Modern western city life is a high–stress life, and even
in the countryside we can’t usually escape the stress.
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We rarely have time and space to relax sufficiently. Therefore the psychological pressure builds up and every so often we make serious mistakes in our interpretations of life and of relationships. Relationships break up, we may become mentally confused, we may turn to crime, we may go to pieces. Is there any good that comes out of all this mess? By analysing our failures, we find out our limitations and weaknesses. In order to prevent similar failures, we need to understand why we failed and what we can do to make less of a mess next time around. Hence we need to make changes to our character and beliefs. By understanding the limitations to our present character, we can decide what we would like our future character to be like. We can begin the pursuit of a better, more balanced, character. We need to change our beliefs, since our present ones are partly responsible for our present failures. We need to study so that we can acquire the new ideas that will shape our new beliefs. Therefore, we need to study any and all theories of consciousness: psychology, sociology, politics, sexuality, spirituality, ethics, etc, whatever captures our interest. Will this study program induce change in us? Not at once, is the answer. Change takes time. Why? We can change our conscious mind fairly easily, but the real challenge is to change our subconscious mind – this is the real difficulty with attempting character change. Our strengths and weaknesses arise from the depths of the subconscious mind, and they arise in ways that we cannot always predict or control. Usually we lack the necessary degree of self–awareness that is needed in order to handle the subconscious mind in a harmonious manner. One major way that the subconscious mind works seems to be this. When we are under high psychological pressure we can learn about ourself and absorb theories that seem to be relevant to our experiences, and even create original ideas. But we only change when the pressure drops off. When the pressure is high, we continue to cling to our old beliefs because we want something to hold onto during our uncertainties. Trying to change beliefs whilst we are regularly or continually stressed-out is a recipe for disaster. In other words, to try and attain a better character, we have to relax and allow the pressure to fade away as much as possible; then we can change our beliefs in accordance with what we have learned about ourself. Creativity and psychological learning require high pressure, |
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