Have you ever been in that circumstance? You’re just so angry. Someone has perhaps hurt you or they’ve said nasty things about you or whatever it is and you wanna say, you make me so angry. But of course, it’s not true, is it? Who’s making me angry?
The self, me. I’m making myself angry. We just can’t avoid this. And yes, the circumstance around us is often very unpleasant because life is hard as we’ve talked about before. But the only person who can make me angry and upset is myself, and that’s equally true of happiness.
I think we’ve all experienced this. We wake up in a sour mood. Perhaps we’ve had bad dreams or we haven’t slept well. It’s perhaps a little bit gray outside and then suddenly a ray of sunshine cascades upon us. We look at our phone, we’ve had a wonderful email from a friend, produces wonderful memories and we’ve gone from morose and horrid to joyful, happy.
How is that possible? Well, we know how. I have done it. It’s me. I’ve created the reality that I occupy.
So I have no one to blame for my life. No one. My life is 100% my fault and that’s a good thing I feel because if I am responsible for me, I can accept the joy and of course, the pain. Because if I accept responsibility for me, I know that this pain can pass, will pass however difficult it is and maybe the pain will continue for a year, for 2 years, but the hope will go on. It will continue.
I’m reading a book at the moment, The Teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Castaneda, very, very old book. I think the first one originally published in 1968. So gosh, 60 something years ago. Essentially, the tale is about an anthropologist who goes and meets an eponymous character, Don Juan, and he learns about how to access reality. Great quote I thought I could share with you.
A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war. Wide awake with fear, with respect and with absolute assurance. Going to war or to knowledge in any other way is a meaningless act if one forgets these conditions. Just great. True?
Just great. Because you realize that I’m in control. Now, easily said, right? Much harder to do because as we’ve said many many times, life is hard. So what am I going to do?
Well, first of all, I’m going to believe that I can gain control of this thing called my reality. Now, all of us have a circumstance. We’re a certain color. We’re a certain gender. We perhaps are a certain ethnicity.
We come from a certain part of the world. We we might be good looking as a body. We might be ugly, might be rich, might be poor, but those are givens. Right? That’s just the beginning of the great track of life.
But we can’t push on, and we can indulge ourselves in the wonderful adventure. Right? But once again, if we continuously blame others for the circumstance that we’re in, we’re never going to get any well. We’re gonna be mired in our own psychological filth, and many people are. I really feel that the vast majority of people are like this.
They somehow want to say life’s not fair. Oh, poor me. But of course, it’s not fair. How could it be fair? That’s the question.
How could it be anything but real? And it’s how I interact in the world. So once again, if I want to find my way, I’ve gotta be responsible. So very quickly, let’s go on a bit of a journey here. I wake up and I’m sad and now I’ve made my life happy or made the day happy.
I think it’s very important that I remember what I’ve done because everything is practice, isn’t it? Really. Everything. If I exercise, God willing, I make my muscles stronger so my mind should be the same and my emotions also should be the same. I learn how to change my mood.
And once again, sometimes I want to be sad. It’s necessary to be sad to be unhappy. It’s part of life. I can’t always be filled with joy. It’s ridiculous.
But there are times, however, that I want to enjoy what’s going on. So think of these things, if you will, That I’m in control. I’ve got no one to blame but me and I think that’s a wonderful thing. There’s no one like me. There never has been and there never will be but I must work on me, of course.
And you know what they say. You know what they say. If I want to live a fulfilling life, I’ve got no one to blame but me because critical thinking is wonderful and critical thinking is great. You take care. God bless. Bye bye.