SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS
IS THE OPPOSITE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
by Forrest Church
April 15, 2007
I have a very simple point to make this morning. Consciousness and self-consciousness are opposites. In fact, they are mutually exclusive. We cannot be conscious, awake to a world of deeper meaning, and self-conscious at the same time. Bill Coffin once said, "there is no smaller package in the world than someone who is all wrapped up in himself." When we are all wrapped up in our worries, guilt feelings, and insecurities, rather than being a part of the world we inhabit, we are apart from it: self-absorption excludes us from that world. Rather than reflecting on life and its meanings, we get lost in our own reflection.
Mirrors play a role in many well-known stories. Aesop tells the fable of a dog with a bone in his mouth who walks past a pond and sees a dog beneath the surface holding a bone at least as big, maybe bigger. Suddenly envious of the reflected dog's bone, he opens his maw and bares his teeth to attack, leaving both him and his reflection boneless.
Mirrors can confuse us in other ways. By studying ourselves in them too intently, we become self-conscious and insecure. We obsess on little flaws, magnify them, and project our fear of their being noticed into a thousand innocent eyes.
You all know the story of Narcissus, that beautiful flower of a boy, who grew so enamored of his reflection mirrored in a still, deep pool that he wasted away on the banks of the water and died. One variant of this tale has him lean over to embrace his mirrored image, fall into the river, and drown. In both tellings, this picturesque Greek legend warns against the dangers of self-absorption.
As a teenager, I remember throwing around the term narcissist long before I knew its source. A narcissist was anyone who skipped lunch in order to have a full half hour to comb his or her hair. Other narcissists came to school not so much to be seen as to be heard. They were the kids you tried to remember not to ask "How are you?" It was their favorite subject. They could go on and on. We called them stuck up. We made fun of them behind their backs. But also we secretly envied them, because they seemed so pleased with themselves, so much more pleased than we were. I didn't realize back then, but they too were probably insecure; this was simply their way of compensating. My way of compensating was doing everything possible to disappear into my locker whenever a pretty girl walked by.
The word narcissism took on a larger significance in the 1970's. Sociologist Christopher Lasch wrote a book on the narcissistic trends in our culture, coining the term the "me generation." Books with titles like Looking Out for Number 1 soared to the top of the best sellers list. "He who dies with the most toys wins," became troubling emblems of an entire generation. Thirty years ago, when I was auditioning to be your minister, my second candidating sermon was entitled, "Watching out for Number 1." Any society in which people were so caught up with themselves that they had no time to lend a hand to their less fortunate neighbors teetered on the edge of moral bankruptcy.
Without disowning what I said back then, today I have a slightly more nuanced take on the subject. Drawing from three-decades experience, observing my own and others' foibles along the way, I have concluded that the most common form of narcissism is not self-love. Precious few people of my acquaintance seem in danger of being destroyed by self-love. In fact, the opposite is the case. By definition, narcissism reflects unhealthy self-absorption, and the narcissistic danger most of us face is not the result of self-love. It springs instead from profound and debilitating self-doubt and self-despite..
Suicide, for instance, is a narcissistic act. We become so completely absorbed in our own troubles that the only way we can imagine solving them is to paint ourselves out of the picture. Contemplating our reflection in a deep, still pool, we drown by attempting not to embrace, but rather to strangle it.
That is the extreme case, of course. Most of us find other, less violent, ways to cope with our pain. Even so, much of the pain that we do end up coping with on a daily basis often comes from an overwhelming sense of inadequacy, awkwardness, incompetence, unattractiveness, shyness, and general insecurity. If narcissism is self-absorption, we are far more likely to be absorbed by negative self-images than positive ones.
The effect can be just as estranging. "What will he think of me?" "How do I look?" "If I speak, will I say something stupid?" And then, and hour later, "He must have thought I was an idiot." "God, I looked terrible." And, "How could I have said that stupid thing?" This too is narcissism, and in its most familiar form.
Why do we feel inadequate as often as we do? For one thing, being human is intrinsically awkward. We are not driven only by instinct. We make thousands of little decisions every day, from the moment we wake up in the morning to right before we drift off to sleep at night. The simplest doubt—did we choose the right clothes when we got dressed this morning?—can keep us off-balance all day long. Because we doubt ourselves, we naturally assume that others must be questioning us as well, shaking their heads as we pass, wondering what we could possibly have been thinking when we pulled that particular combination out of the closet. Rather than being conscious of the world around us, we fixate on how we appear to the world around us.
I am not speaking here about what psychiatrists refer to as narcissistic disorder. I am referring to that might better be described as garden-variety narcissism, the bitter fruit of self-consciousness that most of us taste when we find ourselves in a awkward situation. Yet, both forms of narcissism estrange us from others. When we are painfully self-conscious, the one thing that we almost always fail to notice is that others may be experiencing the same feeling. By obsessing on our own sense of awkwardness and inadequacy, we tend to cut ourselves off from others, who, though we fail to notice, are just as human, just as foibled, as we are. Even as we know how we are feeling—odd, conspicuous, out of place—we tend to perceive only how others look—pretty good, confident, self-assured. The resulting sense of self-consciousness blocks us from identifying with others, who may well be looking at us with equally mistaken eyes.
Since self-consciousness is a form of narcissism, the secret to overcoming it lies in breaking the grip of self-absorption. Little things that may possibly happen to expose or embarrass us—all the million "mortifying" ways in which we can, figuratively speaking, spot our ties—won't cause much of a blip on any radar screen beyond our own. Therefore, when we find ourselves fixating on our inadequacies, the best thing to do is turn off our own monitor and tune in to someone else's. Group therapy is often successful because, by listening to others, we discover that they feel just as inadequate as we do. Problem solving with a friend also places our problems in perspective. The mirrors we look into improve greatly when the thing that catches our attention in them isn't us. The goal is to devote our precious attention to something more abiding than mere appearances. Lose yourself and be found, Jesus said. When we lose ourselves, time passes like a dream, not a nightmare.
Let me focus this more sharply. Think about All Souls. Are you a living part of this congregation or, though present here, even as a regular visitor, set apart from it, unsure of how to break through your own shyness or sense of inadequacy to connect. So you find excuses for participating. You hold yourself back, in seeming self-protection, from participating more fully a community that needs you and which you, in fact, may need.
I'm not singling a few of you out, when I say this. It is something that almost all of you confess when you talk to me about the possibility of joining All Souls. You love the Sunday service, but are uncomfortable in coffee hour. Of course you are. In church, you can hide. In coffee hour, if you are new here, either you end up feeling conspicuous because you clearly don't know what you are doing, standing there all by yourself, or you end up feeling awkward when attempting to present yourself, when trying to act natural while striking up a conversation with a stranger. It can be mortifying. I know. It happens to me every time I enter a room of strangers. It can also be avoided, time and again, by sneaking out of church unnoticed.
So lets try an experiment this morning. When those of you who are new around here go down to Friendship Hall today, remember this. You see others who are happily engaged in conversation or activity—just remember that when they first went down to coffee hour, they too felt awkward and conspicuous. To the extent that they don't feel that way anymore, they had to break through the barriers of their own self-consciousness.
As for those of you who now feel sufficiently at home here that your self-consciousness is for the most part reserved for other places and occasions, please remember how you felt when you first went down to coffee hour. Remember this feeling and make a special point of reaching out to someone you don't know. Greet them and help them feel at home.
What I'm saying may seem banal, but its not. It cuts to the very heart of why we are or should be here. Replacing self-consciousness with consciousness is one of the most important things that we can do together in this church, our little village in the city. Not only to make people feel at home here, but to help them feel at home in themselves, with others, for others. It is central to our mission, captured in our very name: All Souls: together to break down barriers, encourage self-acceptance, forgive one another's human foibles, spring both them and us from the tyranny of self-absorption, from the illusion of inadequacy, to liberate our energies for love.
Any religious institution worth it's salt should be dedicated to raising the consciousness of its members, but until we can break through the barrier of our individual self-consciousness, this goal is simply unattainable.
By the same token, when we cast aside our unlovely self-absorption, we follow in the teachings of the scriptures. When open ourselves to others and for others, when we lose ourselves, when we shed our debilitating self-consciousness, we are found. When we empty ourselves of our unholy self-absorption, we are filled with the spirit of neighborliness. When we look into the deep, still pool, we are drawn, not into a narcissistic contemplation of own disturbing reflection, but into a deeper contemplation of our shared humanity.
All the world's great scriptures find a way of making this same point. When the Buddha said that suffering is the bane of the world and that to escape suffering is to enter Nirvana, he too—painting on a broader spiritual pallet than I have employed this morning—was reminding us that consciousness is the opposite of self-consciousness. We have to break through our own suffering not only to attend to the needs of others, but also to enter a higher state of being.
To help you muster the courage to go down to coffee hour or to break through your crippling self-consciousness in some other way today or in the week to come, let me close with three simple antidotes to self-consciousness, which I first spelled out in my little book, Lifecraft. To liberate our lives from self-absorption, I have found three practices to be of particular value. Easy to remember, because each begins with an "e", they are empathy, ecstasy, and enthusiasm. The literal meaning of each words contains its key. Empathy means, literally, "to suffer or feel within another." Ecstasy means "to stand outside ourselves." And enthusiasm means "to manifest the god ('theos') within us."
Empathy is deep compassion. When we open our hearts empathetically to another, we dare to refuse to let self-consciousness stand in the way of higher consciousness, and become intimately aware, in a felt way, of what another is going through. This serves both her and us. By shouldering another's burden, we shift weight away from our own.
As for ecstasy, which I hinted at two weeks ago in my sermon, "Let it Rip," far from being as self-indulgent as it sounds, ecstasy takes us outside ourselves as well, lifting us from our familiar haunts to life's inner and outermost horizons, where we can soar free. When we stand outside ourselves, self-consciousness no longer circumscribes our existence. We enter a realm in which purpose emerges and meaning can be found.
Enthusiasm, finally, is exactly what the word says—filled with holy energy. Rapt, energetic involvement—in a book, game, or shared project—is the essence of enthusiasm. Here, once again, consciousness displaces self-consciousness. We escape from our mirrored room. Its mirrors turn into windows. Or the pond grows so still that we can see beyond our own reflection to the trees and clouds and birds and sun. There is, by the way, no higher form of spiritual practice. When we step out of our own shadow, consciousness replaces self-consciousness,.
I have had to practice this myself in recent months. I did so, when, faced with the prospect of a death sentence, my wife reminded me that my death belonged to her and our children—yes and to you as well— as much as it belonged to me. Freed from the veil of self-absorption, consciousness displaced self-consciousness. I became a part of a saving circle, not apart from the source of strength and light.
We can only go so far on our own in this world. The sad thing is, we may refuse to walk beside of others who need us and whom we need, because we are unsure of our own steps, and don't want anybody else to know how easily we might fall. Rather than risk embarrassment or expose our sense of inadequacy, we stand apart. Confusing self-consciousness with consciousness, we disappear into our shadows.
It doesn't have to be this way, being alone together, unable to see through our own tears into the tears in another's eyes. In fact, by stepping out from our own shadows, by looking beyond our mirrored image to focus on a world full of seekers, sisters and brothers just as fragile, just as flawed, just as human as ourselves, when night finally falls—which it will, and sooner than we imagine—if consciousness has displaced self-consciousness, we may see beyond our own reflection all the way to the stars.
Amen. I love you. And may God bless us all.