IS SELF DEVELOPMENT

POSIBLE?
Ilan Amit PROGRESS AND INNER TRANSFORMATION. Today we are asleep, with no real awareness of ourselves. Our goal is to awaken. We wish to move from our present mechanical existence, driven mainly by external influences, to intentional will and self control, becoming our own masters. The way to achieve this transformation, we are often told, is by means of exercises, making efforts to attain presence, and particularly by meditation. There are additional requirements, such as discipline, obedience to the teacher, studying the teachings and its ideas, and often certain payments. It is sometimes assumed that if one invests the necessary time and effort, seriously and conscientiously one may attain self mastery and higher levels of consciousness within ten or fifteen years of work. (will continue) (II Continuation) We begin the voyage with hope and enthusiasm. After several years we are still going. There may be special periods of intensive work, perhaps a month of retreat, during which we experience real change. We feel transformed breathing, as it were, a different air. But back in ordinary life, in the customary routine, it is as if nothing has changed. We are back o square one, before the voyage began. Why is it like that, why have we failed once again? Where has the sense of inner transformation vanished? Our usual response is: We did not try hard enough. We must stop wasting energy, passing hours of meditation in daydreams and idle thoughts, forgetting to try simple exercises in everyday life. Once we begin real serious work, we shall surely make it.

During several additional years the same pattern is repeated. We experience yet more instances of inner elation, of summit air, followed always by a gradual return to square one. Oddly enough, the real or imagined intencity of the work does not seem to matter greatly. So far we have not been transformed. We are still the same. We begin to despair. Not of the way, or of the teaching, but of ourselves. We shall probably never be transformed, never become new persons, whatever we do. Perhaps others have greater potential, but we as far as we can see do not. (will continue) (III Continuation) This moment of despair with regard to us and our possibility to advance to higher levels of existence is crucial. Several teachings, several great masters, describe it as the real starting point, where something true may happen. Why is this? Let us look into ourselves. Let us ask who it is in us that starts the long voyage and expects to advance all the way to the summit. What inner mechanism is mobilized to achieve that goal? It must be ambition, the wish to succeed, to excel at arduous tasks. Ambition stems from the EGO, the source of self love, pride, and conceit; the source as well of insecurity, fear, envy, and hate. Our EGO is the chief impediment that blocks our contact with the higher world in ourselves. The motives, drives, and energies of the EGO, it whishes and hopes, cannot lead us past the blockage that it represents. Indeed the EGO will seem to cooperate with pleasure in its apparent demise, only to reappear in full force where it was supposed vanquished. (will continue) (IV Continuation) Despair is a special moment during which the EGO loses its power temporarily and is ready to renounce its leading role. This clears the way for something higher that may take over, if it will. Obviously, nothing can be guaranteed. No automatic mechanisms are available here. One can only pray, not for an outcome, but as an expression of our finitude and incapacity. Perhaps we shall be blessed with grace, beyond our reach; or perhaps not.

AN OBSTACLE We are all dissatisfied with ourselves. We all feel that we are far from realizing our potential, that we have not fulfilled our hopes and expectations for ourselves. Indeed, for most people the principal motive for inner work is the hope that it will bring about an inner transformation. We hope to achieve though inner work better control of ourselves. We would like to be calm and balanced when we wish to. We wish to have control over our thoughts and our emotions. The trouble with inner work aimed at selfimprovement is that it is work undertaken to attain a future result. The initiative of such a work is again ambition which comes always from the same source- the EGO, which can neither improve nor change, but only step aside. People change, if at all, as a result of age and life experience, and not only because of deliberate efforts to change. With time we come to understand that we have to give up the hope for change, and be ready to accept ourselves as we are, with our deficiencies and drawbacks. The key is not in the drive to change or improve ourselves, but in being ready to live with ourselves, to befriend ourselves, as Socrates put it. (will continue) (V Continuation) In moments of illumination, or during experiences of inner relaxation and freedom, we wish that there be still more. That the moments of illumination be more frequent, that the sense of relaxation and freedom stay longer and become deeper. We assume that moments of grace arise by themselves, spontaneously, but our task in our inner work is to try to increase and prolong them by suitable efforts. But the wish for more is yet another form of ambition, and like every ambition it is a wish for the future. The future in that case may be just the next moment, but the wish for more directs attention away from the present, away from what is, here and now. Instead of remaining in the light of illumination, or in the same relaxation, we become worried lest the moment will pass. We mobilize every means we may possess to counteract this danger, but with the opposite result.
2

The only sensible attitude is to give up worrying about the next moment; to let the natural process take its course. There is no need to measure and compare this present moment in length and intensity to another. At this moment only the present exists; and it is comparable to anything else. Two or twenty flashes of illumination are not better than one single flash. Equally mistaken is the wish to attain a state of enlightenment, if enlightenment is understood as constant illumination that cannot longer be lost. Nobody who is blessed by a state of true illumination will harbor, in that state, such a wish. There is no need for flashes of illumination to coalesce and become one uninterrupted, neverceasing stream of light. Each flash of illumination stands on its own, independent of previous or subsequent flashes. . (will continue) (VI Continuation) EFFORTS AND GRACE If our efforts are driven by ambition, and if we need neither change nor improve ourselves, what is then still required for us, and by whom? We indicate the idea of a dead end, a point where we despair of ourselves and our possibilities; a point where we can only pray and hope for grace to appear? G. I. Gurdjieff related a story about children who found a bunch of grapes and could not agree upon its partition. They turned to Mullah Nasrudin (a Middle Eastern folk hero) for help. He asked them whether he should divide the grapes according to divine or human justice. Naturally, the children called for divine justice, whereupon Nasrudin gave the whole bunch to a single child. When the children protested, he told them that this was the nature of divine justice. One receives everything and others nothing. We are not only incapable of actively attracting grace, we cannot even merit it. Our ideas of what constitutes right conduct, right thoughts, or right feelings our human understanding. As such, they are quite significant, but we have no ground to assume that they have any control or power over grace. Like love, or beauty, grace has no cause, no

reasons or motives. It is absolute. We have to accept that the outcome of inner work is not in our hands. We cannot guarantee the outcome to ourselves or to others. . (will continue) (VI Continuation) In reality, there is nothing to guarantee, because whatever we are after is already within us. We do not normally realize it because of a screen that hides it from our view, or due to insufficient illumination. Our wish to succeed, to show results, to change ourselves for the better, to attain higher levels of consciousness, to prolong or intensify moments of illumination- are all components of the same blocking screen. It seems that our real task is to give up; but not as tactical ploy, not as yet another manipulation designed to obtain indirectly that which could not otherwise be achieved. Renunciation means admitting to our innermost selves that we can neither guarantee grace nor be worthy of it. Yet we accept to stay in our incapacity and vulnerability, partial and incomplete, aware of the finitude of our being. DUTY AND RESPONSIBILITY. At times when I become conscious of myself I see the causal system of stimulus and response that operates in me. My seeing does not by itself alter this system, but my awareness opens up and ever-new dimension of freedom and none identification in me. Though, my reaction and counter-reactions are hardly modified, I see that I am not obliged to mobilize my energies and to identify with those reactions- in thought, deed, or feeling. This freedom arises from seeing alone, not from any effort to break loose from fetters, But what am I to do with this freedom, what does it oblige me to? (will continue) (VI Continuation) Our responsibilities are derived from our daily situation, from the people around us and those whom we may encounter occasionally. Our awareness and the inner freedom we experience help us listen to the inner voice that points out our obligations: the voice of the conscience. Our obligation toward the other, as I understand it, does not stem from moral precepts, even though such precepts have an important role to play in our common life- our tradition, culture, and
3

state. Our obligation toward the other is founded on a spontaneous feeling of love and compassion that we experience toward the other, toward the other, toward our children, parents, partners, siblings, and friends. We may also experience compassion and love toward a stranger whose troubled glance we have just met. When we become aware of the love and compassion surging within us we see that we are not alone, not disconnected and separate individuals. Despite having separate bodies we are, in a sense, parts of a single soul. Devotion and sacrifice do not reduce our energy but intensify it. Love and compassion toward the other, readiness to accept him as he is, with all his shortcomings and faults, ailments and old age, help us accept ourselves as well, with our weaknesses and shortcomings, with a feeling of remorse, of love and compassion. Love and compassion are not just private and individual experiences. Neither are they necessarily impersonal manifestations of a universal, vibrant movement. In some unexplained way they are both, at one and the same time. I hope it was helpful to your inner development.

The Instructor

Courtesy of: www.americangnosticassociation.org