“Only the Best in Us Can Talk About the Worst in Us; What’s Worst in Us Lies About Itself and its Own Existence.

“Only the best in us can talk about the worst in us; what’s worst in us lies about itself and its own existence.” — David Schnarch, author of “Passionate Marriage” and “Intimacy & Desire“

Also from David Schnarch, Ph.D. —

“[W]hether you’re a mental health professional or a ‘civilian,’ do everyone a favor: Realize you’re living with an emotional terrorist; someone who occasionally (or frequently) does things knowing it will hurt someone else, and who feels entitled to do so rather than guilty for doing so; someone who can be vindictive, punitive, and withholding.

“And then after you truly realize and accept that you have to deal with this kind of person day after day, you can turn your attention to your mate’s flaws too.”

( https://crucible4points.com/normal-marital-sadism/ — Read the entire article! I dare ya. It will completely 🤯🤯🤯 blow your mind. & it may just help you level up & become a better person.)

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“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.”
— Richard Feynman

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“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself. The man who lies to himself can be more easily offended than anyone.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky, from “The Brothers Karamazov,” Part I, Book II: “An Unfortunate Gathering,” Chapter 2: “The Old Buffoon”

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The following excerpt was written by C. S. Lewis, from “Mere Christianity,” chapter 1, (it is my abridgement and arrangement) —

Human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way — and they cannot really get rid of this idea. Furthermore, they do not in fact behave in that way. We know the Moral Law; we break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.

This very day, and likely several times this very day, we will fail to practice ourselves the kind of behavior we would want from other people towards us.

And there will be all sorts of excuses we will make for ourselves.

— And I am just the same. That is to say, I do not succeed in keeping the Moral Law very well. And the moment anyone tells me I am not keeping it, there starts up in my mind a string of excuses as long as your arm.

The question at the moment is not whether they are good excuses. The point is that they are one more proof of how deeply, whether we like it or not, the Moral Law has been baked into us. If we do not believe in decent behaviour, then why should we be so anxious to make excuses for our not having behaved decently?

The truth is, we believe in decency so much — we feel the Moral Law pressing on us so much — that we cannot bear to face the fact that we are breaking it, and consequently we try to shift the responsibility. For you notice that it is only for our bad behaviour that we come up with all of these excuses. It is only our bad temper that we put down to being tired or worried or hungry or anxious; we put our good temper down to ourselves.

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“One of the Most Blessed Experiences You Can Have“

— Maurice Nicoll, Amwell UK, March 17, 1950, “Reversal,” in “Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of G.I. Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky,” Volume four, p. 1378

The most external part of us is False Personality. The most internal part of us is Essence.

Essence can only grow through what is true.

False Personality leads (misleads) us by way of two giants, Pride and Vanity. And when we are being led — which is always the same as saying, when we are being misled — by Pride and Vanity, we will always be behaving in such a way that there is no truth in what we do.

The more we go with False Personality — i.e., the more we go with these false imaginations of ourselves that are governed by Pride and Vanity — then the more distant we will get from the internal part of ourselves called Essence, which can only grow through what is true and what is good.

Essence can only grow through exposure to what is true and what is good — i.e., what is virtuous.

Now if we can ever see / admit that we are in the wrong — that is, if we can ever step back interiorly and get a little behind False Personality with all its Vanities and Prides — then these moments of self-honesty and “confession” or separation from what is false will cause Essence to grow because we will be giving Essence energy that would otherwise have gone into self-justifying (lying, self-deception).

We all know people who are always expostulating and saying: “I did not mean that — in fact, I never said it.” And for such people, there is within them no internal perception of the truth.

The False Personality in each of us is served by a very unsavory low class of lawyers who always say that we are right and the other person is wrong.

But if we ever have an interior self-observation where we are sincere, then we know that actually it is we who are wrong and the whole thing is our fault.

Now False Personality would never admit this, owing to its low-class lawyers that it (which is to say, we) employ which are really just self-justifiers, self-twisters, self-deceivers. — And the presence of these unsavory low-class lawyers in us means a host of nasty little ‘I’s in us.

However, if we have any good, honest lawyers in us — ‘I’s that can form a Deputy Steward — they will say to us (to our False Personality and its nasty little ‘I’s): “You were in the wrong and you have not got a case and we will not take it up even if you pretend you have one.”

Now this “inner confession,” this giving up and surrendering of what you have always known to be a liar in you, is one of the most blessed experiences that one can have in this Work.

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Screenshot of the unedited and unabridged original material of Dr. Nicoll. (Highlights are mine.)

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“Masks. There are women who have no inner life wherever one looks for it, being nothing but masks. That man is to be pitied who lets himself in with such ghostly, necessarily vexing creatures; yet it is just these women who are able to stimulate a man’s desire most intensely: he searches for their souls — and he searches on and on and on.

— Nietzsche

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No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.

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“The Work means work—hard work—on yourself. Remember that this Work is for those who really wish to work and change themselves. It is not for those who wish to change the world.” — Maurice Nicoll, Birdlip UK, Feb 22, 1943, “Internal Considering and External Considering,” in “Psychological Commentaries on the Teaching of G.I. Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky,” Volume one, p. 254.

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A few thoughts:

All of this False Personality — these negative and dishonest false ‘I’s — is a person acting out on their Chief Feature — their chief (or defining) ancient hurt or fear, their chief (or defining) root inferiority.

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When conversing with another human being it may be wise to assess to whom one is talking — an actual other human being who is reasonable, self-aware, self-observes, and can self-confront?

Or a mechanical cruel machine-like human who can only react and defend and deflect with little lawyers?

Are you conversing with another’s Essence — the Truth-loving, self-aware, self-examining, and self-confronting version of a person (which not everyone has; for not everyone has this Good Wolf nor feeds it)?

Or are you pouring water down the drain, casting pearls before a swine, and conversing with a hypocrite, with a closed-hearted exterior pseudo-self, with one of a person’s many false ‘I’s, with a pseudo-person’s nasty little inner-lawyers? Are you trying to have a conversation where no conversation is possible and no understanding is possible because you are talking to a psuedo-person, to their defenses, their False Personality, their Pride and Vanity and Self-Love, their Inferiority Complex, their Legion of Little Men, the Bad Wolf in them that lies and destroys truth and wants nothing to do with Truth, nothing to do with Virtue, nothing to do with what is Good and Right and Loving?

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Related blog posts —

https://theplacesthatscareyou.wordpress.com/2012/06/04/dedication-to-truth-versus-a-dedication-to-anything-less

https://detanglelove.com/772/yahoo/948738/20009/signs-your-partner-is-a-liar/