well done on the progress you have already made, and remember above all, don’t beat yourself up, take it easy on yourself.

a few things I WILL say: there are lots of shoulds / coulds in your post despite saying you had eliminated these from your mind. “I should be accepting of this and that”, for example. Who said you SHOULD do that? It’s not about what you SHOULD do, it’s about what you CHOOSE to do. If you choose to accept the present moment because that is going with the way of life (instead of against the way of life) and will create happiness into your life, then cool. But you don’t have to. You can choose to resist what ‘is’, that’s an option that’s available to you too, but it comes with its own consequences of course.

You said you can control yourself. Everything? Can you control the next thoughts that will pop into your mind? Nope thoughts just pop into your head. Can you control it so you never ever get ill? Some people claim to be able to influence their health to enormous degrees but I don’t think you can control every element of ‘you’. For example a spot might appear, did you control that? Can you control it away? Nope. What you do have is enormous influence over yourself because you can, for example, choose which thoughts to believe, choose your responses to illnesses, choose whether you accept the ‘isness’ of this moment or not, and so on. So you do have a huge amount of influence and power, and you even have a lot of influence in life itself, but control? Nope, not over anybody else or even yourself in a lot of cases.

I would also argue that deserve doesn’t come into this, it’s about what you desire. “Deserve” is just a thought. But what do you actually want in life? If you change from feeling like you ‘deserve’ this or that to ‘desiring’ this or that then this may well be a positive shift for you.

as for change…When you change, everything changes. Your mind is generating your entire reality and experience, so when you change what’s being generated, the whole situation changes. What do you mean when you say you ONLY are able to change yourself? ONLY?? That’s everything! Change how you are in the face of life and your whole experience of life changes. It’s as if the world has changed. That’s the whole point. You don’t JUST change yourself, your life seems to change as you change in the face of it.

Develop more empowering perspectives and there will be no troubles here.

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND These videos by Noah Elkrief that I’ve recently been watching. Just watch whichever of these are relevant for you and you will soon get the idea (or watch as many as possible, they are great IMO): https://www.youtube.com/user/NoahElkrief/videos?view=0&flow=grid&sort=p

see how much those help!

all best – take care – take it easy

• This reply was modified 10 years, 3 months ago by Rock Banana.