Source Text
Human Energies We should understand how we do things and how far we are able to control and improve the way we do things. The start of such an understanding is to realize that the way we do things is divided into four or five different kinds.
But we are concerned with the vital energies and the higher energies.
The right use of one’s body and the creation of conditions where other parts will be free and able to act is the very start of self-knowledge.
For example, the habit of depending upon various things that will release nervous tensions, such as smoking, which has become a strongly ingrained habit of quite a large proportion of the world’s population and which is quite obviously an anti-automatic habit, producing bad results for the organism. There are many other similar things in the way of mental habits as well, and all of these are anti-automatic false disciplines, or anti-disciplines.
These automatisms can be perfected. For example, in speech, it is possible by right training to automatize oneself to say what one intends to say instead of simply being carried away by an automatic flow of words.
There is a negative sensitivity, which is also sometimes called considering, or weakness in one’s dealing with people; a false kind of dependence, where the sensitivity, instead of being a positive instrument to help us in doing our work better, becomes a hindrance and a weakness in our dealings with people especially, but eventually even in dealing with ourselves. In the way we lead our lives we are constantly hampered by a wrong working of these sensitive perceptions. One worries, one cares about what people think or do not think, how one is looking, whether one succeeds or fails in what one is doing – all of this is the wrong or the negative working of the sensitive level of our activity.
We need to eliminate from ourselves all the negative sensitivity which makes us wrongly dependent upon people, upon our own states, on pleasant or unpleasant experiences, and we need to develop in ourselves positive sensitivity; that is, the ability to see what objectively is required in every situation-whether it is personal or more general, or in dealing with living beings.
We are made in this way, so that our conscious direction should be available for higher purposes than directing the simple, repetitive operations of our bodies and what are called our mental processes; in other words, automatism is part of the natural and necessary equipment of man for living.
The extent of automatism in the feeling life is totally underrated. As I said, people suppose that their likes and dislikes, their desires, interests and the rest of it are spontaneous and really represent what they are themselves, whereas in reality, they are mostly grafted on to them. Now this is not altogether undesirable, because if there were not some regulation, some automatizing, the working of human societies would be impossible; people have to be more or less automatized to certain ways of valuing things in order to be able to live together.
Therefore I cannot rely upon one emotion to help me to get rid of an emotional habit or a habitual dislike. I have to do this through my body, and for that I have to accustom myself to relaxing the particular tension that comes into me whenever this dislikeable object comes to my attention. Through the cooperation of the mind and the body, I change my feeling state, and in this way I can certainly overcome – even quite reverse – an emotional habit. I know with my mind that it is right for me to wish for this, and I must habituate my body to behave as if I wished for it, and then the wish will by itself arise in me; that is, I will have replaced the habitual emotional habit of not wishing for this change by an emotional habit of wishing for it.
AI Summary
How We Do Things by J.G. Bennett presents key insights from the contemplative tradition. The 10 passages above capture the essential teachings.
Core Themes:
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Key Passages: Highlights 1, 3, and 10 are particularly representative.
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