Why is self-change is so hard and how to still achieve it?
It’s no secret that sane society comes with a very high price. You have to let go of your sacred habits and norms, your rituals and repetitions, you have to admit that you don’t actually know. In most situations, you’re at least partially wrong. That’s extremely difficult to admit.
To quote Anthony de Mello: “The three most difficult things for a human being are not physical feats or intellectual achievements. They are, first, returning love for hate; second, including the excluded; third, admitting that you are wrong.”
You have to allow foreign views to be true. Either that or you end up in an unambiguous worldview that never changes and causes great damage. That’s where we are as a society today.
Self-correction is a two-side road. It works inside out and outside in. The “traffic” sometimes alternates and sometimes takes place simultaneously. Therefore both of the following injunctions are true:
1. To improve yourself, improve something in your external world.
2. To improve the world, improve something inside yourself.
Sometimes, the best way to help yourself is to help others, while sometimes taking care of yourself is the best you can do for others. The authentic change affects both and that’s the only way it really works.
Self-correction doesn’t work in isolation
A spiritual seeker went to a mountain to commit to self-realization. Ten years later, frustrated because he didn’t make it, he headed back but a bird attracted his attention. She kept flying hither and thither carrying water in her beak from a flooded area. The rain had flooded her nest and she wouldn’t stop carrying the water away drop by drop until saving the nest.
The seeker thought to himself: “Alas, I’m giving up too soon! I have to try harder!”
He meditated for another decade with no avail. He headed to the valley but, again, on the way he noticed a mouse trying to bite through a large rock. He paid attention to the little animal and realized that an avalanche had fallen on her den and she wouldn’t give up biting on the rock until reaching the den.
The seeker thought to himself: “Alas, I’m giving up too soon! I have to try harder!”
Ten years later, still unfulfilled, the seeker headed back and this time he found a dying dog on the path. The seeker opened his flask and poured water on the dog’s snout.
The dog transformed into a celestial being and said: “What you did just now is worth more than your 30 years of meditation.”
Beyond the self and the world
Self-seeker was self-preoccupied. He never thought of others. He could have helped the bird and the mouse. Why didn’t he?
The paradox of self-realization is that you come closest to it when you’re so immersed in others that you forget about yourself. But to be immersed in others genuinely, you have to be radically self-aware without being self-centered.
Awareness is like breath. That “breath” consists of extrovert intention, action, response, followed by introvert attention, assimilation, learning, thus informing the next breath, and the next… Extroverts spend more time in the first part of the breath than in the second, while for introverts it’s vice versa. Coherent self-change requires both, as well as coherent social change.
There’s too much specialization and exclusivism today. Dedicated spiritual practice and professional business or political engagement seem irreconcilable. Even if you are into both, you’re expected to keep them segregated. You can’t talk spiritually at a business meeting, and you can’t talk business at a spiritual retreat. It’s not only how you talk that matters, but how you dress, behave, and speak.
When you enter the realm of spiritual topics, you’re expected to be abstract, ethereal; when you enter the realm of material topics, you have to be concrete, measurable. Why can’t there be both in both realms? To make this possible we’d need to transcend self-referentiality (the concept explained in my first article in this series).
The story about soul-seeker draws an image of how an introvert finally “exhales,” releasing the tension. There’s certainly someone in your close circles that went through the opposite: after a long period of toiling and panting she stopped, inhaling slowly and with full attention for the first time in years, calming her breath and appreciating it. Her “breath” meaning her awareness.
With self-awareness, you access a broader picture of yourself and the world. You’re able to transcend your old images and form new ones. Your self-reflection becomes fresh, making your worldview adaptable and reliable. With that in place, self-correction becomes easy.
Joy or war?
Self-correction should lead to more joy. When you lose track, suffering intensifies and you come back on track. In some cases, you have to change your track when it no longer serves you.
When you “exhale” you correct the world; when you “inhale” you correct yourself, changing self-awareness and self-reflection.
The internal change requires unlearning the introjected falsehoods. You have to admit that many of your (seemingly self-evident) convictions are false or at least flawed. You have to look yourself in the eye and face your addiction and dependency, your self-imprisonment, and accept it without self-condemnation. Then self-correction won’t come from violence but from benevolence.
There’s too much violent change in this world. So many people stand rooted in their own “truth” fighting against others, rooted in their opposite “truth”. Both such truths are flawed and relative but no side would ever admit that.
Usually, one side fights to consolidate the dominant status quo, while the other tries to undermine it and establish a new order which would, ideally, become a new status quo. You can see this in politics, economy, education, science… To establish a new truth it is often enough to rebut the old — you don’t need to prove you’re right, you only need to prove that your opponent is wrong. By the 21st century, that has become a dominant process of establishing a “truth.”
A great danger to the sanity of any society is when one “truth” eradicates all others and over a couple of generations becomes indisputable. Such a “truth” will prevail against others through general conviction. Changing the general conviction becomes practically impossible; attempting such a feat is risky! Rising above the face value of both “truths” to build agreement on a deeper level of basic principles, is extremely rare.
In the meantime, spiritualists are juggling with dozens of techniques of navel-gazing and constructing ever more abstract cosmologies and explanations of human purpose in this Universe. They build insanely complicated referential fields with unique imagery and jargon. Adherents of these referential fields consider their own field superior to others’. If they want to “coexist” they have to create bubbles, holding back from saying what they actually think about each other. The result is violent non-communication.
Pressing the bubbles too closely together intensifies the tension and may trigger a war, where one side defeats the other and establishes domination. Wars are always fought between people caught up in self-referential illusions.
Were both sides capable of transcending their own referential fields, they could — together — form a new, unbiased referential field and be in agreement. That would be a win-win. Well, if both sides were open to this in the first place, there would be no tension, no war anyway.
Wars usually end in mediocre compromises. Initially, both sides stubbornly insist on their “truths” and remain impermeable to logic and common sense. When at some point a judge draws the line, then complaining and lamenting take ridiculous proportions.
What is a referential field, anyway? It’s an agreement of how we get along, how we communicate and negotiate, what we aspire for, how we steer our family, society, culture, etc., and where our (ethical) boundaries lie. We shouldn’t cement our referential fields! Every now and then, when our society runs amok, when the system turns sluggish, we should press the “reset” button and start anew.
We want more joy, don’t we? That’s the ultimate goal of self-correction: to eliminate suffering and pronounce joy. So, why don’t we use joy as our main measure of progress? Why is nurturing awareness so difficult?
We’re all the same…
The biggest obstacle to advancing awareness is that those who need it the most are convinced they don’t need it. Duško Radović wisely observed: “When someone is stupid you can’t even prove that to him.”
A norm in our society is that you’re not supposed to probe into major referential fields, no matter how improbable their “truths” and how damaging their actions. Serious mental disorders are hidden under the guise of “freedom” of religious and political (or some other) expression.
That’s insane!
It’s very easy to show the level of insanity in our society. You don’t need to challenge whole referential fields — say, Christianity, neoliberalism, big bang theory, etc. It’s enough to take away a simple everyday ritual to unhinge the majority.
Let’s erase coffee! One day you wake up and there’s no coffee. Imagine the chaos!
I chose coffee because our social ritual built around it is as irrational and redundant as any religious ritual. I’m not saying coffee can’t be good; I’m not saying religious ritual can’t be good. I’m saying neither of them is indispensable. Neither of them was around a while ago and many people can do without them just fine.
But hundreds of millions of people have introjected such rituals so deeply that losing them would hurt like losing a limb. Or more! For many people religious adherence is so intertwined with their sense of the self, with their culturally assumed identity, they literally can’t imagine changing it. What depends on it is not only survival and social inclusion, but the eternal afterlife! So losing a limb is a lesser concern than being disassociated from the one and only prescribed “truth.”
Think about it: if giving up coffee frightens you, what about giving up tenets of your sacred worldview? If you‘d rather fight for your coffee and your rituals than give them up, then please, admit in all honesty and modesty your ignorance. Admit you’re far, far from anything transcendent.
How can I say that? You can only express transcendence by practicing it. Locking yourself up in a fairy-tale about transcendence is dumb. If this statement upset you, it proves my point.
If you see the slightest sign that you might be locked up in a fairy-tale — even if that fairy-tale is considered infallible by a billion people — please allow that possibility. If you’re upset now, that’s a good sign there’s some falsehood in you.
When you see it, look for a pocket where correction is possible. Introduce change patiently. Broaden it on the two-way road: inside out and outside in. Talk to those around you and learn what’s realistic.
In a repressive society, you must be very careful! Make changes in the safety of your home and among trustworthy friends. Better safe than sorry! In the threatening world out there, play by the rules of the game and contribute to small changes only when opportunities open up.
In a liberal society, there’s repression too, but you can express freedom easier and stand for your rights. Social pressure still keeps the masses in line, but you have the option to step out of line. Liberal societies are usually very comfortable and there’s not much incentive for serious change. Don’t even try! You might cause a breakdown and lose the comforts you’re enjoying. (I’m being cynical, of course.)
By all means, do something! Change your life before addressing any issues in the world. And when your efforts bring about change in the world, don’t forget about your inner change. Please, never fall prey to the conviction that you’ve reached some ultimate state of perfection.
Don’t say: “I’ve already changed, I’m good. Now others should change to match my standards.” If you’re unable to keep changing yourself, you have no right to demand change from anyone else — especially not if “change” means expecting them to adopt your own referential field.
You may be the most objective environmental scientist with all the data on your side, but if you present your “truth” forcefully to convert climate change deniers to climate change believers, you’ve already lost your case. You should go beyond your self and the world to the level of principles, asking meta-questions and then looking for answers together with the opposition. Be the first to make that step.
Stay true to your doubts
Can you see how your self-conviction holds you back from self-correction? How self-delusion holds you back from self-reflection? How self-denial holds you back from self-awareness?
Even famous scientists have fallen in the trap of being over-confident.
Can you see how far we are from the vastness of change we’d have to undergo as a civilization to attain a truly joyful life? Both individually and collectively. Can we admit with humility there might be a better way? Can we talk about our reference fields openly and scrutinize them thoroughly? Can we accept that our constructed “truths” are not essential to our wellbeing and identity?
Let’s play a game of challenging each other’s blind rituals, religious and holy as well as blunt and mundane. Let’s challenge that cup of coffee twice a day. Let’s be gentle and understanding while we move on. If we’re aware enough, we’ll learn in the process that we’re all the same.
The foundations of a joyful life are the same for all of us on the planet. In the next article, I’ll ask the question: “What is the ideal of human existence?” Through the prism of that question, we’ll look at six pillars of organic living and the joy that comes as a natural consequence of it.
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This is my third article in this series. You can read each article individually, but to take the most out of it read them all from the beginning, starting from:
1. The Ultimate Test of Your Spiritual Development
2. The Ultimate Test of Your Awareness
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