The Hidden Truth About Self-Improvement That No One Wants to Say
There is something complacent about trying to improve yourself... something comfortable.
It still stays in your control: you can follow the courses, sign up for the workshops, do the special somatic exercises follow-alongs, listen to the lectures, and do all of this while at the same time still feeling and knowing that you are fooling yourself, that you are tricking yourself.
That you are not improving anything when you are trying to improve yourself because yourself is not a thing.
Somehow, following some honorable inner way, we seem to know this.
The Unspoken Agreement
We seem to non-verbally agree with each other that we will not say this, that we will not point this out, that we will be sensitive about so-called sensitive things.
While the real thing to say might be that this whole self-improvement thing is nothing - it does nothing.
It can become a hobby, a social club, a dead end, which by itself can be helpful work itself through repeatedly meeting the same frustrations.
Who's Watching This Whole Self-Improvement Zigzag?
This in itself can support the inward turn of seeing who is this self that sees all of this running about, that witnesses all of these nervous zigzag actions of so-called self-improvement.
Who is this?
Seeker seeing all of this and then... tragedy can become comedy, and so in a sense, then that self-improvement that leads nowhere leads nowhere.
When Nowhere Becomes Trusted
The difference now is that this nowhere is trusted.
It doesn't need to be any thing anymore - it doesn't need to be comparable, doesn't need physical affirmation, doesn't need to be applauded or paid for with a material thing.
It-is-as-it-is, and then again the longing begins.
And then again the realisation settles.
IN SEARCH OF...
From Wei Wu Wei's finger points to "doing": "Doing is an avoidance, an escape, a running-away from Reality. To the average man or woman there is no alternative to Doing but Idleness. But should not the alternative to Doing rather be regarded as Being? The sensation approaching terror that modern men and women experience when faced with the possibility of having nothing to "do" is probably a fear of finding nothing between their relative ego and their real ago which is absolute. Doing - work and distraction (from what?) - constitute a screen between the apparent "I" and the real "I"."
Sri Sankaracharya on great delight! "On the vast canvas of the Self, the picture of the manifold worlds is painted by the Self itself. And that Supreme Self, seeing but itself, enjoys great delight."
From Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland on ...: "But it's no use now," thought poor Alice, "to pretend to be two people! Why, there's hardly enough of me left to make one respectable person!"
