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January 8 - January 12, 2019
Alfred Adler, called “life-lies.”
define what is good, unquestioningly, far into the future. The second is that reality would be unbearable if left to its own devices.
This kind of oversimplification and falsification is particularly typical of ideologues.
She does not question authority or put her own ideas forward,
Someone hiding is not someone vital.
There is a difference between hiding and having no opinion on one hand and introversion and reserve on the other.
Vitality requires original contribution.
you will not reveal yourself to others, you cannot reveal yourself to yourself.
If you say no to your boss, or your spouse, or your mother, when it needs to be said, then you transform yourself into someone who can say no
If you betray yourself, if you say untrue things, if you act out a lie, you weaken your character.
It is not vision as such, and not a plan devised to achieve a vision,
A minor modification will suffice in fortunate circumstances.
For what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? (Mark 8:36)
Untruth corrupts the soul and the state alike, and one form of corruption feeds the other.
What cannot be borne, however, is the absolute ruin produced by tragedy and deception.
The capacity of the rational mind to deceive, manipulate, scheme, trick, falsify, minimize, mislead, betray, prevaricate, deny, omit, rationalize, bias, exaggerate and obscure is so endless, so remarkable, that centuries of pre-scientific thought, concentrating on clarifying the nature of moral endeavour, regarded it as positively demonic.
it is the greatest temptation of the rational faculty to glorify its own capacity and its own productions and to claim that in the face of its theories nothing transcendent or outside its domain need exist. This means that all important facts have been discovered. This means that nothing important remains unknown.
But that is not what saves. What saves is the willingness to learn from what you don’t know. That is faith in the possibility of human transformation. That is faith in the sacrifice of the current self for the self that could be. The totalitarian denies the necessity for the individual to take ultimate responsibility for Being.
but to intellectuals—to those whose arrogant pride in intellect assured them they were always right.
It is deceit that makes people miserable beyond what they can bear.
An aim, an ambition, provides the structure necessary for action.
An aim provides a destination, a point of contrast against the present, and a framework, within which all things can be evaluated.
Set your ambitions, even if you are uncertain about what they should be.
If you pay attention to what you do and say, you can learn to feel a state of internal division and weakness when you are misbehaving and misspeaking.
This is true. Right speech / 8 fold path.
If you pay attention, when you are seeking something, you will move towards your goal.
Everyone needs a concrete, specific goal—an ambition, and a purpose—to limit chaos and make intelligible sense of his or her life.
meta-goal, which is a way of approaching and formulating goals themselves.
The meta-goal could be “live in truth.” This means, “Act diligently towards some well-articulated, defined and temporary end. Make your criteria for failure and success timely and clear, at least for yourself (and even better if othe...
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Truth is the ultimate, inexhaustible natural resource. It’s the light in the darkness. See the truth. Tell the truth.
Apprehend your personal truth. Communicate it carefully, in an articulate manner, to yourself and others.
The truth springs forth ever anew from the most profound wellsprings of Being.
This is also the Way of the Tao. Be awake and conscious of the present truth and the unfolding change of it.
When you’re involved in a genuine conversation, you’re listening, and talking—but mostly listening. Listening is paying attention.
After all, if you’re not the leading man in your own drama, you’re a bit player in someone else’s—and you might well be assigned to play a dismal, lonely and tragic part.
People think they think, but it’s not true. It’s mostly self-criticism that passes for thinking. True thinking is rare—just like true listening.
Thinking is an internal dialogue between two or more different views of the world.
You can’t set straw men against one another when you’re thinking, either, because then you’re not thinking. You’re rationalizing, post-hoc.
True thinking is complex and demanding. It requires you to be articulate speaker and careful, judicious listener, at the same time.
Almost all discussions involving politics or economics unfold in this manner, with each participant attempting to justify fixed, a priori positions instead of trying to learn something or to adopt a different frame (even for the novelty).
however, if they could realize and then remember that before a problem can be solved it must be formulated precisely.
What is the question (or problem) ykou are trying to solve?
Another conversational variant is the lecture.
rapidly to some better goals. A good lecturer is thus talking with and not at or even to his or her listeners. To manage this, the lecturer needs to be closely attending to the audience’s every move, gesture and sound.
There are still other conversations that work primarily as demonstrations of wit.
The final type of conversation, akin to listening, is a form of mutual exploration. It requires true reciprocity on the part of those listening and speaking.
However, your current knowledge has neither made you perfect nor kept you safe. So, it is insufficient, by definition—radically, fatally insufficient.
You must meditate, too, instead of strategizing towards victory. If you fail, or refuse, to do so, then you merely and automatically repeat what you already believe, seeking its validation and insisting on its rightness.
You’re immersed in the Tao, following the great Way of Life. There, you’re stable enough to be secure, but flexible enough to transform.
Tao why? Because you are not rigid and fixed? Because you can adapt nd evolve by attending? Presumably so.
So, listen, to yourself and to those with whom you are speaking. Your wisdom then consists not of the knowledge you already have, but the continual search for knowledge, which is the highest form of wisdom.
We see tools and obstacles, not objects or things.
The world reveals itself to us as something to utilize and something to navigate through—not as something that merely is.
When we look at the world, we perceive only what is enough for our plans and actions to work and for us to get by.
is this “enough.”
