Everything you do has consequences and these consequences spread in all directions and go on forever.
A PARADOX OF LIFE
Everything that happens has good consequences and bad consequences.
For instance, you win the lottery.
Good consequences: You give up working and plan a round-the-world luxury voyage.
Bad consequences: Your entire family comes too.
Remember that ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are not Absolute and Eternal Judgements existing outside our human life. We each have our own interpretation of good and bad. Some people believe that lotteries are wicked. Some people wouldn’t want to go anywhere without their family.
A PARADOX OF LIFE
Every interpretation we can create has good and bad implications.
Suppose your interpretation of the right way to behave includes the belief that you will always tell the truth.
The good implication of this is that people always know where they are with you, and the bad implication is that people are sometimes hurt by what you say.
Because every interpretation has good implications and bad implications, and every action has good consequences and bad consequences, life can never be perfect.
The longing for perfection is the longing for an illusion.
If you want to be miserable, believe that you and the world ought to be perfect.
You will always feel guilty, angry and disappointed.
If you want to be miserable, don’t try to make your interpretations as close to reality as possible.
You will always feel surprised, confused and fearful.
If you want to be miserable, believe that you, your life and the world are reality, fixtures which you cannot change.
You will always feel trapped and hopeless.
If you are miserable and want to change, say to yourself,
The way I interpret myself, my life and my world has implications and consequences which make me miserable.
What alternative interpretations can I discover for what has happened, is happening and will happen to me?
Which of these interpretations will give me the most satisfaction and happiness?’
Let’s look at the important components of ‘myself’, ‘my life’ and my world’.
CHAPTER 3 You and Your Own Truth
IF I WERE to ask you, ‘What kind of a person are you?’ and you were to answer truthfully, would you say,
‘Other people looking at me think that I’m a very together person, that I’m competent and confident, get on well with other people, always cheerful, kind – but they don’t know the real me. Underneath I’m very different. I’m not as confident and competent as I make out, and I’m not a nice person at all. I try not to let people know me as I am.’
If I asked you, ‘If you were a house, how would you describe yourself?’ would you say,
‘As a house I’ve got lots of rooms that represent different parts of me. On the outside the house looks all right – could be better but it will pass. There’s a front door that’s always closed. I’ll let a few people into the front rooms. They’re cheerful, nicely furnished rooms, good for work and socializing. There’s a room behind the front rooms where I let only one or two people in. It’s a rather sombre room. That’s where I am when I’m not with people. Beneath that room there’s a cellar. I keep the door to the cellar locked. There’s something terrible in that cellar. If people knew about what’s at the centre of my house that would be the end of me.’
Most people experience their existence as being something like this house.
Some people try to pretend that their cellar and its terrible contents don’t exist. This pretence leaves them feeling that they don’t have a whole house, just a facade of a house. They feel that they aren’t a person, just a facade of a person. They spend their time in their front room socializing and being good and kind to people. They need to be busy and have lots of excitement to stop them being aware of the emptiness and darkness lurking inside themselves.
Other people are always aware of the danger in the cellar. They believe that the only way to keep the cellar locked and hidden is for them to be very good. If they’re a good son/daughter, wife/husband, father/mother, employer/employee, friend and citizen they can keep the evil danger inside them well locked away. This is a never-ending task and their vigilance must be constant.
Most people believe that they are, in essence, bad and unacceptable, but that if they keep this essence hidden, and if they work hard to be good, other people won’t discover how bad they are and they’ll be accepted, and even liked and laved.
Most people believe that this is how they are, and that this is fixed and unchangeable.
If this is what you believe, then you are mistaken.
When you were born you didn’t experience yourself as being bad and unacceptable. When you were born you/your house was open-plan and everyone was invited in. You didn’t know anything about cellars and dangerous, dark forces inside you. You were as you were, open, curious, trusting, wanting to love and be loved, to please and be pleased.
Then the people around you, the very ones you wanted to please so they would love you, began suggesting that there was something nasty inside you and that your open-plan house needed a cellar where this nastiness could be locked away. This nastiness had names. There was greed (‘Babies should be fed at regular intervals and not just when they want to be fed’), dirtiness (‘You’ve soiled yourself. You’re disgusting’), selfishness (‘Wait your turn’), aggression (‘You’re a wicked child to hit your sister’).
All the time you were interpreting what was happening to you.
(You developed the ability to create meaning while you were still in the womb. We begin creating interpretations long before we have a language in which to describe these interpretations. Our interpretations take the form of feelings, images and sounds. Studies of babies in the womb show that they prefer the sweet melodies of Mozart to the taut sharpness of Stravinsky. No doubt once born they can distinguish the sound of ‘Dearest darling’ from the sound of ‘You filthy pig’ even though they don’t know the meaning of the words.)
Like everyone else, the only way you could create your interpretations was to use your past experience. But you were a tiny child. You didn’t have much experience but you did try to create the very best interpretations that you possibly could. You interpreted events and drew conclusions from your interpretations.
You found the world to be a very confusing place. Fortunately your mother explained the world to you.
There you were, toddling along on unsteady feet and your mother said, ‘Be careful or you’ll fall and hurt yourself.’
You took no notice. Then you fell over and hurt yourself. You drew a conclusion from this. You thought, ‘My mum knows what’s what. She tells me the truth.’
Soon after you had another accident. Perhaps you wet yourself or knocked over a glass of milk. Your mother said, ‘You disgusting, wicked child. You’ll be the death of me’ (or