Discerning Untruth: Creative Reflection and the Path to Freedom

This is the fourth in a series of five posts on the jour­ney of unlearn­ing roles and life-scripts that inter­fere with effec­tive lead­er­ship and per­son­al ful­fill­ment. If you like, you can hear me read this post.

The oth­er posts are:

The Jour­ney of Unlearning
Lead­ing is Not Act­ing: What Roles Do You Play?
The Cost of the Script

In the last two of these I have sug­gest­ed a fair­ly log­i­cal approach to sep­a­rat­ing from the roles by first describ­ing and nam­ing them, and then assess­ing their costs and ben­e­fits. But this bare­ly scratch­es the sur­face, and may not “loosen” the script from the per­son suf­fi­cient­ly to effect real change. Tran­scend­ing a role depends on rec­og­niz­ing its fun­da­men­tal untruth, and the untruth of the behav­iors that sup­port it. For exam­ple, if I clear­ly see myself repeat­ed­ly play­ing out the role of “weak prince” in a series of jobs, see­ing it also in my cur­rent COO posi­tion, I still may not be able to free myself. Even if I look hard and hon­est­ly at some of the behav­iors that are tied to this role, such as blam­ing oth­ers for my inabil­i­ty to cre­ate change, mak­ing promis­es I can­not keep, or giv­ing away my author­i­ty, I can­not sim­ply snap my fin­gers and exit the role. This is because the role has some ben­e­fits (well, I do get to be a prince, after all) and it is ingrained, mean­ing the role is a very famil­iar path­way for me. It’s part of my com­fort zone, and it is also at least part­ly uncon­scious.

If I do want to go deep­er, I can do so through a process of cre­ative reflec­tion. I invite into aware­ness what the behav­iors and the role they sup­port mean about how I see myself, and how deep these beliefs go. To get to this lev­el requires more than log­ic. It requires astute self-obser­va­tion and the per­son­al will and open­ness to dis­cov­er what is as yet unknown to me. For exam­ple, as weak prince, I might notice how per­son­al­ly pow­er­less I feel; how envi­ous I am of those with more charis­ma. I might notice how dis­hon­est I am with oth­ers and then reflect on how dis­hon­est I have been with myself about my effec­tive­ness. I begin to ask myself with a kind of ruth­less curios­i­ty how I actu­al­ly see my self in the world. As I pur­sue this inner space and mean­ing, I increas­ing­ly become a mir­ror for myself. It’s not at all unusu­al for things that are hap­pen­ing in the world to sud­den­ly become bet­ter mir­rors to me, too. This is a mat­ter of syn­chronic­i­ty.

I real­ize more ful­ly than ever that if I main­tain my under­ly­ing beliefs, I will con­tin­ue to play the role in a pat­terned and unsat­is­fy­ing way. The role, like a mask I can’t take off, will be liv­ing me rather than the oth­er way around. This is the jump­ing off place into more impor­tant reach­es of reflec­tion. In fact, with­out the next leap, noth­ing is like­ly to change, for the next move is to invite the uncon­scious or sub­lim­i­nal con­tent of the role “right into the liv­ing room” of aware­ness, to make a space for it. This can be done in a myr­i­ad of ways, all inter­pre­tive, all sym­bol­ic in the begin­ning, but lat­er, with increas­ing evi­dence, into a firm under­stand­ing of the role’s nature and essen­tial untruth. The role and how it is played out begin to look like a trea­sure chest part­ly buried in the sand. If it can be ful­ly dug up and opened it will reveal a for­tune in jewels. 

The “myr­i­ad of ways” is pri­mar­i­ly artis­tic. But not in the sense of accom­plished or refined art; sim­ply as a means to offer oth­er­wise uncon­scious mes­sages a bet­ter chance to make them­selves known. This is entire­ly with­out regard to the “skill” lev­el of a per­son. Paint­ing, music, poet­ry, (even blog­ging!), undi­rect­ed jour­nal­ing, “guid­ed med­i­ta­tion,” dream analy­sis, and med­i­ta­tion — all these and more may be effec­tive so long as there is the clear inten­tion to explore in depth the nature of the role, what­ev­er it is. The weak prince, might cre­ative­ly decide, for exam­ple, to write him­self a series of let­ters from an unnamed “king.” All this is com­plete­ly imag­i­na­tive but often quick­ly reveals that there are mes­sages to be received from an unknown source, a psy­cho­log­i­cal “you’ve got mail” from an unknown sender (who turns out to be you). And so, in a way, the real per­son deal­ing with the role dives head­first into the pool of what is mean­ing­ful, although not nec­es­sar­i­ly lin­ear or logical. 

Any tool may be used, as long as it rep­re­sents the cre­ative voice of the role com­ing for­ward. My per­son­al exam­ple is the book of med­i­ta­tions and pho­tographs I offer in the right side­bar, called This Raft of Self. In it I explore the role of “the Fer­ry­man” and come to a real­iza­tion about how that role frag­ments me. The process is one of tak­ing my gifts for writ­ing and pho­tographs and lit­er­al­ly div­ing into the role; exem­plif­ing the role through this piece of work. And that, I believe, is exact­ly the path. Be the role in a high­ly cre­ative way so that what becomes clear are all its bound­aries and con­straints, and per­haps its dra­ma, too — though that may be more about me that you!

Let me share just one exam­ple of what I mean regard­ing cre­ative reflec­tion. At co-facil­i­tat­ed work­shops in the past, I have asked par­tic­i­pants to each draw a man­dala, using Judith Cor­nel­l’s beau­ti­ful book as a gen­er­al guide (see also the right side­bar). Draw­ing man­dalas is a well-known method for self-dis­cov­ery with ori­gins in Carl Jung’s extra­or­di­nary work as a psy­cho­log­i­cal explor­er and theoretician. 

Once they had cre­at­ed their man­dalas, we then asked par­tic­i­pants to explain their draw­ings to one anoth­er. Amaz­ing dis­cov­er­ies have often come out of this process. A can­di­date for pres­i­den­cy of a com­mu­ni­ty col­lege saw how small he made him­self in com­par­i­son to his world. The leader of a social ser­vices agency saw her need for con­trol in the fence she’d drawn around her cur­rent role. And a man­u­fac­tur­ing man­ag­er tear­ful­ly dis­cov­ered that he could­n’t “out­fox” the exer­cise — one that he thought was “non­sense” — for what he soon saw in his ran­dom scrib­bles was how he had uncon­scious­ly drawn a pic­ture of his own fam­i­ly mem­bers and the emo­tion­al dis­tance he had moved away from them. 

The mes­sages were all there, but some­thing else was present: a com­mu­ni­ty of peo­ple, all sim­i­lar­ly engaged in self-learn­ing, to help inter­pret and offer feed­back. With­out that com­mu­ni­ty, my belief is an indi­vid­ual can eas­i­ly get lost or stuck. It’s not impos­si­ble for insight to come while alone, but the process is like­ly to move much faster when a vari­ety of oth­er view­points implic­it­ly chal­lenge the abso­lutism of the role and the beliefs beneath it. The roots of these scripts, I am con­vinced, are unknown to us unless we dig them out of the ground, and we can almost always use some helpers for that work. 

The beau­ty of this artis­tic self-dis­cov­ery process lies in the fact that the draw­er and what is drawn are not dif­fer­ent. In this way a man­dala — or a poem or a pho­to­graph — can become a rev­e­la­tion. Because all roles rep­re­sent reduc­tions of a human being, the mes­sage is uni­ver­sal: you are not just x, what­ev­er behav­ior or role is called out. X by itself is untrue, some­times even ludi­crous. You are not, weak prince, with­out charis­ma (how­ev­er unformed it is today); you are not, can­di­date for pres­i­den­cy, too small for the job; you are not, dis­con­nect­ed man­ag­er, too far from your fam­i­ly (though you may need to take action lest you lose them — “And look here, you’ve drawn a vine that still con­nects all of you — tell me, what is that vine?”). These mes­sages are not just intel­lec­tu­al ones. Those were appar­ent from the begin­ning. These are the emo­tion­al and spir­i­tu­al mes­sages, just out of aware­ness, that are final­ly capa­ble of pen­e­trat­ing the essen­tial wound­ed­ness of our under­ly­ing beliefs. In a moment, the beliefs can bring up all their numbed-out pain and also reveal their essen­tial fic­tion. The essence of this jour­ney is the unlearn­ing of a self that no longer works. The man­dala often dis­plays both the life script and the door­way out. 

I recall a work­shop in which some­one point­ed out to anoth­er par­tic­i­pant that a par­tic­u­lar­ly firm line in her man­dala looked like it was immutable, as if there was no escape from the life she had drawn. At this the par­tic­i­pant bris­tled and became angry, but not at the oth­er par­tic­i­pant, just her­self. She could see imme­di­ate­ly, visu­al­ly, how she’d allowed old hurts to con­tain her life in a way she no longer want­ed. That moment more than shift­ed her entire expe­ri­ence of her­self at the work­shop. It was an moment of dis­rup­tion, of dis­lodg­ing a boul­der, of mov­ing out of an old self.

For those of you who may be skep­ti­cal, please feel free to hold onto your skep­ti­cism. This process, pre­cise­ly because it is organ­ic if not a lit­tle mag­i­cal, does not work every time for every per­son. This is not a machine, not “soft­ware,” only a prin­ci­ple of inner explo­ration. Whether the appli­ca­tion of that prin­ci­ple will pay off depends on many things, includ­ing the readi­ness of a per­son to allow the mes­sages and their inter­pre­ta­tions to come through. And if not today; if not with this par­tic­u­lar medi­um, then another. 

It should be point­ed out that all mes­sages from the unknown, those that come up “out of nowhere” in the process, and those that may be received from a mem­ber of a learn­ing com­mu­ni­ty, must still be test­ed against real­i­ty. Ulti­mate­ly, the mea­sure of the effec­tive­ness of the method is whether a per­son expe­ri­ences a high­er degree of free­dom and self-affir­ma­tion while retain­ing a strong ground­ed­ness in “what is.” The test, in fact, is whether one is released from fan­ta­sy. This means the weak prince might dis­cov­er for him­self that:

…I have pow­er above and beyond cleverness
…I have a pres­ence I am just begin­ning to understand
…I am not essen­tial­ly weak
…I am oper­at­ing in a com­plex world, not a pure­ly treach­er­ous one

And most impor­tant­ly the mes­sage is that “I am not the weak prince I thought I was. I play that role only if and when I choose. I retain my skills, but am able to open into new pos­si­bil­i­ties. I am free only if I give up the ‘infla­tion’ of believ­ing I am a prince — who was I ever to think I was one?” There may be clues here why sim­ply focus­ing on pos­i­tive self-mes­sages in per­son­al learn­ing process­es is not enough. We can­not over­turn the hid­den voic­es of our roles by sim­ply singing to our­selves loud­er about how good or deserv­ing we are. We must first see through the old songs, see how par­tial and even emp­ty they tru­ly are, while acknowl­edg­ing their neces­si­ty to growth. Indeed, when dis­cov­ery comes, we see imme­di­ate­ly how an old role has helped us, even pro­tect­ed us against things that were too big to deal with from any oth­er stand­point, how it was a way to illu­mi­nate and deploy our emerg­ing gifts. We are grate­ful for the help the old role pro­vid­ed, in the way we might be grate­ful for a crutch that helped us get through the world while injured. And we are also grate­ful for know­ing that we have anoth­er life to live.

The psy­chol­o­gy involved here is based in Jun­gian views of com­plex­es and the found­ing pat­terns of human expe­ri­ence called arche­types. What’s most impor­tant about this ter­mi­nol­o­gy is that it lets us under­stand how to build a bridge to free­dom by learn­ing how to stand at the por­tal between unknown and uncon­scious worlds and known, con­scious ones. And hav­ing escaped old roles, which are real­ly a form of pos­ses­sion by what is uncon­scious, we are now ready to open up our lives in new ways.

How­ev­er good that moment of self-dis­cov­ery is, it often brings up anoth­er pro­found ques­tion: if I am not that, what in fact am I? We wait at that moment for what J. Krish­na­mur­ti called the “strange bene­dic­tion [that] comes when it will,” the bene­dic­tion that “brings with each vis­i­ta­tion, deep with­in … a trans­for­ma­tion; it is nev­er the same.”

More in the next and final post in this series on the jour­ney of unlearning.

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