We love the idea of simplicity. In an age of informational complexity, we like to imagine everything tidy and under control. When our emotions become complicated, we like the idea of an easygoing peace.
But we are born with complex minds. We can accept lots of different and conflicting things into our consciousness. When these things fight each other, we become anxious. To achieve simplicity, we need to learn to become a peacemaker between competing ideas. Our love of adventure needs to make friends with our love of security. Our passion for newness needs to make friends with our enjoyment of familiarity.
If we can't accept part of ourselves, if we cannot 'integrate' it into our self-concept, then we literally lack integrity. We will try to deny any weakness, sometimes projecting it onto others; sometimes we'll even create enemies, risking upset to our our own lives in the process - and all because we can't accept ourselves completely. To make our lives simple, I'm sure we need to learn to accept our own imperfections, and to stop blaming others for our shortfalls. Blame and its associated feelings are often just ways of avoiding our own development. Then, once we have accepted our own responsibility, we can begin to make our internal world more tidy and peaceful.
Something magical happens when we relax towards others, and take responsibility for ourselves. We spend less time assuming wrong things, and more time seeing people and things as they are. We become empty, peaceful, and accepting.
