The Book of Secrets - Deepak Chopra [40]
Much time is spent in self-help trying to turn a bad self-image into a good one. As reasonable as that sounds, all self-images have the same pitfall: They keep reminding you of who you were, not who you are. The whole idea of I, me, and mine was erected on memories, and these memories are not really you. If you release yourself from your self-image, you will be free to choose as if for the first time.
Self-image keeps reality away, particularly at the emotional level. Many people don’t want to admit what they are actually feeling. Their self-image dictates that being angry, for example, or showing anxiety is not permissible. Such feelings don’t accord with the “kind of person I want to be.” Certain emotions feel too dangerous to be part of your ideal image of yourself, so you adopt a disguise that excludes those feelings. Deep-seated rage and fear belong in this category, but sadly so does immense joy, ecstasy, or freewheeling spontaneity. You stop being ruled by self-image when:
• You feel what you feel
• You are no longer offended by things
• You stop appraising how a situation makes you look
• You don’t exclude people you feel superior or inferior to
• You quit worrying about what others think about you
• You no longer obsess over money, status, and possessions
• You no longer feel the urge to defend your opinions
Going beyond risks: As long as the future remains unpredictable, every decision involves some level of risk. That’s the story that seems to be universally accepted, at least. We are told that certain foods put one at risk for heart attacks and cancer, for example, and therefore the rational thing is to quantify the risk and stay on the low side of the numbers. But life itself cannot be quantified. For every study that shows a quantifiable fact about heart disease (e.g., men who drink a quart of milk a day are half as likely to suffer a severe heart attack), there is another study to show that stress raises the risk of heart disease only if you are susceptible to stress (some people actually thrive on it).
Risk is mechanical. It implies that there is no intelligence behind the scenes, only a certain number of factors that result in a given outcome. You can go beyond risks by knowing that there is infinite intelligence at work in the hidden dimension of your life. At the level of this intelligence your choices are always supported. The point of looking at risks would be to see if your course of action is reasonable; you wouldn’t rely on risk analysis to override far more important factors, the very factors that are being weighed at the level of deeper awareness:
Does this choice feel right for me?
Am I interested in where this choice is leading?
Do I like the people involved?
Is this choice good for my whole family?
Does this choice make sense given my stage in life?
Do I feel morally justified in making this choice?
Will this choice help me to grow?
Do I have a chance to be more creative and inspired by what I am about to do?
It’s when these things go wrong that choices don’t work out. The risks may be relevant, but they aren’t decisive. People who can assess their choices at the deeper level of awareness are aligning themselves with infinite intelligence, and thus they have a greater chance for success than does someone who crunches the numbers.
When in doubt: It’s hard to let go when you don’t know if you have made the right choice in the first place. Doubt lingers and ties us to the past. Many relationships end in divorce because of a lack of commitment, but that lack didn’t grow over time; it was present from the very