The Spiritual Life, Topic Nineteen, Take responsibility for your own peace of mind.

The Spiritual Life - Topic Nineteen

Take responsibility for your own peace of mind.

The people who are always considering others and their opinions are immature. They are dependent on the opinions of others. They can’t do anything authentically, honestly they can’t say what they want to say—they say what others want to hear. Your politicians say the things you want to hear. They give you the promises you want. They know perfectly well that they cannot fulfill these promises; neither is there any intent to fulfill them. But if they say exactly, truthfully, what the situation is, and make it clear to you that many of the things you are asking for are impossible, that they cannot be done, they will be thrown out of power. You will not choose a politician who is honest. 

It is a very strange world. It is almost an insane asylum. If, in this insane asylum, you become alert and aware of your inner being, you are blessed. p.22-23

A person can live their life based on “indirect self acceptance” or “direct self acceptance.”

People who live their lives based on indirect self acceptance only like themselves if other people like them. Their experience of their self worth, their self esteem, their self confidence is based on what other people think of them. These people are sometimes called “people pleasers” and “co-dependent.” These people organize their lives around other peoples’ functioning.

People who base their lives on direct self acceptance know what makes them tick. They examine their own life and lead it by internal values and standards which they have consciously chosen. Other people’s opinions and feedback is not the determining factor in what they think, how they feel, what their preferences and intentions are. These people have made their values and standards the center of their lives and not someone else's.

Do you live your life based on your own sense of right and wrong, and your own values, or based on someone else's?

The mature person who has actualized their potential is confident in their own thoughts, feelings, and behavior. They are their own person and not suggestible, and easily influenced by the thoughts and desires of others.

Mothers often tell their children, “Just because your friend jumps off a bridge, doesn’t mean that you should.” There is an important lesson here which even as adults we would do well to consider and use to guide our behavioral choices accordingly.

So today, consider who and what you are living your life for? Who and what have led to your decisions about how to live your life? Are your choices self determined or made for you by other people and circumstances?

A mature person knows that while they often have no control over the external circumstances that occur in their lives, they always have control over how they choose to respond.

An immature person easily plays the victim and makes others responsible for their unhappiness while a mature person knows that only their choices about how they will respond to life’s happenings can determine their sense of well being.

The mature person no longer makes other people, and life circumstances, responsible for their unhappiness. They have given up the blame game and taken responsibility for their own peace of mind.