Tapsearch Com EditorTaking inventory of false principles
Link: www.therationale.com/
By Ray Tapajna continuing our study of personality and character for the sake of self improvement Is it time to clean the Windows of our Minds ?
In our last post, we explored the regions of our minds that are based on self-love rather than on the principle of Do unto others as you would have them do to you.
The first order of business now is to clean out the closets of our minds in the shaping of our emotional life. We need to clean out the false principles. At our philosophy site The Rationale , we discuss "protest" as the priority of liberal thought and much of it can be part of our problem in pursuing the ideal life.
We can discover these false principles by examining all the actions, all the emotional responses of our lives. We see a certain emotional reaction we do not approve or which disfigures our personality . We then ask ourselves if I saw someone act like this, what would I think his or her principles were? We start out by understanding we are all under the primary principle of prejudice in favor of ourselves and are inclined to say that while someting may be true for another person in the way they act, it does not apply to our situation.
Following this , we can begin to shape what we truly want to be as a person. The "protest" part of us will try to make us live a lie. So we must build up principles of life that are solid and true related to love and the common good. ( If we deny that the common good is possible, we need to find out why we say this.) This process will challenge us to search out the premise of life and community with one another - first with our families and then with others we love and respect. Patience is the key tool. We must be patient with ourselves and those we come in contact with. Reading the lives of others with high principles is a good way to start or follow the example of others who we see are reacting to life in good ways.
I like a story about St Francis DeSales. He is considered a doctor of spirituality in the Catholic Church. A Bishop came to visit him and was so astounded by the worldly example of St Francis DeSales that we drilled a peep hole in the wall to observe if St Francis acted the same way in private as he did in public. Perhaps you can imagine similar circumstances. Could others peer through a peep hole at you and find the goodness in you attractive when you are alone. Could people at work who think you are wonderful peer through the peep hole when you are with your family.
Another tool is to observe your emotional conduct when there is no possibility of consequences. This is a launching pad for the rest of your reactions in life. Another very common failure is the habit of living in a dream world. Dreaming can be a good thing to build up yourself but it can also crowd out what is close by in the real world. Does a dream world lock you out of the real one or seeing what could be if you went at the core of something directly. We do not have to take all the detours in our life ideal. We should not let our emotions rule the game of life . For example, how do you get ready for a job interview that can change your life. Will you spend all your prepartion time on being anxious or tell yourself it is hopeless to even try. Perhaps in preparation for an important event like this would be a good time to take an inventory of all your impulses of aversion, grief, despair, fear and losing it in stressful situations. However, most anytime is a good time to clean the windows of your mind.
We will continue our discussion in our next post bringing in depression that blocks out the ideal life
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