How to Meditate - Guided Meditation Techniques - Buddhist Meditations. Self and the Way. Self and the Way. The Sacrifices That Lead to Happiness. “As long as you make an identity for yourself out of pain, you cannot be free of it.” -Eckhart Tolle This weekend, a reader presented an interesting question about letting go of old beliefs and attitudes to make room for happiness and open up to a relationship. He suggested that this would require a lot of sacrifice on his part, and would leave him humbled and lost—as if he’s somehow “giving in” and losing touch with who he really is.
He asked how he can reconcile the instinct to change with his resistance to becoming something he is not. I suspect a lot of us struggle with this. For a long time, I believed people were basically selfish, which made me feel constantly defensive. But the reality was that my defensiveness hurt me more than anything anyone else had ever done—and for far longer. We are not the beliefs that we, at one point, decided serve and protect us.
Of course letting go of these will feel like giving in if we believe they define us. Photo by Aschaf. DeepakChopra.com.