Truth Definitions 5

SELF-AWARENESS
     “I would like to be a self-aware woman,” said Anita H., “but I cannot understand what I must do. Is it really that mysterious?” Reply: “It is not mysterious at all. When the waiter sets your dinner before you, do not lose yourself to its pleasant sight; instead, be aware of your reactions to its arrival. Others at the table will not do this, but you can do it. You will feel something different. This awareness is the very same awareness which makes you a problem-free woman.”

SUFFERING
     There is no virtue in suffering. In itself, suffering has no value and no reward. This is contrary to what confused people like to believe, for suffering fills a place inside them which would feel empty if it were not agitated by pain. Suffering is caused by self-contradiction and there is no virtue in contradiction; there is only a need for correction. The only wise course to take with suffering is to use it to end it.

PROBLEM HANDLING
     When meeting a difficulty of any kind you must ask yourself, “Am I going to fight this difficulty or am I going to rise above it?” If you decide to fight you will have to fight endlessly and wearily, for it is the very battling with a problem which keeps it going. But if you decide to transcend it through insight, the problem disappears forever. It vanishes because you now see there was no individual and his problem, there was only an individual who was his problem. Rise above yourself.

IMAGINARY SELF-PICTURES
     Man lives in dozens of imaginary self-pictures which he wrongly takes as his actual identity. But because a man never observes himself to see that it is so, he never believes anyone who tells him about it. I would like to end this paragraph with a single thought for your reflection: If you are not the person you think you are, you do not have the problems you think you have.

SELF-WORK
     We should be encouraged, not discouraged, by seeing how much work we have to do on ourselves. It means we are awakening to our actual condition, we are seeing our self-defeating attitudes. People who live in self-images of being positive and wise and pleasant see no need whatever to work on themselves, so they remain in the suffering caused by living in dreamland. The worse we see ourselves to be, the more encouraged we should be, for if you know all about darkness, you also know about dawn.

SELF-RELIANCE
     I will show you how to become a unique human being. When people around you scream for what they want, don’t join their screaming. If someone of the opposite sex offers to reduce your loneliness in exchange for what he or she wants from you, refuse the offer. While others praise self-reliance, you practice it. If a friend urges you to join him in aggression toward what he calls a common enemy, walk away. When authorities claim they can give you the answers to life, find your own answers by independent search.

SELF-PRAISE & SELF-CONDEMNATION
     By abolishing both self-praise and self-condemnation, and thus thinking from a higher level, we are never falsely fascinated by others, and therefore never hurt by them.

THE HOAX
     What kind of man possesses possibilities for self-awakening? He is the man who feels, even dimly, that he is living under some sort of a gigantic hoax. He has observed the senselessness of his life, he has noticed how people are really quite ruthless beneath their masks of decency. This is a crisis for the man, for now he must decide whether to start thinking for himself or to dazedly endure the horrible hoax. It is a crisis, but also a fresh chance. What man who feels himself caught in a hoax wants to remain in it?