“Comfort is one thing, and truth another; they lead away from each other. If you seek comfort, you may find it in an explanation, a drug or a belief; but it will be temporary, and sooner or later you will have to begin over again. And is there such a thing as comfort? It may be that you will first have to see this fact: that a mind which seeks comfort, security, will always be in sorrow. A satisfactory explanation, or a comforting belief, can put you soothingly to sleep; but is that what you want? Will that wipe away your sorrow? Is sorrow to be got rid of by inducing sleep?”
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Inner Life Exercise
Break Mechanical Thinking
Have you ever watched the face of someone lost in a daydream?
He stares but at nothing. He does not know where he is. He will
be a bit startled when spoken to. Try to catch yourself in this
kind of mechanical thinking. Shake your head. Snap out of it.
Deliberately awaken yourself.
Vernon Howard
Treasury of Positive Answers, #740
This ties in so beautifully with Vernon Howard’s exercise to always do what you don’t want to do. I’ve been watching and working on this, and the dominant ‘want’ that I have noticed is that I want to be asleep. Sounds crazy… it is!! But I have to keep shaking my self awake. The comfortable life keeps me asleep, yet I keep doing what ‘I’ want. A strange companion to comfort is suffering. Human beings are a sad lot in that we have found a false comfort in our suffering. Thankfully, through this Fourth Way, I am onto it enough to snap out of it maybe ten times a day when remembering myself.
I can seek comfort in believing I am right or I can work to snap out of my deluded dream that ‘I’ need to be right. I’m grateful to have this exercise and a chance to stop the rot.
Getting what we want and not getting what we want in this world always has one thing in common: misery. Even if we’re only half aware we can see this. Misery has to be completely seen and understood in order for us to be done with it. And the only way we can see it completely is to be wide awake, to be fully aware. We can be thankful for sites like this one that serves as a compass for awakening.