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DOROTHY ROWE
Guide to Life
To my publisher and friend
Mike Fishwick
Some five hundred years before the birth of Christ the Greek poet Xenophanes wrote,
The gods did not reveal, from the beginning,
All things to us; but in the course of time,
Through seeking we may learn, and know things better.
But as for certain truth, no man has known it,
Nor will he know it; neither of the gods,
Nor yet of the things of which I speak.
And even if by chance he were to utter
The final truth, he would himself not know it;
For all is but a woven web of guesses.1
Albert Einstein wrote,
As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.2
Contents
2 Life – What You Can’t Change and What You Can
5 You and How You Feel About Yourself
THE SECRET of life is that there is no secret.
All that you need to know about life is there for you to see. All you have to do is open your eyes and recognize what you already know.
However, down the centuries, many people wanting power have tried to keep the secret. They have created their theories and their jargon, and told us that they and they alone know the secret of life. These are the people who have claimed to be the wisest of the wise. They have called themselves philosophers, theologians, clergy, doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, psychotherapists, counsellors – in short, experts on life and living. Jungians say we are all part of the collective unconscious, while psychiatrists say that we are the product of our genes. Each of these theories is a way of describing and explaining certain parts of human experience, but no one theory can describe, let alone explain it all.
Some of these people have always known that there is no secret, while others have insisted that they and they alone know the Secret Truth About Life.
Down the centuries a few of these experts have dared to reveal that there is no secret, and, consequently, have been reviled by their colleagues. How dare such renegades say that each of us can sort things out for ourselves! How dare they threaten the experts’ power, prestige and wealth!
The experts always protect themselves by forming themselves into an elite and guarding the entrance with a formidable barrier of examinations and rituals through which only a chosen few can pass.
When the selected few do get through the barrier they are faced with a choice. Do you now tell yourself that you are initiated into the Secret Truth About Life? Or do you bear the disappointment of your discovery that what you might have is simply a collection of useful research results (for instance, we now know that babies are born with the ability to distinguish faces from all other phenomena) and, if you look for it, the kind of wisdom in living which has always been available to every generation.
Amongst the experts this wisdom