The world is as it is – not how you think it should be or how you would like it to be. It is as it is. Accept it and be grateful you are here to see it at all. Do not look for or expect any natural justice in the universe. There isn’t any - and neither is there a referee.
There that was short and sweet wasn’t it? But this is also so fundamental that until you accept , understand and believe this basic truth you cannot make any further progress with EI. If you do not accept this basic truth rather than learning ‘How life works’, you will instead spend your life struggling with and fighting life’s events and be at odds with the people in your life and will be constantly irritated and disappointed that your life is not as your mind wishes it to be, or thinks it should be. I want to help you understand how the world works so that you can work with it, as it is, rather than fighting it and being constantly disappointed and frustrated.
I appeal to you to realise and understand that this is what you are doing-fighting life and the world. Your emotional and intellectual energy and resources are being consumed and wasted by this fighting moment by moment. You cannot be happy and have inner peace if you are always fighting this battle. This second fundamental truth is perhaps just as unsettling as step 1.
If you spend your time and energy hoping for things to be other than they are, or wondering why or how something has happened then you are lost. I ask you to really understand that it is absolutely futile and irrational to fight something that already is. It means that you are opposing life itself. Start living and embracing your real life, not the fictional version that it is in your head and see how things start working for you rather than against you.
Do not struggle with life-accept life is as it is and not as you would wish it to be-Enjoy the ride and Go with the flow. Our relatively long lives in modern times living in rich nations surrounded by comforts, safety, technology, and abundance are extremely fortunate on a scale that few appreciate and absolutely not typical or representative of the lives experienced by our predecessors , nor probably by those who will succeed us.
Actually you can change the world-or at least the version of it that you see and experience and I will show you how in section 3.3 on Practising Spiritual behaviour .We will get onto practising spiritual behaviour after we have built the foundation of a smooth running and stable life applying EI. But for now I just ask that you accept the above statement - The world is as it is-and think about it and really understand it.