I started to pay very careful attention to what I was saying.
I don't know if that happened Voluntarily or involuntarily.
but I could feel a sort of split developing in my psyche and the split
and I've actually had students tell me the same thing that has happened to them after they
listened to some of the material that that I'd be describing to all of you, but
split into two
let's say... and one part was the... let's say the old me that was talking a lot and that
liked to argue and that liked ideas, and there was another part that was watching that part like just with its eyes open and
neutrally judging and the part that was neutrally judging was watching the part that was talking and going: "that isn't your idea"
"You don't really believe that"
"You don't really know what you're talking about"
"That isn't true"
And I thought that's really interesting. So now and that was happening to like
95% of what I was saying. Then I didn't really know what to do. I thought okay. This is strange. So maybe I've
fragmented and that's just not a good thing at all. I mean, it wasn't like I was hearing voices or anything like that
I mean, it wasn't like that
It was... it was... well, people have multiple parts
So then I had this weird conundrum is like well which of those two things are me. Is it the part that's listening and saying
"No, that's rubbish". "That's a lie". "That's..."
"Your doing that to impress people", "You're just trying to win the argument"... you know...
Was that me or was the part that was going about my normal
verbal business me? And I didn't know but I decided I would go with the critic and then what
I tried to do what I learned to do -I think-
was to stop saying things that made me weak and
now that.. I mean, I'm still trying to do that because I'm always
feeling when I talk
whether or not the words that I'm saying are either making me align or making me come apart and
I think the alignment... I really do think the alignment is...
I think alignment is the right way of conceptualizing it because I think if you say things that are as
true as you can say them, let's say, then they come up...
... they come out of the depths inside of you because we don't know where thoughts come from. We don't know how far down
into your substructure the thoughts emerge. We don't know what processes of
physiological alignment are necessary for you to speak from the core of your being. We don't understand any of that
we don't even conceptualize that, but I believe that you can feel that and I learned some of that from reading Carl Rogers by the
way who's a great clinician because he talked about mental health in part as a coherence between the
spiritual or the or the abstract and the physical that the two things were aligned and and there's a lot of idea of
alignment in psychoanalytic and clinical thinking, but anyways I decided that I would start
practicing not saying things that would make me weak and what happened was that
I had to stop saying almost
everything that I was saying. I would say 95% of it as a hell of a shock to wake up
and, I mean, this is over a few months,
but the hell of a shock to wake up and realize that you're mostly deadwood!
It's a shock! You know and you might think: "Well, do you really want all of that to burn off?"
There's nothing left, but a little rusk 5% of you. It's like, well, if that 5% is
solid then maybe that's exactly what you want to have happen.
Well, so I told you that story is an elaboration of this line: "...and God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the Earth
and that every imagination
of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually". To question worth asking:
"Just exactly what are your motives?"
Well, you know maybe they're purer than mine were and it's certainly possible
I don't think that I'm naturally a particularly good person
I think I have to work at it very very hard, and I don't necessarily think that everyone is like that
But some people are worse than, and everyone's like that to some degree
So it's worth thinking about
Just how much trouble are you trying to cause?
You know and the other thing you might think about is that if you're not doing something important with your life, by your own definition
-because that's the game that we're playing- you get to define the terms at least initially
maybe you're prone to cause trouble just because you don't have anything better to do. Because at least it's
trouble is more interesting than boring! You know that's something you learn if you read Dostoyevsky
Dostoyevsky knew that extraordinarily well and so if you're not doing something if you're not pushing yourself to the limits of your capacity
then you have plenty of left over
What would you say willpower energy and resources to devote to causing interesting trouble and so?
Also, I would say this is also an archetypal scenario
God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil
continually
That's something to meditate on
and it's not
Self-destructive because what it is is an attempt to it's like the diagnosis of an illness
It's like if that does happen to be the case for you or to some degree
Maybe it's only 10% of you or something or maybe it's 90%
well, then coming to terms of that is excellent because then maybe you can stop doing it and
What would be the downside to that?
You'd have to give up your resentment obviously in your hatred and all of that
and that's really annoying because those emotions are very they're easy to engage in in their and
they're engaging and they have this feeling of self-righteousness with them and
that goes along with them, but
you're not doing this in order to put yourself down you're
Doing this in order to separate the wheat from the chaff and to leave everything that you don't have to be behind