Imagine, via my free mentoring program, someone publicly asks me a question like the following:
- "I'm an alcoholic doing my best to recover. How do I get rid of the urge to drink?"
- "I'm a gambling addict and want to stop gambling. How do I get rid of the temptation to gamble?"
- "I have intrusive mean self-insulting thoughts. How do I get rid of these?"
- "I feel fear often and dislike the feeling. How do I stop feeling fear?"
What I notice is that then in the comments section you get a lot of people offering decent advice about how to actually do those things partly. They give tangible behaviors you can do that will likely slightly minimize the intensity and/or duration of the urge, feeling, or intrusive thought pattern.
Yet, despite the fact that these people are only saying things that are true, I think those ways of responding tend to be very dangerous and often unhelpful for the asker.
I believe it tends to be analogous to being a toxic enabler of a beloved drug addicted friend, family member, or child. They come knocking at your door with some crazy story about why they need you to loan or give some cash. Do you say yes? Do you give them the cash?
When someone presents a goal that is impossible, we want to be careful about responding by advising them on how to get slightly closer to that impossible goal. To respond that way is to do your best to give them exactly what they asked for, which is decently reasonable for you to do. But I believe it tends to be like giving that drug-addicted addict asking for cash exactly what they are asking for: cash. In fact, a better analogy would be that the drug addict is asking you for a ridiculous impossible amount of cash, and so you respond by giving them some cash, to get them slightly closer to their impossible goal.
Most of the time, when someone asks a question like those four examples I've given above, I think the more helpful and honest way to respond to it is actually to lean more towards refusing to give them what they are asking for and lean more towards challenging them, especially in regard to challenging them on the facts of (1) whether the question even makes sense, (2) what false or doubtable premises are loaded into it, and (3) that they are asking how to do something impossible.
You can feel like you are helping a lot by giving them cash when they ask for an impossible amount of cash. But are you helping really?
By correctly telling them true things about how to get slightly closer to their impossible absurd goal, are you really helping them? Or, are you behaving like a toxic enabler?
All humans are on the addiction spectrum. All humans have experience with temptation. All conscious humans, whether they have the words to describe it yet or not, are also familiar with the opposite of temptation.
I wrote my book, "In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All", as an answer to the question, "What is the opposite of temptation?" That question alone was where the original idea for the book was born.
In the book, I talk in detail about the difference between elimination versus transcendence, particularly in the sense of eliminating desires, urges, and certain feelings versus transcending them.
Fearlessness would be eliminating fear. Bravery is transcending fear. Cowardice is being a slave to fear, meaning to have not transcended it. Those are three different things. It is not one-dimensional. Virtue is not in the middle. You can think of it as a triangle instead of a line, if you like math and/or geometric visualizations.
In addition to the one and only place you want to be on that triangle, the triangle has at least three regions you don't want to be: the two other corners and the middle of the triangle. Virtue is not in the middle. Salvation is not in the middle. It's neither in the middle of the triangle, nor in the middle of any of the three one-dimensional lines between any of the pairs of corners.
The fear, anger, pain, discomfort, and bodily urges are like a water in which you might drown, or perhaps worse choke on water for hours and hours on end without fully drowning. It can be cold dark murky water. Dangerous. Scary. Potentially hellish.
Elimination would be getting rid of the water, or perhaps ending it all by finally fully drowning to death.
Transcendence, in contrast, is learning to swim.
Then you are free. Then you are liberated. Then you are alive, really alive, alive in a way most humans never are. Then you are grateful for the water. You couldn't swim without it. You get to swim thanks to the water. Then you realize how boring and undesirable elimination would be. What once seemed hellish becomes revealed as heavenly. What once seemed like curse becomes revealed as blessing.
Frankly, if you don't already have extreme inner peace (a.k.a. extreme true happiness) and extreme spiritual freedom (a.k.a. extreme self-discipline), I strongly recommend you don't answer my mentees’ questions, and I strongly recommend you don't answer similar questions when anyone asks them to you directly in your life. Refuse to answer. Refuse to give even one cent to the proverbial drug addict at your door asking for ridiculous loads of cash.
Perhaps, the #1 most important piece of advice I give my mentees and other readers, fans, and followers is this: Don't ever take any advice from unhappy people.
If you aren’t already a truly very happy person who has extreme inner peace and extreme spiritual freedom (a.k.a. extreme self-discipline), then please don’t toxically enable others into violating my explicit clear advice about not taking your advice. Don’t tell them what you would do because we don’t want them to do what you would do. Don’t tell them how to do what you would do because, again, we don't want them to do what you would do.
Insofar as we can even reach or advise them at all, we want them to do what a happy spiritually free person would do, not what you would do.
It may seem like a very tough pill to swallow, but I am proud to say, whatever the case, that is the only kind of pill I hand out. I aim to be the opposite of a toxic enabler. These pills I have for you are not very tempting at all. I am offering you the opposite of temptation, something infinitely better than what you get by caving to temptation, something infinitely better than that which is tempting.
If you are already strictly following the teachings of my book, including all 11 of the numbered suggestions at the end, then you will be happy already, in the sense of having extreme inner peace (a.k.a. extreme true happiness) and extreme spiritual freedom (a.k.a. extreme self-discipline). You don't need to read my book to achieve those states, but if you read my book and strictly follow all of the numbered suggestions, you will achieve that state instantly. It doesn't take time and it costs zero dollars. Then any advice you give others or any answers you give to their questions will possibly be helpful to them. Otherwise, your attempts to help, while likely good-hearted, will at best almost certainly amount to toxic enabling.
If you cannot honestly and confidently say that you already have extreme inner peace (a.k.a. extreme true happiness) and extreme spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline), then do not answer questions; Ask questions.
Even with my extreme inner peace and extreme self-discipline, which so many have asked me to help advise them to mimic over the years, especially in regard to the latter (the self-discipline which they often mistakenly call “willpower”), I aim to do my best to ask questions more than I say statements. I do my best to listen more than I speak, and to understand more than I convey.
If I, Eckhart Aurelius Hughes, the human formally known as Scott, am a hypocrite on any of these matters, I ask you to let me alone be the hypocrite, and not follow in my hypocritical footsteps.
Regardless, no matter who you are and no matter how much happiness and spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline) you have or don't have, I invite you to read or re-read the following advice article of mine:
"Whether you are looking for a savior or someone to save, or both, look into a mirror."
With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
a.k.a. Scott
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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.
