Outline
- A common myth is that you are supposed to care.
- Unhappiness is the belief that unhappiness can and will happen in the future.
- Unhappiness is the belief that you’re not free.
- Not wanting the consequences of an action is not the same as not being free to do the action.
- Happiness is just you feeling you
- Unhappiness is you feeling you and not liking you, and saying it’s bad.
- Our causing unhappiness is inadvertent, but it’s inevitable when we cause it, and instantly remediable when we realized we caused it.
Introduction
In this talk, Bruce Di Marsico discusses caring and freedom.
Unhappiness is the belief that you’re not free. In particular, that if you were happy now, you would be unhappy in the future. This is often a result of mistaking not wanting the consequences of an action for not being free to do the action. One particular form of freedom addressed is the freedom to care or not care.
Happiness is just you feeling your own desires, tastes, values, likes, dislikes, wants, and desires to avoid. Unhappiness is you feeling you and not liking you, and saying it’s bad, that your desires, tastes, values, likes, and dislikes are not useful, practical, or beneficial to your desires, tastes, likes, dislikes, and values.
Our causing unhappiness is inadvertent, but it’s inevitable when we cause it, and instantly remediable when we realized we caused it. There is no blame in being unhappy, anymore than there is blame in flipping a switch you thought was a light switch, but is disconnected. It is a mistake, and as soon as you realize you were mistaken, you now know everything you need to know.
Readings
I’m not so concerned about why people having the dreams they have or why they wear the clothes they wear. It’s why they’re unhappy about it. But when you starting looking at why people are unhappy about a thing, you really have to have the question of “Are you really unhappy?”
There are a lot of times you can help yourself or someone else by just asking, “Do you really care about that?” There are a lot of things people think they ought to care about, that they ought to feel bad about, that they ought to worry about, that they ought to be concerned about. And they’ve never felt allowed not to care about it.
But sometimes just the question, “Do you really care about that?” puts them in touch with, “Well, if I had to tell the truth, no, I don’t.” So now the unhappiness that they had is gone, partly because they thought they had to care and now they don’t believe they have to care. But also the very act of caring was that when you really care about something, you have to be unhappy about it.
So now they don’t have to care and they don’t have to be unhappy about something, because they don’t really care. They may still believe you only have to be unhappy about things you care about. You or I have to question “how do you know if you’re unhappy?”
We were talking about emotions are beliefs about future emotions. Now I know that that’s not always easy to see because we’re not used to seeing that way, but it is the basic underlying thing of why we got unhappy. The how is by making judgments.
Unhappiness is the belief that unhappiness can and will happen in the future. Unhappiness is the belief that you’re not free. Unhappiness is the belief that you’re not free, that you’re not free to think what you think and you’re not free to want what you want.
You’re not free to not think something. You think you’re not allowed to not think this or not want that, whatever you don’t want, that you’re not allowed to choose what you choose.
The whole concept of not being free means the punishment for being free is I’ll wind up unhappy. Some people call it misusing your freedom. Some people call it abusing your free choice. Some people call it going overboard. There are all these names for why you’ll be sorry later if you really feel free. “If you really believe you’re free you’ll be sorry” is basically what I’m saying. So unhappiness is the belief that you’ll be sorry if you’re free.
Fundamentally, feeling unhappy is the belief that you can be unhappy. Fundamentally feeling unhappy is the belief that you will be unhappy, in some future, that you are capable of being an unhappy being. It is not feelings, but actually that you will have to see yourself in such a way as you call unhappy. You’re an unhappy wretch.
Unhappiness is the belief that you do not have the right to be happy at certain times or under conditions determined by you. Now each thing I’m saying is another way of saying the fundamental truth about any unhappiness. I said unhappiness is the belief that unhappiness can happen, and will happen in the future. It sounds like I’m saying something different, though when I say unhappiness is the belief you’re not free, right? But the reason I can say it that way is that you’re not free because you believe you’ll be unhappy in the future, because you’re afraid you’ll be unhappy in the future if you are free to think what you’re thinking, do what you want, choose what you choose. So it’s basically the belief that you can be unhappy.
Unhappiness is the belief that you don’t have the right to be happy. But if you ever ask yourself or anyone else “Fundamentally why are you not happy? Why are you unhappy when this happens or that happens?” they may say, “Well, it’s not right.” What they really mean is “I don’t have the right. It’s not right. I don’t have the right to be happy. It wouldn’t be right to be happy if this happened. I don’t have the right to be happy. It wouldn’t be right. I don’t have the right.” “It isn’t right. I don’t have the right. It isn’t right. I don’t have the right.” Right means the ability to do something, and the fact of its consequences doesn’t mean anything about the ability to do it. People often say you don’t have the right to do that. What they mean is, “Oh, you can do it.” Why would they tell you don’t have the right if you really couldn’t do it, right?
So it means you do to have the ability, but you’ll be punished. You’ll be sorry. There are consequences that you won’t want. But if there are consequences you don’t want, that doesn’t mean you don’t have right, right? It has nothing to do with rights. We may not want to do certain things because we don’t want the consequences, but that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t say we don’t have the right to do it.
So what could it possibly mean to say that you don’t have the right to do something if you have the ability to do it? There’s no meaning. But yet, people often say, “I don’t have the right to do it,” as if they don’t have the ability to do it or the freedom to do it without feeling bad. I don’t have the right to do it means then if I do it, I have to feel bad. I will somehow or another have to feel bad. Even if I don’t feel guilty immediately, something else will happen that will make me sorry. So to believe that there is no right to do something is implying that there’s going to be a punishment or consequence that you don’t want, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have the right to do it.
If there’s a consequence you don’t want, then don’t do it. The belief that you do not have the right when you have the ability is really your fear of the consequences. So anything you believe or feel that you don’t have the right to do – the fact that you even make it seem that way to yourself and if you ever hear anybody else saying it, all you’re really saying is you’re afraid of the consequences.
You’re not saying the consequences are undesirable, because if you made it that clear, you would say, “I don’t want to do it because I don’t want the consequences.” You don’t say, “I don’t have the right to jump off the bridge.” You say, “I don’t want to.”
If you really feel you don’t have the right to by happy, you’re really afraid of the consequences, but you’re not saying that what you’re avoiding is the consequences. Otherwise, if you were in touch with it, you would just simply say, “I don’t want to do that because I don’t want the consequences.”
But if the fundamental problem of people is that they don’t feel they have the right to be happy, and they’re quite aware that what they really mean is they’re afraid of the consequences, they might just as well say, “Well, I can’t be happy. I shouldn’t be happy. I don’t have the right to be happy. I’m not supposed to be happy. It’d be crazy to be happy.”
They could start putting in any kind of language, all the language that we hear. “Why the hell would I be happy when this happens or that happens? I’d be nuts if I was happy because that would happen. I don’t have the right to be happy,” which is really an expression of, “I wouldn’t want the consequences if I was happy, without any longer being aware that it’s a choice. See, when you stop saying it’s not a choice, “I’m choosing not to be happy because I don’t want the consequence.”
But the interesting thing about happy, if you thought that you could choose to be happy, but would wind up with unhappy consequences, you couldn’t choose to be happy. You’d be unhappy.
The funny thing, though, is that when it comes to unhappiness there are lots of things you wouldn’t choose to do because you don’t want the consequences that you could do. But the consequence is just simply undesirable, but you don’t say you don’t have the right to do it. You just don’t do it because you don’t want the consequences. But when it comes to happiness, it’s a little different because that’s the be all and end all of your existence.
Happiness and you are fundamentally identical; they’re one and the same thing. You are your happiness and you and your happiness are the same thing. When we talk about happiness, by the way, and say, “How do you know you’re unhappy? How do you know you’re happy?” happiness is just you feeling you. Unhappiness is you feeling you and not liking you, and saying it’s bad.
When it comes to happiness and unhappiness, if you thought that you could freely choose to be happy any time you wanted, and thought, though, that the consequences for that is you’d wind up unhappy, we can’t say that at that point you’re really choosing to be unhappy in a sense, although it’s true. But you couldn’t really choose to be happy, could you? It’s an impossible choice. You wouldn’t choose happiness if it’s going to cause you unhappiness.
You could choose other things that might have undesirable affects for one reason or another, for one benefit or advantage that you could imagine. But can you choose to be happy if you think the payoff is going to be unhappiness? Right then and there you’re going to be unhappy right now, so how can you choose to be happy? Because you really think you have no choice. At that point you don’t, you see. If you thought unhappiness was the inevitable and natural consequences of being happy, then there’s no sense talking about choice because you couldn’t have one. You’d just be unhappy about that whole situation. Every time you started to get happy you’d immediately get afraid of that because it’s going to get you into trouble; it’s going to make you unhappy if you’re believing it’s going to make unhappy.
The first description today: Unhappiness is the belief that unhappiness can and will happen in the future.
The second description today: Unhappiness is the belief that you’re not free because you’ll wind up unhappy and then unhappiness will happen in the future. Being unhappy – now this is another definition – is simply believing about happiness that it will make you unhappy. It will make me – underline “make,” naturally, inevitably, make or cause you to be unhappy. So I’ll say it a couple different ways.
Being unhappy is simply believing about happiness it will make me unhappy. Believing about thoughts, they will make me unhappy. Believing about loss, for instance, it will make me unhappy. Believing about desires, they will make me unhappy. Believing about actions, words, experiences, physical feelings, they will make me unhappy. Feeling about myself, others, nature, anything whatsoever can be believed to cause unhappiness.
So the fundamental truth here is that anything whatsoever can be believed to cause unhappiness, and you’ll find that. So you can never be shocked, you’ll never be surprised about what people can be unhappy about because anything whatsoever can be believed to cause unhappiness.
To summarize: People believe unhappiness happens and will happen. People believe unhappiness is caused against their will, but they cause it by believing this, by believing happiness is caused is how we cause it. You wouldn’t choose to be unhappy unless you thought there was a benefit to it. So you would only choose to be unhappy if you thought by not choosing to you would be even more unhappy. So ultimately, you have to be believing you’re going to be more happy.
So the idea of choice is lost in some sense, because of the belief that you’re going to be unhappy. Everything follows after that. There really isn’t much choice if you believe that you’re going to be unhappy. If you believe that some thoughts of yours are going to make you unhappy or something that someone does is going to make you unhappy or could make you unhappy, if you believe that your not being unhappy could make you unhappy.
So if you believe anything could make you unhappy, you’re going to be unhappy. So unhappiness happens if you believe that unhappiness can happen to you or will happen to you. That’s how you get unhappy. People believe unhappiness is caused against their wills.
We’re really talking about believing this happens against our will. Even though I’m showing you how we cause it, and how it’s inadvertent, it’s not against our will. It’s inadvertent, but it’s inevitable when we cause it. But it wouldn’t be inevitable if we didn’t cause it. But we wouldn’t cause it if we didn’t believe it was inevitable.
Unhappiness would not happen to us if we didn’t believe it was going to happen. But we wouldn’t believe it was going to happen if we knew that we caused it.
And we do cause it. It doesn’t happen. But how we cause it is by believing it’s going to happen to us. So it doesn’t really happen to us. We do really cause it. But that’s nothing to be afraid of because we only cause it by believing it’s going to happen to us.
If you misunderstand what I’m saying, you’d say, “Oh, yes. We have learned from Bruce that we cause our unhappiness. Now I have to be afraid of causing my unhappiness when I don’t want to, against my will.”
You don’t cause it against your will. You only cause it by believing it’s going to happen anyway.
Exercise
This exercise is from the original group, as offered by Bruce Di Marsico
Now this is the exercise. I want A’s to ask three questions of B, regardless of their answers, okay? B I want you to answer as quickly as possible without hesitating with every question. Don’t give it any thought. Just answer as quickly as possible because that’s not important.
A, what I want you to ask B is: What do people believe will make them unhappy? And B will answer as quickly as possible. A, again, I want you to ask: Why do people believe that, that thing that they just said will make them unhappy? Answer that as quickly as possible. And then ask: But why do they believe that?
Okay. And then after you’ve done that, do it again, start again from right from the beginning: What do people believe will make them unhappy? And do that exercise two more times.Questions for Reflection
Are there things, people, or persons that you feel you should care about (for example, associates that you are not very intimate with)?
Do you actually care about them?
Are there things you do care about that you feel you shouldn’t (for example, your appearance, looking sexy, being liked)?
What would it be like to care about the things you feel you shouldn’t, but not need for them to thrive, occur, or exist for your happiness?
Meditation for the Week
We may not want to do certain things because we don’t want the consequences, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have the right to do it.