Illusion Resolution

Every so often I do an illu­sion res­o­lu­tion. I notice that I am invest­ing in some­thing that really does not go any­where — either in addi­tional hap­pi­ness or toward the gen­eral wel­fare of oth­ers. I resolve it by either tak­ing a dif­fer­ent view of the action or by delet­ing it com­pletely. So far I have a list of things that I have released from life: that any­thing out­side of me can make me happy; that it mat­ters all that much exactly where I am on the planet; how I look as my body ages (not an excuse for let­ting myself go); that I am going to live on the planet for­ever; that I have to do any­thing per­fectly; that things have to go my way. Occa­sion­ally, one or more of these will sneak back into my psy­che and I will be on its tread­mill again. Illu­sion res­o­lu­tion can be repeated with­out hav­ing to beat your­self up emotionally.

Do what works and see if your life is not bet­ter. Stick with real­ity. If mate­ri­al­ism alone would bring peo­ple hap­pi­ness, then this coun­try would be filled with ecsta­tic peo­ple. It isn’t. Some­thing else is in the mix. The cor­re­la­tion between things and well being is appar­ently illusory.

Find ulti­mately sat­is­fy­ing ways of being and stick with them. Here are a few things that I have found to be ulti­mately sat­is­fy­ing: being aware of God; treat­ing myself with dig­nity and respect; doing right by other peo­ple; being opti­mistic; liv­ing in trust; turn­ing most of my con­trol needs loose.

Con­se­quently, I have found that there is lit­tle I need to own and no one I need to impress. It is amaz­ing what accep­tance can do to destroy waste­ful illusions.