Last revision March 11
2008
Once a person openly confronts the fact
that he or she has real faults, too serious to ignore, and sincerely
embarks on a path of self-improvement, criticisms of his actions or
character by friends who mean him well will cease to offend him. From
then on he will be ‘on their side’, as, like them, he will only wish the
best for himself, and he will now be ready to change in the light of
constructive criticism, or at least to earnestly give it a
try.
But before this stage is reached, the offense
he feels when criticized has something to do with his attempts at
keeping himself hidden from his own eyes. He feels angry and frustrated
when his tranquil self-deception is shaken or cracked, and though in his
mind he may blame his friends for their treachery or insults or unjust
attacks, in fact his frustration may at bottom concern himself alone,
his inability to live well by his own conscience and ideals, as he more
than anyone would have himself do.
Until he decisively and genuinely takes
himself to task he will never be truly happy, and will never feel fully
nourished by life’s fruit. Insofar as he fails to do so, it may be that
he is held back not so much by meanness of heart or by lack of
aspiration as by his doubts and fears, especially the doubting of his
own abilities and potential. His past failures, as he sees them, have
provided the evidence and material for his imagined depiction of himself
as inconstant, weak, lacking in courage, mediocre or whatever, and this
self-depiction is the barrier that prevents him from freely
evolving.
But he may experience a kind of liberation if
and when he comes to understand that it is not this or that lack of a
trait of character that prevents him from growing, but rather his seeing
himself as lacking that character.
He thinks that his doubt is caused by his
defect of character, but it may well be the defect that is caused by his
doubt. And to realize this, to see through it right to the root, is at
the same time to dispel that doubt, to undermine its foundation, and
thus the barrier is removed.