The “you-niverse” is tiny and confining. The universe is huge and liberating. Think outside your self-box.
Freedom from anxiety and compulsion comes through self-forgetfulness. Self-centeredness can’t achieve it. Self-absorption creates loneliness, not happiness. Self-centeredness and joy refuse to coexist.
To drive you don’t focus on smudges on the windshield. You look beyond them. To be happy don’t focus on self, look beyond it. To be self-concerned in ‘my, my, my”–causes many unnecessary problems.
To be self-absorbed is to be caught up in an ongoing whirlwind of tormenting thoughts and emotions. Self-focus causes you to obsess over your feelings and self-analysis, leaving you to bask in anxiety. Other-focus creates compassion.
Self-absorption always results in a distortion of the truth. Self-detachment brings truth into focus. Self-focus intensifies your needs and desires. Self-detachment sets you free from them.
The fuller you are of yourself, the emptier you are of unrestrained joy. Instead of insisting that your opinions are right, treat people right, with kindness and respect. To truly understand a situation, we must detach our self-interest from it. The more you distance from self-focus, the better you will understand various points of view.
Detachment lets you forgive those who hurt you, while appreciating what you learned thru the pain. Resentment is a bear trap that many people step into and drag around their entire life.
To resent is to allow the pain from a past experience to be “re-sent” thru your heart, every time you think about it. You can’t have both contentment and resentment. I choose contentment.
Self-pity is a lonely city–population 1. To forgive is to give up your perceived right to accuse or blame someone. It doesn’t require forgetfulness.
It takes courage and strength to forgive. Holding a grudge is a symptom of weakness.
Like barnacles on a boat, we can be carrying biases and be completely unaware of them. It takes courage to find them and scrape them off.
