You will use up everything you’ve got, trying to give everyone what they want. How much do you trade to defeat loneliness? What’s the point of that sort of life? Anyone who has struggled to be free knows how much it costs. To have positive liberty is to take control of one’s own mind, to be liberated from irrational fears and beliefs, from addictions, superstitions, and all other forms of self-coercion.
To be an independent and mature adult, you may have to dump all kinds of things that get in the way. You have to be able to live in a world without why. A cynic, after all, is a passionate person who does not want to be disappointed again. To admit uncertainty is to admit to weakness, to powerlessness, and to believe in yourself despite both. It is a frailty, but in this frailty, there is a strength: the conviction to live in your own mind and not in someone else’s.
The first problem you have to deal with is your own reaction. The real problem is that there is something inside of you that can have a problem with almost anything. Our blame tells us there is nothing for us to work on. But, what you see in others is also in you, and sometimes only in you.
Declare an all-out war on your destructive thought patterns. Let go of the part of you that seems to have so many problems with reality. Embrace feeling abandoned. See if it destroys. Do not be too fascinated with your complaints. The more you challenge your negative instincts by not acting on them, the more they lose their control over you.
Balance yourself with reality, then throw yourself into the sea. The sea is inspiration. Ideas come to us as the successors to griefs, and griefs, at the moment when they change into ideas, lose some part of their power to injure the heart. You have to know how to come out of those dark moments, and even go back in, and come out again, and still persevere.
Take such good care of yourself that your heart can stay open. Truthful human behavior can’t be beat. You can live happily and sensuously in this rich and promising world without being caught up in many of its dehumanizing values and empty distractions. When you are oriented to abundance, you care less about being in control, and you take more risks.
Love is God in manifestation and the strongest magnetic force. The infinite intelligence is inside you. Show that you love life by living it. Don’t try to make it mean something, try to make it be something. As your heart expands, you learn to love a world that needs your affection and service, and paradoxically, your sense of self intensifies.
Remember that you absolutely owe no loyalty whatever to anything or anyone but your own soul and to the furtherance of its spiritual development. Your most solemn duty is to make everything secondary to that. Freedom is never free. If peace is really what you want, you will choose peace.
Sometimes, it takes a long time to learn how to play like yourself. I suggest that you entertain, consider the possibility, that you are a powerful, creative, compassionate, and loving spirit. You are not fool’s gold, shining only under a particular light. Whomever you become, whatever you make yourself into, that is who you always were.
Song Accompaniment: Martika, Love Thy Will Be Done
Artwork: The Art of Seth
2024 Accompaniments Playlist – Apple Music
2024 Accompaniments Playlist – Spotify
Endnotes are in the same order as the sentences they refer to.
[i] Tyler Perry, Maxine’s Baby: The Tyler Perry Story, Prime Video, 2023.
[ii] Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2018.
[iii] Deborah Levy, The Cost of Living, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018.
[iv] Deborah Levy, The Cost of Living, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018.
[v] Tara Westover, Educated: A Memoir, Random House, 2018.
[vi] Thomas Moore, Dark Nights of the Soul: A Guide to Finding Your Way Through Life’s Ordeals, Gotham Books, 2004.
[vii] Gloria Vanderbilt, as quoted in Nothing Left Unsaid: Gloria Vanderbilt & Anderson Cooper, HBO Documentary, 2016.
[viii] Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander, The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life, Harvard Business School Press, 2000.
[ix] Tara Westover, Educated: A Memoir, Random House, 2018.
[x] Tara Westover, Educated: A Memoir, Random House, 2018.
[xi] Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself, New Harbinger Publications, 2007.
[xii] Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself, New Harbinger Publications, 2007.
[xiii] Bruce Tift, Already Free: Buddhism Meets Psychotherapy on the Path of Liberation, Sounds True, 2005.
[xiv] Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, Penguin Group, 2005.
[xv] Melody Beattie, Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself, Hazelden Publishing, 1986.
[xvi] Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself, New Harbinger Publications, 2007.
[xvii] Bruce Tift, Already Free: Buddhism Meets Psychotherapy on the Path of Liberation, Sounds True, 2005.
[xviii] Bruce Tift, Already Free: Buddhism Meets Psychotherapy on the Path of Liberation, Sounds True, 2005.
[xix] Bruce Tift, Already Free: Buddhism Meets Psychotherapy on the Path of Liberation, Sounds True, 2005.
[xx] Gary Zukav, The Seat of the Soul, Simon & Schuster, 1989.
[xxi] Wynn Handman, as quoted in It Takes a Lunatic, directed by Billy Lyons, Netflix, 2019.
[xxii] Wynn Handman, as quoted in It Takes a Lunatic, directed by Billy Lyons, Netflix, 2019.
[xxiii] Deborah Levy, The Cost of Living, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018.
[xxiv] Narrator, Losers, Netflix, 2019
[xxv] Bruce Tift, Already Free: Buddhism Meets Psychotherapy on the Path of Liberation, Sounds True, 2005.
[xxvi] Wynn Handman, as quoted in It Takes a Lunatic, directed by Billy Lyons, Netflix, 2019.
[xxvii] Thomas Moore, Dark Nights of the Soul: A Guide to Finding Your Way Through Life’s Ordeals, Gotham Books, 2004.
[xxviii] Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander, The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life, Harvard Business School Press, 2000.
[xxix] Florence Scovel Shinn, The Game of Life and How to Play It, 1925.
[xxx] Florence Scovel Shinn, The Game of Life and How to Play It, 1925.
[xxxi] Vito Fiorino, as quoted in Stories of a Generation with Pope Francis, Netflix, 2021
[xxxii] Wynn Handman, as quoted in It Takes a Lunatic, directed by Billy Lyons, Netflix, 2019.
[xxxiii] Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life, HarperCollins, 1992.
[xxxiv] Emmet Fox, “Getting Results by Prayer,” Around the Year with Emmet Fox: A Book of Daily Readings, HarperOne, 1951.
[xxxv] Emmet Fox, “Getting Results by Prayer,” Around the Year with Emmet Fox: A Book of Daily Readings, HarperOne, 1951.
[xxxvi] Deborah Levy, The Cost of Living, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018.
[xxxvii] Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, Penguin Group, 2005.
[xxxviii] Miles Davis, as quoted in Miles: The Autobiography, Simon and Schuster, 1990.
[xxxix] Gary Zukav, The Seat of the Soul, Simon & Schuster, 1989.
[xl] Tara Westover, Educated: A Memoir, Random House, 2018.
[xli] Tara Westover, Educated: A Memoir, Random House, 2018.
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