wouldn't get caught, or that it wouldn't matter if you did get caught). Your predictions turned out to be wrong, although you didn't  realise that at the time.

6. Your present self-judgments are based on a false premise: your present self blames your past self even though your past self did not possess the experience of knowledge your present self now has.

Here is the truth:

1. You did not actually have free will back then when you committed your error of judgment. You did what you had to do at the time because you lacked Awareness.

2. Indulging in Headmind worry (i.e. analyzing over and over again about what an 'evil' person you were/are) may actually get in the way of your attempts to put things right.

3. If you have really done somebody wrong you could connect to the emotion of remorse and get on with making amends, rather than wasting time on guilt.


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Schopenhauer - a philosophy for grumpy people?

In my last article - Can feeling grumpy be good for you? I mentioned one of my favourite philosophers - Arthur Schopenhauer - who was a grumpy old man already by the age of 19. I first read him at 15 and developed a 'bah humbug' attitude which was delicious and self-indulgent while it lasted although I no longer think it is clever - or even profound - to be pessimistic about life. Even so, I still think that Schopenhauer possessed a genius for philosophy. (He also wrote a lot about sex).

Here are a few gems:

After your death you will be what you were before       your birth.    

Everyone takes the limit of his own field of vision for the limit of the world.

The conscious mind may be regarded as a kind of parasite of the organism, a pensioner, as it were, who dwells within the body.

If you want to know your true opinion of someone, watch the effect produced in you by the sight of a letter/email from that person.

The two enemies of human happiness are pain and boredom.

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.

Console yourself by remembering that the world doesn't deserve your affection.

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.

There is no absurdity so obvious but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to introduce it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity.

The closing years of life are like a masquerade party, when the masks are dropped.

Compassion is the basis of all morality.

Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark on the face, especially the eyes.

The greatest of mistakes is to sacrifice health for any other kind of reward.

There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome.

In my next article I will write about the advantages - and disadvantages - of pessimism for life.

Why you can't just do what you want

This is the follow up to my article on The Dice Man the week before on Anything Goes?

In which I referred to the anti-hero who makes all his decisions by shaking the dice.

Specifically, he comes up with SIX possible outcomes for any given situation. Then he rolls the dice to decide which he shall follow.

For example the situation might be:

A person unknown to you keeps looking at you when you go to the bar. Your six possibilities might be:

1. Hit her.

2. Put Rohypnol in her drink.

3. Ask her if you've met before

4. Ask if she has a squint

5. Ask for sex

6. Talk about things you might have in common

You shake the dice and are obliged to follow that 'choice'.

But here are my objections to the Dice Man's Theory:

1. Stupid people will come up with six dumb choices (like most of those above)
2. Insensitive people might come up with six unimaginative choices (ditto)
3. Emotionally unintelligent people could come up with six abusive choices (ditto)

The idea that shaking the dice can make your decisions for you is also wrong on three important counts:

• Headmind may not have enough experience or imagination to think up some worthwhile choices
• Bodymind may not approve the choices made for you and may react with disgust
• You can't just use the dice to further the illusion of free will. You don't have free will because your body (amongst other things) always forces the 'right choice' on you

The idea of letting the dice rule our lives might free us up from rules, conventions and worries but it won't teach us how to be real human beings, happier, wiser, or even self-actualizers.

Handing control of your life over to dice is the same kind of cop-out as is handing over control to drugs, other people, or fate.

Image by art makes me smile

Remorse

An interesting email response to my recent article on Evil - 'Mad, Bad or Just Dangerous to Know?', from Linda, who has some profound thoughts to share:

"I once knew a man (a USAF Colonel) who told me that his definition of evil is when someone does something they know is wrong and they feel no remorse.

I've always liked that definition because it means that at some level of our being, we know we have done something wrong. And therefore remorse matters, not just the wrong-doing. This applies not just to the immoral but also to the amoral (those who seem to have no sense of right or wrong), I suspect they have just squelched the divine in them so much, they don't allow it any expression.

Which brings us to that fundamental reality, that at our core we are all divine. So you are correct in saying there are no evil people."

People have a tendency to get into a guilt mode and re-wound themselves. We easily can turn guilt into self-hate. Which means we've turned the attention back on ourselves. But in true remorse, we feel compassion for those we've hurt. Our attention is on others, not ourselves. So it is apology, not guilt that matters. I mean real, true, heart-felt apology."

Now, I agree with Linda that remorse matters. I also agree that, at some level, we know when we have offended against life (other people, ourselves, the divine). Where I disagree is that people who have no capacity for remorse are 'evil'. For me they are mad (another word for 'amoral'). I have written about this in connection with Psychopaths before

For those of us who are not just psychopaths I want to write some more about remorse and its relation to Bodymind.

First up, I would argue that remorse is based on the emotion of disgust. It is a state of revulsion in which we recoil from the harm we have done to others. It crucially depends on our capacity for empathy (the basis for compassion), which, in turn, depends on our personal emotional intelligence. It is significant that psychopaths aren't able to exercise empathy.

Now what is interesting about remorse is that Bodymind doesn't let us alone until we have done something about it. In the original French, 'remorse' means 'rebite'. That is a pretty neat metaphor for what happens when we don't make amends for the harm we have done: remorse keeps biting away at us, giving us uncomfortable, incongruent, anguished sensations. Until we remove the pain through repentance, care, apology, compensation, love.

I don't believe this is divine though, just very human.

Image by The Sagamore Journal

Mad, bad, or just dangerous to know?

My latest request for an article comes from Helen, who wants to know what I think about evil.

This seems especially relevant given the recent headlines about the Baby P case and the conviction of Sean Mercer in Liverpool for the 'murder' of Rhys Jones (excuse the quotation marks but I don't understand why Sean Mercer was convicted of murder when he was shooting at other kids - surely he should have been convicted of manslaughter?)

I have brooded on this for a while now and, reluctantly, I have concluded that there is no such thing as an evil person. Reluctant, because it makes life so much simpler if you believe in Evil with a capital 'E'.

The most loathsome human being I have ever met was not the paedophile who came to me for therapy seven years ago. Nor was it the gangster I once met who had killed seven people. Nor, even, was it the terrorist who had shared in numerous bomb attacks on innocent civilians. They all of them thought that either they couldn't help themselves (the paedophile), were fighting back against their enemies (the gangster), or were resisting injustice (the terrorist). They were not evil people although I would argue that they were responsible for evil actions.

The original meaning of the word evil is 'transgression' - someone who breaks the rules or breaks the limits of acceptable behavior. It is only very recently (inspired by a Christian use of words) that the term was applied to human beings. But if you are going to go around saying that some people are evil then you are also buying in to the idea that there is a principle of evil in the world (called 'Satan', 'Ahriman', 'the Devil') through which these human beings have been taken over. But I don't accept that for the simple reason that human beings are driven by other causes - by their delusions, by the abuse they have suffered from others, through loyalty, by the belief that they are martyrs, because they are schizophrenics or alcoholics, or simply because they don't understand virtues like compassion, empathy and charity.

To sum up: the dangerous word 'evil' is used as an evaluator not as a description. Only actions can be evil, not people.

  'If you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss gazes back into you.' Nietzsche

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