Don't Let the Devil Know
Keep the important stuff from even yourself
There’s a funny thing that happens when a person gets a good idea, something he or she really would like to act on — it usually doesn’t work.
Say you want to drink or smoke less or exercise more; well, as soon as you decide what you’re up to, and make some commitment to yourself to do things in this or that new way, count on it going completely sideways and every possible thing that could go wrong seemingly going wrong. Before you know it, you’re back on the pipe. As Mark Twain is reported to have said, “Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times.”
This sort of thing happens to me all the time. I decide I want to, say, wake earlier in the morning. I make a serious, solid plan to do it. That night, my dog needs to go out in the middle of the night and one of my kids has a bad dream or something, so that I end up waking multiple times through the night and don’t much feel like sticking to my resolution when the time comes.
Maybe your resolve is better than mine, but maybe you have noticed things are stacked against you suddenly once you decide you would like to make some important change in your life. The problem we have is that we tend to give too much notice of what we intend to do — we let the devil know what we’re doing.
Alan Watts gives a great discussion of this in one of his lectures (I’d highly recommend listening to the whole thing):
It’s as if, you see, you had said to the devil one morning, look, I’m going to get rid of you. I’m not going to have anything to do with you anymore. So the devil who is an archangel and is terribly clever, is all set for you. And because he knows that you are getting out of his way, he surrounds you with greater temptations than you ever imagined. If you are going to outwit the devil it’s terribly important that you don’t give him any advance notice.
The moment you decide you’re going to do something, the devil knows. The devil, it seems, is inseparable from ourselves. The devil is us. So it’s really a question of how we can act and be in accordance with our greatest ideals without giving so much notice, even to ourselves.
In the same lecture, Watts likens this practice to that of a professional archer. When we think about something before we do it, and then decide to do it, we’ve already missed the boat. The key is not to think about much of anything, but to act with intention all the time:
The necessity of letting go of the bowstring without first deciding to do so — another way of putting it is that the decision to release the bowstring and the action of doing so must be simultaneous. Not to decide and then act but to act-decide all at once.
If you are going to be an expert archer, you must shoot before you think — otherwise, it’ll be too late. You don’t aim and then shoot; it’s all one action.
Watts gives another example of this in von Kleist’s Fencing Bear, which is a story about a man who must fight a bear, but he finds the bear can read his mind and stymies his every attempt. There’s simply nothing he can do to beat this bear, as long as it’s premeditated, for the moment the man decides to do anything, the bear already seems to be aware and can block or parry with ease. It’s not until the man learns to act without thinking that he is able to surprise the bear.
I’ve noticed this with even my own dog. He’s a good dog, but he loves to get loose every so often and run wildly through the neighborhood. It’s a game for him. I have noticed that when I attempt to corner him, which he will allow me to do for the fun of it, the moment I decide to make a move to grab him, he already seems aware of it and will take off in the other direction. Were I to act without thinking, my move would not be foreseen and I’d have more of a chance; however, I’ve learned there are better ways altogether (you catch more flies with honey), but that’s a different topic.
What is all this for, other than liberation from suffering? To be free from suffering has been at the root of many ancient traditions, including Buddhism. These urges we get that can be cause or effect of beliefs only seem to bind us and to keep the cycle going — something like belief-attachment-attempt-failure-suffering-belief.
Watts relates this to karma:
Liberation is getting out of the toils of karma. It’s like this, during your many past lives, you’ve done all kinds of deeds — good and bad — and you’re reaping the consequences of these deeds today. And also today, you’re setting up future consequences.
Now, before you can be liberated you’ve got to pay off your karmic debts.
And so the moment you set your foot on the path of liberation, you are apt to find that all your karmic creditors will come to your door. And that’s why it’s often said that people who start out on the serious work of yoga suddenly get sick and lose their money and their best friends drop dead and all kinds of ghastly things happen.
That’s because, you see, they serve notice that they were going to do this. And so all the creditors came around.
His recommendation: live life as the sly man. According to Watts, “The art of the sly man is to make no contest, but simply to leave without one word.” In other words, don’t make a big thing of your ideas, not to yourself and especially not to others. The moment you do, you’ve let the devil know. You’ve let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. You’ve set yourself up for greater challenge than need be.
The practice of not letting the devil know what you’re up to is a kind of meditation. That voice you hear that’s telling you that maybe you should try something is probably just a mental interpretation of what could be a deeper impression. You have the impression and attach all sorts of thinking and beliefs and intentions to it. Suddenly, you are having thoughts about what maybe you should do, and building up interpretations around that. Maybe suddenly you’re thinking about how great it will be to have this or to do that, or how great you’ll seem to others if you do this or give up that. Obviously, these are just mental constructs, and it amounts to letting the devil know what your intentions are, which is sort of like getting caught up in fanciful attachments.
Instead, you might try this: the next time you get some idea for some thing you feel you should do or try or give up or whatever, recognize it simply as a thought. Whatever it is, it likely is not the end-all-be-all in your life. Take a deep breath, recognize the thought, and don’t commit to it any energy in obligation or fantasy. Instead, let it go. You know you had the idea, and it will come back if relevant. For the time being, just let it go. Then, when the time for action or inaction or indulgence or abstinence is upon you, execute without warning!