facing facts

Why should not jealousy, ambition, etc. be immediately brushed aside? Why should there be this postponement, the gradual change, the acceptance of idealistic authority? I hope, sirs, you are thinking it out with me and not merely listening to me. We accept this gradual process of change because it is more easy, and postponement is more pleasurable. The immediate gives you a great deal of excitement, and to see its value is much more difficult and requires much greater attention and energy. I do not know if you have realized that in facing a fact there is a release of energy, and it is this facing the fact, from which energy is derived, which has the quality that brings about mutation. And we cannot face the fact if we are convinced that change through a gradual process, through influence, through fear, through compulsion, is the only way. In the very act of facing it, you will find there is release of energy, psychologically. Most of our lives are wasted through conflict. We do not face facts but run away from them, seeking various forms of escape. This is dissipated energy, and the result of that dissipation is confusion. If one does not escape, if one does not translate the fact in terms of one’s own pleasure and pain, but merely observes, then that act of pure seeing in which there is no resistance is the releasing of energy. – Jiddu Krishnamurti, Choiceless Awareness (A Selection of Passages from the Teachings)

From J. Krishnamurti Online