Outline
- You are unhappy because of one belief only: the belief that you are not naturally going to be happier.
- We can only become unhappy because we believe that unhappiness is possible.
- If you know that you will naturally be happier, then you have done everything and the only thing that will make the difference in any situation.
Introduction
In this talk, Bruce Di Marsico discusses the cause of unhappiness.
You are unhappy because of one belief only: the belief that you are not naturally going to be happier. Money, things, relationships, love, one’s own behavior, other’s behavior do not cause unhappiness.
We can only become unhappy because we believe that unhappiness is possible, namely, by believing the (impossible) proposition that we could be against ourselves, our well-being, our own best interests.
If you know that you will naturally be happier, then you have done everything and the only thing that will make the difference in any situation. To quote Bruce Di Marsico: “if you just got hit by a bus and have a broken leg, why add unhappiness to the situation?”
You are not unhappy for any reason – but only because you believe you can and/or will be unhappy
No one was ever unhappy because they didn’t get what they wanted. You were never unhappy because you didn’t explore your beliefs. You were never unhappy because you believe what you do. You are unhappy because of one belief only: the belief that you are not naturally going to be happier. The belief that you aren’t right now naturally motivated, moved by, living and doing everything you are doing from your happiness. The only reason you have ever been unhappy or anyone could be unhappy is that you believe that it is not happiness that rules you, that moves you, it is not happiness that directs your thoughts, your inclinations, your decisions.
The unhappy believe that if they didn’t get “it”, they will be unhappy – whether it be money, things, relationships, love, behavior from other people, behavior from themselves – they believe those are the causes of their unhappiness so they seek ways to control their own behaviors, to control the behaviors of others. They seek ways to control the world around them all for the good of getting what they want. But it is why they do it that is why they are unhappy.
They do it because they believe they can’t be happy unless they do it. Then if they didn’t get that control, they feel bad and they say they should. They feel that they have failed and they believe that unless they succeed, they also can’t be happy and they say their failure is the cause of their unhappiness. Since they don’t do what they needed to do in order to be happy, they usually choose one of two ways: they blame the world and the way it is for their unhappiness or they blame themselves and the way they are for their unhappiness.
You have usually experienced both of them one time or another. Usually some of you find yourselves mostly on one side and others mostly on the other. Then you realized that a lot of the bad feelings you have had and a lot of the reasons you haven’t been able to get and do what you have wanted was because you were afraid and so that you needed to get control over your fear in order to better get what you needed to be happy, in order to better be the kind of person that you needed to be, in order to be happy, and if you found that it was your fear that kept you from loving, then you worked on stopping being afraid, so that you could be more loving.
But we were always more concerned about being more loving then we were about not having the fear. If you found that it was your fear that drove people away from you — if you found that it was because of something you believed — you had a pain, and you always wanted to work on that belief so that you could get rid of the pain, so that you could draw the people closer to you, so that you could get those things that you needed in order to be happy. Always more concerned about what you were working towards than the fear itself.
Then you found out that the way to get rid of the fear was to change the beliefs, and there were times that the fear just made you feel bad, and so you didn’t like the way that you felt, and you believed that if you continued to feel that way, you couldn’t be happy. So you tried to get at the beliefs that would remove the fear that would get rid of the bad feeling. Still more concerned about getting rid of the bad feeling than you were about the fear. The fear was always one and the same: the fear that somehow naturally you would mislead yourself, that naturally you wouldn’t be as happy as you could, that naturally you would believe things that would make you unhappy, that naturally you might want things that would make you unhappy, or naturally you would make the wrong decisions about what you wanted that would make you unhappy. Always believing that something about you naturally would make you unhappy, or might, but never quite fully believing that naturally, no matter what you say to yourself, no matter what happened in the world, no matter what you thought or didn’t think – no matter what you did or didn’t do – no matter what they thought or did – you never believed that naturally you would still be happy.
No one becomes unhappy because they do not do what they want or know what they want. We do not even become unhappy because we choose against what we want – if that were possible – or because we choose against what we seem to want – but we become unhappy from why we do not consent to our wanting – our possible wanting. We can only become unhappy because we believe we might become unhappy – that unhappiness is possible.
It doesn’t matter what we believe is the cause or is going to be the cause of our unhappiness – it doesn’t matter what we say the cause is. There is no difference if we believe we may become unhappy because of our wanting or because of our not getting what we want. There is no difference if we believe we could possibly become unhappy because we consent to our wanting or because we didn’t consent to our wanting. If I believe that anything I do or want to do could cause me to be unhappy, then I am unhappy just because of that belief. Of course I would always want what I want and I would gladly consent to it unless I believe that my wanting could lead me to unhappiness. It is only why I go against my thoughts, feelings and desires, etc., that cause unhappiness. I am calling something bad. I am believing that my unhappiness can come from something in me or outside me.
We have always known that unhappiness came from calling something bad and what that simply means is that it comes from saying that there is anything that could cause me to be unhappy, that “bad” means could make me unhappy. So we don’t use the word “bad”, we may not use the word “bad” anymore, but if we still believe that anything could make us unhappy – that something could cause me to be unhappy – we are believing that something could cause us to be unhappy.
Why or what is it really that we are believing? We don’t seem to be too discriminating. We just believe that something could cause us to be unhappy and we find one way or another of believing it. We will take something you constitutionally or physically believe and start with that – notice something about ourselves and we will say that is where it starts. I will be doing something and then say I should be doing something else. I will not be doing something and I will say I should be doing it. Feeling a certain way, thinking a certain thought and we start with anything that we can get our hands on, or our beliefs on. Is it because we have a natural propensity to do so? Is it because it is natural for us to just pick on ourselves? How about this: it is natural to discover that we are naturally going to be happy.
What does it matter if I could even knowingly go against what I want, which is impossible to do, until or unless I believe that I can cause my unhappiness; it just so happens that it is by definition impossible to go against what I want or not do what I naturally or happily would do, unless I am unhappy. I would always be doing what is coming from my life – from my happiness – unless I start believing that what is coming naturally from my being could lead me to unhappiness – non-being – the death of my happiness.
If you feel a pain – if you feel sick – if you feel a funny feeling – if you feel a sad feeling, an unhappy feeling, an angry feeling, any feeling – if your body – if you – feels in a way you don’t want, what are you going to do about it? If you feel in a way that reminds you that you would prefer to feel differently, that is what I mean by “don’t want”. If you feel in a way that helps you to become aware that there is another way you would like to feel, that is natural, that is for you. What will you do with it? You have just become aware that there is another way you would like to feel. Will you naturally begin to feel that way – if it is natural for you? Well, will you naturally be happier?
If you know that you will naturally be happier, aren’t you then and haven’t you then done everything and the only thing that will make the difference – that will bring you to where you are naturally going? If your sickness, if your pain, is caused by your unhappiness, if your feelings are caused by your unhappiness – by what power or motivation would they ever get changed anyway – by more unhappiness or by the power of wanting to be happier, by the power that is in you – that urge that is in you which we call wanting to be happier, that life force, that thing called your desire?
Questions for Reflection
Try to do something that you don’t want to do.
If you did something, in what sense did you not want to do it?
Are there situations in which you find unhappiness useful? What would it look like to be happy, and also to reproduce the benefits you are getting from unhappiness?
Meditation for the Week
If you know that you will naturally be happier you have done everything and the only thing that will make the difference. All action flows from that knowledge of happiness.