At this
time of the year many people make or have already made a resolution, which is
often short-lived, to embark upon some sort of self-improvement program or to
give up some bad habit. Now, don’t get me wrong. I am all for personal
transformation, but there is a right, and a wrong, way to go about it, both in
thought, word and deed.
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| Alan Watts |
One of
my all-time favourite spiritual teachers Alan
Watts, pictured left, in his book The Wisdom of Insecurity, has this to say
about the wrong way to embark upon self-improvement:
I can only think seriously of trying to
live up to an ideal, to improve myself, if I am split in two pieces. There must
be a good ‘I’ who is going to improve the bad ‘me.’ ‘I,’ who has the best
intentions, will go to work on wayward ‘me,’ and the tussle between the two
will very much stress the difference between them. Consequently ‘I’ will feel
more separate than ever, and so merely increase the lonely and cut-off feelings
which make ‘me’ behave so badly.
The reason the good ‘I’
can’t change the bad ‘I’ is because they are one and the same. Worse still,
both ‘I’s’ are illusory. When I use the word 'illusory' I am not saying these
'I's' do not exist. They do exist—but only as
self-images in our mind. The 'I's' are, however, illusory in the sense that they
are not what they appear to be. They appear to be 'solid,' 'fixed,' and 'permanent,' but they
are not. Nevertheless, all the 'I's' and 'me's' in your mind are brought about by thought, and they have no reality in and of themselves. They are, as the Indian spiritual philosopher J.
Krishnamurti used to say, the product of thought which divides. They are certainly not you, the person that you are.
Yes, despite appearances to the contrary, and our own
misbelief, these ‘I’s” do not have any separate, independent, discrete and
permanent existence from the person each one of us is. The
great Scottish philosopher David
Hume came up with what is known as the ‘bundle theory,’ which postulates that our mind constructs
hundreds of waxing and waning selves. None of these selves ever come together
as a single unified entity. They are no more than a bundle of thoughts,
feelings, perceptions and sensations. Neuroscience has shown that Hume, along
with a considerable number of other eminent philosophers, was right.
Alan
Watts explains how the phenomenon of self occurs:
The notion of a separate thinker, of an ‘I’
distinct from the experience, comes from memory and from the rapidity with
which thought changes. It is like whirling a burning stick to give the illusion
of a continuous circle of fire. If you imagine that memory is a direct
knowledge of the past rather than a present experience, you get the illusion of
knowing the past and the present at the same time. This suggests that there is
something in you distinct from both the past and the present experiences. You
reason, ‘I know this present experience, and it is different from that past
experience. If I can compare the two, and notice that experience has changed, I
must be something constant and apart.’
Over time our sense of self hardens, but it is
never more than image—self-image—in our mind. And the bottom line is this: ‘I’
can’t change ‘me.’ You see, the ‘I’ that wants to stop smoking or drinking is
the ‘me’ that wants to keep smoking or drinking. What’s more, all such ‘I’s’
and ‘me’s’ are in the past. They are all the result of past
thinking and past conditioning. They can never result in the
attainment of something in the now, let alone the future.
When we work and rely upon only our ‘I’s’ and ‘me’s we will never, never
succeed in our endeavours. As William Temple, a
former Archbishop of Canterbury,
said, ‘For the trouble is that we are self-centred, and no effort of the self
can remove the self from the centre of its own endeavour.’
The only program of self-improvement that has any chance at all of being successful is one where the person that each one of us is makes a decision to invoke the power of one’s own personhood. That power is not of self; it is a ‘power-not-oneself.’ Self can’t change self, for all our mental selves are in and of themselves not only powerless but also contradictory and in opposition to each other. Hence the need to rely upon a power-not-oneself—the power that comes from being a person among persons.
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| P F Strawson |
Now, what is a person? Well, the well-known
English philosopher P F Strawson, pictured right, wrote much on
the subject. Strawson articulated a concept of ‘person’ in respect of which
both physical characteristics and states of consciousness can be ascribed to
it. Each one of us is a person among persons—a mind-body complex. We are much,
much more than those hundreds of little, false selves---all those waxing and
waning ‘I’s’ and ‘me’s’—with which we tend to identify, in the mistaken belief
that they constitute the ‘real me,’ that is, the person each
one of us is. Only the latter is ontologically real.
Personal freedom and real personal transformation come when we get real,
that is, when we start to think, act and live from our personhood as
a person among persons. We need to get our mind off our ‘selves’ and rise above
them if we are to get real. And remember this: there is no human problem that
is not common to other persons among persons.
Now,
here are the steps involved. You begin by making up your mind and make a
decision to do X [X being whatever positive thing you wish to
see actualized in your life]. Great power arises from the making of a decision.
Then nail that decision up in your mind and don’t look back. A big part of not
looking back means that when any thought, feeling, perception or sensation
arises that is to the contrary of the doing of X, you proceed to reaffirm
and thus strengthen your original decision and resolve to do X by
performing some action—the important word is action—that is not
only consistent with the doing of X, it will actually help to bring
about X. In the words of the American essayist and minister Ralph Waldo Emerson, ‘Do the thing and you will have the
power.’ The power is in the doing—the power of the person that
you are. It’s the ‘act as if’ principle taught by the great American
philosopher and psychologist William James, pictured below. He said, ‘If you want a
quality [of personhood], act as if you already had it’
[emphasis added]. Now, who must act? You, the person that you
are, must act.
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| William James |
For
example, if your decision is to give up smoking, and a thought arises that a
cigarette would be nice right now, you immediately do something that is
consistent with being a non-smoker. For example, you go somewhere, or mix with
someone, where smoking is simply out of the question. Forget all about
so-called will-power, for there is no such thing. The ‘will’ is simply your
ability to make a decision; it has no power in and of itself. We will always do
whatever is our strongest want. It’s want-power—fortified
with enthusiasm—and not will-power that we need. Another problem
with so-called will-power is this—it is simply the imposition of one illusory
‘self’ over another. It’s the old problem all over.
One more
thing, motivation is essential for successful personal transformation.
Motivation is motive plus action, the latter being the doing of all that is
necessary for X to actualize. What is your motive for doing X?
(There may, of course, be more than one such motive.) Your motive must relate
to you as a person. For example, if you want to give up smoking, your motive
may be to be a healthier person or a wealthier person (as smoking is, among
other things, damn expensive). Keep your motive upfront in your consciousness.
Your motive is your want-power. For all intents and purposes they are one and
the same.
So,
remember this. Self can’t change self, because self is image inside a person, but the person each one
of us is can indeed change—and change for the better—if we want, that is, really
want, change more than anything else and are prepared to go to any length to
get it.
Note. This
post was first published, in substantially the same form, as ‘The Myth of Self-improvement’ on January 11, 2015.
