1.29 The Road Less Travelled [M Scott Peck]
Discipline is the basic set of tools we require to solve life’s problems. Without discipline we can solve nothing.
Franklin:”Those things that hurt, instruct.” It is for this reason that wise people learn not to dread but actually to welcome problems and actually to welcome the pain of problems.
In the succinctly elegant words of Carl Jung: “Neruosis [精神官能症] is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.”
The neurosis assumes too much responsibility; the person with a character disorder [人格失调] not enough.
Few of us can escape being neurosis or character disordered to at least some degree. The reason for this is that the problem of distinguishing what we are and what we are not responsible for in this life is one of the greatest problems of human existence.
It is for this reason that Erich Fromm so aptly (恰当地) titled his study of Nazism and authoritarianism “Escape from Freedom”. In attempting to avoid the pain of responsibility, millions and even billions daily attempt to escape from freedom.
Our view of reality is like a map with which to negotiate the terrain of life. If the map is true and accurate, we will generally know where we are, and if we have decided where we want to go, we will generally know who to get there. If the map is false and inaccurate, we generally will be lost.
The more honest one is, the easier it is to continue being honest, just as the more lies one has told, the more necessary it is to lie again. By their opens, people dedicated to the truth live in the open, and through the exercise of their courage to live in the open, they become free from fear. [一个人越是诚实，保持诚实就越容易，而谎言说的越多，则越要编造更过的谎言自圆其说。敢于面对事实的人能够心胸坦荡地生活，不必面临良心的折磨和恐惧的威胁。]
Balancing is the discipline that gives us flexibility
Mature mental health demands, then, an extraordinary capacity to flexibly strike and continually restrict a delicate balance between conflicting needs, goals, duties, responsibilities, directions etc. The essence of this discipline of balancing is “giving up”…Balancing is a discipline precisely because the act of giving something up is painful.
The discipline of bracketing illustrates the most consequential fact of giving up and of discipline in general: namely that fro all that is given up even more is gained. Self-discipline is a self-enlarging process.
Buddhists tend to ignore the Buddha’s suffering and Christians forget Christ’s joy. Buddha and Christ were not different men. The suffering of Christ letting go on the cross and the joy of Buddha letting go under the bo tree are one.
One measure—and perhaps the best measure—of a person’s greatness is the capacity for suffering. Yet the great are also joyful. This then is the paradox. [一个人是否杰出和伟大，视其承受痛苦的能力决定，而杰出伟大本身，则会给人带来快乐和幸福－－－表面是悖论，其实不然。]
A final word on this discipline of balancing and its essence of giving up: you must have something in order to give it up.
It is the difference between the peak experience, typified by falling in love, and what Abraham Maslow has referred to as the “plateau /ˈplætəʊ/ experience”. The heights are not suddenly glimpsed and lost again; they are attained forever.
Seneca said two millennia ago “Throughout the whole of life one must continue to learn to live and what will amaze you even more, throughout life one must learn to die.”
The child’s speech patterns are uneven—occasional rushes of words interspersed with pauses and repetitions—which makes concentration difficult.
Courage is not the absence of fear; it is the making of action in spite of fear, the moving out against the resistance engendered by fear into the unknown and into the future.
The highest forms of love are inevitably totally free choices and not acts of conformity. [放弃真正的自我，我们就无法进入爱的至高境界。至高境界的爱，必然是自由状态下的自主选择，而不是墨守成规，被动而消极地抗拒心灵的状态]
Problems of commitment are a major, inherent part of most psychiatric disorders and issues of commitment are crucial in the course of psychotherapy. Character-disordered individuals tend to form only shallow commitments, and when their disorders are severe /səˈvɪr/ these individuals seems to lack totally the capacity to form commitments at all.
The fact that a feeling is uncontrolled is no indication whatsoever that it is any deeper than a feeling that is disciplined. To the contrary, psychiatrists know well the truth of the old proverb:”Shallow brooks are noisy and still waters run deep.” We must not assume that someone whose feelings are modulated and controlled is not a passionate person. [恣意放纵，漫无节制的情感，绝不会自制的情感更为深刻。俗语说：“静水流深”。真正掌握和控制情感的人，不仅不缺少激情和活力，而且能使情感更为深刻和成熟。]
While one should not be a slave to one’s feelings, self-discipline does not mean the squashing of one’s feelings into non-existence. I frequently tell my patients that their feelings are their salves and that the art of self-discipline is like the art of slave-owning.
One set of such questions derives rather logically from the material thus far discussed. It has been made clear, for instance, that self-discipline develops from the foundation of love. But this leaves unanswered question of where love itself comes from. And if we ask that, we must also ask what are the sources of the absence of love. It has been further suggested that the absence of love is the major cause of mental illness and that the absence of love is consequently the essential healing element in psychotherapy. This being so, who is it that certain individuals, born and raised in an environment of non love, of unremitting neglect and casual brutality, somehow manage to transcend their childhood, sometimes even without the loving assistance of psychotherapy, and become mature, healthy and perhaps even saintly people? Conversely, how is it that some patients, apparently no more ill than others, fail partially or totally to respond to psychotherapeutic treatment by even the most wise and loving therapist?
I believe that an understanding of the phenomenon of grace is essential to complete understanding of the process of growth in human being.
As human beings grow in discipline and love and life experience, their understanding of the world and their place in it naturally grows apace. Conversely, as people fail to grow in discipline, love and life experience, so does their understanding fail to grow. Consequently, among the members of the human race there exists an extraordinary variability in the breadth and sophistication of our understanding of what life is all about. This understanding is our religion. Since everyone has some understanding—some world view, no matter how limited or primitive or inaccurate— everyone has a religion. This face, not widely recognized, is of the utmost importance: everyone has a religion. We suffer from a tendency to define religion too narrowly. We tend to think that religion must include a belief in God or some ritualistic practice or membership in worshiping group……We are puzzled as to how two very different people can both call themselves Christians. or Jews, or how an atheist might have a more highly developed sense of Christian morality than a Catholic who routinely attends mass. [随着爱和人生经验的增长，我们会越来越了解周围的世界，以及自己在世界中的位置。由于天赋以及成长环境的不同，每个人认识的广度和深度常常有着天壤之别。 我们对于人生都有各自的认识，有着或广阔或狭隘的人生观和世界观，可以说，人人都有自己的信仰，对人生的认识和了解就属于信仰的范畴…两个完全不同的人，为什么都以基督徒自居？为什么和某些经常做弥撒的天主教徒相比，某些无神论者更能遵守宗教的道德规范？]
We tend to believe what the people around us believe, and we tend to accept as truth what these people tell us of the nature of the world as we listen to them during our formative year.[我们通常很容易接纳周围人的信仰，把口耳相传的东西视为真理]
To some extent the religion of most adults is a product of transference [移情].Most of us operate from a narrower frame of reference than that of which we are capable, failing to transcend the influence of our particular culture, our particular set of parents and our particular childhood experience upon our understanding. It is no wonder that the world of humanity is so full of conflict. We have a situation in which human being, who must deal with each other, have vastly different views as to the nature of reality, yet each one believes his/her own view to be the correct one since it is based on the microcosm of personal experience. And to make matters worse, most of us are not even fully aware of our own world views, much less the uniqueness of the experience from which they are derived. [许多成年人的信仰其实是移情的产物。我们毕竟不是超人，无法超越文化，父母和童年经验的影响，只能根据狭窄的人生参照系来待人处事。人们的感受和观点起源于过去的经验，却很少意识到经验并不是放之四海皆准的法则，他们对自己的世界观并没有完整而深入的认识。]
Hui: Here is a short conversation with my best friend:
Q: What is wrong with the world?
A: There are people.
最有活力，最适合我们的信仰，理应从我们对现实的经验和认识中产生。经由质疑，挑战，检验的信仰，才是属于我们的信仰。…我想要真正地活着，就必须有自己的语言，拥有独一无二的怀疑与挑战的意识。我们有了自己的信仰，才能有成熟的心灵。[To be vital, to be best of which we are capable, our religion must be a wholly personal one, forged entirely through the fire of our questioning and doubting in the crucible of our own experience of reality…So for mental health and spiritual growth we must develop our own personal religion and not rely on that of our parents.]
We see dogmatism and proceeding from dogmatism, we see wars and inquisitions and persecutions. We see hypocrisy behind faith.[过分信仰上帝，容易使我们更加教条。正是从这样的教条主义中，曾产生过无数战争，宗教裁判所乃至各种迫害。在信仰的背后，曾隐藏着无数伪善的嘴脸。]
There is clearly a lot of dirty bath water surrounding the reality of God [不夸张地说，在真实的上帝周围，其实流淌着大量肮脏的洗澡水]： Holy wars [残酷的圣战], Inquisitions [宗教审判], Animal sacrifice [动物牺牲], Human sacrifice [活人献祭], Superstition [极度的迷信], Stultification [愚民政策], Dogmatism [教条主义], Ignorance [极端无知], Hypocrisy [伪装虔诚], Self-righteousness [自以为是], Rigidity [顽固不化], Cruelty, Book-buring [焚书坑儒], Witch burning [把女巫处以火刑], Inhibition, Fear, Conformity, Morbid guilt, Insanity [阻碍人类思维进步，制造恐惧，强迫服从，病态的原罪，疯狂的朝拜等等]. The list is almost endless. But is all this what God has done to humans or what humans have done to God? It is abundantly evident that belief in God is often destructively dogmatic. Is the problem, then, that humans tend to believe in God, or is the problem that human tend to be dogmatic? [可谓不可胜数。追根溯源，这一切究竟是上帝有负于人类，还是人类对不起上帝呢？无数宗教信仰都是以毁灭性的教条主义为特征，那么，问题出在我们过于信仰上帝，还是我们天生就容易流于教条主义呢?] Anyone who has known a died-in-the-wool atheist will know that such an individual can be dogmatic about unbelief we need to get rid of, or is it dogmatism? [熟悉顽固无神论者的人都知道，他们从不信仰神灵，以打破神灵崇拜为荣，乃至到了独断专行的程度。他们实际上并不比狂热的宗教信徒好到哪里。那么我们该屏蔽的是信仰本身还是教条主义呢？]
Another reason that scientists are so prone to throw the baby out with the bath water is that science itself, as I have suggested, is a religion. [科学家容易把婴儿和洗澡水一道泼掉的原因，还在于科学本身就是一种宗教。] The neophyte scientist, recently come or converted to the world view of science, can be every bit as fanatical ’nætɪkəl as Christian crusader or a soldier of Allah. [刚刚接受科学启蒙的新生科学家，其狂妄和偏执的程度，可能丝毫不逊于基督教的十字军，或者真主安拉的圣战勇士。] This is particularly the case when we have come to science from a culture and home in which belief in God is firmly hypocrisy. The we have emotional as well as intellectual motives to smash the idols of primitive faith. A mark of maturity in scientist, however, is their awareness that science may be as subject to dogmatism as any other religion. [如果他们的家庭或文化背景原本就带有宗教的无知，迷信，顽固与伪善成分，他们的狂妄和偏执就可能更严重。在破除原有的信仰崇拜方面，我们的动机不仅有知性因素，也含有情感成分。科学家成熟的标志之一就是能够意识到，像其他任何宗教一样，科学也可能流于教条主义。]
I have firmly stated that it is essential to our spiritual growth for us to become scientists who are skeptical of what we have been taught—that is , the common notions and assumptions of our culture idols, and it is necessary that we become skeptical of these as well. [我坚定地认为，对于别人教给我们的一切，包括通常的文化观念以及一切陈规旧习，采取冷静和怀疑的态度，才是心智成熟不可或缺的元素。科学本身很容易成为一种文化偶像，我们亦应该保持怀疑态度。]
A third way in which the unconscious manifests itself and speaks to us if we care to listen is through our behavior. I am referring to slips of the tongue and other “mistakes” in behavior or “freudian slips”, which Freud, in his “Psychopathology of everyday life”, initially demonstrated to be manifestations of the unconscious [虽然常常对潜意识不予理会，但它仍时刻渴望与我们对话。我们的言行足以暴露一切。我们经常说错话，也就是弗洛伊德所说的“说漏嘴”。我们在个人行为上所犯的可笑“错误”也会揭示出潜意识与我们沟通的渴望]……Not all slips express hostility or denied “negative” feelings. They express all denied feelings, negative or positive. They express the truth, the way things really are as opposed to the way we like to think they are.[人们不经意间说出某些奇怪的话，做出异于平常的举动，原因各种各样，但往往是受到压抑的东西的一种自然流露，其中既包括消极的东西，也包括积极的东西。它们是客观而真实的，尽管我们可能不想公之于众。] The fact of the matter is that our unconscious is wiser than we are about everything.
Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious suggests that our wisdom is inherited. Recent scientific experiments with genetic material in conjunction with the phenomenon of memory suggest that it is indeed possible to inherit knowledge, which is stored in the form of nucleic acid codes within cells. [荣格的“集体无意识”理论暗示出，我们的智慧来自于对全人类智慧的继承。最近的科学实验把遗传物质痛记忆现象结合起来进行研究，结论证明我们的基因很可能继承了某些知识，并在细胞里以核酸遗传密码的形式储存。]
Decline of physical competence in old age is an inevitability. Within an individual lifetime, however, the human spirit may evolve dramatically…One of the basic natural laws is the second law of thermodynamics, which states that every naturally flows from a state of greater organization to a state of lesser organization, from a state of higher differentiation to a state of lower differentiation. In other words, the universe is in a process of winding down…Some other energy system has to be depleted if this one is to be maintained. Ultimately, according to the second law of thermodynamics, in billions and billions of years, the universe will completely wind down until it reaches the lowest point as as amorphous, totally disorganized, totally undifferentiated “blob” in which nothing happens any more. This state of total disorganization and undifferentiation is termed entropy. [随着年龄的增长，肉体的衰老是不可避免的结果，但在人的一生中，心灵却可以不断进化，乃至发生根本性的改变……按照热力学第二定律，能量会自然地从有序状态流向混乱状态，从分化状态流向均一状态。换句话说，宇宙的秩序处于持续不断的崩解之中…为维持某处的秩序保持不变，必须以其他地方的秩序崩解为代价。这样下去，经过数十亿年，整个宇宙会完全分解，其秩序降至最低点，成为没有任何形状和结构，不再发生分化的死寂状态，我们称之为“熵”。]
The process of spiritual growth is an effortful and difficult one. This is because it is conducted against a natural resistance, against a natural inclination to keep things the way they were, to cling to the old maps and old ways of doing things, to take the easy path……But as in the case of physical evolution, the miracle is that this resistance is overcome. We do grow. [心灵的成长，心智的成熟需要不断努力，而且必然是艰苦的过程。它必须与自然法则对抗，必须跟循规蹈矩的自然倾向背道而驰…我们习惯于走平坦的道路，害怕道路熵荆棘遍布。在反抗自然法则的过程中，心灵需要同熵的力量对抗，就如同生物进化一样，我们的心灵克服了熵的力量，才一直成长到今天。]
But what is this force that pushed us as individuals and as a whole species to grow against the natural resistance of our own lethargy? We have already labeled it. It is love. Love was defined as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth”. When we grow, it is because we are working at it, and we are working at it because we love ourselves. It is through love that we elevate ourselves. And it is through our love for others that we assist others to elevate themselves. Love, the extension of the self, is the very act of evolution. It is evolution in progress. The exclusionary force, present in all of life, manifest itself in mankind as human love. Among humanity love is the miraculous force that defies the natural law of entropy. [归根结底，推动个人乃至整个物种克服懒惰和其它自然阻力的力量究竟是什么？其实我们已经给它取了名字，那就是“爱”。我们之所以能够成长，在于持续的努力，我们之所以能够付出努力，是因为懂得自尊自爱。对自己的爱是我们愿意遵循规矩去生活，对别人的爱让我们帮助他们去自我完善。自我完善的爱是一种典型的进化行为，具有生生不息的特征。在生物世界中存在着永久儿普遍的进化力量，体现在人类身上，就是具有人性的爱。它违反熵增的自然规律，是一种永远走向进步的神奇力量。]
We are stuck with this childlike notion of a loving God or else with a theoretical vacuum.
Our failure to conduct — or to conduct fully and whole heartedly —this internal debate between good and evil is the cause of those evil actions that constitute sin … It is work to hold these internal debates. They require time and energy just to conduct them…For laziness takes forms other than that related to the bare number of hours spent on the job or devoted to one’s responsibilities to others. A major form that laziness takes is fear … Each of us represents the whole human race; within each of us is the instinct for godhood and the hope for mankind, and within each of us is the original sin of laziness. [我们回避内心的善恶辩论，就产生了许多构成原罪的邪恶行为。…完成心灵的辩论需要努力，需要时间，需要坚强的意志。…懒惰与你花多少时间工作，如何对待别人尽职尽责没有多少关系。懒惰的一个主要特征就是恐惧感。… 在每一个人的身体中都拥有向往神性的本能，都有达到完美境界的欲望，同时也都有懒惰的原罪。]
Hui: 不仅仅是行为上的懒惰，更是思想上的懒惰。如La Rochefoucauld在Maxims中说的：“We have more idleness in the mind than in the body.” 我们觉得累了，不想进行善恶的争辩，于是就听之任之。
First, I have come to conclude that evil is real. It is not the figment of the imagination of a primitive religious mind feebly attempting to explain the unknown…My second conclusion then is that evil is laziness carried to its ultimate, extraordinary extreme…I define evil, then, as the exercise of political power—that is, the position of one’s will upon others by overt or covert coercion—in order to avoid extending one’s self for the purpose of nurturing spiritual growth…My third conclusion is that the existence of evil is inevitable, at least at this stage in human evolution…Last, I have come to conclude that while entropy is an enormous force, in its most extreme force of human evil. It is strangely ineffective as a social force. [首先，我相信邪恶是真实存在的，它并非原始宗教为解释某些不可知现象而凭空捏造的一种概念。…第二，所谓邪恶就是为所欲为，横行霸道式的懒惰。…关于“邪恶”，我们可以给出这样的定义：邪恶式运用一切影响力阻止他人心智成熟与自我完善的行为。…第三，至少到目前人类进化的这一阶段，邪恶式不可避免的。…最后，熵是一种强大的力量，是人性极恶的体现。]
There is another problem with power: aloneness
Through bracketing and the attention of love we grow more aware of our beloved and of the world …The word “conscious” is derived from the Latin prefix “con” means “to know with”. But how are we to understand this “with”? To know with what? We have spoken of the fact that the unconscious part of our mind is the possessor of extraordinary knowledge. It knows more than we know, “we” being defined as our conscious self. And when we become aware of a new truth, it is because we recognize it to be true; we re-know that which we knew all along. Therefore, might we not conclude that to become conscious is to know with unconscious? The development of consciousness is the development of awareness in our conscious mind of knowledge along with our unconscious mind, which already possess that knowledge. It is a process of the conscious mind coming into synchrony with the unconscious …To put it plainly, our unconscious is God, God within us. We were part of God all the time. God has been with us all along, is now and always will be…I have said that the ultimate goal of spiritual growth is for the individual to become as one with God.[要使心智成熟，必须认清自己的偏见和局限。我们经由爱、包容和关怀，可以渐渐了解自己，了解所爱的人和整个世界。…“意识”这个词来源于拉丁文，本意是“共同认识与了解”。那么意识的对立面是什么呢？我认为就是潜意识，潜意识知道的事情永远比意识多得多。我们获得一项真理，得到一种启示，不过是重新认识潜意识里原本存在的事情。获得新的真理和启示，其实是意识和潜意识同步。…我们的潜意识就是上帝，我们内心的上帝。我们是上帝的一部分，上帝一直与我们同在，无论现在还是未来。…心智成熟的终极目标是天人合一。]