So, I said I was going to talk about overcoming self-deceit, but rather than go through the whole story, I’m going to boil it down. What did I learn at the end of this, exactly?

1. If you desire to escape your problems, you become prone to easy solutions – anything you can grasp on to to get out of it. Instead, you must ask questions, and be part of the solution of those problems, especially those involving your own happiness.
2. It is extremely dangerous to your spirit to be dishonest if that dishonesty is for the purpose of changing your life situation to be more comfortable. The reason for this is that you place the solution to your problems in the hands of other people (or perhaps the weather) – you are running away from your own power and ability to solve problems.
3. Not only CAN you face the truth of your own difficulties, but it is the only way to solve them. If you feel bad, rather than distracting yourself with games or food, try to turn your awareness to the nature of the issue. No matter how many dark things lurk inside you, you CAN stand strong in front of them. You are more than a match for what life throws at you.
4. When you are feeling down, or distressed, treat yourself like a flower who needs water, rather than a nasty bug who needs to change and solve its problems asap so you can go back to feeling “good”. However you feel is how you feel! It’s an expression of your needs.
5. If you merely act like you care about yourself, you will end up killing your happiness. The reason is because you may see caring about yourself as part of a solution to a problem that bothers you. But caring isn’t a goal-oriented task, it’s something very spontaneous and natural. Given this, you may want to care about yourself only enough so that you can persist towards a comfortable life you want, a future you think will be without a lot of pesky problems. Perhaps a comfortable job, a family so you don’t look too out of place, and such other plans. But what makes you happy is so much more grand than all of that! Yeah, you need courage to bring true happiness into your life, but the alternative is to let a demon who’s only interested in maintaining a small miserable bubble of a life have control over you. Happiness, to it, seems like such a bother – and it will tell you all sorts of reasons why it’s out of reach. This is more manipulation. That brings me to:
6. To truly break free from the self-deceit – from the lies you tell yourself, from the misery that you invite because of it – you must see the effect it has on you. You must lay your intentions bare before you, and see that if you continue down this road, you will be ruled by a force that treats you like a pawn in its game of finding an escape from difficulty. In other words, you must face the truth. The truth of how you treat yourself – only then will you care enough to break free from this, and you will see how valuable conflict can be, and that your problems are there to point you towards a brighter future.
7. After all this is done, you may find yourself less distressed at the problems you have, or at least willing to ask questions towards a real solution. You might start asking a lot more questions in general! Because you no longer wish for something you already have in mind – what you want is the truth, when the truth is yet unknown. Only in that vast unknown do the answers to our problems truly lie.

And this was supposed to be “boiled down”? Hot damn. Well, I hope, for those of you who took the time to read it, you took something away. Bye for now : )