If there could be only one idea — a lamp whose light could show the aspirant of real life the way out of the prison of dark thoughts and punishing feelings — it would surely be this: your true self doesn’t win in life by overpowering problems but by revealing they never really existed as you once believed they did.
Truths such as this can be difficult to accept. Tell some people the basis of their present mental or emotional pain is a negative byproduct of a mind trapped in an illusion and, as a rule, their response is to cling all the more tightly to their suffering. With few exceptions, the justification of their pain is as follows: given what they have had to endure, there is no alternative but this, their pain.
No one is saying to deny this pain or to otherwise pretend it’s not there. Yes, the feeling of any pain is real, but here’s what we must come to see if we would set ourselves free: all the excuses we’re handed—by ourselves—for why we must continue to hurt ourselves are like flies that travel with trash. The only purpose they serve is to make something worthless seem valuable; garbage is garbage, no matter how it comes wrapped!
Consider closely the twin truths in the following summary. Within them rests the understanding—and the power—you need to start throwing useless suffering out the door:
The justification of any negative state serves one end only: the protection and the preservation of the nature responsible for its manifestation.
Any part of our nature that finds good reason to justify our pain is the source of that pain it justifies.
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