Your First Feeling…
W
hen I was 19, I worked as a gold-panner and prospector in northern
Canada for about 18 months, saving money to go to university.
Every couple
of weeks, I would go into town, have a nice dinner and perhaps go to a disco.
One night, I started chatting up the prettiest woman at the bar. I found it rather difficult to talk to her, though, because she kept glancing around. We chatted for about 15 minutes – though her responses were mostly monosyllabic – and then she excused herself, because she wanted to go and talk to a friend.
I sat at the table for about 20 more minutes, not knowing if she was going to come back, feeling increasingly baffled and irritated. When she finally did return, she said she had to go. I asked her for her number – she sighed, and told me that she would prefer it if I gave her my number.
I did, and then spent the next day hoping that she would call.
Two nights later, after working out, I was sitting in a sauna, and realized that she hadn’t called me. I felt a stab of disappointment – which I immediately smothered by taking a deep, sudden breath and forcing myself to think of something else.
I had recently read my first book on psychology, and so, catching myself, I decided to relax, slow down my breathing, and actually
feel
my disappointment.
Shocking, I know
!
This began a lifelong process for me of re-learning how to trust my emotions
.
It’s no fun to live life as if you are inhabited by some malevolent demon that is constantly
“shooting you up” with random high-stimuli emotions that will inevitably mess you up in some manner.
Setting us at variance against ourselves is a prerequisite for exploitation
.
A man at peace with himself cannot be exploited, except through direct violence
, which the ruling classes quite sensibly shy away from.
A man at war with himself remains jittery, insecure, consumed with self-management, overeager for approval, unable to set boundaries
, always available to work overtime. He feels generally unworthy of keeping his property, unable to challenge any of the moral rules that enslave him…
He lives a life of fear and self-subjugation
.
It is this self-subjugation
that breeds political, religious and tribal subjugation.
It is self-slavery that creates our masters.
We sell ourselves
before
we are bought by others.
Slowing Down…
Our defences work by creating a “rush to react,” which smothers our genuine instinctual and emotional responses.
Sitting in the sauna all those years ago, when I felt my stab of disappointment that the girl had not called me, I immediately began to make up excuses as to why my disappointment was invalid:
Ahhh, it’s her loss.
She wasn’t that pretty anyway.
Maybe she lost my number.
She might call.
Etc.
We all know these endless litanies of excuses that we invent to smother our genuine emotional reactions. We live life so frightened, so unstable, so consumed with self-management, that we become cheap lawyers, petty sophists – ready, willing and able to talk ourselves in and out of
anything
.
Self-manipulation is our medication.
Mythology is our drug.
The only cure is honesty
.
When I made up
“answers” in a “rush of reaction” to my genuine emotion, I was engaged in a fundamentally religious approach to reality.
I was not exhibiting any kind of curiosity about myself, about my emotional reaction to the girl not calling. I experienced a stimulus that I considered
“negative” – and so just made up an “answer” to make the stimulus go away.
This is exactly the religious approach – when religious people experience
“negative” stimuli, such as doubt, they make up answers to make the stimuli go away.
When we do not know where life came from, or how old the planet is, or what makes the lightning, we can either ask questions in all humility
according to the scientific method - or we can just make up “answers” to wish our doubts away.
In the latter case, clearly we are not interested in establishing the truth, but rather in magically turning our ignorance into
“truth.”
This habit is the eternal curse of our species.
When we are faced with the question “How are the children to be educated?”
or “Who will build the roads?” saying, “Just give a bunch of guys a bunch of guns to make it happen,” is a complete and total non-answer.
When we are faced with the question,
“Do my parents really love me?” saying, “Yes, because they tell me so,” is also a complete and total non-answer.
The Truth We Repress…
Once I began to explore my feelings of disappointment about the girl not calling, some fascinating insights began to arise.
First of all, it became clear to me over time that I was not disappointed in the fact that the girl had not called me, but rather I was frightened by my desire for a girl who would not call me.
I chose her in that bar because she was very pretty. I ignored the fact that she was quite rude, and was constantly looking around the disco while I was talking to her. I ignored the fact that she abruptly got up and talked to a friend of hers for 20 minutes, leaving me sitting in the booth, twiddling my thumbs and wondering whether I should stay or go. I ignored the fact that she gave me a very scant smile when I ask her for her number, and said, “Why don’t you just give me your number instead?”
In other words, the reality
was that I was disappointed in
myself
, not in the girl.
And I was afraid.
Why was I afraid?
Well, I was afraid because I was putting my heart in danger.
I was afraid because, by choosing women who were obviously not very nice based entirely on their looks, I was putting myself in considerable danger. Not just in terms of disappointment, but in terms of getting into a relationship with a cold, selfish and manipulative woman – and, God forbid, having children with her – which could truly ruin my entire life.
By attempting to repress and ignore my disappointment, I was placing myself in considerable danger of ruining my life – and the lives of my potential children
, which is even worse.
“
Negative” feelings are designed to protect you, in the same way that physical pain is designed to protect you.
My feelings were telling me that my approach to women was going to put me in grave danger throughout my life. The value that I placed upon a woman’s looks – in complete opposition to the definition of love
we have talked about in this book – left me wide open to disastrous exploitation.
As it turns out, that was not the end of the story either…