The guru says:

Don’t forget to think of all the good things about your life while you are working for improvements. We don’t want the search for a better life to mean only focusing on what needs to be changed. Some things about yourself are cause for rejoicing. Do it, for goodness’ sake.

Before embarking on a mission to extend the values of your life, why not take stock of what you have got? Even in its poorest phase, life has many blessings. The soldiers in the Hell of mud and slaughter in the trenches of World War 1 were still able to find poetry about poppies, courage and memories of home. Do not worry that this course is about merely distracting you from the problems that need solving; we intend to show you how to deal with the difficulties. But by the same rationale, it would be wrong to draw your attention away from the good things in your life. That would be equally false and misleading.

As soon as is convenient after reading this section, get yourself some paper or a note book and start writing:

Write down all the good things you can think of in your life right now. You don’t have to do the New Agey thing of telling yourself that horrible things are really good for you (“All miseries are just lessons” and that stuff). List genuine pleasures, quiet satisfactions and the many many things that you surely have achieved in your life. Count your blessings, as the Christians say. Well, why not?

It’s a god idea to take inventory in this way. Because it helps to balance your life and sanity is mainly about being balanced: right brain-left brain; positive and negative; male-female; yin and yang. There are things you want to change; we’ll talk about that in other sections. But write down the things that you wouldn’t want to change. Continue reading →