QA211 QUESTION: I have a problem concerning taking care of myself and how hard this is for me. I don’t want to take care of myself, and in order not to, I’ll get sick – and my body is responding to this very well. I do have problems. The more I work on myself, the more I get sick, and even though I’m trying to face this thing, I need some sort of feeling of balance.
ANSWER: I think there is a very important missing link in your understanding on a deeper level of consciousness, as well as even in your quite conscious brain – you have probably never thought about it. That is that you truly equate self-responsibility with lovelessness and aloneness. And it is precisely because of this misconception that you rebel.
Perhaps you can think about this, that this is not true. As a matter of fact, it is just the opposite that’s true. Only as you are truly self-responsible can you be capable of loving and of being loved – one cannot go without the other. Now, that is very important to think about.
At the same time, there is also another aspect directly related to this misconception. That is that there is a misconception in regard to taking responsibility in working, in being active, in taking care of yourself, in being adult in dealing with reality as it needs to be dealt with. You have misconceptions in this regard, that this is terribly unpleasant and disagreeable.
In that misconception is a demand: “I must not have pain; I must not have any ill consequences of any sort.” And then the destructive situation arises in which you will deliberately create infinitely worse conditions in order to avoid the discomfort of aspects of reality that would never be anywhere near as uncomfortable as the situation you put yourself into now, physically and mentally and emotionally.
I think what you really need to confront is, very specifically, aspects of reality that you do not wish to deal with – pain, disappointment, your own limitations, groping, making mistakes and maybe failing in something and starting again, and all the fine details that are necessary in order to live a fully self-responsible, productive and creative life. It is those little aspects, once again, that are much more important than the grandiose ideals.
It may be easier for you to admit that you do not wish to experience pain of a grave sort than to admit that it is the little frustrations, the little failures, the inevitability of making mistakes and being responsible for them, and suffering their consequences in your daily little life, of focusing, of holding yourself together, of concentrating and planning your life, that you reject.
And in rejecting it, all that becomes tragically unacceptable for you. This is my advice that you deal with. As long as you have this basic rebellion against what life is, you will make it much worse, and you will put yourself in a very unnecessary, painful position.
