Comment from a reader on this blog post (existential kink: undoing ourselves with radically owned honesty):
“I feel that a lot of zen buddhist people also cover up a lot of anxiety about living life fully, and try to spiritually worm out of the experience by following a set of rules, whereas they often do not go for the full experience of life, as if they don't trust they will always end up again at the same point of choosing love - but this time, because they have deeply felt it themselves, not because someone else has told them so. (…) Going more and more with a flow, that sometimes feels totally weird or off morally, but trusting that following our own behaviour fully is bringing us directly to accepting the world and ourselves as we are.”
It’s tempting to alter our outward behavior and present ourselves as more enlightened and morally virtuous than we actually are. By adhering to rules and self-censorship, we gain social approval, boost our self-worth, and enjoy the simplicity of knowing what is right and wrong. Eventually, we may begin identifying with this self-created moral persona, leading to a “Barbie-fication”—a plastic self-image and a performative version of ourselves in social relationships.
This pretending—even when unconscious—is not progress but regression. It prevents me from honestly seeing myself and reality, leaving me to settle for a local optimum: still an ape, just now dressed in a tutu.
The journey from self-alienating social conformity to fully embodying and expressing my own way of being human is filled with crises, dissolution, falling apart, emotional chaos, and confusion. It’s a process of undoing—deconstructing the stories and conditioning that kept me in line—thereby creating the space to discover and design what it means to be me.
In a society that values care, order, consistency, social desirability, “keeping it together,” and mindfulness, this positive disintegration (a term borrowed from K. Dabrowski) can be blocked. I will hesitate to leave the local optimum in fear of losing relationships, status, or being diagnosed and institutionalized. As a result, I never stray far enough to escape the gravitational pull of social conformity, and I deny myself the chance to feel and become what lies dormant in the deepest caves of my being.
But:
Selfishness and egoism can be closer to selfless compassion than self-deprecation and self-sacrifice disguised as humility and care for others.
Anger and blaming can be closer to inner peace than a dissociative freeze disguised as contemplative achievement.
Harmful, anti-social behavior can be closer to self-love than covert self-harm and internalized aggression.
Chaos, crying, and falling apart can be closer to inner peace and self-love than the conventional containment of an alienated mind and body, paving its way to burnout and depression.
The loneliness and sadness of not fitting into any spiritual community are closer to true belonging than self-censoring, alienating conformity.
Shouting at the neighbors to turn down the music might be closer to meditation than silently sitting on your cushion, visualizing fire consuming their house.
How long will I fool myself? Why do I believe the wild animal that roars within me is less “me” than the delicate persona I present? The truth reveals itself continuously in the intimacy of my solitude and the rawness of my relationships. The moment I stop pretending, the pristine collage of my fabricated self disintegrates.
Radical honesty—fully owning what lives in my body—launches me on a path of truth. Only by suspending judgments of right and wrong can I begin to see what’s real. Seeing the truth is the first step on the path to self-insight, self-discovery, and spiritual growth.
Progress isn’t about emulating my image of an enlightened being—smiling under the Bodhi tree. Quite the opposite: this striving can blind me to what is real and hold me back from the disintegration that often involves antisocial, dysfunctional, or even pathological behaviors on the path to liberation.
Pretending to be more spiritual than I am is worse than doing nothing and simply being ordinary.
Let’s take it easy.
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