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SELF – DISILLUSIONMENT Consider the person who reads THE ULTIMATE FRONTIER and
feels very strongly the truth of the Brotherhoods’
philosophy. He senses keenly the importance of striving to achieve Initiation
into the Brotherhoods and eventually attaining
Mastership. To reach this goal, he realizes, means working to uplift his
character by incorporating into it the twelve Great Virtues. So, for a short time, he diligently practices the virtues.
But he soon hits a snag. He may have always had a fairly high level of self-esteem due to the success he had
achieved by measuring up to the standards of his peers at any given time. But, with the attempt to become virtuous and a shift of
his awareness to those standards by which Egoic growth is measured, he soon
may learn that his character has more deficiencies than hitherto suspected.
Upon practicing patience, for instance, he finds that he is not a patient person,
and even more disconcerting, he seems to have little control over his
reactions. Whereas he had always thought he had firm control of himself, he
now realizes he is weak. For such a person, as for many of us at
some time in our development, this is the moment of decision. We can either deny the validity of the spiritual journey and
grasp desperately for an old, out-worn self-image, or we can become humbled
by our new understanding of ourselves, and resolve that regardless of how
depressed we feel about our level of development we will press on from where
we are. To use C. S. Lewis’ words, we “drink the cup of shame to the bottom.”
Then, armed with the knowledge that false pride is but a cover-up for
insecurity, we can take a realistic appraisal of ourselves and begin anew. It is not only the beginner on the road
to spiritual perfection who becomes disillusioned with himself; even those
who have been on the path for a long time, grow
discouraged with themselves. They may have a character defect
which they have been trying to overcome for years that keeps cropping
up. Or they may think they’ve solved a particular
problem only to have it recur. Having worked on their virtues for years,
these individuals expect much of themselves; so it
can be very disheartening to them when they fail. They, too, can have quite
bleak moments. The advantage they have over the neophyte is that they are
used to picking themselves up after their mistakes. Also,
they know that persistence in the practice of the Great Virtues will
eventually solve all problems, and life will become even more beautiful than
before. Of even greater danger than becoming
discouraged because of failures, a person has a tendency to deny failure.
What happens here Is that a person loses the ability to “take it.” He gives
up the baffle of accepting responsibility for his flaws and negative
thinking. For example, let’s take a young man who is
put into a very challenging job. He works hard at the job, but does not
accomplish what he thinks is expected of him.
Instead of admitting to himself that he is failing, he begins to blame his
boss for demanding too much or for making wrong decisions and so on. What the
young man is doing is hiding his own shortcomings from himself by placing the
blame on his boss. It is a psycho-logical trick to
preserve his self-respect in the face of an eroding self-image. What happens in cases such as this is
that a failing Is driven into the subconscious where
it still operates but beyond conscious control. To protect himself from an
awareness of failure, which is acting as a thorn beneath his skin, the person
sees other people or events as the cause of his frustration. He sees himself
as the victim of circumstance. But such an
unhappy state need never come about. Much of what causes a person to give up
in this manner is that he places unreal expectations on himself. He expects
to become perfect overnight and cannot accept it when he fails to do so. To
avoid the pitfalls which accompany one’s demanding
more of oneself that one is ready to give, one must learn to be tolerant of
oneself. As Max Ehrmann puts it in his poem Desiderata, “Beyond a
wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the
Universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.”
Yet at the same time one must continue to improve his character to grow
Egoically, It is a question of moderation. A person should balance between
being so over-demanding upon himself that he breaks under the stress on the
one hand, or being so easy on himself that he fails to grow Egoically. |
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