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Abdm28 wrote: ↑June 27th, 2024, 6:56 am
I'm
deeply concerned about my parents' health, especially my 78-year-old mother who is struggling with fever and high blood pressure. Despite
my best efforts to share my knowledge and advice on healthy habits, she refuses to listen, citing my youth and perceived lack of expertise. As her child, it's heartbreaking to see her dismiss my concerns and rely solely on pharmaceuticals, which only mask her symptoms without addressing the root causes. Her lack of education and literacy in health matters makes it even more challenging. I've
tried explaining the importance of lifestyle changes and dietary adjustments, but she won't budge.
I'm desperate to find a way to help her understand the value of preventive care and make positive changes. Please, what can I do to help my mother take control of her health and well-being?
Hi,
Abdm28,
Thank you for your question!
If I am understanding what you mean correctly (which is never a safe bet
), this would be an accurate paraphrasing of what you have said:
- I'm deeply
concerned and worried about something outside of my control.
- I've been
trying as hard as I can to control and/or change someone else's choices and behavior.
- I'm heartbroken to see things out of my control happen the way they uncontrollably happen.
- I've
tried.
- I'm
desperate to change someone else's behavior.
- How do you recommend I go about cleaning my mother's proverbial backyard?
If I am misunderstanding (i.e. if the above is not an accurate paraphrasing of what you are asking me), please do let me know.
Otherwise, here is my answer:
I don't engage in any judgmentalism at all, but, if I was going to judge the messiness of either backyard, based on the information provided, I'd bet your proverbial backyard is messier than your mother's.
However, even if her proverbial backyard was messier than yours, it still wouldn't make sense to "try" (your word) to clean her backyard. It's her choice (a.k.a. responsibility) to clean her own proverbial backyard or not and to decide what clean means for her. And that also explains why I would never actually judge her backyard (or even yours) as messy, because, in a sense, it can't be. It is how she chooses for it to be. Just like you and I with our choices, she is 100% in control of her choices. When it comes to her choices, she always gets exactly what she wants, meaning what she chooses. Therefore, her backyard is inexorably clean. To each their own. One person's trash is another person's treasure. One person's messy is another's clean.
Your subjective version of treasurable, clean, messy, or trashy only applies to your own proverbial backyard, not your mother's and not your neighbor's.
My advice to you, if you want it (which presumably you do, since you are here asking for it), is this:
Follow
all eleven of the numbered suggestions in
my book.
I know for a fact that you aren't doing that yet. That's because you admit it in your question.
One of the suggestions in
my book very explicitly advises you to
never try. But in your question, you admit to trying. You literally use the word 'try' in your question.
While (as
my book explains) you typically cannot control your bodily feelings, if you were following the suggestions in
my book, you almost certainly wouldn't be feeling very much of the following:
- concern and worry about things you cannot control
- unwelcomed desperation
- unwelcomed heartbreak
The fact that you are feeling those feelings to such an extreme degree, and more importantly, seeing your experience of those feelings as a problem that you want to fix, is a major symptom of you not following the teachings of
my book.
That's not to say that someone who follows the teachings of
my book won't ever feel uncontrollable heartbreak or uncontrollable grief or such. But rather, what we can say for sure is that
someone following the teachings of my book won't
ever feel
any willful resentment, willful hate, willful unacceptance, or willful unforgiveness.
And, when you are not choosing to engage in any resentment or unforgiveness or such, and you aren't willfully trying to change what you cannot, then, as a result, you end up experiencing much less of the conventionally negative feelings like grief, pain, sadness, anger, and so on.
You still find yourself going through all the stages of grief during your human life, but you go through them much quicker and much more welcomingly. More importantly, while going through them, you don't resent the fact that you are going through them. You learn to be happy and artistic and free-spirited and such even when you are going through grief or experiencing pain. Marcus Aurelius is paraphrased in the movie
Gladiator as saying, "Death smiles at us all. All a man can do is smile back."
The same goes not just for death, but for heartbreak, grief, fear, and bodily pain and bodily discomfort in general. One experiences all of these things frequently, no matter what one does. They come to one like a rainstorm, dark clouds, or even a hurricane. You'd be more likely to make it never ever literally rain again than to make it so that bodily pain, fear, heartbreak, or grief never came to you again, let alone avoid death itself. Those are all inevitable, but they can be easily welcomed with a stoic loving friendly smile. While the smile may be a spiritual or proverbial smile, rather than a literal visible movement of this human mouth, I smile at death; I smile at pain; I smile at fear; I smile at discomfort; I smile at heartbreak; I smile when my literal human eyes cry. I don't just smile a little at these things. I smile a huge loving grin, with loving laughter, and a sense of Amor Fati. As if I was destined to re-live this moment over and over infinite times, as if this moment—this little unique here and now, meaning this little momentary conscious experience—was my personal unchanging eternal heaven or hell, meaning if I smile at it, I will smile forever, and if I frown hatefully or hate it with miserable resentment, I will be frowning and feeling miserable resentment for every second for the rest of eternity, forever and ever. I'm not saying that is an accurate representation of the metaphysics of reality, but just that I live each moment like it was my last, meaning I make the most and best of each moment, namely by always smiling, grinning, and laughing in my spirit.
When it comes to the
true happiness about which
my book teaches, which may be better called
invincible free-spirited inner peace or
unwavering spiritual fulfillment, that kind of happiness is the kind you can have even when your literal human eyes are crying. It's the kind you can have even when you are experiencing bodily pain, fear, anger, hunger, and grief. It's the kind of happiness you can have even when you are experiencing bodily feelings of sexual frustration or unrequited romantic love or bodily longing. It's the kind of happiness you can have even when it is raining, whether that is literal rain or proverbial rain. You can have it no matter what the weather is and no matter what happens externally (i.e. no matter what happens in regard to things you cannot control). That's why we call that kind of true unwavering happiness and invincible peace
'inner'. Whether or not you have true happiness, that is
inner peace, is 100% in your control.
That kind of happiness is a choice.
From your question, I can tell that you have not yet chosen it.
It's 100% in your grasp. With infinite ease, you can reach out and grab it and have it. But you have not yet chosen to.
That's the sense in which, if I was going to say anyone's proverbial backyard was messy at all, I'd say yours—not your mother's—is the messiest of all. But I don't say that. I don't believe in real messy yards. Proverbially speaking, that is. Instead, here is my response when I notice someone choosing to not have free-spirited inner peace (a.k.a. true happiness):
When I see someone in hell, I smile inside myself, and I think, "Good for him; he's getting what he's choosing."
I'd consider my proverbial backyard to be horribly messy if it looked like yours. But one person's trash is another person's treasure. To each their own. One person's messy is another's clean.
No proverbial backyards are truly messy.
If your backyard looked like mine, yours would be messy. And, if mine looked like yours, mine would be messy. But such states don't exist. My backyard always looks like mine, meaning it always looks like itself, and yours always looks like yours, meaning it always looks like itself. Whatever it is, it is what it is. Whoever they are, they are who they are. Thus, no proverbial backyards are ever messy. Everyone and everything is a success. Failure is an illusion, and trying is lying.
Each person gets exactly what they choose:
1. When it comes to my choices, I get exactly what I want, meaning what I choose. My proverbial backyard is exactly the way I am choosing for it to be. My proverbial backyard is exactly the way I want it to be. And thus, my backyard is always inexorably perfectly clean. It can't be messy, ever. It is a perfect wonderful treasurable treasure exactly as it is.
2. When it comes to your choices, you get exactly what you want, meaning what you choose. Your proverbial backyard is exactly the way you are choosing for it to be. It's scattered with "trying" and "desperation" and
desperate effort, and thus also failure and the avoidable heartbreak and avoidable grief that come as a result of desperate trying and/or from unforgiveness and willful resentment. If those things were in my backyard, I'd consider my yard messy, but that's why they aren't in my backyard at all. They are in yours, but that's okay; everything is okay, always and inexorably so. Your proverbial backyard is exactly the way you want it to be. And thus, your backyard is always inexorably perfectly clean. It can't be messy, ever. It is a perfect wonderful treasurable treasure exactly as it is.
3. When it comes to your mother's choices, she gets exactly what she wants, meaning what she chooses. Her proverbial backyard is exactly the way she is choosing for it to be. Her proverbial backyard is exactly the way she wants it to be. And thus, her backyard is always inexorably perfectly clean. It can't be messy, ever. It is a perfect wonderful treasurable treasure exactly as it is.
All three proverbial yards are perfect and clean just the way they are.
You desperately try to change your mom's backyard, or more accurately, you choose to perceive yourself as doing so. (In reality, there is no try, and your perception that you are trying is a delusion.)
Luckily, trying always results in failure and disgrace. Or, more accurately, trying (meaning really merely the perception thereof) is disgrace, by definition. In contrast, grace is
to do without trying. For more on that, please see my poem,
What Grace Means to Me. I am grateful to think how extremely lucky we are that all the control freaks and anyone else with a god complex who tries to control the world and control others are destined to always fail. I am grateful that those who try to clean their neighbor's backyard always fail. Of course, both the trying and the failure are actually illusions, hence why they are doomed. Those control freaks with god complexes never actually have even the slightest amount of the power or righteousness they imagine themselves as having. It's all in their self-righteous overactive imagination. It's like imagining oneself as having magic powers, and so they shake their fist or wand at the sky to change and control the weather. Luckily, they cannot. We are spiritually protected from them thanks to the fact that trying is lying; it's an illusion. They can't really trespass on our proverbial backyards, no matter how much they imagine "trying" exists and imagine themselves as "trying" to control what they cannot (e.g. our proverbial backyard). Luckily, we are protected by the illusionary nature of their illusions—hence our spiritual invincibility, hence the invincibility of invincible inner peace and invincible spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline). No matter what they do or imagine, we—luckily—always remain 100% in control of our choices.
I think your mom is perfect exactly the way she is. I think her proverbial backyard is perfect exactly the way it is. I think her proverbial backyard is perfectly clean just the way it is.
If you disagree with me about even one of those three things, then that's totally fine, but it raises some questions. I don't have a standard of imperfection or a standard of failure. To me, nothing and nobody is a failure. To me, nothing and nobody is imperfect. To me, failure and imperfection don't exist. To me, trying, failure, and imperfection are all just superstitious phantoms (i.e. hellish delusions) that other people believe in or somehow see despite them not really being there. To me, they are imaginary tormenting ghosts that some people believe in or even really see in the sense that a delusional or hallucinating person can really see something that isn't really there. It's not really there, but they are still really seeing it.
So if you are seeing failure and/or imperfection in the world when you look around, it raises the question of what the standards and qualifications are that you use to categorize things between being (1) a failure and/or imperfect versus (2) being perfect and completely successful.
To help me understand that, I would ask you the following questions (and keep in mind I would only ask these if I found out that you believe your mom isn't perfect just the way she is and/or that her yard is clean just the way it is):
1. According to your own standards of perfection, are you perfect?
2. According to your own standards of what makes someone or something a failure versus a success, are you a success or a failure?
3. Is your own proverbial backyard completely clean? Could it possibly be any cleaner?
4. In terms of physical (i.e. non-mental and non-psychological) health, are you the healthiest person in the world? If not, why not? What (if anything) is something you could do differently that would make you even healthier?
5. In terms of mental health, are you the healthiest person in the entire world? If not, why not? What is something you could do differently that would make you healthier mentally?
Looking through my own eyes, I simply don't see trying, failure, or imperfection at all, anywhere, ever. However, if you answer the above 5 questions, I believe I will be able to see the world through your eyes a little bit to get a better idea of how, where, and why you see things like 'trying', 'failure', and 'imperfection'. Then, once I can kind of see the world through your eyes, I can then offer more personalized, fitting, and helpful advice for you.
I'm not religious, but I am reminded of these teachings of Jesus, with which I wholeheartedly agree:
"Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn others, or it will all come back against you. Forgive others, and you will be forgiven."
(Luke 6:37)
"Do not judge, or you will be judged. For with the same judgment you pronounce, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."
(Matthew 7:1)
Similarly, here is something I wrote on page 134 of
my book:
"This dreamy world may be but a mirror. If you look in it with hateful eyes, hateful eyes will hate you back."
If you answer the 5 numbered questions I've asked above, I believe I will then be able to use my imagination to effectively see the world through your eyes, and look into the mirror that is the world with your eyes and see what you see in that mirror (a.k.a. outer world). Then I can provide some more direct, more personalized, more specific, and more helpful advice.
Regardless, my most important advice to you is to stop trying at all. Don't try ever. Fully and completely let go of the miserable illusions of trying and failure. Do your best, and accept the rest. Fully and unconditionally accept everything you cannot control with an acceptance so full and unconditional it warrants the word love.
Then, notice that therefore
everything is acceptable, exactly as it is. Notice that therefore
everything is lovable, exactly as it is. Everything. Just love everything.
Every single thing is either (1) to be unconditionally accepted (and loved) as that which you cannot control, or (2) to be accepted and loved as being exactly the way you are choosing for it to be.
Beyond that, as I already pointed out, your question itself proves you aren't following the numbered suggestions at the end of
my book, which are infinitely easy to follow. Namely, that's revealed by your use of the word "try". So I suggest you, right now, immediately choose to start strictly following all eleven of the numbered suggestions at the end of
my book.
If you do that, you will have invincible free-spirited inner peace (a.k.a. unwavering true happiness). It's what some would even call nirvana, enlightenment, or spiritual fulfillment. Or even just
grace itself.
The choice is 100% yours.
It's your proverbial backyard, and you can and will do with it whatever you want.
Whichever you choose, I respect and love both you and your choice.
With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
a.k.a. Scott
In addition to having authored his book, In It Together, Eckhart Aurelius Hughes (a.k.a. Scott) runs a mentoring program, with a free option, that guarantees success. Success is guaranteed for anyone who follows the program.
