In cognitive terms humans tend to compartmentalize. We identify ideas and perspectives and classify them as compatible or incompatible with our self-concept and system of values. Often the distinction is made on moral grounds. We tag the ideas of God, family, purity, joy and peace with positive attributes while denying the influence of greed, sensuality, violence and anger in our lives. We are averse to situations where these competing influences come into contact. We put one set of influences in a box labelled “good” and another in a box flagged “bad”, and hope they never come into contact. The juxtaposition of polar opposites such as peace/violence and purity/sensuality repel us, and when they do interact, we experience shame. If we are supposed to embody the attributes of the “good” box and shun those of the “bad” how can we be comfortable embracing the reality of both expressed in our lives? An honest assessment of the situation would convince us that we do, in fact, embody both sets of influences, but for the sake of our own self-perception, and to project an image of respectability to others, we hide the contents of our bad box in the furthest recesses of our mind where they wreak havoc. These influences are manifestations of what psychologist Karl Jung termed “The Shadow” – the embodiment of our dark side.
We could describe this shadow in terms of brain chemistry, brain morphology or higher brain function but ultimately these three form a holarchy which would collapse in the absence of any one component. A good starting point for discussion, however, is the contrast between the propensities of the Limbic System and Prefrontal Cortex.
Season 1 episode 5 of Star Trek the Original Series (The Enemy Within) illustrates this distinction quite well. Kirk is beamed up from the surface of a planet and arrives on the Enterprise as two different individuals. Their arrival is offset by a few seconds, so nobody is in the transporter room when Kirk #2 arrives and he is able to blend into the normal buzz of ships operations unnoticed. This situation doesn’t last long, however, as Kirk #2 tries to sexually assault a female crew member and receives some nasty scratches on his face. Meanwhile Spock has noticed that Kirk #1 is acting strangely. He seems listless, unmotivated and is unable to remember basic operating protocols. Eventually the dichotomy between the two Kirks becomes common knowledge among the ship’s crew and, after some analysis, Dr. McCoy identifies the following attributes of the two:
Kirk #1
- Love
- Compassion
- Intelligence
- Self-control
Kirk #2
- Aggression
- Decisiveness
- Passion
- Guile
What we see in these characteristics are the basic attributes of the Pre-Frontal Cortex and Limbic System respectively. Kirk #1 was completely incapable of performing his leadership role as Captain while Kirk #2 roamed the ship’s halls like a wild animal assaulting security details and officers alike, including Kirk #1. The solution, proposed by Spock and Scotty, was to reverse the polarity of the transporter and put both Kirks back through in the hope that the two personalities would be merged back into one individual. This (spoiler alert) strategy turns out to be successful, and an integrated version of the Captain walks off the transporter platform, with confidence and grace, to resume his directorial duties.
On the surface the moral of the story is that the more bestial aspects of our nature are as necessary to our functioning as are the more human ones, and that the only way a person can function is by integrating both aspects into their being. Jung adds to this the following maxim – we habitually deny the influence, possibly even the existence of this shadow in ourselves. Having been raised by parents who played the role of our PFC until ours was fully formed and integrated into our being (a process of emotional maturation) we learned to have a very poor view of those behaviours, beliefs and attitudes that were so frequently censured in our youth. One focus of this parental nurturing process is the frequent admonition to care for the feelings of others. This exhortation towards empathy lays the foundation for many of the skills necessary to function as members of a social group, be it a family, collegial troop, religious community, gardening club or society as a whole, and yet we all fail repeatedly. We cheat, violate social mores, lie, let our loved ones down and hate ourselves for it.
This sense of self-loathing causes us to resist the more beggarly qualities we see in ourselves, but rather than addressing their manifest reality we resist their expression in others. This external-focused aversion creates a destructive cycle of tension that both exacerbates our personal situation and reduces our ability to redress it. Jung encapsulates this truth in the statement:
“what you resist not only persists, but grows in size.”
Herein lies a key point – the use of the word “resist” differs from its use in James 4:7 where James states:
“Resist the devil and he will flee from you”
Jung is not saying that the only way to keep our Chimp in check is to stop resisting it. The resistance to which he refers could better be described as denial. Rather than accepting the truth that we share the propensities and capabilities of the rapist, murderer and thief, we deny (resist) this reality. Because we hide these tendencies behind a mask which turns both inward and outward, in an attempt to disguise our true nature from ourselves and others, we become blind to it. But this does not prevent us from seeing our shortcomings in others. We become judgmental and condemn the people in our lives while being blind to those same principles at work in us. As Jung put it:
…it is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to recognize the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil.
This quality of self-observation (shadow perception) rarely observed in human kind, is a pre-requisite to the acceptance of reality. Rather than familiarizing ourselves with the contours and features of the face described by Jung (our true moral appearance) our tendency is to put it out of our minds, and do as described in James 1:
22 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23 Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror 24 and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.
As bizarre as it sounds, this level of self-deception is pretty much the default mode of human operation. We all tend to see ourselves as decent up-standing citizens and that it is those around us that need rehabilitation. Jesus was well aware of this axiom and described it in Matthew 7:
3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
We can’t see the plank in our own eye because we deny (resist) its existence. Perhaps this is the quintessential application of the word hypocrite (play actor). We are playing out the role of the righteous one in our own minds when in reality our flaws are at least equal to those of the people we disdain. That plank in our eye used to be a speck, but our denial of its existence allows it to grow without restraint. Ironically, we can’t resist what we resist to acknowledge.
A major component of Christ’s ministry was the delivery of this message to the people, and he used the Jewish leaders of the time as his prime antitypes. Their challenge in recognizing their own plank was twofold, firstly they were entrusted with interpreting a law which defined the parameters of righteous living. This enabled them to mold each precept to their own advantage and insure that their Chimp remained satisfied while at the same time, in their own minds, they were abiding by the rules. Secondly, they believed it was possible to perfectly observe their interpretation of this law and that their job was to be seen by their followers as doing just that. It’s hardly surprising Christ describes them as hypocrites and blind leaders of the blind. The ability to deny their own shadow was practically part of their job description. Nowhere is this presented more clearly than in Christ’s parable recounted in Luke 18:
9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ 13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ 14 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Denial is the wool the Chimp pulls over the eyes of the human. It allows the Chimp to operate in stealth mode. But where in the Bible do we find a description of this Limbic/PFC dichotomy. In his letter to the Romans, chapter 7, the Apostle Paul describes the two warring minds as the mind of the flesh and the mind of the spirit:
5 Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. 6 The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. 7 The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. 8 Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God. 9 You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you.
This passage provides some context for this book’s title – The Spirituality of Addiction. It frames the struggle between the human and chimp, as a spiritual conflict. All of our addictive behaviours are rooted in the mind of the flesh, a mind that operates independently of the desire for self-improvement and self-preservation. The mind of the flesh is death in both the temporal and the eternal sense. Even in an illegal drug market, such as that in Western North America – which has been contaminated with lethal levels of Fentanyl – addicts continue to use, knowing that their next fix could be fatal. Feeding the appetites of the limbic loop has become, for them, more important than life itself. The strength of a Christ-centered approach to recovery, as promoted by in the 12 Step Program of Alcoholics Anonymous, is that it brings the spiritual nature of the conflict into full view, thus promoting life and peace.