The Power of the Herd (62 page)

T
hese days, when you talk into a cell phone,
you're not necessarily conversing with a real person. You might be negotiating with a computerized bank teller or some other impersonal service. For a couple hundred bucks, you can even purchase your own mechanized secretary, stuff her into a pocket or purse, and she won't be offended. She'll surf the Web on request, speak to you, and even tell a few jokes in a pleasant, albeit stiff, feminine voice.

In 2011, creators of the iPhone 4S took speech recognition software to the masses with an “intelligent” assistant named Siri. Responding to all kinds of verbal directives, Siri looks things up on the Internet, makes restaurant recommendations, keeps track of your schedule, asks clarifying questions, and learns to a certain extent through continued use. Some people find Siri amusing; others simply find her useful. Still others get irritated and turn her off. Whatever effect Siri has, however, it's obvious that she lacks sentience, creativity, and self-awareness.

But what if, through the right combination of downloaded information, user interaction, and increasingly sophisticated programming, Siri's modest ability to learn reached critical mass, causing her to access a rudimentary form of consciousness? Like a handheld version of HAL in the classic film
2001,
would she be more trouble than she's worth? What if she developed an identity and took over your iPhone? What if one day, out of the blue, she interrupted your ability to download a new application because, well, it just wasn't “her”? The human ego is a bit like Siri run amok. It initially serves as a useful
interface between our inner and outer worlds, gathering and cataloging information, balancing personal desires and instincts with appropriate social behavior. Yet somehow, along the way, this organizational
feature
of consciousness develops an identity and tries to take over despite a lack of talent for adaptability, imagination, and innovation.

Here's how it works: From the day we're born, all kinds of thought and behavior patterns are downloaded into our innocent little brains by family members, peer groups, and cultural, religious, educational, and professional authority figures. Unified over time into a single, consistent “voice in your head,” these programs can be quite useful, making recommendations, keeping track of schedules, asking perfunctory questions (within the confines of their programming), making judgments, telling jokes, and so on. The problem is that as the mind approaches maturity, this organizing principle moves from a helpful mediating role to a
controlling
role. Developing a grandiose sense of importance, it steals its host's name, hijacks his or her biography, and actively rejects any programs, old or new, that conflict with its limited sense of self.

The ego is little more than a collection of habits that coalesce to form a rigid identity. It has no true creativity, no intuition, an almost phobic aversion to experimenting, and very little connection to the body and its feelings. With few internal resources to draw on, it focuses on outside approval, outside appearances, money, security, and social standing. Because it has no imagination, it looks to established methods and protocols for guidance, becoming extremely fearful in novel situations — hence its relentless efforts to keep everything under control and moving according to familiar patterns. It's the ego that freaks out in response to change, especially in situations where its favorite conceptual and behavioral programs aren't working.

People who habitually display a low tolerance for vulnerability (Guiding Principle 5, in
chapter 17
) tend to
overidentify
with the ego. This doesn't necessarily mean they're narcissistic. It means that other, more creative and responsive aspects of their consciousness have been suppressed by a limited, controlling,
false
sense of self.

When we return the ego to its rightful place — teaching it to become a “team player” rather than an insecure dictator — this potentially masterful organizing principle relaxes, becoming a helpful, more graceful and lucid Siri-like assistant. An expansive, innovative form of consciousness steps forward, choosing among a wider array of neglected programs already installed in the standard human “hard drive” while downloading or even creating new ones.

Manufacturing a false sense of self is the ego's one creative act. In some people, this static ideal is actually quite impressive, especially at first glance. But it's little more than a form of mental idolatry. Like any image set in stone, it begs to be worshipped; but it doesn't even begin to encompass the potential of who we truly are. Michelangelo's classic statue
David
is a stunning, three-dimensional portrait of the surface of a man, but it can never be any better than it is right now. It can deteriorate over time and become less than it was in its prime, but even a greater artist than Michelangelo himself couldn't come along and add the qualities of a woman, a lion, a stallion, or a star without defacing the original.

And so it is when we fall into the trap of identifying exclusively with images of who
we
are. Encouraged to practice the fine art of ego building from the day we're born, we learn to deftly slice off shards of what we don't want to be while refining the qualities we think would make the most pleasing sculpture of our own identity. Parents, teachers, and peers are the first critics we encounter; over time, we internalize their aesthetics, trying to live up to their expectations.

The problem is, what we carve in stone threatens to turn our minds to stone. Any mask or idol we cling to becomes a cause we must defend. Once the statue of the ego gets past a certain point, it becomes impossible to add new and unforeseen ideas to the equation without rendering the entire masterpiece obsolete. The same goes for all those static images we use to define, and ultimately confine, our parents, spouses, children, friends, and associates, including horses and other animal companions.

Somehow, over time, we forget that we are not the programs we've downloaded or sculptures we create; we are the programm
ers,
the sculpt
ors.
Every computer genius or artist reveals certain aspects of himself in his work, but no single program or piece of art, in fact no entire medium, can ever sum up the totality of a living being, that glittering array of thoughts, feelings, experiences, perspectives, wishes, dreams, and untapped potential. Beneath all that is something even more elusive, the pure, indefinable light of awareness. Consciousness expresses itself through time and space. But just as an artist is
not
his artwork, his technique, or his raw material, a person's
true self
cannot be framed and hung on a wall for all the world to see. To even begin to know ourselves, we must be comfortable with mystery.

When threatened by change, the ego can become nasty, especially if it downloaded a dictatorial “inner critic” program from parents, influential authority figures, or the culture at large. (Freud called this the superego.) Many people leading functional lives on the surface are enslaved by a dull, humorless inner critic that can't differentiate between socially sanctioned images of success and true talent or fulfillment. Just when these people feel the urge to follow their own dreams or change an outdated system, a nagging voice reminds them they're not good enough, strong enough, thin enough, rich enough, or educated enough to step outside the “stall.” So they go back to a practical, unimaginative job, trying to patch an ever-widening sense of emptiness with a new car, designer clothes, and the largest possible flat-screen TV.

This self-limiting feature of human intelligence is all too easily passed down over generations — creating idols in thought that are more resistant to change than stone. So the first act of courage any innovator performs is internal, confronting the mental tyrant that maintains control through relentless dictates, social clichés, and demoralizing comments.

Distinctions between the ego, superego, persona, and inner critic point to different nuances of what many call the “false self” or “conditioned personality.” This is the same repressive feature of the human psyche that people have been challenging for centuries, through art and philosophy, through Eastern mindfulness practices and yoga, and through the more contemplative forms of Christianity, Judaism, and Sufism — all contexts for the revitalization and liberation of that most neglected and elusive of attributes, the human soul. Leaders without soul are little more than cookie-cutter managers. Putting the soul back into leadership sometimes involves confronting and taming (not destroying) a beastly superego or personal inner critic or both.

Deep down, the false self knows it's not good enough to run the entire show, but that doesn't stop it from trying. The nagging fear that “you're a fake” is actually a sign the conditioned personality is on the verge of discovering
it
is not real. The ego mistakenly believes that oblivion or death follows such a realization, so it goes into flight-or-fight mode anytime its limitations are revealed. For this reason, I've found that advice to fight or kill the ego is counterproductive.

I don't need a part of my own psyche freaking out — struggling to defend itself from possible eradication — whenever I change an unproductive behavior, modify a belief, step into the unknown, experiment, or invent something new. I've found it much easier to assure this potentially useful aspect of
consciousness that it's part of a larger, more accomplished team, and that it has an important role: the ego accesses all my previously installed programs, from the ways that men or women are “supposed” to act in certain cultures, to the various languages I've learned and the degrees and certifications I've earned. After all, I don't want to reinvent the wheel if I can draw several previous programs together, modifying them slightly with a minor innovation or two.

The “boardroom” of my own psyche includes huge floor-to-ceiling windows that I sometimes leave open to the city on one side and the desert on the other (leading to an oasis retreat at the foot of the mountains). In the center of the room is a round marble table with big comfy chairs, encouraging consensual leadership from a team of equals. This includes an executive grand organizer (the ego loves this lofty title), an artist-musician-writer, a dreamer, an iconoclast, a researcher, a teacher, a master herder, and an emotional-intelligence specialist, among others.

And while they're a little rough on the furniture, I also have a male lion and a female horse who wander in and out at will. These are not so much animal totems as forms of inner wisdom that bring the predatory and nonpredatory aspects of mind-body awareness into balance.

This metaphorical description of my own inner sanctum brings me to another intriguing piece of horse wisdom: the benefits of what I call “exercising your twin.” The story of how this particular innovation came to light draws attention to the role that humanity's mythic imagination plays in developing visionary leadership, and it provides a useful metaphor for allowing your imagination to run wild while maintaining connection to the practical side of life.

Along the way,
you
might find the courage to add a wizard, mystic, shaman, centaur, or flying horse to your own executive team.

Through the work of scholars like Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and Marion Woodman, ancient myths have been recognized as sources of significant insight still relevant, arguably
essential,
to a deeper understanding of life. In her audio program
Myths for the Future,
Jean Houston defines myth as
“something that never was, but is always happening
. It's the coded DNA of the human psyche. . . . Myth waters our every conscious act and is the very sea of our unconscious life.”

The winged horses, centaurs, and mare-headed goddesses of antiquity are archetypes, mythic images that have a certain life and intelligence of their own. Quintessentially, Houston explains, “archetypes are about relationship, and the
impetus behind relationship, and the connectedness for the way things grow, evolve, complexify, and ultimately become more integral.” When repressed in the individual or culture, “all kinds of alienation emerges, and one is cut off from nature, self, society, and spirit with consequences seen all over today's world. This alienation has gained considerably from the mechanistic view of the world, which has touched virtually every level of modern life.”

As nonmaterial patterns of existence, archetypes can hide out indefinitely in the depths of the collective unconscious, but they can't be suppressed forever. They reappear, Houston says, through the “other great bleed-through realms of human experience: dreams, religious knowings, visions, art, ritual, love, and madness. Sometimes they occur in their archaic forms bearing the accoutrements of earlier cultures, but they ask to be seen in fresh ways. They ask to be regrown.”

Mythic messages evolve over time, dressing themselves up in the customs of different eras, drawing attention to destructive patterns of thought and behavior while offering solutions through symbols of transformation. Perpetually looking for an “in” to our world, they search for people who are not just willing to live these patterns unconsciously but willing to actually notice and appreciate them anew. One archetype that has been resurfacing in my work, and most notably in my herd, involves the dual nature of reality. Drawing attention to an ancient cross-cultural theme, this myth asked “to be regrown” by manifesting
physically.

Twins are not common among horses, yet they play a significant role in horse mythology. From Greece to India to the Celtic lands, stories associated with the Divine Twins have a strong equine element. In most mythical texts, this is mentioned only in passing. But in 2002, the Year of the Black Horse in Chinese astrology, oddly enough, I was gripped by this archetype when my own mare Rasa gave birth to twins sired by Merlin, despite modern veterinary protocols to prevent it. (For an in-depth discussion of the events leading up to this pregnancy, see my 2003 book,
Riding between the Worlds.)