Notes to Myself: My Struggle to Become a Person

by Hugh Prather

After I had written this book I told several friends. Their reaction was polite and mild. Later I was able to tell them the book was going to be published. Most of them responded with the words ‘I’m proud of you.” Proud of the results but not of the action.

When I outgrow my names and facts and theories, or when reality leaves them behind, something in me begins to die if I don’t continue on toward a broader way of seeing, one in which I look without categorizing, one in which I look, not even for stillness, but from stillness.

Don’t push. Don’t hang on. Lean back and let reality unfold.

How can I begin unless I see where I’m starting from?

When I disown a feeling I do not destroy it, I only forfeit my capacity to act it out as I wish. Even to think guiltily or irritatedly about a feeling merely strengthens its hold on my mind. Yet regardless of the state I am in, I am always free to draw upon my reserves of stillness and peace, and whenever I do, the inner shift is subtle but profound: I become peacefully depressed, peacefully fearful, peacefully angry. And whereas the effect of my mood before was to pull others down with me, now I leave the world uncontaminated.

The criticism that hurts the most is the one that echoes my own self-condemnation.

Whenever I find myself arguing for something with great passion, I can be certain I’m not convinced.

I thought their liking me was a comment on me, but it was a comment on them.

The heart loves, but moods have no loyalty. Moods should be heard but never danced to.

I don’t really have to become my self, although at times it feels this way. I already am what I am.