Are you being abused and violated by an Inner Terrorist?
Terrorism is a hot topic these days. I am constantly reminded as I walk through this world how many people live in fear. It is fairly common, or so it seems, that many people don’t know their neighbors – and don’t want to.
Many people seem afraid to address a stranger. I guess that’s symptomatic of all the fear, suspicion, and violence running amok these days, but – holy moly – I see people avoiding contact due to habit and fear, not common sense.
The inner terrorist is much more threatening than all of the external forces. It operates 24/7 and is one of the main factors in perpetuating the fear and suspicion.
Dealing with the inner terrorist
How can we effectively neutralize our tendency to undermine ourselves?
A.H. Almaas observes that:
As we have seen, the main reason we engage in meddling, resistance, and defense is that we’re afraid that if we’re vulnerable, if we’re open, if we allow ourselves to just simply be where we are, we will not be safe. Many people these days blame their insecurity on terrorism in the world. But the actual lack of safety is more a result of the terrorism that is inside your mind—the internal saboteurs. Our primary fear is that if we are open and let ourselves be where we are, we’re going to be belittled. We’re going to be rejected. We’re going to be humiliated. We’re going to be attacked. We’re going to be judged. We’re going to be criticized. We’re going to be shamed. We’re going to be made to feel guilty.
We’re afraid that other people will do these things to us and sometimes that actually happens. But more often, we do these things to ourselves. Have you ever said to yourself, “If I really let myself be vulnerable, I feel so delicate, sweet, and innocent. If people notice that, they will judge me as good for nothing”? Or maybe you’ve thought, “If I feel that sweet innocence, I’m going to get embarrassed. I’m going to be humiliated. It means I’m not strong. Somebody is going to reject me or shame me.” These worries are usually a projection onto other people of our own inner terrorist that’s scaring us.
All of these projections are examples of the obstacle of aggression. We normally think that aggression is about people killing or hurting other people. But for people who are on the inner journey, that’s only a very small part of it. The primary form of aggression for those on the path is their aggression toward themselves. We don’t allow ourselves to be open and vulnerable, to be where we are, because whatever we find as primary in that experience of vulnerability is often connected to a feeling of deficiency, and we might attack the hell out of ourselves for it: “You’re no good. You’re not enough. You’ll never amount to anything.”
Right away, we become afraid that somebody is going to think those things about us. But why do you always believe that no matter what, somebody’s going to think you’re not good enough? Why can’t you imagine that they might think something else? Is it likely that everyone on Earth is thinking the same thought—that you’re not good enough? Why doesn’t it occur to you that some of them will just think you’re weird? And that others will think you’re naive? No, you believe they will all think you’re not good enough.
Obviously, the common factor among all these people is that you are projecting onto them. This is one way that we avoid facing the primary component that is arising in our own experience. We rationalize, defend ourselves, justify ourselves. But to whom are we justifying ourselves? Why do we need to blame anybody? We simply are not comfortable about where we are, but we don’t want to feel that, so we make others responsible for our discomfort by projecting onto them our own reaction. Our focus is outward on them instead of inward on what’s true about ourselves.
What we’re seeing here is the activity of what we call the superego. The superego is a specialized part of our ego structure that has the job of making sure we live up to the standards we learned as children to survive in our families and communities. It does this by various means, including judging, criticizing, advising, warning, encouraging, threatening, and punishing ourselves in reaction to our thoughts, feelings, and actions. The superego is one way that aggression toward ourselves manifests, and it becomes a big obstacle to finding where we are and just being there. It is a major barrier to being ourselves, to being real.
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