What does self-change entail?
I'm going to break it down into segments.
First,
Insight.
Not effort.
Not cultivating habits.
Not having an ideal.
Ideals do a lot of damage.
You're the whole time focusing on what should be instead of understanding what is.
And so you're imposing what should be on present reality,
Never having understood what present reality is.
Now,
Insight.
Let me give you an example of that from my own experience,
Counseling experience.
There's this priest who comes to me and says he's lazy.
He wants to be more industrious,
More active.
He's lazy.
And I say,
Lazy?
What does that mean?
Now we're going to get into insight.
What's he talking about?
In the old days,
I would have said to him,
Oh,
You're lazy,
Huh?
He says,
Yes.
Well,
Let's see.
If I had said,
Do you have married brothers and sisters?
I do.
Do you see how hard they have to work?
That'll make him guilty.
But he hasn't got self-insight.
In the old days,
I would have said to him,
Why don't you do this?
Why don't you make a list of things you want to do every day?
And then every night you pick them off.
That'll give you a good feeling.
And then so build up a habit.
Or I might say to him,
Who's your ideal?
Who's your patron saint?
He says,
St.
Francis Xavier.
Now see how much that guy worked?
You've got to meditate on your ideal and that will get you moving,
Et cetera.
Now that's one way of going about it.
But I'm sorry to say it's superficial.
Making him use his willpower,
His effort,
Et cetera,
Doesn't last very long.
His behavior may change,
But he does not.
Let's move in the other direction.
I say to him,
Lazy?
What's that?
You know there are about 500 million types of laziness.
Let's hear what your type of laziness is.
Would you describe what you mean when you're talking about laziness?
He says,
Well,
You know,
I never get anything done.
Uh-huh.
You don't feel like doing anything.
That's right.
I don't feel like doing anything.
You mean right from the moment you get up in the morning?
Yes.
He says,
You know,
I wake up in the morning and nothing worth getting up for.
He says,
That's right.
Nothing worth getting up for.
You're depressed.
He says,
You could call it that.
I'm depressed.
So I've sort of withdrawn.
Have you always been like this?
Well,
Not always.
When I was younger,
I was more active.
When I was in the seminary,
I was full of life.
When did this begin?
Well,
About three years ago,
Four years ago.
Anything happen?
He's thinking.
Well,
If you have to think so much,
Nothing special could have happened four years ago.
How about the year before that?
What happened?
He said,
Well,
I was a Dane.
Anything happen in your ordination year?
No.
Well,
There was a little thing,
The final examination in theology.
You know,
I failed and it was a bit of a disappointment,
But I've gotten over it.
It's all right.
What happened?
He says,
Well,
The bishop was planning to send me to Rome to eventually teach in the seminary.
And,
Well,
I rather like the idea,
But since I failed in the examination,
He changed his mind.
He sent me to this parish.
He said,
Actually,
That was an injustice because the man on the board,
He was,
Oh,
He's getting worked up now.
There's anger there.
He hasn't gotten over it.
We've got to work through that.
He's disappointed.
It's useless preaching him a sermon.
We've got to find out what's happening there.
It's useless giving him an ideal.
We've got to get him to face his anger,
His disappointment,
To get some insight into all of that.
So that's the first thing,
The marvels of psychological insight.
Now,
There's a great boon in psychology,
Great help.
Modern psychology is indeed a great help to understand how our emotions keep tying us into all kinds of situations.
There's another great help,
Understanding.
That priest who comes to me,
I said to him,
Why did you want to teach in the seminary?
Did you really think this was going to make you happy?
You just assumed it was going to make you happy.
Why did you want to teach in the seminary?
Because you wanted to be happy.
You thought that being a professor,
Having a certain status and prestige,
Would make you happy,
Would it?
Understanding is called for there.
When he's able to work through that,
He's back into life again.
