When you are truthful with yourself, you start to see everything as it is, not the way you want to see it. Though it may be true that something bad may have happened to you, it is no longer true that you must suffer this experience. You discover that perhaps what you believe hurt you so badly was never true. Even if it was true, it doesn’t mean that now it is true. By using the truth, you open the wound and see the injustice from a new perspective.
Three Rules for Seeing What is True:
1. Don’t believe me. Believe what you want to believe according to what I say, but only if it makes sense for you, if it makes you happy. If it guides you to your awakening, then make the choice to believe it.
2. Don’t believe yourself. Don’t believe all the lies you tell yourself — all those lies that you never chose to believe, but were programmed to believe. Don’t believe yourself when you say you are not good enough, you are not strong enough, you are not intelligent enough. Don’t believe all of your boundaries and limitations. Don’t believe you are unworthy of happiness or love. Don’t believe you are not beautiful. Don’t believe whatever makes you suffer. More than 80% of what you believe is a lie…it isn’t true.
3. Don’t believe anyone else. Don’t believe anyone else because they are lying all of the time anyway. When you don’t have the need to believe other people just to be accepted, you see everything more clearly.
Only what is true will survive, and that includes the concepts you have about yourself.
How to Heal:
Once you open those wounds, you must heal with forgiveness and self-love. You forgive those who hurt you [even if what they did is unforgivable in your mind] because you don’t want to keep feeling sick all the time. Forgiveness is for your own mental healing. Forgiveness is an act of self-love. And if you can also forgive yourself, you can start all over again. You don’t need to suffer, you don’t have to pay anything.
When you love yourself, you just accept who you are and accept everyone else the way he or she is. You have the right to love, to smile, to be happy, to share your love, and to not be afraid to receive it also. That is healing.
Lessons from The Mastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz
Photo source: smile in the rain