We can modify our habits ourselves
We are not our natural selves.
You can think, ‘We are. I’m like that. I’ve always been like that.’ People are right-handed or left-handed. What happens is, you’re born with a tendency one way or the other, but that goes on. If you’re right-handed, you use the right hand more and more. The one minister is almost dead. When the teacher begins to urge us to develop the other hand as well, we always think, ‘He doesn’t understand me.’ In the same way, our natural voice has got about five decent notes which it can sing, and the rest – well, it should be a two-octave register – is absolutely awful. The tunes we choose to sing are the ones where the strong notes are, the strong five notes and we bellow those out. The other melodies which grow a bit wider, we don’t care for them. Somehow, ‘I’ve never liked that,’ means you can’t do it. Again, the first thing the teacher will do is bring up the weak register, and then bring the whole register up together, the two octaves together. Now, to some extent, we can do this ourselves if we look calmly, and we realize the habits which we have.
My older brother’s method of arguing was to repeat his sentence louder, and louder, and louder. As he was a fine boxer, he often won an argument, but he didn’t actually win an argument. He never convinced them, but he shut them up. He gradually came to realize that this was just one thing that he could do, and he hadn’t developed a rational argument. He had a little awakening one day. It was most peculiar. It was just a sentence which changed him. He was shouting at a man, and I don’t know what it was that impressed him about this man. The man said, “You might be a bit civil about it.” For some reason, that penetrated like a dart and he started becoming quite gentlemanly. When we try these things, of course it seems to be unnatural because it’s not what we’ve been doing, but actually, the use of the body and the mind, in all its faculties, is the natural way.
It’s not to look at everything intellectually, or, ‘I consider things scientifically,’ or ‘Do I have to be the conscience of everybody else?’ We have our particular line, and we’re quite effective in that line, but we’re not very good at the other lines, and we should develop an ability both to speak and to shut up. It’s not easy to do these things when we first try them. A long, long time ago they did a performance of The Ring at Covent Garden. They did something which they didn’t necessarily often do. They brought the dragon onto the stage: Fafner. He was actually to come on and Siegfried finally slays him. They had an impressive dragon. He was mounted on lots of little wheels and he was to come forward onto the stage like that.They just rehearsed that week, and then he was put away for quite a time, but they forgot to oil the wheels. When Fafner, this immense thing, came on there were thousand of little wheels and [the sound] spoiled the whole illusion. When we try to change our conduct or our thinking, it’s a bit like Fafner. We do change it, but there are a lot of little wheels grinding away. Finally, it will become natural.
One of Freud’s best pupils, Theodor Reik, said that nearly every sense, nearly every feeling in psychoanalysis is false, but there’s one feeling, one of the very few feelings that is absolutely genuine. That is, the sense of relief when some cherished fantasy, or some cherished ambition, or some cherished prejudice, or some long-cherished fear is dissolved and floats away into the infinite. He said that sense of relief at getting rid of what seems so natural, what seemed to be one’s very self, he said this is one of the few things that really does register as genuine.
About doing good, there’s a Chinese Zen master who said, you see a hungry snake pursuing a frog. What do you do? You don’t like snakes, you prefer frogs, so you take a stick and you knock the snake away or maybe kill it. Then the frog starts eating flies, so what have you done? On the other hand, if you don’t kill a snake, it’ll eat the frog. Aren’t you offending against the law of compassion? He says, in fact, you will never solve these riddles of what is finally good and what is finally bad. The best thing is not to do any harm yourself, not to be killing snakes or eating frogs yourself. He says that we feel we’re doing good, but when we look at it, we often find we give drink to somebody who’s an alcoholic. He’s very grateful, “Oh, you saved my life,” but have we done good? No. We’ve plunged him deeper into it. He says best, don’t do harm, but set an example of independence yourself.
© Trevor Leggett
The full talk is Getting beneath the mask