Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth. – Buddha
Knowing the truth can be painful. However, it is a necessary step before any change can take place. In this article let me share with you 4 disturbing truths that we often prefer to ignore.
Your children are not your property
Can you be said to love me if you cling to me and will not let me go? If you will not let me be? Can you be said to love me if you need me psychologically or emotionally for your happiness? – Anthony De Mello, Awareness
We constantly identify ourselves with things or people by talking about “my” house, “my” car or “my” wife. We mistakenly derive most of our identity from external things or relationships with other people. In reality there is no such thing as “my.” It’s just a social construct reflecting a strong desire from the ego to create a sense of ownership over things or people but nothing truly belongs to you.
Why did you decide to have children? Maybe you thought becoming a parent would make you happy or maybe you wanted to leave behind a legacy. Perhaps such a legacy gives you the comfortable illusion of immortality and alleviates your fear of death.
So, now you have children and you find yourself trying to achieve your unfulfilled dreams through them. You decide for your children what they should or should not do and what kind of life they should have. Your children become servants of your ego, as you use them to fulfill your own desires. What makes you believe that you can tell your children what to do?
The truth is your children don’t belong to you. It is certainly your responsibility to educate them and to give them the tools they need to be successful in life but, once they reach adulthood, you lose the right to dictate the direction of their lives. The amount of time and money you invested in them shouldn’t be used as a tool to control them, that sort of behavior doesn’t reflect true parental love.
It is not the responsibility of your children to make you happy or to live up to your expectations. You cannot demand that they do something that goes against their happiness in order to satisfy your own happiness. For that would no longer be love but rather selfishness. Let them do what they want to do and they will return your love back tenfold.
Your partner is not here to solve your problems
The purpose of a relationship is not to have another who might complete you, but to have another with whom you might share your completeness. – Neale Donald Walsch
For a relationship to be healthy, you need to be happy with yourself first. Only then can you give love to your partner rather than using them in an attempt to fill a void within you. No other person or material thing can complete you, rather only you yourself can do that!
Most dysfunctional relationships are the result of people trying to fix their own problems through their partner. Your partner is not a professional counsellor and is certainly not here to solve all of your problems or fill gaps within you. If you go from one dysfunctional relationship to another, it is likely because you yourself are dysfunctional. You are hoping to get something from your partner. You don’t love your partner you simply need her!
You may certainly ask your partner to have patience in understanding you and to support you, but you should never expect her to solve your problems for you. Even if they wanted too they couldn’t. Only you can solve your problems. Stop passing the buck to your partner and take the bull by the horns.
If you can’t stand being alone and are overly needy then you will likely attract similar people, which will only result in more dysfunctional relationships!
You are alone in life
We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life. – Tennessee Williams
You are alone in life. Get rid of the myths about your “other half” or “soulmate” and accept that you are alone. Those myths are misleading. They make you believe that you cannot be complete until you find the right one. In reality, there is no other half or soulmate. You know perfectly well that in this world there are thousands or millions of potential partners that you could live happily with for the rest of your life. First find happiness within yourself, a healthy relationship will follow.
Realize that nobody is ever going to save you nor complete you. You are responsible for everything in your life and that includes your own happiness. Don’t expect others to make you happy. Learn to be happy by yourself. Then, you will enjoy the company of others without the constant need to get something from them.
Your life is largely fiction
To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation. This creates an endless preoccupation with past and future and an unwillingness to honor and acknowledge the present moment and allow it to be. The compulsion arises because the past gives you an identity and the future holds the promise of salvation, of fulfillment in whatever form. Both are illusions. – Eckhart Tolle
Theoretically, we know that we can only live in the present. However, in reality, most of us are completely trapped in our thoughts. Our mind convinces us that our past is totally real and simultaneously creates huge expectations about the future – but your past is not real. The only thing that remains from the past is thoughts that are no more than a partial interpretation of your reality. It has been demonstrated countless times in studies where participants claim to remember things that never even happened!
Your entire identity is based on a past that no longer exists. Yet, you are totally convinced that who you are is the result of some distorted memories from a past reality that is no more.
Your constant focus on the past and the future make you totally scared of death. It creates the illusion that when you will die, you will lose your past and your future while in reality you can only lose the present moment, which cannot be defined in term of time. If you think about it, you will realize that you have actually no direct way to experience time.
The bottom line: stop taking your past so seriously and stop creating countless expectations about the future – just enjoy the present moment.
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