The Four Delusions
A couple of years ago, I had a sudden insight about The Four Tendencies. I realized that there are four different unconscious – and completely false – assumptions we can hold about ourselves, that seem to correspond to whether one is an Obliger, a Rebel, a Questioner or an Upholder.
I called them ‘The Four Delusions’.
Here they are:
The Obliger Delusion: Limitless Resources
The Rebel Delusion: Limitless Freedom
The Questioner Delusion: Perfect Understanding
The Upholder Delusion: Perfect Control
I’ll take them in turn and unpack them a bit, because although some aspects about them are quite obvious, others need some clarification.
The first thing to say about all four delusions is that, actually, none of us is immune from labouring under any of them at different points in our lives! So I think it will be useful to understand our particular propensity, but be on guard against each.
The next important thing I’d like you to keep in mind is just how unrealistic these false assumptions are. Let’s take them one by one:
In the Obliger’s heart, there is this permanent niggle: everything that everyone expects of them must be done. External demands never cease, but the Obliger rarely says no to any. How come? Why do they say yes and keep taking on so much? Deep in their subconscious there is this delusion: ‘I possess limitless resources’.
Clearly that cannot be true of any human being. We are limited, we have only so much time, so much energy, so much money, etc. It will all end at some point, and the more we overextend ourselves the quicker our strength will run out, together with any desire to fulfill even the most legitimate of expectations, even our most basic of needs.
Burnout and Obliger Rebellion might be the results of toiling under this delusion on the longer term, but the horrible immediate effect of not honouring the obvious limits of our resources is Resentment. When we keep pushing our needs and personal interests to the back burner, we start to resent those we are serving. Then the irritation often obscures even further our need to take responsibility and treat our limits with respect.
Rebels, with their knee-jerk reaction to oppose anything that’s imposed on them, can easily fall prey to the impression that the very fabric of reality is an imposition. For them, that will not do. Their actions often unmask this deep-seated delusion: ‘I have limitless freedom to do whatever the [bleep!] I want’.
I’m not talking here about freedom from unrightful constraints, or from any sort of oppression that other people or society in general might exercise on us. That is a freedom we do well to yearn for and fight to obtain and keep.
The delusional “freedom” is the one that imagines itself safe from any sort of negative consequence. It is the illusion of being invulnerable, the mistaken idea that I can keep banging my head against the wall all I want, without getting a bump and a black eye. We operate under this mad assumption when we act impulsively, and the more we refuse to pay attention to the cause-and-effect character of reality, the more we undermine our real freedoms. Addiction is a very obvious example of this. The same for some other things, which we’re less used to identifying as quite so self-destructive: for example, making a habit out of staying up too late instead of giving ourselves the opportunity for sufficient sleep. I have done that often enough – and experienced the horrid consequence of becoming an awful cross between a zombie and an ogre the next day – to know from experience how strong but ruinous this delusion can be. It is one of the roots of Self-Sabotage in the lives of Rebels (there are others too, which I hope to bring to light later on).
Questioners feel the strong need that any action be based on good reasons: and by good reasons, they mean those that correspond to their own inner standards.
Committing to a certain course of action will tend to happen, for them, only insofar as there is good justification for it. But how to be sure that there is? This is where they can let themselves be lured by an unnoticed, thus uncharacteristically left unquestioned, false assumption: ‘I can have perfect understanding’. They often continue to search and search for answers and knowledge that will allow them to perfectly meet their inner expectations. But because there will always be ‘known unknowns and unknown unknowns’, the delusion of perfect understanding and the never ending search for information becomes a recipe for Analysis Paralysis and decision fatigue.
The Upholders seek to meet their own high standards, while not letting anyone else down either. Their deep-seated delusion is ‘I can have perfect control!’. After all, if one has perfect control, over oneself and over any situation, then both inner and outer expectations can be perfectly met.
For us humans, however, there is no such thing as being perfectly in control of anything, least of all other people. Although, it must be said, there’s no shortage of trying! If we are honest with ourselves, the temptation is always there for us to recur to all sorts of forcefulness and manipulation in order to make people do what we want. There is an overabundance of proof for the human thirst to hold sway over other humans: from authoritarian parents to overbearing relatives to domineering spouses, bosses and church leaders, all the way to the countless atrocious dictators all along history – the delusion of gaining perfect control over others seems to be ingrained in our fallen nature.
It is no less a delusion to keep striving for total control over our own selves. Self-mastery is a virtue to be aspired to, but there are many factors that will effectively prevent the reins from ever being fully in our hands. Here are some examples of disruptive agents: nature, our physical bodies, our wandering minds, other people. All these and more unmask the senselessness of striving to be perfectly in control over ourselves, and living under a cloud of condemnation for our failure to meet this impossible standard.
‘Tightening’, as termed by Gretchen Rubin, is what happens when Upholders, in their vain pursuit of feeling perfectly in control, keep adding and adding to their list of rules, tasks, and requirements. A black spiral of stress, fear, anxiety and restlessness is the result of letting ourselves live under this delusion. It is a recipe for driving ourselves mad – and not just us, but everyone else around.
Is there hope for us? Can we be freed from the influence of these pernicious deceptions that seem to have been haunting us all our lives, unseen but iron-handed?
Yes, I believe we can be free. And the first step has just been taken! The delusions have been brought out into the open! As we acknowledge their presence, as we unmask their false character and learn to pinpoint when they are at work in our day-to-day, their strength diminishes.
However, we need more. We need Truth to vanquish these harmful lies. We need God.
He alone has limitless resources. He alone is free to do as He pleases: because His nature is completely free from self-contradiction, and He is utter reality, which cannot go against itself.
He is the only one who possesses perfect understanding – perfect knowledge, perfect wisdom. All facts, circumstances, reasons and possibilities are laid bare before Him, and His decisions are ever perfectly justified.
He is in control of everything. His perfect justice is in complete harmony with His perfect love – and that makes Him completely to be trusted as the utter Sovereign of all there is.
He is God, I am not. This is the truth that sets us free from our delusions.
I cannot fulfill everyone’s needs, hopes and dreams! Only He can.
I cannot bend reality to my will! Being in His will lets me enjoy reality.
I can never be completely certain about anything! For Him, there are no unknowns.
I can never have everything perfectly in hand. His hand offers total safety and brings all things to perfect completion.
When we act based on these truths, instead of lies, and choose to trust Him, we have hope. We can humbly ask the Holy Spirit to open our eyes each time we’re about to repeat the damaging patterns, give us the courage to admit our limits, and choose the ways God has laid down for us instead.
