Theories, beliefs and excuses

 

Practically all of our popular beliefs are still only theories:

• that we are the descendants of monkeys;
• that our ancestors were cave dwellers;
• that the universe started with a big bang or by some divine act;
• that such and such a founder of a religion is the only legitimate representative of the truth;
• that we are all equal;
• that violence is natural to the human being.

The list of our beliefs at a personal level goes on and on.
The beliefs about what can make us happy are mostly a bunch of premises, based more on hope than on a real perception of the world and our relationships.
Theories are not absolute truths. A good exercise would be to go through our convenient yet basically unfounded theories of beliefs and rewrite them:

• my husband, wife is ...
• my religion, race, culture is better than...
• I can't change...
• I'm too lazy...

No beliefs or theories are fixed forever. If we could really go to a deeper level of perception we would probably change them. If we have the power also, we would be able to see how excuses are the main weapons of our shaky premises and how excuses actually block the truth.

Recently I came across a phrase from an anonymous source.
"Excuses are tools of incompetence.
They build bridges to nowhere and monuments of nothingness"
I would go a step further and suggest they are bigger and smaller lies to escape responsibility, embarrassment or the realization of the extent of some bad habit.
What we need to do to is to learn to explain honestly any failures we may have.

• I ate that third piece of pizza because I wanted to please the person who made it. I really did it because of unmitigated greed.
• I didn't get up this morning for my meditation practice because I had a hard day yesterday. I really didn't get up because of pure laziness.

The phrase, I know I had to do X but I did Y because of..., is only real if the Y was so important or unavoidable that I couldn't do anything else. It should not be a lame attempt to avoid shame or the revelation of my incompetence.
If I become a specialist in making excuses, two things will happen:

• I will start to believe in them.
• Real self-progress will stop. 

If I continue always making excuses then I will seldom accomplish anything worthwhile.
If I learn to clarify honestly what really happens l will learn from it, retain my self-respect and really contribute to a better self and a better world.

Text from the Live and Meditate Channel (https://www.youtube.com/liveandmeditate and https://www.facebook.com/liveandmeditate/) Videos #16 and #17