That is how important the speaking profession is. It is not like speakers teaching ‘get rich quick’ or ‘bogus internet marketing’ who distort the value of public speaking in society. I will explain why a speech has such power.
Humans have a conscious and a subconscious mind. The conscious mind is like what is above ground: the tree and its fruit (results). The subconscious is what lies below ground: the soil, containing seeds that will grow and “rise,” breaking through the ground to appear in the conscious mind. Thus the fruits we harvest in the conscious mind are merely the “results” of what operates in the subconscious below. Those fruits are the results in our lives: success, wealth, happiness, relationships, finances, destiny… Spiritual practice/personal development is therefore much like gardening. If gardeners must work with the soil, practitioners must work with the subconscious. Working only with the conscious mind will not succeed. All seeds lie in the subconscious, and only the subconscious can offer the fruits of understanding, love, and enlightenment.
When hearing a powerful speech (the right content), from someone with sufficient experience (the right person), at the right moment (the right time), perfectly supported by a suitable setting (the right place), the speech affects not only consciousness: the speaker can also move the listener's subconscious. In doing so, they “till” the soil of the listener's mind. Like a farmer plowing and turning the earth, the mental soil—the realm of the subconscious—is cultivated, good seeds nurtured and bad ones removed, creating conditions for good seeds to grow and bear fruit in the listener's life.
There is something many people misunderstand: they think listening is just listening and that action must follow before transformation can happen. In fact, that is true but incomplete. With a sufficiently powerful talk, listening itself is “acting with the mind”—working with your consciousness, tilling your subconscious, and nurturing your good seeds. Transformation happens immediately while listening to the talk. Just as when a preacher or monk gives a sermon or Dharma teaching, listeners seem to have the good seeds in the soil of their minds “watered.” The soil becomes richer and more fertile, the seeds sprout and grow, and transformation happens right as they listen.
This brings us to a second misconception: people often assume that change must be a process and cannot happen instantly. In fact, this is not wrong, but it is incomplete. The view that “change must be a sufficiently long process of accumulation” is sometimes merely an excuse made by people unwilling to change. They believe change takes a great deal of effort, time and energy and must involve a long process. They therefore use that reason to delay or even avoid changing. In fact, change can come in an instant, in a single decision: take 100% responsibility for yourself. If you do not proactively make that decision, “Heaven” will force you to change by presenting you with an upheaval, a truth or some surprise you must endure. When the hurt and pain become great enough, you will have to decide: “Oh no, I need to change!” In fact, the circumstances around you are constantly changing, but you are not paying attention. By the time the environment forces you to change, you will also have to pay the price for that change.
A good speaking or training program will provide you with a similar context and experiences so that you decide to change and transform yourself immediately. That is the power of education. Change does not necessarily take place over a process; it can happen in the very moment of a decision. And the most important decision is always today's decision. The best time to change is today!
Trích: Chương 13 – Quyết định quan trọng nhất là quyết định của ngày hôm nay, Sách Darkness Always Comes Before Dawn.
