“We are Legion” — How accepting our many ‘selfs’ can set us free
The gospel of Mark tells the story of a man of “unclean spirits” who dwelt among the tombs; possessed by spirits beyond his own control. Having broken free of chains that bound him, he screamed night and day and harmed himself with stones that littered the graveyard surrounding him. His brute strength was only matched by his numbness to the pain of his self-inflicted wounds. Church historians call him “the Gerasene Demoniac” (Pretty cool name for a Fortnite character!).
Jesus asked him — “what is your name?” and he responded: “My name is Legion, because we are many”.
Amidst the storms raging in this man’s head, he mustered a moment of clarity to answer a simple question — a moment of clarity that may have been the beginning of his healing. I believe that Jesus’ act of healing was in helping this man see his whole self, integrating the light with the dark, the vice with the virtue, the past with the potential and the human with the divine.
In this article, I will share my personal journey of looking beyond traditional morality, discovering my many selfs, accepting them and integrating them to live more harmoniously. My hope is that this inspires others to also look beyond the formulaic answers of religion and docile thinking to discover their own eternal and inner wholeness.
January 8th of 2012, I realized that I too was Legion. My marriage had become a slow train wreck and I was in the first days of living separated from my then-wife and son. Like my Geresene demoniac friend, I found myself wandering the back roads of the Texas Hill Country in my Prius which had also temporarily become my home. Luckily, unlike the Geresene, I was too weak and too sensitive to pain to indulge in aggressive physical exfoliation. But, also luckily, I was not afraid of exfoliating, dissecting, understanding and eventually accepting what lay beneath the skin.
Till then, I had a very clear and singular identity — community leader, dutiful son, community organizer, MBA, engineer, prudent, family man, pleaser.
It was an identity that was shaped by years of carefully and arbitrarily defined sets of dos and don’ts. It was not just an identity, but a groomed-up brand that was easy for anyone to understand and predict. Most crucially, it served the essential function of hiding the reality of biology, memories, desires, curiosity and spiritual longing from others and from oneself. Truth was not its friend.
Singularized identity is also essential for religion. With its insistence on individual responsibility, sin and salvation, any complexity of identity becomes an inconvenience at judgement time. Unsurprisingly, religion prizes fiction over fact so that people can be controlled by illusions.
Fortunately, my failure as a husband and the circumstances of the divorce helped thoroughly pulverize these ideas of faith, the false singular identity and caricature brand that was built around it. Relieved of all expectations and false narratives, bumming around the Hill Country I came to recognize and accept all my selfs with the help of nature, books, strangers, baristas, college students, and a wide range of Meetup groups and TED talks.
I AM the sum of my regrets.
Historical records indicate that the region of Geresa was often the site of brutal repression by Roman legions. Could it be that our demoniac is a Roman Legionnaire rapt with PTSD and guilt for his brutality towards innocents?
In 2012, I too was living through the regret of actions and decisions I could not undo — actions that lead up to the break up of my family.
I AM also the sum of all future possibilities.
Texas Red Buds are often the first to put forth blooms announcing the arrival of Spring. At the time the buds come out, they don’t know of what will happen in the future. A freak late-winter hard freeze could kill all the blooms. However, this unknowing never bothers them. Blossoms are created from the promise of possibilities, not from fear of the past.
Nature reminded me that life exists not because of its prudence, but because of its daring, foolhardy, faith that it will always find a way to flourish.
In every bud is the possibility of a thousand forests.
I AM a living corpse and a city of bugs.
I am a perpetually dying and molting edifice. Most of what I consider ‘my doing’ is actually mediated and orchestrated by trillions of bacteria that inhabit my body. Without them, there is no corporeality, sense of volition or agency. If the bugs in my gut get distracted from doing the right things, they can trigger a chain of metabolic pathways that result in dementia, Parkinson’s disease, depression anxiety and whole host of debilitating diseases.
I am a puppet in the hands of trillions of single celled organisms that decide to hang out together for ~80 years and make me think I am important.
I AM the stars.
Lying on the cold limestone banks of the Pedernales river looking up at a clear winter night sky — my eyes absorbed ancient light that pulsed forth from the heart of the Milky way. The photons, like seeds strewn by the galaxy, nestled into my retina and germinate into images and take residence as light in their new home. They remind me that every molecule of my body was born in the womb of stars billions of years ago.
The very shape of those billion-year old molecules shape the contours of my ears, my thoughts and my feelings.
Surely, before Moses, I am.
I AM the mountain vole and the prairie vole.
Sitting at the Barnes and Nobles in the Arboretum shopping center, I poured over bookshelves to understand why human beings do what we do. The religious narrative says it’s because a talking snake convinced my great, great great grandmother to eat an apple. Maybe ?, but there’s nothing anyone can rationally do about that.
The most explanatory answer came not from profound thinkers or gods, but from a study about two types of closely related rodents — the mountain vole and prairie vole. The mountain voles live mostly alone, have multiple sexual partners and don’t rear their young. The prairie voles on the other hand, live rich communal lives, pair-bond for life and invest in their young. The levels of three hormones — Oxytocin, Testosterone and Vasopressin — neatly explain the difference in behavior of these rodents. Modifying the levels of these hormones in the rodents (and in humans) modify their behaviors.
I am a puppet of my hormones.
I AM fear — full of fight or flight responses.
In the letter to the Colossians Ch 3, Paul admonishes the reader to “put away the old man” and “put on the new man”. Paul gets this right. The idea of an old brain and new brain is one that has solid scientific footing. Apparently, God borrowed brains from a lizard and sloppily affixed a pre-frontal cortex on top it to make human brains. This is why our brains produce the same stress response to a job interview as it does to being chased by a bear. Sadly, most of society, religion and even family relationships are formed around the maturity of this lizard brain.
I am a puppet of brain structures and behaviors that were developed under hostile, scarce conditions. Structures that make me blind to the abundance of what it means to be fully human. Structures that institutions can use to convince me to kill, hate, while generating immense profits for themselves.
I AM innocence — creative and playful unaware of time and boundaries.
Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a Harvard neuroanatomists studying strokes had the unique experience of observing a stroke while she was having one herself. In her TED Talk she talks about what happened when the left side of her brain briefly stopped functioning due to lack of blood flow and only the right side of the brain was present. Almost magically, time stood still, boundaries dissolved and the sense of self blended in with the broader creation. The right brain is the integrator that accepts all. It is the child that Jesus spoke of. It is the tree on which the birds of the world can come and make their homes in.
I carry within myself the ability to forget time and division and smile at everything. I am a flower child — a hippie.
I AM a schemer.
Despite all my genetic anchoring in fallible, short-term thinking, I am able to muster enough discipline and forethought to design corporate strategy, refine product features, balance a checkbook and plan my retirement. My fellow humans have organized super complex events like Indian weddings, the moon landing, and have figured out how to make giant pieces of metal float and fly to destinations thousands of miles away.
I am a formidable planner and tamer of entropy.
I AM abundance.
Despite all the genetic anchoring in violence and zero-sum competition, I am capable of uncanny acts of creative abundance. I am compelled to uplift strangers, and invest in the betterment of their conditions even when those acts have no direct or indirect benefit for me. I revel in solving problems by creating new realities — not by conforming to existing reality. Something deep in me reminds me that I am an infinite spring of possibility. My fellow humans have won over violent empires with non-violence, defeated disease and poverty with selfless overflowing love.
I am Awareness.
Lastly, I am the awareness that observes all my other selves. Sometimes, my different selves show up uninvited to situations in my life — like a relative who cares deeply but may not always have the best plan. My awareness observes them come and go and does the intentional work of choosing which ‘self’ is best suited to handle a given situation.
I am who I am.
I am a tautology — self existent and self knowing.
In many ways, the nameless man of the Gospels is a reflection of humanity in the 21st century and of each one of us. Despite being at the verge of healing most ailments, imbued with the magic of technology and living more comfortably than most kings who ever walked this earth, we find ourselves un-moored, unable to converse or reconcile with each other and prone to causing significant self-harm. We attempt to solve our problems through brute force, and in the process break the chains of family and ecology that protect us. We nervously sterilize and sanitize against all organic variations in life and in the process, destroy our own sanity and mental hygiene. Like the demoniac we continue raging, numb to the pain we’re causing ourselves, our society and our ecology.
It is time we too find our moment of clarity and recognize who (all) we are and begin a process of wholesome integration.
