We Prefer Illusion to Reality When Dealing With the Truth of Our Weaknesses
Posted: Thursday, October 16, 2008
by Jeff Brown
Inner Projection
Why is it that we desire change in our lives, but when that change comes in the form of personal growth and greater potential happiness, we avoid it like the plague. For example:
If I'm lazy, rather than seek the source of what's making me lazy, I just assume that I'm, you guessed it, lazy. But why don't I seek further? Why won't I go deeper? What am I afraid of seeing?
Unfortunately, if we give up and give in to not overcoming any weakness, the problem is that it's going to still be there. It will not go away on it's own, without our help.
If you find that you're too negative, depressed, angry, self-serving, dishonest, a gossip, destroyer of reputations without just cause, overly shy or introverted, unaccountable for your actions, full of hopelessness and despair, and so on, you will not overcome these issues without a concerted, focused effrt. And, unfortunately, the longer the problem has been there the more work it will take to overcome.
According to Dr. M. Scott Peck, for those who came to him for psychiatric treatment with open, willing minds, the healing process still took one to two years. Those who were reticent and unwilling to change took up to five years if not more.
If you have a habit that was developed in childhood (and by habit, I mean any undesirable character weakness), where the majority of habits come from, then it will take at least a year if not two or more to overcome or change that which may appear to be "you" or is so hardwired into your character that you can't see a difference between that undesirable character weakness and you. Or that the character weakness defines you so much that the discomfort of change alone, regardless of the negativity, will make you run away kicking and screaming. But as those who have overcome, overcome the most debilitating habits (drugs, alcohol, anger, depression), will tell you, with work and support anything is possible.
Unfortunately, if you do not open your mind to possibilities, change, to healing, then you are developing a breeding ground for fear. For if the unexamined stays as such too long, it will come back to haunt you, it will come to the surface eventually in unusual and socially unacceptable bursts.
Time and time and time again, we hear of celebrities who have had childhood issues who could only hold down their character flaws for so long before they become public knowledge. There is a belief amongst the religious that if you hold onto your sins, your imperfections too long, that they will be shouted from the hilltops. Is this what happens to those who hold onto the unwanted? Consider any illness that is not addressed, and there is a more than significant chance that that illness will kill if not permanently disable.
There is a certain amount of time that will pass before we either realize that we must do something or have it made evident to us, more uncomfortably so, by public authorities, at the extreme, or our through family and friends in a less public way.
But heal we must and work we have. All of us, for we all have weaknesses that need attending to.
Now, you may not feel this to be so or that you don't hear about others working to overcome their problems. Well, as the title of the article states, we have a difficult time admitting to ourselves, never mind hearing it from an outside source, that we are arrogant, prideful, overbearingly stubborn, impossible to deal with or have any undesirable character trait. But if we ever begin to believe that we don't have work to do on our character, then our character is bound to remain the same, and our lives limited in not only what we can achieve materially, but emotionally, spiritually, and communally.
If we only live to seek material gain, greater social standing, public adulation, appreciation for the number and qualities of our degrees, then for what have we lived? The only thing that is eternal is that which we impart heart to heart. And if we fail to improve our nature, our character, our weaknesses, then we have failed in the sole thing that we have the greatest control over, and that which if we do improve can aid us in doing the greatest work known to man- and womankind: coming to the aid of others.
May you find your greater purpose in overcoming all your challenges, in refining the mortal clay that only you have the ability to work and mold to the best and most brilliant design known to humankind.
God bless.
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