If you believe you’re unlikely to meet a zombie, you’re wrong. Zombies come by every day, you just don’t know that’s what they are. In fact, several times a day you probably become a zombie yourself but don’t know it. Once you properly learn how to recognize the walking dead, you’ll see them everywhere. If you can’t spot any, you might be looking for zombies as they’re depicted in movies, with their shuffling gait, arms outstretched, faces falling off, breaking into a shopping mall to eat your brains. Actual zombies are not like that, unless they’re imitating the movies. Their bodies work fine and are indistinguishable from regular people. Their brains function as needed to operate their bodies; but they’re mindless. They go through the motions without conscious awareness of their surroundings or their actions. They’re like robots, rigid and compulsive in their thinking and behavior. They don’t learn from mistakes. They lack that special something that distinguishes them from real humans, often called the soul. How To Become a ZombieWe’ll get to how to deal with the zombies around you in a bit, but first you’ll want to make sure you’re not one, yourself. As I said, you sometimes are; maybe not right now, but later today you will be. It’s usually temporary. You can easily turn yourself into a zombie by taking a drug. Any drug will do, as long as it alters your consciousness. Once it does that, it changes your personality to whatever it wants you to be. If you don’t want to use drugs, you can use entertainment. Go to a concert or a club and lose yourself in the music. Play a game and become part of the game. Watch a show or read a book and be so wrapped up in the narrative that you forget you’re not in the story. Attend a rally or a protest and become part of the crowd. Pray and be so moved by worship that you unite with the divine. If all these methods of becoming a zombie seem benign, that’s because they are, predominantly. In every case, you’re choosing to be a zombie, hopefully at a time and place where you can’t hurt anyone, including yourself. The chief risk is when you do it too often and become addicted to it. An addict is a zombie even when they're not intoxicated by the drug, to the extent that everything becomes about the drug. The most insidious way of becoming a zombie is out of your conscious control. A zombie within takes over. We all have a zombie hoard inside us, ready to go at any minute. They spring into action when we experience something scary. By that I mean something you’d rather not be conscious of. This can be a trauma, but it doesn’t have to be a huge one. It can be any setback, embarrassment, loss, or state of confusion. When something happens that’s scary, your consciousness runs away and the zombies take over. From that moment until you realize what you’re doing, you think and behave in rigid, stereotypic ways, mindless of the consequences. Let me illustrate. A wife is upset that her husband leaves everything for her to do around the house. She has a legitimate grievance, but she experiences something scary, a feeling of helplessness. She just can’t bear that feeling. It gives her a glimpse of the abyss, her consciousness runs away, and the zombies see their chance and take over. So, instead of sitting down with her husband and having a reasonable conversation, aware of how she’s coming across, and measuring out her message to no more than he could swallow at a time, her zombies do the talking. They nag, scold, threaten, and generalize, showing her husband something scary. Now his consciousness takes flight, leaving his zombies to take over. They defend, argue, justify, and stonewall. The couple has an epic fight. Afterwards, they barely knew what happened because it was their zombies that fought while their consciousnesses ran away. The presence of zombies was evidenced by mindlessness, rigidity, compulsivity, and acting counter to their character and interest. Soon afterwards, they were horrified by what they’d done. They came to see me for marriage counseling, saying they needed to communicate. Not so fast, I wanted to say. First we need to get to know who’s in this marriage. You and how many zombies? What To Do About ZombiesSo, what can you do about zombies? Most people just want to kill them. Many people in society will help me. Everyone from family, friends, co-workers, bosses, probation officers, and therapists will join you in a great zombie massacre. This couple could get very good at recognizing every time they start to nag, scold, threaten, and generalize, as well as defend, argue, justify, and stonewall. With practice, they may be able to stop themselves before they do those things. But they’re never going to get them all. There will always be a few living dead that slip through because they don’t recognize them for what they are. The husband will kill off all but a passive-aggressive zombie because passive-aggressiveness looks like compliance. He’ll help with some of the cleaning when she asks, but won’t see when it needs to be done. The wife will kill off all but a smoldering, resentful zombie, because resentment is hidden. Despite having learned to communicate, they’ll still have the original problem. Before you try to kill off all your zombies, you should know that it's necessary to put them in charge of some things. You do it all the time. Typing, for instance. When you learned how to type, you intentionally hunted for each letter on the keyboard. But once you mastered the skill, then you could type without paying close attention. I don't mean you ignore what you’re saying, I mean a zombie takes over the typing. If something occurred out of the routine, like if you’re on a strange keyboard, consciousness can take over in an instant. It has not fled the scene. It’s possible for zombies and conscious intention to tune in and groove on the zombie channel. The Zombie ChannelAll mastery works this way. Consciousness directs your learning but, once you learn something so well, you don’t need to be fully conscious of doing it. In fact, full consciousness gets in the way of doing it. Ask any athlete. No baseball player thinks about the mechanics of hitting a ball when he’s at the plate. He learns how to swing with conscious intention, swings, and then uses conscious intention to correct any mistakes for the next time. Every home run has been hit by a well trained zombie. In fact, everything playful is conducted by zombies, but not by zombies alone. Zombies are useful when they can be directed by conscious intention. If only they could get on the same channel with consciousness. Luckily, they can. You already have a zombie channel that can bring them and consciousness together. Everyone has a part of them that instinctively knows how to heal and grow. Your body knew how to grow when it needed to do so, when you were a child. It knows how to heal when you’re injured. There’s something that makes all your organs work together. It stands to reason that, since your body has all that, your mind would too. It makes no sense to have all these zombies running around in your mind without something organizing them. You have a zombie channel. The tricky part is finding it. It’s hard for me to explain what to look for, but I can point you to someone who can: Carl Jung. JungEverything I’ve been talking about is based in Jungian psychology, using different terms. I like to freshen things up a bit, shed the baggage that accumulates, and show how clever I am. I hope to capture the interest of those who would not willingly read about Jungian psychology. If you’re one of those, I hope you read on because, once you connect with Jung, he can help you more than the usual methods. However, you’re going to need to know the terms he uses, instead of mine. The zombies are your Unconscious. However, they are only zombies from the point of view of your conscious mind, unwelcome intruders on its show. If zombies were capable of self reflection, they would see themselves as a jazz band. Consciousness is the presumptuous front man, who thinks the whole show is about him because his name is up in lights. That arrogant front man is your Ego, the person you think you are; consisting of all thoughts, memories, and emotions you’re aware of, responsible for feelings of continuity. Your Ego cannot get it together with the zombies if it doesn’t take the trouble to understand them. It can start by being curious about the crazy things you do when zombies intervene in your life. They are a vast source of knowledge and wisdom, so the Ego should regard them with a sense of respect. The process where your Ego runs off when it’s threatened by a scary thing is a Complex. Picture hecklers pelting the front man with tomatoes till they drive him offstage. The band plays on. The Ego is never happy with how the band plays without it. For example, when your Inferiority Complex is activated, you have certain automatic reactions like being shy or bragging. Consciously, you know that neither being shy nor bragging really help you, but you haven’t been able to stop those reactions because your Ego hates feeling inferior. The most difficult part to understand is the zombie channel, what Jung called the Unconscious Self. In musical terms, it’s the groove that musicians get in when they play well. The Ego can get in the groove, too, if he can find the zombie channel; but the Ego often fails to search for it. Getting in the GrooveMost people learn to get in the groove by accident when they are captivated by beauty. Athletes, when they make a brilliant play. Their subjective sense of time slows down and everything is easy, while their bodies are in motion. Musicians say the same thing when they forget themselves and become one with the music. You know you’re in the groove, listening to your zombie whisperer, when everything is clicking; when you listen to your gut or follow an inborn sense of right and wrong. When you feel centered, grounded, and connected to an inner wisdom. In all cases, the Ego forgets it’s the front man, that the lights are shining on him. It becomes one with the band. Once you know what it’s like to get in the groove, remember how you got there. Try to recreate that feeling whenever you can. Above all, embrace a new attitude toward your zombies. Make friends with your zombies, groove to their beat, and add your voice to the mix. The process of getting in the groove, having all your pieces playing together, on beat and in tune, is what Jung calls Individuation. In the interests of freshening things up, I’ll just go on calling it getting in the groove. What the Groove Can DoTo see what happens when you get in the groove, let’s go back to our couple. When we left them, they had learned to communicate better with each other, but it didn’t help them get along. They weren’t fully in the groove with each other because neither one was in the groove with his or her self. The husband was helping with some of the cleaning, but never saw when it needed to be done. The wife was seething with resentment. I, their marriage counselor, was beginning to think they should have seen Carl Jung instead of me. Jung had a radical view of men and women for his day. It has since become ordinary. He said that each one of us possesses all the qualities of the masculine and feminine, but only identify with some of them. The ones we identify with are the dominant functions. The ones we don't identify with are inferior functions. We feel more comfortable exercising those capacities we identify with. When we try to exercise those capacities we don't identify with, it's scary, so our zombies take over. Both the wife and the husband conform to the standard idea of feminine and masculine. The wife identifies with being feminine. She’s in charge of the house and believes she’ll be judged by how clean and orderly it is. Therefore, she pays it close attention. However, she’s enough of a modern woman (meaning a woman who also works outside the home) that she feels her husband must pitch in. When she asserts herself, she has to reach for masculine qualities of strength, confidence, and command. This threatens her sense of herself as a woman, so the zombies take over. They speak up so she doesn’t have to. Zombies are not good at dealing with other people. They just repeat things rotely, without any nuance or sensitivity. Because they possess no ability to self-reflect, they cannot change what they do to accommodate another person’s point of view. Therefore, her strength, confidence, and command came out shrill, nagging, scolding, threatening, and generalizing, which sounded scary to her husband. If she killed off all the nagging, scolding, threatening, and generalizing, she just would have made it harder to practice the masculine qualities. Jung has a different approach. Embrace the unfamiliar, be curious about the weird, patient with the awkward, forgiving of mistakes. Expand your idea of yourself. Jung is the opposite of a zombie killer. Rather than kill off all the zombies, he’ll teach her to groove with them. She doesn’t need to go on nagging, scolding, threatening, and generalizing, but she learns to see what the zombies are aiming at and adds conscious intention so she can get there without complicating things by touching her husband’s sore spots. Before the wife learned to groove with her zombies, it was like she took a nap while her two year old did the dishes. Plates got broken and nothing got cleaned. Now she supervises. The husband identifies with the masculine. The inside of the home is not a standard man’s problem, so he pays little attention to it. He could live in a bachelor pad, be happy, and no one would judge him for it. When his wife speaks up, he should listen and follow; but listing and following are feminine qualities, he has his zombies do it because listening and following threaten his manhood. Zombies are not good at dealing with other people. When they listen, they don’t listen to understand, for that requires self-reflection; they listen to find points to debate. When they’re told to follow, they’ll do what you ask for, but won’t look for what needs to be done. Therefore, his version of listening and following will come out as arguing, defensiveness, justification, and stonewalling, which shows the wife something scary. He’ll help with some of the cleaning, but won’t take responsibility for any of it. If he killed off all the arguing, defensiveness, justification, and stonewalling, he just would have made it harder to practice the feminine qualities. After trying Jung’s different approach, he now listens and follows with conscious intention. He listens to understand and follows to take responsibility. Before the husband learned to groove with his zombies, it was like he set the car in self driving mode and took a nap. Now he supervises. When the husband and the wife get in the groove with their own zombies, then they can get in the groove with each other. Their life together is no longer about manhood or womanhood. They have a broader conception of themselves; they are fully human. It’s about getting the job done. More is possible. They will learn to keep house together, each one accepting responsibility for chores, not out of their identity, but by seeing what needs to be done and doing it. There may still be disagreements about who does the dishes when the kids need to be put to bed, but they’re able to be adaptable to circumstances and not so hung up on the masculine or feminine. Your zombies may be organized differently than those of the couple in our example. You may not conform so slavishly to the old standard of masculine and feminine; but you still have some characteristics you identify with, your primary functions, and others you are less comfortable exercising, your inferior functions. All I’m saying is, when you try to do something you haven’t mastered, pay attention while you’re doing it. The Zombies Around YouNow that I’ve alerted you to the zombies within, it’ll be a lot easier to spot the zombies around you. You can assume that another person has turned into a zombie if their attitude is rigid and inflexible; if they are single-minded in the accomplishment of a goal which seems out of character for them; if they don’t learn from mistakes. If they seem to be overlooking key facts or have glaring blind spots, you can assume they’re not conscious of what they’re doing and are, in fact, a zombie. If you encounter one of the living dead, I don’t think you need to run screaming from the room, but you should be afraid. They won’t literally eat your brains, but figuratively they will. By that I mean zombies tend to turn the people around them into zombies. Because they’re so clumsy, they inevitably get scary and there you go, starting on the process of becoming a zombie. It’s tempting to try to kill off the zombies around you. A zombie killer will employ shame, ultimatum, or force to murder millions. It never works. All it does is make you scary and activate more zombies within them. What can you do instead? Treat the zombies around you like you have learned to treat the zombies within. Rather than kill off all the zombies you see, get on the zombie channel and groove with them. You don’t have to do what they’re doing, but see what they're aiming at and add conscious intention so you can get there together. You're currently a free subscriber to The Reflective Eclectic. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
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Thursday, 18 April 2024
Getting in the Groove with Zombies
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