Yes, you are making this choice.
The Universe/Divinity/Creator intended you to be joyful and loving.
If you are not, you have made that choice.
Your life Might not be Bad, But is it Great? Victims are violent! Victims are angry and miserable.
Victims blame others and hate those who they believe are making them miserable.
They are resistant to living their own lives.
They are resistant to taking responsibility.
They are resistant to change.
They are resistant to exercising their free will.
Wake up from the nightmare if you are in it.
You are whatever you believe yourself to be.
It is possible to let go of any beliefs, no matter how long you've held them.
Perhaps you believe something less violent than those above who are quite paranoid.
Perhaps you believe that your children don't respect you, or that your boss doesn't appreciate you.
These are beliefs that are going to affect you.
If you don't quickly let them go, you are having some resistance.
This is a time when our memories are kicking up for release.
Many of these will be stressful.
It does not help us to resist them, to pretend that they aren't there or to explain them.
Ideally, we will simply watch them come up, and maybe take a look at them, and let them move along.
Defence is the first act of war.
Stop defending.
The Work and the Sedona Method Teach Us How to be Open to Life Byron Katie's The Work and Lester Levenson's Sedona Method teach us how to look at the ideas or thoughts that bring us suffering.
These both help us to stay in the Now.
Sadness, resentment and anger all come from thoughts.
These thoughts are not true.
It is apparent as soon as you take a close look at them.
Byron Katie asks four questions about any stressful thought:
- Is it True?
- Can I absolutely know that it it True?
- How do you react when you believe this thought?
- Who Would You be Without that Thought?
- Could you welcome the issue/thought/feeling that you are perceiving?
- Could you let it go?
- Would you?
- When?
In the present moment, nothing is ever bad.
It is when our memories start replaying and our minds start imagining a dire future that we are stressed.
Bill Harris and Genpo Roshi teach that it is best to accept all our feelings (not thoughts) rather than to resist them, even the bad ones.
In this way, we accept that we are human and are capable of all the feelings that anyone else sometimes shows.
When we resist anger, we are focusing on it.
When we resist death, we are thinking about it.
Feelings will come and go like clouds as long as we don't resist them.
Yet, we can choose particular feelings to be in.
Byron Katie and Lester Levenson both chose to love.