“What Are Some Ugly Truths Of Life?” (Quora)

Michael Laitman, On Quora: “What are some ugly truths of life?“

While we innately feel that we want to change the world and change other people in order to improve the world, the ugly truth is that the only one who needs to change is myself.

Our desire to change the world and to change others stems from our intuitive egoistic perception of reality, where we want to self-benefit at the expense of others.

By wanting to change people and things around me, I essentially demand, “Give me something different to what I now have!”

However, true change is when I demand nothing of others and of the world, but that I demand to give to others from myself.

This is ugly to our very human egoistic nature, which we cannot escape, and which wants to invert anything it can in the world so that it can reap maximal benefit with minimal effort.

Each one of us feels ourselves to be the sole exceptional creation in existence. Our egoistic nature gives us all a feeling of uniqueness, an exclusive experience where it feels as if I alone exist, and everyone and everything else is secondary in importance to me.

Accordingly, we feel that if anyone should change, it should be others, not me.

However, the only way for the world around us to change is if we each change ourselves.

It’s great if I want to change the world. I just need to change myself so that changes in me influence the world.

This kind of change is doable. I can change myself at every moment, and by doing so, the world will change.