Personal importance, or taking things personally, is the maximum expression of selfishness because we make the assumption that everything is about me.
The way humans relate to each other is so emotionally painful that for no apparent reason we get angry, jealous, envious, sad. To even say “I love you” can be frightening. But even if it’s painful and fearful to have an emotional interaction, still we keep going, we enter into a relationship, we get married, and we have children. In order to protect our emotional wounds, and because of our fear of being hurt, humans create something very sophisticated in the mind: a big denial system.
The normal frequency of humans before domestication is to explore and to enjoy life; we are tuned to love. As children, we don’t have any definition of love as an abstract concept; we just live love. It’s the way we are.
Humans use fear to domesticate humans, and our fear increases with each experience of injustice. The sense of injustice is the knife that opens a wound in our emotional body. Emotional poison is created by our reaction to what we consider injustice.
The people of power abuse the people who have less power because they need to release their emotional poison. We have the need to release the poison, and sometimes we don’t want justice; we just want to release, we want peace. That is why humans are hunting power all the time, because the more powerful we are, the easier it is to release the poison to the ones who cannot defend themselves.
Happiness never comes from outside of us. He was happy because of the love coming out of him; she was happy because of the love coming out of her. But as soon as he made her responsible for his happiness, she broke the star because she could not be responsible for his happiness.
Just consider what you believe about yourself and what your Mother believes about you. She can say she knows you very well, but she has no idea who you really are. You know that she doesn’t. You can believe that you know your Mother very well, but you don’t have any idea who she really is. She has all those fantasies in her mind that she never shared with anyone else. You have no idea what is inside her mind.
We don’t have the right to change anyone else, and no one else has the right to change us. If we are going to change, it is because we want to change, because we don’t want to suffer any longer.
If others say one thing, but do another, you are lying to yourself if you don’t listen to their actions.
Self-abuse comes from self-rejection, and self-rejection comes from having an image of what it means to be perfect and never measuring up to that ideal.
Si alguien no te trata con amor ni respeto, que se aleje de ti es un regalo.
Forgiveness. There is no other way but forgiveness to clean the wounds of all the poison.
You have practiced all of your life to be what you are, and you do it so well that you master what you believe you are. You master your own personality, your own beliefs; you master every action, every reaction. You practice for years and years, and you achieve the level of mastery to be what you believe you are.
Truth or fiction, you don’t have to believe anyone’s story. You don’t have to form an opinion about what someone says. You don’t have to express your own opinion. You don’t have to agree.
Selfishness comes from poverty in the heart, from the belief that love is not abundant. We become selfish when we believe that maybe tomorrow we won’t have any pizza but when we know that our heart is a magical kitchen, we are always generous, and our love is completely unconditional.
But as soon as we are alone, the Judge becomes so strong, the guilt is so strong, and we feel so stupid, or so bad, or so unworthy.
When you pretend to be what you are not, you are always going to fail.
So even before others have a chance to reject us, we have already rejected ourselves.
Only by loving and accepting yourself the way you are can you truly be and express what you are.
If you cannot love your partner the way she is, someone else can love her just as she is. Don’t waste your time, and don’t waste your partner’s time. This is respect.
When we reject ourselves, and judge ourselves, and find ourselves guilty and punish ourselves so much, it looks like there is no love. It looks like there is only punishment, only suffering, only judgment in this world. Hell has many different levels. Some people are very deep in hell and other people are hardly in hell, but still they are in hell. There are very abusive relationships in hell and relationships with hardly any abuse.