Moore

Introduction

I have to do it; I’ll feel so guilty if I don’t! I just don’t know—what’s the right thing to do here? I got mad, but then I felt so guilty I took it all back. I’m so tired, but they need me; so I just have to be there. I feel guilty all the time!" On the surface, these statements might not seem to be problematic, but they are made by many of my clients who are so identified with being good that they don’t even know they are trapped in a false identity. They have no clue that there could be a different way of living, an alignment with their authentic Self that just might be very different from their current striving to be good enough, a striving that seems to define them. They don’t know what they want. They don’t know what they need. They can’t tell the difference between an obligation and genuine compassion. When it comes right down to it, they don’t even know who they are. They are utterly lost to an identification with goodness.

But there is another way, a way that is healing, uplifting, and empowering. It is the way of the authentic Self. The difference is that the authentic Self generates its actions from the core essence of the soul. It lives, like an ancient oak tree, solidly from its roots. It does not need to define itself by a striving for a sense of worthiness based on constructs generated by the familial, social, religious, and cultural world. It operates organically, from its roots up, rather than from its branches down—and when it gives it does so from its own natural and internal processes. We can come to live from our own very natural, organic internal processes by defining and integrating our true nature. We will then respond to all of life from our genuine core—the authentic Self. This book is meant to facilitate our awaking to the power and presence of that Self.

My Story

As a practicing psychotherapist with over thirty years of experience in the mental health field, I have worked with many people who have lived whole lifetimes with the goal of striving to be good so that they won’t end up being worthless. These people come from families, religions, societies, and cultures where they learned to define themselves as good people. They are obligated to that goodness in a way that ends up not being so healthy for them. They must be good at all costs, and the cost is often high.

I began to notice this particular kind of client early in my career. The sheer number of them forced me to study the psychological and spiritual elements of their dynamic interaction with goodness. The first thing that became clear was that they came from both dysfunctional homes and homes that seemed, at least on the surface, to be functional and even healthy. So, at first, I didn’t fully understand how they could have identified with goodness so deeply as to believe that being good was tantamount to survival itself. But, as time went by and more and more clients revealed the interior depths of their struggles, the story of the good-guy identity began to take shape and form. As the work of therapy unfolded, both my clients and I began to understand that owning the authentic Self was the key to healing this identity.

The good-guy identity forms early in life when a child imprints to goodness as a way of surviving. The good guy can be male or female (throughout the book I’ll refer to both genders interchangeably), but whatever the gender, the good-guy identity shuts the authentic Self out of awareness. The good guy defines herself as a good person who is always striving to be a better person, and this becomes the central theme of her life. Everything else is secondary to this central theme. She must be goodness and she must be seen as good. The identity is a mask and costume, though many have no idea they are wearing it; so she is often unaware that it has become the central motivation for living. This identity, including exactly how it is formed and the kinds of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors attached to it will be clearly explained and illustrated in the chapters of this book.

Over the years, I have frequently been a privileged participant in the process of awakening that occurs when a client realizes that there is a vast difference between being real and identifying with goodness. I have been so fortunate to be an observer when the authentic Self of a particular client walks into the room and joins the conversation. And I have witnessed the awesome power of the life change that occurs when a person wakes up fully and begins to think, emote, and behave from the Self.

I have also had my own deep associations with this concept of being good, which of course drew me to understand it as well. In my own psychology, religion had once been the way I would become a worthy person. That sense of unworthiness that haunted me in my early years would, I once thought, be resolved when I finally became good enough to feel worthy. It turns out that being real—being my authentic Self—has been the healing I was always looking for.

Over the years of my own personal and professional growth, as I talked to friends and family about goodness, I began to understand that we all have at least some psychological associations with goodness. We all come from a world where we are raised to be good, to do the right thing. But if we look around in that world, we see that some people identify with it in ways that trap and hold them captive to deep, painful feelings of guilt, driving them to make decisions that are self-negating, even self-abusive. In my private practice I saw so many of these people that it became apparent that they needed a book of their own, one that would both help them see the problem with an identification with goodness and also help them to find healing. This is that book.

How This Book Will Help

It’s hard to talk about identifying with goodness as a problem because goodness is, well, good. When it comes to naming the various problems in the world, goodness is not typically the first thing that comes to mind. That is exactly why this discussion is needed—to expose the nature of this problem, its common outcomes, and how we can heal and resolve it. While later chapters will explore the good-guy identity with a great deal of depth, what can be understood now is that identification is a way of becoming something. The something we become is meant to help us survive in a world that seems to require that we put on an identity to be safe in some psychological or even physical way. For the good-guy identity, this means that he must become goodness itself.

If we really think about what goodness is, however, we have to admit that there is no clear, objective definition that is standardized across all nations, cultures, religions, and families. What is good to one group of people might be bad to another. So essentially a person who identifies with goodness can only identify with the version of goodness they grew up with. This makes identifying with goodness quite problematic when one considers the various things that a child can pick up, especially things that a dysfunctional family might consider to be good. When we think about these skewed definitions of goodness becoming an identity, what we will come to know is that for many who identify with goodness, serving and sacrificing for others becomes a primary way of thinking, feeling, and behaving. For those of us who identify as the good guy, these methods of being good seem to prove worthiness on a fundamental level.

The core problem with this is that when a person’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are all about taking care of others, this tends to eliminate the ability to recognize genuine thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. This makes that person easier to fool, manipulate, use, and abuse. As we shall see, trying to embody an image of goodness makes it difficult to wake up and see what’s really going on.

It is exactly this ability to recognize and come from genuine thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that will ultimately become the healing source for the good-guy identity. However, in order to have those recognitions, one has to first be able to distinguish genuine thoughts, emotions, and behaviors from those that come from the false identification with goodness. This book provides clear differentiation between the false and the genuine while healing that false identification through an awakening to the authentic Self.

How to Use This Book

This book will be useful to you as you allow your progress through it to stir and initiate your internal process. The first part of that process will be covered in Part 1, where we will learn what it means to become genuine and begin to realize where the need to identify with goodness comes from. From there we will come to understand how one develops an identity through the psychological dynamics of projection (unconsciously attributing your own denied thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and attitudes onto others as a defense mechanism or method of coping) and introjection (unconsciously taking in ideas, beliefs, emotions, and attitudes of others). We will learn how a family system can sometimes (knowingly or unknowingly) push a child into an identification with goodness, and we will learn the underpinnings (the thoughts, emotions, and behaviors) of this identification. We will also learn how empathy and the subtle emotional power of bargaining plays a role in maintaining that identity throughout a lifetime. Finally in chapter 4 of Part 1 we will get an introductory view of the self-actualization process, the process by which a person begins to live presently with and motivated by the authentic Self, as well as other terms relative to the Self-actualization process. This process ultimately heals the wounds that created the original need for an identification with goodness.

In Part 2 the process turns to understanding the various falsehoods that have been passed down from generation to generation and have been held up as bastions of truth but actually turn out to be false. Indeed, we have lived for many centuries so absolutely tied to the good and bad paradigm that the true-false paradigm has been much overlooked. Therefore, because we do not typically question the good and bad paradigm, these falsehoods have the power to become the hypnotizing mantra of the good-guy identity—making a person believe that he is a good guy for following the path laid out by these falsehoods. This part of the process serves as an awakening to the true-false paradigm in which we can find truth within the genuine Self. The journey from false identity to the authentic Self is a deeply moving, profoundly awakening journey that looks only for the truth of the Self. We are looking for that truth in this book.

Once we know that we have been misled and have thereby misled ourselves, we will begin to understand how we may come to know the truth—the genuine within us. One clear pathway to the authentic Self is through our emotions. But some of our emotions are considered to be negative and are thus associated with being weak, inept, self-pitying, or even bad. What we will learn is that these difficult emotions are actually part of our internal guidance system and can facilitate real healing. Part 3 of the book may accelerate an awakening to the authentic Self by demonstrating how to follow the guidance and enlightened understanding that difficult emotions can give us.

Once we understand how difficult emotions can awaken us, we can also awaken to our personal powers. Each of the three chapters in Part 4 will uncover and explore one particular personal power: intuition, discernment, and desire. Each of these has at some time in our history been dismissed simply because it originates in the inner person, rather than in the external world. We have been taught for centuries that all of our knowledge and understanding about life should come from the external world, where our teachers, parents, religious leaders, and authority figures have primary influence. But here we find that these powers of the internal guidance system empower us to understand and live into an authentic direction. Getting in touch with and beginning to live from these powers offers great healing to the person who identifies as a good guy.

Part 5 will offer a realistic view of what can be expected from the healing process. While no promises can be made for eternal bliss in life, these chapters clarify the processes that are a natural part of waking up to the authentic Self and to wholeness. We distinguish the false from the true and we integrate the truth of our most genuine natures. That leads us to discover the powers inherent in the I AM, or the authentic Self. Each of these specific powers will be revealed as a part of the process of awakening and of living an authentic life.

Throughout the book there are specific terms that are highlighted—terms that we will revisit in more detail in 30 Practice That Becomes Process." Each term is a practice you can implement into your daily routine, but which will ultimately become an effortless part of the processes of the authentic Self. Finally, in the last chapter you will come to know the power of peace to guide you into the truth of the authentic Self. This peace is not just a simple carefree attitude with no worries. Rather, it is a powerful, life-changing peace that comes over us when we discover a deep inner truth. And as we shall see, it becomes the ultimate guide for our lives.

[contents]

Part 1

Why We Need to Let

Go of Good and Learn

to Be Genuine Instead

What we haven’t known in all of our attempts to be good people is that being good is not the same as being genuine. Indeed, goodness is not even in the same category as genuineness. Part 1 will expose this idea and all of the damage it can cause while establishing the fact that being genuine can heal that damage.

1 Becoming Genuine

Genuineness is the expression of the authentic Self, the real you. It is thought, emotion, verbal expression, body language, and behavior that come from the deepest essential core of who we are. It is the congruence of thought, emotion, word, and deed so that an action is not way over here while an emotion is way over there. All aspects of being are working together in harmony when one is being genuine. It is not a mask and costume; it is genuineness of soul—the essential authentic Self—revealed in thought, emotion, and action.

What many of us don’t know, however, is that this essential Self often gets left out of our daily interactions with others, with life, and even with ourselves—even when we are trying very hard to be good people. In fact, trying very hard to be good can actually prevent us from being genuine. But most of us don’t know this or that there is even a difference between being genuine and attempting to be good. In fact, most of us operate by trying to live up to an image of who we think we ought to be. That is, until those moments when we just can’t do that anymore and we temporarily crack open—at which point we do something that we later say was out of character, and then we go back to living up to an image of who we think we ought to be. Sometimes life even becomes a kind of rote automatic responsiveness that just keeps doing what it does, because it must keep doing what it does. But genuineness is different. It is living fulfilled, experiencing life at its most profound and meaningful levels. It is who we came here to be, to embody an authentic heart, soul, and mind and to live from those deep and powerful impulses as an authentic being.

To illustrate the difference between living from the authentic Self and living in an identification with goodness, the following analogy applies. Suppose that an acorn growing into an oak tree was watching the neighbor pine tree and wishing it could produce those funky little prickly cones. Why, oh why was I not given the capacity to make pine cones? What must I do to become a better tree so I can produce pine cones instead of just more of these stupid little acorns? Of course that’s a pretty humorous analogy because we aren’t trees, are we? But, like trees, we are natural organisms—natural beings—though quite often we assume a very unnatural stance in life in order to consider ourselves to be worthy or good enough. Yet, like that tree, we don’t really need to be measuring ourselves for worthiness—we just need to grow into who we actually are.

But how do we find out who we actually are in a world, in a culture, and in a family system that has been insisting since we were young that we identify with being good in order to meet the needs of the system in play? And what will happen to us if we suddenly start being genuine in this world, culture, and family in which conforming to that agenda is tantamount to a sense of survival? Answering those two primary questions is what this book is all about.

The Difference between

Goodness and Genuineness

Most of us have been raised to be good, using certain dimly specified, but quickly absorbed ideals that were meant to define us as good (this process will be clarified in later chapters). Most of us have, indeed, been taught that being good is the ultimate in being. That to be without being good is to be unworthy, at least to some degree. This idea of being good is so ingrained that it almost feels essential to our beingness. Because of this, most of us do not really see the gravity of being good or how heavy the weight of this burden really is. Instead most of us see being good as essential to our well-being. But goodness always comes attached to its polar opposite, badness or evil. One cannot think in terms of goodness, without also considering that polarity. In some sense then, goodness is a battle against badness, for to do good is to avoid doing bad. Therefore, attempting to accomplish goodness is generally a struggle to some degree. We must try hard to be good, for if we are not good, we might be bad and if we are bad, we are unworthy.

Yet most of us have been taught that this is a positive kind of striving that builds character and makes us better people. But the truth is that the more we identify with goodness, the more our psychic energy becomes focused on that internal power struggle between good and bad. Over time there is less and less psychic energy focused on being authentic. So not only must we constantly perform as good people, but we must do that without much contact with our deepest authenticity. Further, it is not uncommon at all for us to make deep and early associations to the rewards and consequences of goodness or badness. These associations may stay with us, even as we develop an awareness that they don’t consistently apply and often don’t really even make sense.

We place tremendous power in the way we perceive what good is and what bad is. They are concepts we imagine to be concrete, but goodness and badness are not things we can measure. When we look around it becomes fairly clear that what is good to one family, one culture, or one society may be bad to another. Yet as we shall see, many are measuring their worth as people based on these immeasurable and quite fluid concepts. Since the concepts of goodness and its polar opposite—badness—cannot be measured or defined by any clear standard, they turn out to be nothing more than mental constructs perpetuated by a social agenda, which we have adopted as truth.

The danger here is that living as if these terms have a standard definition can split us off from other parts of ourselves. If I think, for example, that being kind means never saying to another person how I feel about it when they step on my toe once a week as we cross paths, then I will continue to tolerate that behavior, and I will repress all of my genuine feelings about that behavior in the name of being kind. I will tell myself that it would be rude or unkind to hurt his feelings by telling him to stop. How does one remain kind and simultaneously assertive? This is a conundrum for many people who believe that being good (in this instance, kind) must define their character. These are people who live in an identification with goodness that doesn’t allow their authenticity.

The split-off in consciousness created by this kind of thinking means that the parts of us that we think are bad are relegated to the unconscious, where they will fester and mold and come out later in some other hairy, smelly way—which of course we will also deny or attribute to some bad part of us that needs to become good. So, we will repress the so-called bad thing again, until it comes out later, and we will have to repress it yet again.

Most of us feel shame (i.e., a sense of unworthiness) to some degree or another when we have