On the Cave of the Intrapersonal

We seem to be more aware than ever that suc­cess in busi­ness, as in life, requires self-aware­ness. Self-aware­ness offers us the advan­tages of under­stand­ing our own think­ing and bias­es, gives us greater capac­i­ty for emo­tion­al reg­u­la­tion, and a deep­er appre­ci­a­tion for our val­ues. “Emo­tion­al intel­li­gence” is only one the lat­est prod­ucts of a long his­to­ry of philoso­phers, artists, psy­chol­o­gists and soci­ol­o­gists advis­ing us to “Know thy­self.” And who can be against such a dic­tum? Indeed, we can be defen­sive any­time we get infor­ma­tion that shows we do not know ourselves. 

Yet against this tra­di­tion is anoth­er that val­ues action over self-exam­i­na­tion, that places results ahead of val­ues or oth­er sub­jec­tive con­tent. In the hard-edged world of prof­it and loss, such mat­ters as feel­ing and expe­ri­ence may be viewed as too touchy-feely and navel-gaz­ing to be attend­ed to or (if we must attend to them) are sim­ply seen as part of a com­pen­sato­ry pack­age used to sat­is­fy unmo­ti­vat­ed employees.

We have, in effect, a deep ambiva­lence about the actu­al process of self-knowl­edge and what val­ue it has. Because we can­not eas­i­ly see its con­nec­tion to achiev­ing out­er gold in terms of a bet­ter life, it’s hard to see why we should pen­e­trate the cave of the intrap­er­son­al to find the inner gold.

So here’s a the­o­ry, if you will, based on my inter­pre­ta­tions of what I’ve read over the last forty years or so, and my own expe­ri­ences. There are too many authors and books here to cite, but if you want to know more you can always read Robert Bly’s small clas­sic, “A Lit­tle Book on the Human Shad­ow” or just about any­thing by Robert John­son.

As chil­dren we are taught to grow up in such a way that parts of our­selves that were unac­cept­able to our pri­ma­ry care­givers were quashed. Any­thing that did not fit their own images of who they want­ed us to be — as an exten­sion of them­selves — became risky, unac­cept­able, and even­tu­al­ly less con­scious. We typ­i­cal­ly work pret­ty hard at this project of grow­ing up, even­tu­al­ly cov­er­ing over some major con­ti­nents of per­son­al­i­ty. Of course, some of what gets cov­ered over, such as destruc­tive emo­tions or impuls­es helps us func­tion as part of soci­ety, so all that’s an appro­pri­ate and inevitable thing. How­ev­er, oth­er parts of us that are valu­able and good also get cov­ered over in the process — per­haps our native “big ener­gy,” or our cre­ativ­i­ty or oth­er kinds of intel­li­gence that don’t fit the care­givers’ model. 

But here’s the deal. No mat­ter how much a per­son grows toward that image of what they should become, there’s still an access point some­place to the whole, orig­i­nal per­son. It often has its own life, if it has not been com­plete­ly throt­tled, but get­ting near that inner hole (which I said in my last post was real­ly also a well) can be uncom­fort­able. We are prone to say a num­ber of things when we get close to it:

“I know myself already, don’t I?”
“Yes, but know­ing what’s in that hole won’t help be make more money.”
“I don’t real­ly see a hole or a whole.”
“Prove to me that enter­ing that cave will have value.”
“I don’t see the point of exam­in­ing that pain; can’t you pre­scribe me something?”
“I feel emp­ty. There’s noth­ing down there.”
“I don’t want to go there to find out how I real­ly am.”

All of which, in their way, from ratio­nal­iza­tion to depres­sion, are tools of avoid­ance because, after all, we real­ly don’t know the inner con­ti­nents, and while they might hold a cer­tain attrac­tive mag­ic, they also by the time we are adults can be pret­ty scary. We want some­how to make the inner ques­tions some­thing more than emp­ty, painful or anx­i­ety pro­vok­ing. And even if we try yet again to design a val­ue sys­tem that attempts intel­lec­tu­al­ly to inte­grate the inner world we may come up per­son­al­ly short-hand­ed — because rea­son is not the whole enchi­la­da. This is not to say that attempt is unim­por­tant — it is, in order ulti­mate­ly to con­tribute to human under­stand­ing and need­ed shifts in the cul­ture, but it may not be enough for the “me” that is oper­at­ing in the world right now, a me that is here deal­ing with these chal­lenges, deal­ing with the pri­vate facts of a real life — from job dis­sat­is­fac­tion to life dis­sat­is­fac­tion to break-ups in impor­tant rela­tion­ships, and back again.

And so that’s the way we too often think of the inner world, as a place you go in pain or empti­ness only to find more pain and more empti­ness. And under such a sup­po­si­tion, why would any­one enter the cave? Because it’s good for us? No. That would nev­er be enough. To find the truth. Yes, but that may not be enough either, in the moment. We go because we have no choice? Well, maybe, but we are pret­ty good escape artists. 

In a world flush with fast, con­crete, behav­ioral answers to inner ques­tions, with calls to action at the very moment qui­et reflec­tion might have begun, it is easy to miss the mouth of the real cave. It is easy to miss the steps lead­ing down into the daz­zling dark­ness. To answer the ques­tion, “why go there” is to notice the busi­ness-like ques­tion of a rea­son­ing mind try­ing to pro­tect itself from fal­ter­ing, try­ing to defend the per­son­al­i­ty it has built around itself. After all, our rea­son may be built, in part, on the cov­er-up of our full, true natures. 

Why go there, indeed! Only what we find in the cave can ulti­mate­ly tell us why we have decid­ed to go that way. And we can­not find those rich­es with­out enter­ing. So this is the conun­drum, one that can­not be bro­ken if it is nev­er seri­ous­ly considered.

Per­haps you’d like to take a crack at the answer.

(Here begin the steps down…)

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