{"id":630,"date":"2012-01-14T01:02:53","date_gmt":"2012-01-14T08:02:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/psychod.com\/?p=630"},"modified":"2016-03-08T08:31:21","modified_gmt":"2016-03-08T15:31:21","slug":"why-bother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/psychod.com\/?p=630","title":{"rendered":"Why Bother?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Why Bother?[1]<\/p>\n<p>Why bother to begin this work on\u00a0yourself? Others have been motivated by these kinds of\u00a0observations that you\u00a0yourself might make on your own present life:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>You make the same mistakes again and again, with painful\u00a0consequences, and cannot seem to\u00a0interrupt the mistakes<\/li>\n<li> You believe you are entitled to certain treatment or\u00a0success or health that does not in\u00a0fact often come your way<\/li>\n<li> You are genuinely unhappy, or suffering even,\u00a0about various elements in your world<\/li>\n<li> You experience quite a bit of fear about your\u00a0life, the life of the world itself, and with what you see in the daily news<\/li>\n<li> You experience too much helplessness, life just\u00a0happening to you, without any genuine\u00a0sense that you can make a difference in\u00a0yours or others<\/li>\n<li> You read cryptic references in religious or\u00a0psychological literature that allude to a\u00a0better life, but you cannot decipher\u00a0them; or there is reference to dramatic success in\u00a0human functioning in various\u00a0methods, but you attempt them and find they do not work for you\u00a0that way<\/li>\n<li> You meet certain people who seem more alert and aware\u00a0than you, perhaps more empathic,\u00a0understanding, wise even, and you wonder if\u00a0\u2018that is just them\u2019 or if they perhaps are\u00a0drawing from some well that you too\u00a0could drink from<\/li>\n<li> You don\u2019t have any real standards (other than financial\u00a0and consumer-possession ones) from\u00a0which to ascertain how far you have come as\u00a0a human being<\/li>\n<li> You give a kind of lip-service to \u201cworshipping God,\u201d\u00a0perhaps even believing you are \u201cborn\u00a0again;\u201d you participate with\u00a0\u00a0your religion but do not really feel\u00a0deeply yoked to it, and\u00a0see little from your efforts<\/li>\n<li> You have an opinion about yourself, \u2018I\u2019m fine, thank\u00a0you,\u2019 but others do not share it;\u00a0(this attitude of yours is likely one of the\u00a0biggest obstacles to actual inner development)<\/li>\n<li> You have the sense that you are not what you think you\u00a0are: you overestimate yourself, and\u00a0lie to yourself about this, constantly<\/li>\n<li>You truly believe that \u2018others\u2019 make you the way you are\u00a0(\u201cyou make me angry\u201d), that\u00a0others are primarily to blame for the paucity of\u00a0results you\u2019ve achieved from your effort in\u00a0traffic or career or love<\/li>\n<li>You were told, or read, that if you learned to observe\u00a0yourself, without prejudice,\u00a0repeatedly and objectively, that this would give\u00a0birth the truth inside yourself, a kind of\u00a0truth which can grow<\/li>\n<li>You do not know how to actually\u00a0see\u00a0things in yourself that you did not see before, nor\u00a0what to do\u00a0with these things<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>What will further\u00a0your efforts?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Learning how to\u00a0observe\u00a0yourself, over and over, without judgement or condemnation, you will encounter a deepening desire to\u00a0develop yourself&#8230;.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>[1]\u00a0<em>Inspired by \u201cTalk by Gurdjieff,\u00a0September 1941\u201d, provided by Richard Lefevre, personal\u00a0communication, January\u00a013, 2007<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why Bother?[1] Why bother to begin this work on\u00a0yourself? Others have been motivated by these kinds of\u00a0observations that you\u00a0yourself might make on your own present life: You make the same mistakes again and again, with painful\u00a0consequences, and cannot seem to\u00a0interrupt the mistakes You believe you are entitled to certain treatment or\u00a0success or health that does [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88890,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/88890"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=630"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/psychod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":933,"href":"https:\/\/psychod.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630\/revisions\/933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/psychod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/psychod.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}