Happiness and Loving Yourself
Your subjective world is a projection of yourself. It is as if we live our lives within a mirrored sphere. When we look outwards at our external reality, we see visions of ourselves. There are a number of reasons why this is true, but I will not get into them in detail right now. Self-projection is true generally because 1) there is only one consciousness in your subjective world (yourself) and 2) you have executive control over where you focus your attention and the stories that you tell yourself.
Emotional pain is caused by your non-acceptance of some aspect of your external world. For example, you may be afraid of spiders. Interestingly it is not the unacceptable aspect of reality that causes you emotional pain, but rather your beliefs about that aspect that cause you emotional pain. It is impossible for people or external circumstances to directly cause you emotional pain.
Somehow, we all learned the habit of causing ourselves emotional pain. A fully rational person would not cause himself unnecessary emotional pain. Causing yourself unnecessary emotional pain is a form of self-hatred. The answer to relieving emotional pain is self-love. If your world is a projection of yourself, then loving your external reality has the same effect as loving yourself. Of course, loving your external reality is no substitute for loving yourself, but it can take you a long way in that direction.
You can check this line of reasoning by asking yourself whether you would feel emotional pain if you made the decision to love every person and every thing in your external reality. If you could follow through on such a vow, then you would have no need to subject yourself to emotional pain.
It is impossible to solve the problem of temporary emotional pain because this is necessary for our survival. Temporary painful emotions arise from false beliefs about your objective external world, and these painful signals trigger you to change your perceptions or your procedures. Once the changes in your beliefs or your actions have been made, you are under no obligation to continue to experience painful emotions; your emotions have served their purpose.
To escape emotional pain once can vow to appreciate everyone and everything in their external reality. Do you have to love lima beans even if you are not fond of eating them? Yes and no. When you are confronted with the idea of lima beans you must view them positively in some respect, but it is not necessary to love them in every respect. For instance, lima beans do not make good firewood; this is an objective fact. You might prefer pine logs to lima beans when making a fire, but lima beans themselves should never be evaluated negatively. Try focusing on all of the infinite number of wonderful aspects of lima beans, even if you do not necessarily prefer to eat them.
