Strength is in the abandonment of meaningless resistance.
WHAT IT IS, BRO:
What you are instinctively is the truth about you. Via thought do men try to lie about themselves, always with the intention that it be to their benefit.
If by instinct you are not physically graceful, through mental alertness to movement, you can lie about what you are, and be less clumsy. A person with a nasty temper can mentally curb his tongue, and a timid man can, with his mind’s help, project an image otherwise.
This is the background to all forms of, “self-improvement.” There is first some instinctive proclivity with which your thinking finds fault, and determines as costly. Instincts have no reason to ever alter their own behavior other than from physical pain, an experience the mind does not favor, nor find practical. From the mind’s perspective, any changes to instinctive behavior will have to originate in it, and can only be accomplished using methods it must design.
Everyone’s instincts are perfectly happy just as they are – that is why they are your instincts. But no one’s mind is perfectly satisfied with the instinctive truth-about-themselves. This situation is responsible for all features of Culture, and all desires to be-a-better-person. Civilization is based on men lying about what they are.
J.