Getting stuck in a particular way of understanding the world and us is actually the cause of the three major human sicknesses that trigger my attention to studying it and see what can I do about it.
The first one is about seriousness, read ”deadly serious” – as I used to be – O.M.G.! Terrible and stupid. Speak on behalf of my name. Hence, if you decide that you want to do something, it’s OK but please do not get serious about it cause it will hold you blind and get ”in your way”.
”Being right or certain” is the second malady. It means that when someone feel certain, the person stop thinking and noticing. Any time you feel absolutely certain of something, be sure that it is a sign that you probably you have missed something. On the other hand, it is very convenient to deliberately ignore something for a while, but if you are ”absolutely certain” you may miss it forever.
Even people who are uncertain are usually certain about that – either they are sure, or, they are unsure. Do you find someone who is uncertain about his doubt or uncertain about his certainty? You can create that experience, but you do not usually encounter it. You can ask someone ”are you sure enough to be unsure”? That’s a stupid question, but the person you ask won’t be sure any more after you ask it.
The third one and probably not the last one is importance and self-importance as the worst of all. As soon as one thing is ”important”, than other things aren’t. Importance is a great way to justify being mean and destructive, or doing anything else that is unpleasant enough to need justification.
These 3 maladies are the way most important people get stuck. You may decide something is important but you can’t get really serious about it until you are certain that is important. For lots of people, ”getting stuck” is wanting something and not getting it. There is also another kid of being stuck that few notices ”not wanting something and not having it”. That is the greatest limitation of all, cause you do not even know you are stuck
Example – go back some ten years ago, when you didn’t know about ”that”, or, you knew but id did not mean anything to you. Hence, you did not know what you were missing, did you? You also had no idea how you were stuck back there, and you weren’t motivated to change it. You were certain that your understanding was an accurate representation of the world. That’s when you are really stuck. What are you missing now?
Certainty probably impedes human progress more than any other state of mind. I think that one of the most important steps in the evolution of human consciousness is to be always suspicious of success – whenever we feel certain and we succeed at a given task, we need to become suspicious of what you are simply not noticing. When you have something that works, that doesn’t mean other things wouldn’t work, or that there aren’t other interesting things to do.
Although we cannot have tomorrow’s wisdom today, we can work on ourselves to improve our traits to attribute more realistic values to our desires. Hence, you may say that ”today I will try to realize that tomorrow I might think myself foolish for having become so enraged about something that frustrated me today” (say, stupid comment on the face, your kid, husband, boss, or whatever).
Hence, do not worry if you find yourself confused, because it can be an indication that you are on the right way to understanding.
“a person’s drives are related to the degree of one’s intellect” – Tanya
