Evading the Full Intensity of Life – Abraham Maslow

It is precisely the godlike in ourselves and others that we are ambivalent about, fascinated by and fearful of, motivated to and defensive against. This is one aspect of the basic human predicament, that we are simultaneously worms and gods; gods with anuses. Freud’s greatest discovery, the one which lies at the root of psycho-dynamics, is that the great cause of so much psychological illness is the fear of knowledge of oneself—of one’s emotions, impulses, memories, capacities, potentialities, of one’s destiny. We have discovered that fear of knowledge of oneself is very often isomorphic with, and parallel with, fear of the outside world and fear of intimacy.

We fear our highest possibility as well as our lowest ones. We are generally afraid to become that which we can glimpse in our most perfect moments. We enjoy and even thrill to the godlike possibilities we see in ourselves in such peak moments. And yet we simultaneously shiver with weakness, awe and fear before these very same possibilities.

And the result is what we would expect of a weak organism: we evade and cut back the full intensity of life. We are just not strong enough to endure more! It is just too shaking and wearing. So often people in ecstatic moments say, “It’s too much,” or “I can’t stand it,” or “I could die.” Delirious happiness cannot be borne for long. Our organisms are just too weak for any large doses of greatness.

The evasion of one’s own growth, setting low levels of aspiration, the fear of doing what one is capable of doing, voluntary self-crippling, pseudo-stupidity, mock-humility, are in fact defenses against grandiosity and greatness, borne of a partly justified fear of being torn apart, of losing control, of being shattered and disintegrated, even of being killed by the experience.

~ by John 24x7 on July 11, 2008.