There is a fundamental misconception an uncons often an unconscious misconception in human beings and that misconception is this. They believe that the world has the ability to make them happy but this this is being withheld from them and they regard that as a personal insult by life is doing. Why is life withholding happiness from me?
Why? If you're not awakening yet and that is you can verify that in your perhaps in your own experience when things go wrong there is a reactive entity there that that gets works itself up. either you become angry or despondent or whatever the reactivity is.
People like uh in professions such as lawyers often encounter people in their most unconscious states because they tend to go to lawyers when things go wrong, they're being sued or the divorce is happening. divorce lawyers. The to be a divorce lawyers potentially could be a very enlightening job because you encounter deep human unconsciousness which in most people when they uh in a conflict situation like that become more unconscious than they are normally deeply unconscious.
And so that's when you're being challenged by life, the challenge will create a reaction and the reaction will you become completely identified with the reaction and you can even more unconscious than your normal state which is unconscious enough but it's now it's more unconscious. Oh can't stop thinking about it. Oh no.
And now as you're awakening challenge comes again and and then you suddenly see the possibility of actually being more intensely present when a challenge comes and you go. It's like a you know what a dimmer switch is on an electric electrical switch. You can turn up the light dimmer switch.
So when a challenge comes, something goes wrong so to speak, a difficult person arises, a difficult situation arises, some kind of loss arises, whatever kind of loss it may be. And instead of reacting and becoming more unconscious, you suddenly sense you're becoming more present in the face of a challenge. And that is when the challenges of the world are becoming helpful to you rather than make you unconscious.
They can intensify the awakening process and that is the ultimate purpose really of all the challenges that humans encounter here. There is a fundamental misconception an uncons often an unconscious misconception in human beings and that misconception is this. They believe that the world has the ability to make them happy.
But this this is being withheld from them and they regard that as a personal insult by life is doing. Why is life withholding happiness from me? Why all the things always happen to me?
Because it's not happening to others. You read their Facebook posts and they're all happy. They're eating meals.
You see pictures of meals. Look, I'm eating this. Oh, okay.
And then you see their happy faces. And not only are they happy, they're also so good-looking. Everybody's good-looking.
It's the technology of filters and stuff. Uh, everyone can look beautiful. Even I they did it to me, too.
So people watch that and say, "Wow, these people's lives are so great. What my is so awful. " And then you maybe then you also pretend because everybody else is pretending.
Okay. Like go to a restaurant, take a picture of a meal I'm what I'm eating right now. Oh.
So the misconception is uh the world is here to make me happy but it's not doing it. And this is a very serious misconception because it can makes your whole life miserable because that barely means that something that that should be happening is not happening in my life. Something should it's just not happening.
But of course that misconception is that the world is here to make you happy and it can't do that. It's not here to make you happy. It's here to make you conscious, to awaken you.
Oh, I see. I was wrong all along. I've been complaining uselessly for 40 years or whatever your age is.
I've been complaining uselessly for 40 years that there's something wrong with the world and my so-called life. But there wasn't anything wrong at all because the world is here to awaken me in if humans are not challenged or not just humans. Any life form only grows through being challenged which means encounter obstacles and difficulties in their process of growth.
Even plants and animals they all encount every life form is precarious. Its existence is precarious and it encounters obstacles to its unfoldment. And that ultimately is how evolution happens through encountering difficulties, obstacles, challenges.
Because as you encounter obstacles and challenges, they seem to block you and you think life would be much better if I did not have these challenges. But it wouldn't because you would go to sleep even more. So you have the challenges and that brings about an influx of energy on whatever level even if it's physical.
Every organism already encounters challenges on a physical level. And then it grows. It gains new strength by come attempting to overcome these limitations.
I sometimes mention example if you want it because it operates on every level. If you want to become physically stronger, you have to exercise. Unless you have a job that is already physically uh hardworking forces you to exert yourself physically.
Otherwise you have to exercise and you have to start doing if you want to go stronger uh you have to lift weights. I'm not doing it anymore, but I'm just demonstrating. You lift away now.
What? How does that feel at first? What What are you doing?
The way I put it is this. You are making life difficult for your body because your body is not going to go stronger unless you make your the body's life difficult. The same with jogging.
Don't. The body doesn't really want to do it, but says, "No, no, you have to do it. Why are you making life difficult for your body?
Your body would be so relaxed sitting on on the sofa and watching Netflix. " But it's not going stronger. It's actually getting weaker because it's not being challenged.
But challenge it. And then there is a demand for added energy. And this and this is just operates on the physical level.
And this demand for added there's a there's a moment when there's a gap. You're exerting yourself and the energy isn't there yet. So it's very hard.
But at some point the energy comes flooding in because there was a demand for it. And in that point you may actually begin to enjoy the physical movement because there's added energy and suddenly ah strength is increasing and this is just on a physical level there's a demand and it comes also on a psychological level it can operate and on a spiritual level when you become very unhappy in your life then there is the possibility that the unhappiness causes you to awaken because at some point you realize either because you've had a spiritual teacher or teaching or even to in some people it happens spontaneously. the the suffering, the psychological suffering that humans undergo can at some point bring about an awaken when you just can't stand it anymore and something snaps and suddenly you it dissolves and you're oh suddenly an awakening has happened.
But it would not have happened if you hadn't gone through those three sometimes years of suffering. Quite often I have encountered people who tell me I would never have come to you or listen understood the books or been open to anything spiritual if I had not experienced in some cases it's a a serious very serious illness or an accident or some deep loss in their personal lives and they come and perhaps some of you with some of you that is also the case there would not have been an opening if you had not gone through that suffering. And at some point the suffering awakens you.
And that is really the ultimate purpose of suffering is to awaken. And then you realize that most suffering is actually unnecessary. It's actually created by the conditioned entity.
I'm talking about real second. you there's physical pain physical pain isn't suffering suffering is a psychological phenomenon so and this this suffering can be transcended if you awaken you transcend that suffering you in other words you transcend unhappiness you are no longer unhappy the mind loses its power to make you unhappy Because most of your unhappiness is created by unconscious thought processes, not situations. Most of unhappiness is created not by situations, difficult situations that you encounter, but but but what your mind is telling you about the difficult situations.
The situation itself is as it is. Then you impose an interpretation on it. The interpret when the interpretation says this should not be happening.
This is awful. Why always to me? Why?
Why did he do that? He etc. , etc.
Interpretations. What causes the unhappiness and strengthens the fictitious self is the commentary, the interpretation. And that is an amazing realization that most of your unhappiness is created by your mind.
And that's an amazing thing. And then as you become more present, unhappiness disappears from your life. Now, am I saying that you will then always be happy?
No, it's not.
