Yes. This is part of the self-hatred side of many people. And I often say that everyone who walks up this hill to join the retreats has some degree of self-hatred. So you won't be alone in it. There are times when we really don't feel we are worthy; we feel that really we are the jerk. We shouldn't get the praise, we shouldn't get the fame, those people don't really know who I am. Psychology actually has a term for this, which is interesting, we just happened to see it in a book, called the "IP syndrome." The IP syndrome stands for "Imposter syndrome." Even great people, great politicians, famous movie stars, whoever (the person who wrote the book did studies on people who were such successes), many of them had this IP syndrome.
One person in particular, an actor who performed on the stage, had done a certain play over 1000 times, the same actor in the same play, the same personality and so on. He had performed the same play over 1000 times, yet still got very nervous before every performance and was basically scared. It seems crazy, right? But this was an example of what they call the IP syndrome and this is an example of an undercurrent that that person had and many people have of really feeling, "I'm not worthy, not me. Nope. I don't deserve the fame." No matter how good they are, no matter what they do, they are never good enough is what these people feel. And some of you have that sort of trait. That you are never good enough, and therefore you often have the thoughts, "I should get blame, I should have loss, I'm stupid, I'm a jerk. If they really knew who I am, they wouldn't be praising me!"
Once again this is an attitude which can be corrected with the water in the glass half full, half empty that I was talking about before. It's an attitude of always looking at our negativities. Some of you might remember, it was last night down in the other hall, that I gave the story about the tree growing, flowering and fruiting in its own time. That Unknown Seed story was related to the fact that a lot of people feel a lot of negativities towards themselves. A lot of meditators will look at the past, at things they've done that were not so good, and not enough time is spent looking on the good positive things we have done. When we are more objective, we don't have to hide away from praise, it'll come if we do something good. Fame comes if we do something good. Of course fame will come if we do something very bad, too! These different Eight worldly dhammas will come, and if we are more objective, and we know who we are, that we have our good qualities and we have our not so good qualities. If we are more objective, then we won't be feeling so guilty about the negative stuff we have done, because we know we have got positive stuff as well, and we have more compassion for ourselves. We then have a balanced view.
That also helps to bring in the understanding that we are not who we were. Take a photograph of who you were when you were 6 years old, stick it on a wall next to your mirror. Stare at yourself in the mirror and look at your picture. You are going to figure out you are not the same person you were. Now it's easy to see when you are looking at your 6 year old picture, it's not so easy to see yesterday, and today, but this is what's going on all the time, that we are not the same person as we were yesterday. None of you are the same person as you were when you walked inside this hall. You are just not the same, there's been change. Now we don't see it in 30 minutes, we see it in 20 years, 30 years, but we don't see it in 30 minutes, but it's going on. This is a valuable part of how Buddhism teaches to understand that these changes are occurring, we are not the same person.
This helps us to forgive who we were as long as we make the effort to prevent the same thing from happening again. We have the Four Great Efforts; we have also got Moral Shame and Moral Dread, two virtues that protect the world. Moral Shame looks into the past and figures out what we did wrong. It's like a computer information center, but all it does is look into the past and figure out what we did wrong. It is Moral Dread that takes all that understanding which Moral Shame accumulates. Moral Dread has a look at it, and goes "Right! I don't want to do that! I don't want to do that! I don't want to do that!" Moral Dread then watches out, in this moment and in the future. Without Moral Dread we can't correct anything from the past. Moral Shame is very good, and we need that or else Moral Dread doesn't have any understanding to work with, but it's Moral Dread that's the actual ingredient that prevents us from doing the unbeneficial things again. Now, if we use Moral Shame and Moral Dread, and if we use the Four Great Efforts, and if we develop more compassion and so on, then we don't have to hold onto any guilt of past things. We know we are a changing person, we are trying to do better all the time.