Following on from yesterdays post, I want to share my oldest anti-scrupulosity tool in my OCD toolkit.
This is a quote, I believe, from Marcus Aurelius , a Roman Emporer and philosopher.
It also happens to have been the philosophy of my Maternal Grandmother who hailed from Manchester, I'm not sure if she ever read much of Marcus's work but they shared a similar view however unrelated they were.
The quote is :
"Live a good life. If there are Gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are Gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no Gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones."
I think this is a great "in a nutshell" kind of quote. It is pretty blunt but I think it hits the nail bang on the head.
It highlights that living a good life being preferable to living a devout life - something which when you look around the world is not put in to practice enough, when you consider the acts carried out by supposedly "devout" people of many religions.
It is also not specific to any one religion, having originated (if what I understand to be correct) from a time of widespread polytheism.
Any way, most importantly it helps me and it might help you should you share my condition.
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