KNOWLEDGE OF THE NATURE OF
DESTRUCTIVE CONDUCT III
or
How Could He/She (or I) Have Done Such A Thing?
E-Mail By Calbraith MacLeod Bio/Address
Previously, I worked to describe the compulsive thoughts and physical attraction towards destructive conduct experienced by many convicted People. In addition, many convicted people face a third obstacle, the enslavement to an ever-tightening cycle of deleterious behaviors, beliefs, and emotions.
When in my early history, I neglected to act properly — it makes no difference if this feeling of failure resulted from a genuinely immoral act or from the failure to please a significant adult — I frequently thought it best to hide my inaction or action from others. My secrecy, by its nature, required me to fear the discovery of my behavior by another person. I made myself dishonest by hiding my inappropriate actions, and my dishonesty positioned me to become a liar. The worry that someone might discover I was trying to hide my involvement in inappropriate behavior burdened me with additional fear. At that point, I developed four reasons to view myself as less than respectable: I'd acted in a manner I had known to be inappropriate? I'd made of myself a dishonest person; I'd made myself a frightened person; and, by relinquishing much of my behavior to the control of fear, I'd made myself a weak person.
Hiding my dishonesty, fear, weakness and less than respectable stature required me to fabricate stories and to do things I’d not wanted to do. People became my opponents. They possessed the potential to see through my deception, and, therefore, they held the power to dictate my actions. Eventually, I possessed so little control over my self that I sought a feeling of power by trying to rule external things and people. However, my efforts to control external things and people proved to be frustrating work. Things and people seldom did or thought exactly as I wanted for very long. Keeping things and people under the work made me even less in command of myself, of how I occupied my time, and of how I used my energy and resources. Although it at times gave me temporary feelings of power, my project to control things and people actually made me even weaker than before.
At the same time, my self-respect declined to a point where I found the need to seek a feeling of respectability from other people. I practiced performances that I imagined would prove me to be intelligent or knowledgeable, I looked for impressive things to collect, and I looked for impressive skills and abilities to master.
My efforts to acquire a feeling of respectability from other people also became became a frustrating work. I found it impossible to perform with unfailing perfection. It was difficult to consistently be an impressively intelligent, knowledgeable, skillful or able person among many. The scope of worldly experience and skill and ability was too large to master, although I did make the attempt, even if my method of doing so had at times been to claim certain abilities to be useless, outrageous, or surmountable in some other way. I thought everyone to be my competitor. Sometimes, instead of trying to succeed at something, I criticized other people to enable myself to think better of my current abilities, knowledge, or skills. Sometimes I cheated, and sometimes I lied about my achievements, experiences, and assets.
Compelled to perform for others, I became weak and felt pushed around. I became not unlike a circus animal, or child, trying to impress people and hoping to gain a reward of recognition and applause. My ability to respect myself dwindled, and my fears increased. As much as I tried to be, I could not be all things to all people, and I constantly experienced the fear that someone might discover I wasn't all I would have them believe me to be.
Unable to respect myself, surrounded by foes, I turned to alcohol, drugs, fantasy and other methods to elude my hopeless situations. However, the substances and mannerisms that helped me hide from the truth also further reduced my self-command and precipitated many more reasons to see myself as less than respectable.
I became angry, like an animal caught in a trap. I began to hate myself/ and I frequently became violent. I'd committed more destructive acts and hid as best I could the fact that I owned responsibility for my behaviors. The new inappropriate behaviors and my hiding of them started me through yet another repetition of my enslaving lifestyle.
The potential consequences concerning my accumulated inappropriate behaviors multiplied my fear that my true nature might be exposed. I became suspicious of everyone. I thought people were watching me, thinking about me, and talking about me.
When any of my deceptions and inappropriate behaviors came to light, I found the need to make excuses for my behavior. Sometimes, I claimed not to have known what I was doing because I'd been drunk or influenced by a drug. Sometimes I claimed to be crazy and even acted so. Sometimes my acting was so prolonged that I convinced myself and others that I was crazy. Most of the times, I declared myself weak by blaming my behavior on a multitude of outside influences. I frequently relinquished all responsibility for my actions and became, in many cases, convinced that I was not responsible for my conduct. .
I now wanted to be weak so that I could disclaim any fault for my embarrassing behaviors. I now became frightened of having any real power at all, and I became terrified of reality.
Fully developed, my fear of reality virtually assured my inability to free myself from the succession of harmful behaviors, The way I was thinking removed from me any control over my life and in effect rendered me a nonentity, little more than a reactionary puppet,
I am convinced the lifestyle I was trapped in was, in practice, even more complex, but it is enough for me to have understood that I was in a repetitive and increasingly restrictive trap from which my thinking, planning, studying, wishing, meditating, trying, and selfish praying was not going to free me. My thinking and the methods which were a result of my thinking had gotten me into the lifestyle, kept me in the criminal lifestyle, and had even become the critical ingredient and guardian of the lifestyle. The severest of consequences were of no corrective value to me. No amount of humiliation would have turned me from my path. My designs were of no utility, for I could but will the things I knew, and they were the things that kept pushing me into acting in destructive ways. I was not going to "learn my lesson", "see the light", "turn over a new leaf", or "figure out how to better manage my life." I was not going to outgrow my behavior. I was not going to gain such compassion for others that I would give up my destructive lifestyle "for them", and no one, regardless of their education was going to come along, wave a wand and "cure me".
Today, I have no doubt that the realization of my hopeless situation saved my life. The understanding of my powerless condition jarred me, for a moment freed me from my historical line of thought. The terrifying and painful comprehension that I was unable to fix myself by my own methods was the first truly new and different type of thought I'd entertained in a very long time. Albeit a small degree, not of my own will, my thinking had changed. That enlightening moment gave me a chance to make something more of myself than a drone.
