In ordinary life, we seem to experience two realities. One of them is physical reality. Another is the reality of our emotional-mental space. The second reality is the one that gets almost all my attention.
Do I notice the quality of sunlight, the presence of trees, the continuity of the building on the corner which is there every day? Yes, but mostly in passing. In my ‘inner’ world, I am continually thinking and reacting, experiencing my likes and dislikes, my wants, my fears and expectations. These occupations appear to be as permanent as the physical world ‘out there’, or that is how I treat them, but they are not. They are of my own making.
It seems to me that the aim of work on self is to find that the inner world, the one where I expend most of my time and attention, can be changed in a fundamental way. The key is to find my habitual emotional reactions�not just the big, fat ones full of ‘sturm und drang’ but also, and more importantly, the smaller habits…of avoidance, giving up, feeling sorry for myself, impatience, pointless irritation, petty anxiety and so on. Each of these is a tool with a handle. Seeing them arise and turning them along a different path shifts my world fundamentally.
In a state of no-work-on-self, I take the world as a given and I fight against it to get the outcome I want, often unsuccessfully. In a state of work-on-self, I observe and change my reactions, using them to shift my world at the point of contact, to find greater fluidity and new possibilities. The world becomes more workable. This is a great benefit of impartial observation of self.
