"Myself" is not some higher-level entity
Q: Hello, sir,
You say, “All you can ever be is what you are right now.” I don’t understand that. Right now, I am overweight. Does it mean that I will always be like that? And if being overweight can be changed with proper exercise, why can’t being overanxious, overirritable, or some other personality trait be changed through some practice?Sanjay Srivastava
A: Yes, you don’t understand it, Sanjay. And there is no way to make yourself grasp it. You do, or you don’t. At the moment, you don’t. In the next moment, it may all seem clear, or perhaps it never will. That cannot be predicted.
If you see yourself as overweight right now, you do, and no matter what you may think or feel about it, it is a fact: you are fatter right now than you want to be, and in this moment, that cannot be any different from what it is.
That does not mean that you may not be thinner in the future—assuming you have a future, which may be probable but is hardly a given—but that would require a period of eating less, and there is no guarantee that you will eat less. That remains to be seen.
Personality is highly resistant to alteration. Usually, with a shift in understanding, behavior changes, but not what lies more deeply encoded in DNA and early childhood experience, which are the wellsprings of personality. When understanding changes, behavior changes automatically without anyone trying to change, but the underlying drives and desires remain.
In your case, if you are the anxious type, you may be overeating because you use eating as a way of reducing or dulling anxiety. If you found a healthier way of dealing with anxiety, you might lose weight, but the anxiety would still be there.
Q: Thanks, sir, for your response. Although I found it a bit patronizing.
I have read both of your books, so I am already familiar with your perspective. I was just trying to understand what you wanted to convey through the sentence I quoted—not whether it was true or otherwise. Since English is not my mother tongue, I might be missing a few nuances here and there, and I thought it best to get it clarified from you if you cared to respond.
Anyway, from the explanation above, I understand that you want to say that what one can be right now is what one already is. If that is what you mean, it is more like a tautology requiring no further elaboration. But when you say that “all you can ever be is what you are right now,” I get the meaning that “all you can ever be in the future- if you survive then--is what you are right now.”
Also, saying that personality is highly resistant to alteration is not the same as saying it is changeless. So, wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that “all you can ever be will only be marginally different from what you are now”?
Hi, Sanjay.
It was certainly not my intention to patronize you. If I misunderstood your question, let me try again based on what you just said.
I am not saying that personality is “changeless.” Nothing is changeless. I am saying that one does not simply banish anxiety or any other deeply rooted personality trait through a “practice.” If I am the anxious type, I may learn to calm down by employing deep breathing, for example, but the native anxiety will still be there. So one may be able to modify behavior through a practice, but not so easily the actual drives and attitudes at the root of one’s personality.
From my perspective, what you call a tautology is simply a fact. Our perceptions, feelings, and thoughts flow like an unstoppable river--a stream of consciousness. There is no way for “myself” to intervene in that flow because “myself” is part of it and in no way separate from it or outside that flow. The flow is me.
It only seems that you can choose to modify a behavior like overeating. You did not choose to overeat and get fat; it just happened. You may now “decide” to eat less and be more physically active to lose weight (which is a thought--one among many that bubbled up unbidden), but there is no actual “me” who could carry out that plan, only the illusion of a such an entity.
In daily life, that illusion may be necessary or at least helpful on a practical level. Still, your question is not about practicality but about an awakened sense of self, so I reply on that level. If that seems patronizing, I am sorry, but I know no other way to respond appropriately to your question.
Eating less may happen, or it may not. One might “decide” to eat less and end up eating more. Such things happen all the time. If one could simply “decide” not to overeat, there would be few fat people in this world. It doesn’t work that way.
What I am saying here and in my books is not hard to understand logically, but the implications may be more challenging to grasp. One aspect is that no “myself” can make decisions and carry them out. That myself is illusory. Myself is the decisions and behaviors, not some higher-level entity responsible for them. I am not patronizing you when I say you do not seem to understand this. Few do.
As you know, I completely agree with everything you say here about free will, the self, personality, etc. But I would point out that being overweight does not come only from overeating, nor does eating less always resolve it. It can also involve metabolism, hormones, age and other factors. It's very common for women to gain weight after menopause, and men often get a large belly in middle age as well. This has certainly been the case for me. I'm over 2 inches shorter now than I used to be (the spine compresses with age and we shrink in height), and simultaneously, I'm over 20 lbs heavier, and none of it it is due to overeating, which has never been a pattern of mine or one of my addictive tendencies. Also, I'm not entirely convinced that tendencies such as anxiety and depression are so deeply rooted as to be pretty much unchangeable, as you seem to suggest, and that only our behavior in response to them can change. But, overall, I resonate completely with your main point here.