The trouble is that very few of us feel like working to remedy a
wrong merely for the sake of the right, and therefore we must have
an impetus of personal feeling to carry us on toward the work of
reformation. If we could once be strongly started in obedience to
the law from love of the law itself, we should find in that
impersonal love a clear light and power for effective action both in
the larger and in the smaller questions of life.
There is a popular cry against introspection and an insistence that
it is necessarily morbid, which works in direct opposition to true
self-control. Introspection for its own sake is self-centred and
morbid, but we might as well assert that it is right to have dirty
hands so long as we wear gloves, and that it is morbid to want to be
sure that our hands are clean under our gloves, as to assert that
introspection for the sake of our true spiritual freedom is morbid.
If I cannot look at my selfish motives, how am I going to get free
from them? It is my selfish motives that prevent true self-control.
It is my selfish motives that prompt me to the false control of
repression, which is counterfeit and for the sake of appearances
alone. We must see these motives, recognize and turn away from them,
in order to control ourselves interiorly into line with law. We
cannot possibly see them unless we look for them. If we look into
ourselves for the sake of freedom, for the sake of our greater power
for use, for the sake of our true self-control, what can be more
wholesome or what can lead us to a more healthy habit of looking out
from ourselves into the lives and interests of others? The farther
we get established in motives that are truly unselfish, the sooner
we shall get out of our own light, and the wider our horizon will
be; and the wider our horizon, the greater our power for use.
There must, of course, be a certain period of self-consciousness in
the process of finding our true self-control, but it is for the sake
of an end which brings us more and more fully into a state of happy,
quiet spontaneity. If we are working carefully for true self-control
we shall welcome an unexpected searchlight from another mind. If the
searchlight brings into prominence a bit of irritation that we did
not know was there, so much the better. How could we free ourselves
from it without knowing that it was there? But as soon as we
discover it we can control and cast it off. A healthy introspection
is merely the use of a searchlight which every one who loves the
truth has the privilege of using for the sake of his own growth and
wilfulness, and circumstances often turn it full upon us, greatly to
our advantage, if we do not wince but act upon the knowledge that it
brings. It is possible to acquire an introspective habit which is
wholesome and true, and brings us every day a better sense of pro.
portion and a clearer outlook.
With regard to the true control of the Pleasurable emotions, the
same principle applies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account