There is a story that I first heard a long time ago, maybe even as early as my childhood years. I would stumble upon it occasionally, each time understanding it a bit differently, each time extracting more wisdom from it. I am talking about the Indian two wolves story.
It goes something like this:
An old Indian is teaching his grandson about the duality of life.He exemplifies it with two wolves, one white and one black.One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.They are constantly fighting each other.The grandson eventually asks which one wins.The grandfather replies wisely: "The one you feed.”
I have seen, read or heard many iterations of this story and it certainly carries a powerful message. I believe, however, that it also carries a great many misunderstandings and applies poorly to our condition. This is in fact, the beginning of understanding what goes on inside our minds and is suited for a child’s tale but the reality that it is associated with is far more complex and certainly not black & white.
The duality of white and black is a metaphor for our conscious and unconscious mind
Let’s break this story down. There are two wolves, one white and one black, symbolizing good and bad. Good and bad for whom? For you, obviously, and if life has taught me anything, my good can be somebody else’s bad and vice-versa. So perfect good or perfect bad is by no means universal and is, in fact, a point of view.
The duality of white and black is a metaphor for our conscious and unconscious mind, i.e. conscious and unconscious desires. Here’s a real kicker: your unconscious desires are not bad and your conscious ones are not good. You are simply aware of some and unaware of others. What we are not aware of scares us and we usually choose to distance ourselves from it. The more you distance yourself from a thought or feeling, the more you push it away, the deeper it gets buried in your subconscious and you forget about it, you forget that it is part of you.
There is the acceptable part of you, the white wolf and the unacceptable part, the black wolf.
This starts in childhood, one of the few things that psychologists got right, when you are loved based on an archaic system of punishment and reward: “if you act like this, you will receive love and rewards but if you decide to act against my rules(and in accordance to your needs and desires), you will be sanctioned by withholding of love and various punishments.
This is the way that most of our parents raised us. This type of love is by no means unconditional but in fact, the textbook definition of conditioning behavior and conditional love. What we naturally felt as kids, is sorted through this process into acceptable and unacceptable behavior and thoughts. We are essentially forced to reject a part of ourselves in order to keep belonging to the family. So far, this fits the wolf story. There is the acceptable part of you, the white wolf(since bright colors are associated with “good” and acceptable feelings and behaviors) and the unacceptable part, the black wolf(dark colors associated with “bad”, unacceptable behavior).
The conditioning process has some educational value but also has a host of side effects
The child learns to no longer display the undesired behavior and thus, fragments his psyche for the first time. This process of rejecting parts of you continues though, even after the initial fragmentation and although it may seem that there are only two categories, accepted and rejected thoughts and behavior, the rejected part is actually composed of an ever-increasing number of pieces or fragments. The parents are later replaced with other figures of authority(teacher, boss, husband/wife etc.) who continue the conditioning.
Over time, with the conditioning process, we may come to have dozens, hundreds or even thousands of fragments within ourselves(you cannot play in the dirt because it is not healthy, you, as a kid, must be seen, not heard, you have to do what I tell you, when I tell you to do it, you can play with these kids but have to avoid these kids, you can be a lawyer, engineer, manager, businessman but cannot be a musician, painter, dancer because these jobs don’t pay well, you have to go to church because it is God’s will, you must learn to fix cars because you will be a mechanic, just like your old man etc.), which are in fact, the things that we want to do, but are not allowed to pursue. While the conditioning process certainly has some educational value, it has a host of side effects like the aforementioned fragmentation.
People with mental health issues didn’t just get sick in one day
These ideas and feelings are demonized and perverted from their original form into consistently more deviated variations of the original. That is the way in which the subconscious puts more pressure on us, drawing our attention to the problem. The more we push these ideas down, the stronger they come up, every time, until we are forced to deal with them. The people that you know who have mental health issues didn’t just get sick in one day. They reject their feelings for a long time until they can’t handle the force with which they return. The loss of control they feel is indicative of their inner pain threshold.
If you get them to work together...
To the layman, these unfulfilled desires are bad things that sometimes go through our head, the work of the devil, something to run away from if we wish to avoid mental health issues. To somebody who pays attention to what is going on and is willing to face his/her “demons”, they realize that these thoughts and ideas are their own, just as much a part of them as the “good” ideas. The bad, demonized ideas express a lack in the individual, a need that has not been met. Back to the wolves story, you only feed one part of yourself, you will undoubtedly starve the other and literally lose part of yourself in the process. If you get them to work together, well....that's a whole different story.
