THE ONLY WAY TO CHANGE WHO YOU ARE

Have you ever noticed how most of our attempts to change fail? Have you ever asked yourself why this is the case?

We read self-help books, we attend self-improvement courses, we join a yoga or pilates group, we learn to meditate. We have the best of intentions and for a while we seem happier in ourselves but sooner or later something unexpected or unpleasant happens and, wham, we are back to our old selves again---with the emphasis on ‘old selves.’ Yes, all too often any change in us is temporary and skin-deep. This is not surprising. After all, do we not live in a world of makeovers and quick fixes?

Here are a couple of Eastern stories or anecdotes that you might find helpful. I certainly find them illuminative and instructive.

Here’s the first one. A pupil asks his teacher, ‘And how does real change come about?’ Now, if someone asks me a ‘how’ question I usually reply, ‘Don’t ask “how,” for you are asking for a method or technique. Methods and techniques are conditioning, and we need to be de-conditioned.’ Anyway, this teacher was not put off by the pupil’s question.

So, the pupil wanted to know how ‘real change’ comes about. Here’s the teacher’s answer. ‘Through awareness.’ That’s right, we change through awareness. Not through changing our religion, our beliefs, our politics, our appearance, our clothes, or anything else. Through awareness.

‘And what does one do to become aware,’ asked the pupil. (Now, that’s a damn good way of asking the question. This time the pupil didn’t say, ‘How do I become aware?’ That would probably have been too much for the teacher.)

Now, listen to the teacher’s reply. ‘What does one do, when one is asleep, to wake from sleep?’ was his reply.

Here’s another little anecdote on the same point.

‘What is my self, O teacher?’ asked a pupil. The teacher replied, ‘For that you have to learn what is known as “the secret act”.’

‘What is the secret act?’ asked the pupil. ‘This,’ said the teacher, as he closed his eyes and then opened them.

All we succeed by most of our efforts at self-improvement is a change in our behaviour, and even that is usually short-lived. That’s right, our behaviour changes but not ourselves, that is, the person that each one of us is. Real, deep and lasting change only occurs through awareness, that is, self-observation. As I’ve often said---it’s not an original idea of mine---enlightenment means waking up. Yes, waking up. To ourselves, other people, and our world.

Whenever you are choicelessly aware and accepting of life unfolding from one moment to the next, you are in an enlightened state of consciousness. Whenever you resist and oppose what is, whenever you judge others or events, you are anything but enlightened. It’s as simple as that.

Don’t change your ‘self,’ or rather the many ‘selves’ that exist in your mind---for example, the angry self, the frightened self, the anxious self, and so on---but instead learn to change the person that you are. In order to change the person that you are, you must increase in self-knowledge. The latter comes, not from reading books, however helpful they may be, but from self-observation, that is, awareness.

Simply watch and observe your thoughts and feelings as well as your reactions to events with passive detachment, that is, dispassionately. You will learn plenty from so doing. You will see at work all the false selves which you have taken to be the ‘real you,’ that is the person that you are. You may see the ‘frightened self,’ which has arisen in your mind perhaps as a result of overly protective parents. You may see the ‘angry self,’ which perhaps is the result of an ‘egocentric, narcissistic and self-absorbed self’ which insists always on getting its own way and which demands the attention of others at all times.

All these false selves have given you an acquired, invented ‘identity,’ but it is a false identity, that is, an imaginary ‘I.’ These false selves are the result of past thinking and conditioning, but they are persistent little critters that want to hang onto their fake existence. Know this---no matter how persistent and powerful these selves may appear to be, they are only self-images in your mind. Yet there is often strong feeling associated with them such that they can lead us terribly astray.

The ‘real you’ is something altogether different. It is the mind-body complex that we call a person. You are much, much more than those hundreds of little, false selves---all those waxing and waning ‘I’s’ and ‘me’s’---with which you identify, in the mistaken belief that they constitute the ‘real you,’ that is, the person that you are. Only the latter is ontologically real.

Personal freedom and transformation come when you ‘get real,’ that is, when you learn to think, feel, act and live from your personhood as a person among persons. The ‘secret’ is to get your mind off your many false ‘selves’ and rise above them. This, you must do, if you are ever to get real, but you must watch and, for a while, endure your false selves. Yes, endure them. Watch and follow them to their end. Suffer and endure their disturbance until it ends---and most assuredly it will. In time, you will come to see, know and understand where you have gone astray, and with self-knowledge, insight and understanding real psychological change will come naturally to you, as surely as night follows day. Listen to these wonderful words from the American spiritual teacher Vernon Howard: 'The quality of self-insight is the quality of the life.'

Now, close your eyes and open them. That’s the secret act. Literally and metaphorically speaking.

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IMPORTANT NOTICE: See the Terms of Use and Disclaimer. The information provided on this blogspot is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Never delay or disregard seeking professional medical advice from your medical practitioner or other qualified health provider because of something you have read on this blogspot. For immediate advice or support call Lifeline on 13 1 1 14 or Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800. For information, advice and referral on mental illness contact the SANE Helpline on 1800 18 SANE (7263) go online via sane.org

MINDFULNESS, PSYCHOLOGICAL MUTATION AND HEALING

‘The mind is made up of thousands of yesterdays.’

So said Krishnamurti (pictured left), who often spoke of what he referred to as a ‘complete psychological revolution in the nature of the whole human being.’

This ‘psychological revolution’ – this ‘real crisis in the life of man’ or ‘radical inward revolution’ – can happen instantaneously or incrementally (although Krishnamurti appeared to doubt whether any change which was not immediate could be ‘true’). In either case, the experience is ‘revolutionary.’

The ‘psychological revolution’ of which Krishnamurti often spoke is one which you ‘must radically, profoundly, bring about [yourself].’ It is not something that others can do for you. Only you can effect this change within yourself, and it is a change which affects the conscious mind as well as the unconscious. The change comes from finding a ‘way of living’ where you ‘come into reality.’ It is an awakening, in which we wake up ... and then learn to stay awake.

This liberating experience is a ‘radical’ and ‘inward’ one but it can only happen when an individual realises that inner change is of ‘primary importance.’ That means that you have to want it more than anything else. In that regard, there is an Eastern story which goes like this. A seeker after wisdom asked a master, ‘How can I attain wisdom?’ The mater replied, ‘Let me show you.’ He took him down to the sea and immersed his head in the water three times. Then he asked him, ‘What did you desire more than anything else when your head was under water?’ ‘Air,’ replied the seeker. ‘When you desire wisdom as much as you desired air, you will attain it,’ said the master. (In some accounts of this story the master is none other than Socrates.)

Yes, so great is the power of change that if you want it – that is, really want it – you will have it! But first you must see the ‘danger’ inherent in the way you’re living. Krishnamurti would say, ‘It is like seeing the danger of a precipice, of a wild animal, of a snake; then there is instant action.’ Yes, so often we do not want to get well. No wonder Jesus asked the man who had been an invalid for 38 years, ‘Do you want to get well?’ (Jn 5:6).

The change produces freedom – ‘freedom from psychological fear, freedom from greed, envy, jealousy, dependency; freedom from the fear of being lonely, from the fear of conformity’ – and the freedom which comes into being comes not through the pursuit of freedom but when one ‘understands the total conditioning of his own mind.’

This is not some pathetic so-called ‘complete makeover’ of the kind that is so sickeningly popular these days, but a total reorientation of one’s life and being. Everything else becomes secondary to the task of remaining ‘alert’ and ‘anew to the challenge of life.’ What is required is vigilant, ‘thought-less’ self-observation and choiceless awareness of ‘the outer as well as of the inner.’ Says Krishnamurti, ‘To observe the action of the past is again action without the past. The state of seeing – in the form of a disinterested and passive alertness – is more important than what is seen. To be aware of the past in that choiceless observation, is not only to act differently, but to be different. In this awareness memory acts without impediment, and efficiently.’

New Thought minister and writer Emmet Fox (pictured left) wrote, ‘Has it ever occurred to you that the only time you ever have is the present moment?’ He went on to say, ‘It means that you can only live in the present. It means that you can only act in the present. It means that you can only experience in the present. Above all, it means that the only thing you have to heal is the present thought.’ When we do that, we free ourselves from what Krishnamurti called the ‘background,’ and when we are free of the background, we can, in Krishnamurti’s words, ‘renew life’ and ‘recreate ourselves’ immediately, without dependence on time.

That’s a powerful idea – the only thing we have to heal is the present thought. We need to ‘get the present moment right.’ What we call the past is nothing more than our memory of the past ... experienced in the moment of the present. However, until we awaken to that fact, and stop living in the past, I regret to advise that our present and also our future will all be in the past. We are the result of the past, and all too often we live in the past.

For Krishnamurti the ‘past’ was not the chronological past but all ‘the accumulated experiences, the accumulated responses, memories, traditions, knowledge, the sub-conscious storehouse of innumerable thoughts, feelings, influences and responses.’ All psychological maladjustment can be seen to be a condition of the past, and, if Krishnamurti is right, we can instantaneously free ourselves from the past. ‘Freedom from the past,’ says Krishnamurti, ‘means living in the now which is not of time, in which there is only this movement of freedom, untouched by the past, by the known.’

Krishnamurti had little or no time for those ‘analysts’ who were of the view that it was necessary to examine ‘every response, every complex, every hindrance, every blockage,’ for all that implied a process of time, but nothing which was the result of time could, he said, free us from the burden of the past. For Krishnamurti, ‘choiceless awareness’ was ‘a much simpler, a more direct way’ to liberate oneself from the past. He referred to it as a ‘psychological mutation.’

Ultimately, one’s understanding of oneself and reality is ‘from moment to moment.’ If you can ‘get that right’, then, as Dr Emmet Fox would say, ‘the whole picture will change into one of harmony.’ Gone will be the contradiction, friction and conflict between all the warring ‘I’s’ and ‘me’s’ within that supposed ‘self’ which we mistakenly take for our true being or personhood. We need no longer be anxious, depressed or fearful. Mindfulness, in the form of a constant, meditative choiceless awareness of the ‘inner’ and the ‘outer’, provides us with ever-present opportunities for self-healing, for it is (to quote Krishnamurti once again) an ‘objective, kindly, dispassionate study of ourselves, ourselves being the organism as a whole: our body, our feelings, our thoughts.’

Now, this is important. I am not saying that we can heal ourselves of all maladies including psychological illnesses. As regards the latter, some people can at times experience a gross distortion of reality – a state of affairs which is not readily amenable to healing of the kind the subject of this post ... at least not until other therapeutic modalities are effectually in place. What I am saying is this – ultimately, all healing is self-healing which frees us from the bondage of both the past and a non-existent, but ever so persistent, ‘self.’ Yes, not only must each of us be our own teacher and our own pupil, we must also be our own healer ... to the fullest extent humanly possible.

Acknowledgment is made, and gratitude is expressed,
to the Krishnamurti Foundation of America, Ojai, California, USA.

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IMPORTANT NOTICE: See the Terms of Use and Disclaimer. The information provided on this blogspot is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Never delay or disregard seeking professional medical advice from your medical practitioner or other qualified health provider because of something you have read on this blogspot. For immediate advice or support call Lifeline on 13 1 1 14 or Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800. For information, advice and referral on mental illness contact the SANE Helpline on 1800 18 SANE (7263) go online via sane.org