525. Victimisation

Never allow others to victimise you by getting you to do things just to prove your own self-worth. Your self-worth is self-existent. It is a given simply by virtue of your own existence. It is not reliant on your actions or the opinions of others. Remember the description of your own Self :

The Self knows all
Is not born
Does not die
Is not the effect of any cause
Is eternal
Self-existent
Imperisable
Ancient
He lives in all hearts
That Thou Art

The victimisation spoken of here is a form of manipulation and a guilt-trip. Do not allow it to happen, even once. Repeated manipulations of this type build up resentment in your heart and mind. This is a form of mental and emotional cancer.

200. Superiority and True Nobility

There is nothing noble about being superior to some other person. True nobility lies in your being a superior person to your own former self. This is the practice of CANI or Kaizen. You must run your own race against yourself. It does not matter what other people say about you. What is important is what you say to yourself. You can do whatever you want to do so long as it is correct according to your conscience and your heart. Therefore you have a duty to keep your conscience informed and sharp and your heart open.

Never be ashamed of what is right. Decide what is right after appropriate study and stick to it.

Never get into the petty habit of measuring your self-worth against other people's. All such comparisons are odious. Every second you spend thinking about someone else's dreams is time taken away from your own. Always plough your own furrow and keep your nose out of other people's business.

26. Failure

It is impossible to fail as a person. You can, however fail at a given task. This is an important distinction because your self-worth as a person is self-evident and has nothing to do with any task external to yourself. Never equate your self-worth with any external achievement. This is an error into which people often fall. Your inherent value and dignity are not measurable by externals.If you are to learn and grow and ever achieve anything worthwhile, plenty of failure (at tasks) is inevitable. More often than not, you will learn far more from the tests that you fail than from those that you pass.The correct attitude to failure is expressed in the old song as "Pick yourself up, Dust yourself down and Start all over again."