Is your reality only a silent conspiracy of other people’s thoughts that you believe? Is your present reality frustrating you, got you depressed, or doubting yourself? What are you believing about your reality right now? What are you wanting right now that is not present in your reality?
Unchallenged beliefs breed fear, preclude flexibility, peace of mind, and adaptation. It says there is an absoluteness to life despite your own personal experiences that may present something different. And if some beliefs remain unchallenged in your thinking, they can cause mental frustration, depression, suicide, abuse, guilt, and shame because you want life to be one way and it is another.
For example, let’s take the worry many of us have about being single too long, getting married or the stigma many of us carry from either getting a divorce, wanting a divorce, or being divorced. Many of us enter the construct of marriage because we love our boyfriend or girlfriend and sincerely want to continue sharing space and time with this person.
Marriage was the way we were taught to express our true love to another. So we press our mates to get married. And we pay for weddings to get married to a person we already love and are already with. But then when the relationship breaks down, the love fades, or someone simply changes his or her mind (which is always his or her right), we pay for filing fees and lawyers to get divorced. Isn’t it funny how constructs like marriage and divorce charge you for things that were already in your reality and were free and bind you to things that have no real power of permanent attachment?
The Bible clearly states that divorce is a sin and not allowed by god. The only exception is that Moses allowed men to divorce in the event of infidelity. The Bible doesn’t mention any other exception and doesn’t mention any other way of divorcing except the man divorcing the woman.
Now let’s take a look at the raw reality. Over 50% to 75% of all marriages lead to divorce and women initiate divorce just as frequently as men, and in Texas the majority of those divorces are based on irreconcilable differences that have nothing to do with infidelity. Despite these statistics, on Sunday morning, preachers all over the world preach and promote the Bible’s words about marriage as the truth, even though the reality of marriages present differently. But is this truth owning its truth?
And for most of these people who do eventually divorce, especially the ones who identify as Christians or Catholics, its only after staying in marriages years pass the expiration of a healthy loving mutually satisfying relationship that they finally divorce. And many stay in unhealthy marriages because they feel ashamed, guilty or sinful as if they will burn in hell if they divorce without a godly-good reason to divorce. Some people find their godly-good reason, and then they divorce because their spouse was a “cheater cheater pumpkin eater” only to later carry guilt, shame and regret about divorcing. They never took the time within the present reality of their experience to explore truth for them.
If the god of the Bible controls what is true in the life we live then wouldn’t what is present for you right now in your life be god’s truth. You don’t have to run away from what is, you simply just embrace it. What is rules reality, doesn’t it? And reality knows how to change. So as the Bible says in Acts 26:14, why “keep kicking against the goads.” Present reality has final say about present reality despite what you may want it to be to the contrary.
I am sitting in my house alone right now drinking decaf coffee writing this blog. This is my present reality in this moment. How does it mentally benefit me to worry that I am not present in this house with my two kids who are with their dad at his house? If at this moment I started to worry, it would only be my believing something about this present moment that is not true that causes me to worry, not my actual present moment. My actual present reality is typing and drinking decaf coffee. Is it your life or your thinking about your life that is causing you anxiety?
If you matter to yourself, why inflict yourself with beliefs that cause you such mental grief about your life? Isn’t your mental grief just your thoughts (or beliefs) fighting your reality of what is because you want life to be different? Life knows how to be different. Your worry isn’t needed for change to occur.
Why fight the reality that some people can have healthy loving and happy marriages or relationships that will last a lifetime and some people just simply will not. Some of us will divorce, break up, never marry or just have friends with benefits. Some people will be poor, some people will be rich. That’s the reality.
And whatever is your reality, how is it beneficial to your mental and emotional health to want something so differently that it causes you mental (and emotional) instability and worry? How does incessantly worrying about what isn’t present in your marriage life, in your relationships, or in your financial life helping you?
What if you simply embraced your reality and lived their happily being gratitude in the flesh? Because if life is as powerful as life has shown itself to be, just live and life will change for you.
If I was one of the proverbial “they” that has the power to write and rewrite the Bible and all of its translations that we believe in (and also receive the royalties from Bible sales lol), I would change the words of the Bible about marriage to say simply this: “Relationships are mutual agreements between independent people in whatever capacity and timeframe they agree to enjoy this paradise that is called life.”
So whatever is not present in your life right now you don’t need. Whoever is not present in your life right now you don’t need. And when you need it or him or her, it, him or her will be present in your life.
I leave you with this question Byron Katie once asked, “How do I know that I don’t need what I want?
Her answer, “I don’t have it.”
Ase’
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