Each moment is a possibility to redeem ourselves. Our bad habits, our unkind thoughts, our indifference or whatever is causing regrets and pain.
Each moment one can stay as one is, repeating yesterday’s habits and fooling oneself in many ways. Or, one can stay as one is and quietly watch one’s inner being; am I fooling myself when I reassure myself? justify myself?condemn or cover up, or yearn to enhance my image?
Each moment I have an opportunity to understand, at a deeper level, my mind and its actions.
To understand myself is all that I can do or ever need to do. We all have knowledge of ourselves that is based on images. Gratifying images of who and what we are, behind which we hide much that is contrary and we rather not face.
We have cultivated these images over time and are eager to enhance them, but never to face ourselves, or another, without any image.
We need to understand what it means to have all this self-knowledge that we carry around and cling to and protect.
Looking closer, we can see that our images are rigid and fixed, for the most part, like pigeon holes, while our actual living moments are not at all easy to categorize. My image of being smart is really true only rarely, yet I cling to that image. It is like wearing rose-tinted glasses that prevent seeing the truth about myself .
Whenever I do “not very smart” things, I’m blind to the full realization of my actions. When another questions the wisdom of some of my actions, I am blind as a bat to their implications. And, I am hurt, or rather, my image of being smart has taken a blow.
So, I’ve learned to protect my image by resisting close scrutiny of my own motives and actions.
If I continue as I am and not try to understand my clinging to images, and my avoidance of facts, then I will always be at the mercy of kind and unkind comments of other people. Just as I am now.
Or, I can watch myself and pay close attention to my inner motives. I can start to understand whether my images are who I am or are false and harmful. Maybe then I will see that the only security I have is in learning about myself all the time.
“If we are seeing the truth of something because we have seen it for ourselves, isn’t this the capacity or energy that breaks up conditioned thinking, that frees the brain from its habitual confines? Can we see that thinking about thinking only creates more confusion because of the past? Can the past understand the present? To define this energy as this or that hinders the necessary capacity to understand the question, for it categorizes intellectually and, therefore, doesn’t bring about real awareness.”
– from The Religious Impulse by Dr. Terrence Webster-Doyle
