adjustment

 

adjustment

We spend a lifetime adjusting to the world and its demands, slowly crafting and fine-tuning an image of ourselves that fits the world and how it sees us, so that we don’t stand out (see self-concept). The world holds a picture of us in which our job is to meet its demands and accept its judgments of us. Adjusting to this picture seems required, simply because the world is bigger than us. We don’t realize that our ego made the world, and specifically designed it to hold this picture of us, so that we would feel forced to adopt the picture as our own. Instead, we must refuse to adjust to what the world tells us we are. In other words, the last thing we want to be is “well adjusted.” Rather than adjusting to the world, we must merely look on reality directly, to which we have no need to adjust. For the purpose of any adjustment is to bring two things into alignment that do not fit, and we and reality are inherently a perfect fit. See T-20.III.