so if you want to simplify your life - stop investing so much effort in outward aspiration; because it’s a foregone conclusion that you will fail.
because it’s the nature of an infinite number of variables to have one of those variables to take you out - which is the 1 variable you didn’t predict.
whereas if you shift what you aspire to, and you construct your aspiration not around your achievement in the world, but your inner achievement, then the matter becomes very simple.
you have 1 enemy,
you have 1 problem,
and that problem is - self-pity.
and you know you’ve escaped your self-pity, when your virtue has no sense of force in it any more. there’s no sense of compulsion. every virtuous act is freely chosen
Not giving to be liked, not giving to be respected,
not given to make an investment for your future,
but given to give away. Until your every act is an act of giving to give away, you’ve not understood this part;
and that giving to give away - you can only do consciously and deliberately, it doesn’t happen by knee-jerk.
Need-based behaviour is habituated behaviour. It is how i am compelled to act…
“i have an itch, i am compelled to scratch” - that’s my need.
Value-based behaviour is behaviour that happens when I see what is in my own interest,
and what’s the right thing to do are not the same;
and I choose to do what is the right thing to do. In other words,
I quite deliberately act contrary to my need. That is value-based action.
That is virtue..
- Shaykh E.Schuitema