Habits to observe

Normally people erroneously assume that they are constantly one and the same person. However, as you begin to observe yourself, you find this is not true. You assume many different ‘I’s and each ‘I’ manifests itself as a role that you play corresponding to one set of conditions, i.e. you assume different roles with different people and in different circumstances. One role with your parents, another with your children, a loved one, at the corner store, at the theatre, in sports, under stress, when threatened, when praised, when jilted, and so on. You seldom, if ever, notice these differences or how you pass from one role to another. The change of roles or ‘personality masks’ is always controlled by circumstances, rather than you self-determinedly choosing and appropriate way of being. It is the unconsciousness or compulsion that we are trying to expose. Freely adopting appropriate ways of being, for example, to match the reality of the people you are with, is a necessary social skill and all part of the fun and variety of life.

The illusion of ‘oneness’ or belief that you are always the same is created by always having the sensation of one physical body, the same name, the same physical habits and so forth.

By self-observation, you will catch yourself lying. Lying occurs when you pretend to know something when in actuality you do not. People pretend to possess all kinds of knowledge: about themselves, about God, about life and death, about the universe, about evolution, about politics, about sex, about everything. In fact, people do not even know who or what they are.

As you self-observe, you find that you identify with everything – you emotionalise 24 hours a day. Some people take pride in their irritability, anger and worry. It is extremely difficult to perceive that you actually enjoy negative emotions. Books, movies, TV and popular songs glorify negative emotions such as anger, fear, guilt, boredom, irritation, hatred, jealousy, suspicion, self-pity, sympathy, depression, etc. Many people are controlled by the expression of negative emotions. But negative emotions are purely mechanical – done without awareness or consciousness – and serve no useful purpose whatsoever.

Negative emotions and all habits require ‘identification’ or they cease to exist. Thus when you cease to identify, by self-observation, your habits will drop away – they have been exposed, i.e. you have differentiated yourself from them. Habits cannot be stopped by willpower, they can only be erased by self-knowledge.