'I never got what I wanted or needed from my parents!'
Believe it or not it is optional about whether you feel OK or not OK with that!
And it ain't your parents fault!
Because it is a choice that is being made every single moment that it occurs to you.
'I did not get what I wanted.'
And?
'And I think I'll make myself feel miserable, upset, resentful, regretful, and rageful about that for the rest of my life.'
'Because that way I get even.'
'If I make myself drastically miserable, somehow I get even.'
'I win.'
The most miserable person wins.
And what an awful defeat it would be,
what an awful, terrible thing it would be for me
to let go of that.
You can't let go of what happened, can't you?
Whatever happened happened.
Maybe you did or didn't get your needs met.
You can't change that,
and nobody can't change that for you.
But
since that
isn't now
since that isn't happening now
that is the key to freedom.
Does that make sense?
Just imagine that your or mine happiness, our ultimate happiness or sense of well-being
or even liberation
depended upon anybody!
'I cannot be happy, because my mom didn't love me.'
OK, well then you are screwed!
If that is what is true
and if she didn't love you
you can't change that, can you?
You can't go back, there is no time machine.
If that is true, if that is the reason for your unhappiness for the rest of your life
then you're done for.
Because you can't change it.
If that is what someone really, actually, in their deepest deepest place believes
Well, then you are in a total fatal position, aren't you?
Absolutely fatal.
Nothing can save you,
you might as well not go to a therapist, go to a self-help thing,
you might as well not come here, you might as well do not anything,
if that is actually true.
You see, if the cause of our misery lies only in something other than this moment
and since we can't change anything about any other moment that has ever happened,
if that is the cause of our misery,
ultimately,
and since we can't change that
it means we can't change the cause of our misery
it means
forget it.
There is nothing you can do then.
Does that make sense?
So many human beings actually really believe that.
I would say the vast majority of human beings believe what I've just said!
They may not believe it in their conscious mind, but they believe it inside.
At the same time they are going about trying to make themselves more happy,
but their belief says 'I cannot be happy, because of what happened.'
'I can't be, but I'm going to spend my life trying to do something
that I don't believe I can do, because the cause of my misery is back there.'
'It's some other moment than this moment.'
Do you see how contradictory it becomes?
How much suffering there is in it, how much sorrow there is in it?!
Now of course, I am sure many people in this room
have had awful things happened to them in their lives,
hurtful, terrible, destructive,
very very painful things happened in their lives.
That seems to be the norm, not the exception!
The exception is if you get through the first twenty years or so without having that.
And nobody with any intelligence
can say that 'You know, awful things don't happen to people.'
Awful things do happen to people
And so I am not saying that awful things didn't happen to - I am sure - many people in this room.
Things that generated a tremendous amount of sorrow,
because that is true.
That is what happens in life.
As I say, that is probably more the norm.
But if the events of our life
were the sole reason for our unhappiness
then we're stuck!
Because we can't change anything that has ever happened,
good or bad.
But what we can do
is stop telling ourselves
whatever we are telling ourselves
about the past or the present that causes us to suffer.
Does that make sense?
That is the key, that is the liberating fact.
That one thing, if you see that ...
the suffering may have gotten started long ago,
the groove (?) of it,
the conditioned tendency may have gotten started
and it may have continued up in my life till this moment
and it may have basically operated on automatic pilot without my conscious consent up till this moment,
but at a certain moment we realize
'I start to see and I start to see that those choices to suffer that I might have made completely unconsciously
now I see them!'
'And now I'm seeing that I am making them consciously.'
'I see them!'
And you can watch them happen!
And the liberating thing is when you begin to watch them happen without judging yourself for doing them
you start to realize 'The keys to my own well-being are actually in my pocket!'