Can we really control and change ourselves?
Vic Shayne
author
The Self is a Belief: the idea that causes suffering
People are not happy with what they are. Not really. We live a life of psychological ups and downs, bouncing between pleasure and suffering. The suffering is sometimes unbearable and at other times quite minor, like when someone steals your parking spot.
By and large we human beings do not recognize and accept what we are, so we place a wedge between what we are and who we believe we are. While this sounds like a psychological pathology, it is actually the way nearly everyone is. We have countless avenues for our attempts to control our states of mind, with a great deal of them considered to be good, necessary, and positive. The New Age/positive thinking industry has made fortunes from teaching and writing about methods of control-and-improvement that are fueled and sponsored by unrest and unhappiness.
When a person says, “I am unhappy,” or “I need to change,” what is she suggesting? I am this but I want to be that, or I don’t like this but I like that, or I must be something better. Going deeper, she is saying I am depressed but do not want to be; I want to change this, or at least find a way to ignore it.
