Sins, or weaknesses?

Now, I'm in no way excusing bad behaviour of any kind, nor do I intend to offend any faith or anyone who has one in any form or manner. I'm sincerely speaking from the point of view of an Atheist (by practice), who has experienced different, if not many, people throughout her 21 years of living and want to understand them including myself as a human being. This is just one opinion I have based on what I've learnt.

On that note, let me begin.

As someone who was raised by a religious Buddhist household (except for my dear parents, thank goodness), I have been subjected to hear the word "Karma" more than my own name, and seeing people describe it in so many versions that I had begun to question the Buddhism textbook given to us by the school.

In school, I grew up hearing how talking, walking or even breathing the wrong way could land me in Hell (highly exaggerated, but you get the gist).

The thing about me is, you see, I am a control freak; I despise the idea that the strings of my life are being strung from outside my own body and mind. Thus, I prefer to set out to understand myself more and make sure I don't do anything that could bring me or anyone around me any harm. The ways I do that is through the basis of philosophy, psychology and simple scientific observation.

But that does not mean I don't empathise with feeling comfort from an external source. I completely understand it, and I respect it.

My concern lies in the internal struggles that I see people externalise and let "fate", "Karma", or whatever you wish to call it, decide what happens.

In many religions, you'd hear the word "sins". What are sins? Are they negative emotions like jealousy, greed, lust, anger, etc.?

Sure, one could see them as sins. Now let me ask you this follow-up question:

Can a person live without feeling any of these at least once in their life to live sin-free and good?

I would like to say without any fear or shame, that I cannot. I have felt jealous of other people, I've felt greedy towards things, anger is an everyday feeling, and I'll skip lust because I have some shame.

I personally don't believe that people can live without going through at least one of these feelings at least once in their lives. A person might deny it, one reason being, we all have a habit of denying things about ourselves to ourselves simply due to societal expectations of a perfectly good person.

That leads to my next question: can we continuously repress these feelings? Can we keep them hidden so deep in our unconsciousness without a trace of their existence? Can we actually get rid of them?

Carl Gustav Jung talks about this in his theory of the personality.

To give a brief introduction, he modelled the human psyche into three major systems;

1. The ego

2. The personal unconscious

3. The collective unconscious

We'll focus on the third one in this case, which refers to shared and/or inherited unconscious knowledge and experiences, somewhat similar to unspoken rules.

These are the ideas that are preset in our minds and lives as we grow up.

In this unconscious, we find four major Jungian archetypes;

1. Persona

2. Anima/animus

3. Shadow

4. Self

The shadow is what I wanted to bring to attention in my post.

This entity consists of our hidden and repressed feelings, personal traits we feel guilty and/or embarrassed of, and deemed unacceptable and taboo by society.

Freud called this the Id, and believed it was responsible for all of our basic needs and drives, including sex, hunger and aggression.

To a certain extent one would consider this evil, sinful, thus leading us to repress it within ourselves without even as much of a glance at it.

Jung perceived this shadow entity as a dark room, located far back in our brain, where we shove everything we despise about ourselves according to the words we hear and things we se from other people. In my interpretation, this entity corresponds with a personal version of Mr Hyde that we have inside ourselves; a creature we find despicable, unacceptable, ugly, basically every feeling that's negative.

Jung also said that as long as this unconscious entity is left in the dark, it will control our lives and we'd call it fate. How true is this?

Have you had unexplainable feelings and thoughts arise at times when they would be most inconvenient?

Have you felt unexplainable anger or frustration over something that you wouldn't consider to be as frustrating as it seems? Or perhaps felt some annoyance over a trait of another person and judged them harshly?

These are all projections of your shadow. This room or creature, which consists of all your repressed feelings and traits, projects these from deep within because- like a kid with overly strict parents- it wants to and will get out, by hook or by crook.

Thus, this shadow self of ours manifests itself into our lives in many ways;

• A tendency to judge others harshly - This manifests from the fear of being judged by others with the same harshness with which we judge ourselves.
  
  
• Pointing out one's own insecurities as flaws in others - This is best described through a few examples.
  Ex: 1. (Movie- American Beauty) Colonel Fitts expresses his homophobia especially towards his homosexual son, but he himself is homosexual.
         2. Parents being extra judgmental when they see their own shortcomings in their children, and they are literally confronted by themselves.
         3. Internet trolls... I need not say any more.
  
  
• A quick temper with people in subordinate positions of power - This is to compensate for their own feelings of powerlessness.
  
  
• Frequently playing the victim in every situation - This is a way to prevent being exposed as something you don't want the world to see; by playing the victim, you aren't perceived as bad and you don't have to take responsibility.
  
  

Let's put this in parallel with my first question about sins.

Are greed, jealousy, lust, anger, etc., really sins?

According to the theory of the shadow, these are traits; human traits, vulnerabilities as creatures of emotion.

They aren't sins, rather they are weaknesses we all have. Parts of us that we cast aside without even getting to know what they really are. (Again, I'm in no way justifying them. These are only explanations; anything can have an explanation, not an excuse.)

So, if that's the case, when do these become sins?

Once we act on them only, do they become our sins. We validate our thoughts and feelings through our actions and behaviour, so we need to be careful about how we react to our thoughts and feelings rather than go along with them without a second thought.

Which brings me to think, that maybe, when Lord Buddha "defeated Death", what He did was face His own darkness and accept his weaknesses as a human being. Tanha, Rati, Ranga... the three daughters of Death, weaknesses of ours that lead to our attachment to life and inevitable suffering.
Maybe He didn't get rid of Death, maybe He accepted Death, leading to its defeat.

But I should inform you, this is not what you should believe. This is how I connected and interpreted what I know to create an explanation that helps me improve on myself and help the people around me. My message is only this:

It's highly important that you're well aware of yourself. To be self-aware, you have to look into things you may hate about yourself. Granted, it is hard, almost seems impossible... but there's no other way of being true to knowing thyself. It's upto you to realise and make your own comprehension of yourself in order to relieve yourself of whatever that burdens you. That is how you show compassion towards yourself; slowly, steadily, through trial and error. Being self-aware is the most crucial step to accepting yourself, and as Carl Jung said,

"The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely."

And once you do start to accept yourself, you start to take back your dependence on other's acceptance and validation. You become impenetrable to those who seek to take advantage of you. Truly knowing and accepting yourself can and will make you invincible (not in the sense of gaining the strength of ten men, but you get what I mean!).

P.s:-

First of all, I'd like to apologise for not blogging for years, again... I was both in the midst of my studies and unable to think of anything to write about.

Secondly, I know I have talked about mental health and self-love earlier, but I was nowhere near calm; there was too much anger and I was taking it out in crude ways in my writing. I wasn't able to convey my ideas without sounding condescending or petty, and my tones of speaking could be easily misunderstood; I was not well-spoken in the least. I would like to apologise for that as well.