Last revised April 16 2008
Often the greatest
barrier preventing a person from accomplishing something is his own
doubt as to whether he is capable of succeeding. Conversely, faith or confidence in one’s own ability and
potential is the biggest single step towards
achievement.
A person tends to
divide himself into two imagined selves – the aspiring, willing, active
self on the one hand, and on the other, the passive self that is swayed,
influenced or determined by temptations, weaknesses and by outside
factors, having no will but which must rather be resisted, moved and
mastered by the active will.
Like a man
labouring to move a heavy rock; only both the ambitious,
well-intentioned man and the inert rock are aspects of, or ways of
seeing, the same person. And the more he forces and strives, and the
stronger his arms grow from his repeated valiant efforts, the more does
the rock grow heavier and more obstinately resistant.
For a person does
not really consist of two selves, but of one, and the supposed duality
is an illusion, a trick of the mind. And so by strengthening one side of
the imagined duality, we inadvertently strengthen the
other.
Until one comes to
clearly understand that the rock against which he pits his forces is an
illusion, does not even exist except as a self-conception, his endeavors
will repeatedly come to nothing. Worse still, the efforts may gradually
weaken and exhaust him, and undermine his courage, for he is using his
energy to fight against his very own self.
But once he has
seen, he has only to forget the rock and drop his crowbar, which vanish
in the same moment, to stand up straight and unencumbered, to look
ahead, and to freely walk, or run, or whatever it is he may choose to
do. What a new sense of lightness and of
freedom!