The Sources Of Misery - Why You Suffer Your Existence

Why do we do the things we do? At the end it is not about the results, it is what the results means to you. The levels of unfulfilment in our society is rising, as survival gets easier and easier, people are looking in the wrong places to find happiness and joy. Today, we will explore why we suffer our existence, how to deal with it, and how to eliminate it. Let's begin.

Misery Source #1 - Compulsive Desire

There is no problem with desire itself. You need desire to wake up, brush your teeth and walk from A to B. However, when the mind starts expanding in a limited way, this will turn into your first source of suffering.

What do I mean by limited? To conquer the outer existence is impossible. If you set your eyes upon having a million dollars, the moment you have one, you want five. This multiplies endlessly because the perception towards one fulfilment is turned outwards.

When it comes to happiness, there is nothing on the outside that can make you happy. If you need an external reason to have a good reason to be happy, then no wonder you are miserable! The only value we have is that we are alive. The greatest gift right now is life itself.

How does one know when he has eliminated compulsive desire from his mind? This is very simple. Drive to your local beach or any scenic place in nature, and can you sit there with total content? Do you get bored or think about something else? That is the compulsive desire thats working within you.

The moment you can sit there and become conscious of your very own existence, then you will see that you have no desire. There is not even a desire to live, because you would have merged with everything around you. There was never a distinction between an outer world and an inner world.

Misery Source #2 - Expectations

Have you ever wondered the mechanics of anger? The most common forms of anger is irritation. You might have not considered irritation to be anger, but it works the same way. It is just manifesting in its seed form. Only when the fruit sprouts, then you throw a tantrum like a baby.

So how does anger work? Anger works when your expectations and subverted. You've built a conceptual understanding of how the future will be, and when the future does not turn out the way you want, you become angry. If you read this carefully, you can easily see how stupid it is.

Is the future ever guaranteed? Is it written somewhere that you will wake up tomorrow? Being alive is by its very nature uncertain. With all the fantasy stock traders, everyone likes to think they know the future. But it is this very mindset of trying to do astrology thats causing you this sense of misery.

Do we have an ideal way we want an outcome to develop? Of course. But does it necessarily mean it shall happen? No. Nothing on the outside is ever 100% in your control despite what hustle culture says. In the outer world, there might be a thousand different influences working in and against your preferences.

The simplest way to transcend anger and expectations is that we see situations for what they are. When we are not touched by our memory and psychic powers, we can respond to reality the way it exactly is. Do you have a better chance of getting the result you want when you are responding or reacting?

Misery Source #3 - Greed

Greed might sound very similar to compulsive desire and its manifestations might overlap, but greed comes from a place where internally, you prioritize your survival at the costs of others. It is the win-lose outcomes that makes other accuse you as a manipulator or a freeloader.

It is important to see that manipulation is not some sort of psychological disease reserved for the mentally ill, you are a great manipulator right now. If you have a sense of self awareness, dont you constantly notice that you are deceiving yourself and playing tricks with others?

This comes from a limited sense of identification. When you identify your body as you, then naturally you will pick a fight with existence itself. How can it be so that fighting for survival is fighting againts existence? If you constantly extract from the life around you, do you think others will sit around and let you take advantage of them?

So greed or better known as corruption, is you attempting to extract more and more from others to benefit yourself. If you orient yourself towards this way of existence, you might have every luxury and material wellbeing you want in the world, but you will never know what it means to really relax.

Life only turns good when we are looking to see how we can benefit others. This is not some moral argument to be a good person, but it is as a consequence of interdependency. You cannot survive without others, and hopefully you can make it to the point where others cannot survive without you.

If you run this planet down environmentally and socially, you might be the king of this planet but you would have destroyed the world in the process. Even the most egotistical manic will eventually turn to realize the shame and regret of these unconscious actions.

Only when you hold this existence as a part of yourself, can you live in harmony with everything else. Once you are harmonious and productive to the environment around you, your passage through life will be supported by others and become effortless.

Misery Source #4 - Attachment

This existence is impermanent. Nothing will ever stay the way it is forever. The reason behind this is that the basis of creation is stillness or nothing. Since existence is still, it requires dynamism to start manifesting itself. You are a consequence of this dynamism.

This may be a little hard to follow, and may require some spiritual insight to understand what I mean, but by rejecting impermanence and attempting to keep everything the way it is, you are violating the laws of physics. To be manifested as a form, the form must one day cease to exist.

By emotionally and intellectually refusing that this form has came to its end is attachment. It will either way go away with or without your permission, so what is there to be attached about? If we can see that all forms will come to its end, we can be prepared for change.

Would you appreciate and find something valuable if something cannot change? If your girlfriend is forced for eternity, frozen in time to love you, is this valuable? The very fact that she can be with whoever she wants, but chose to spend her time with you is what makes it valuable.

So impermanence, is what makes us hold something as valuable. You must drink your Pina Colada and enjoy it, but dont be sad when the drink is over. If you are so attached that you cannot drink the Pina Colada, not only have you missed the experience, but you are rejecting and postponing life and letting it go to waste.

What a shame.

Misery Source #5 - Pride

Another source of suffering is when we evaluate our own self worth depending on the external circumstances. I am only great, when X Y and Z happens, or I use an societal achievement as a signal of my value. This might be socially relevant for survival, but these achievements have no existential basis for why you are here.

Essentially, you dont know why you exist, and to give yourself a reason, you call yourself a success or faliure depending on the ideas of everyone else. If this is describing you, then pride is the number one highway to slavery. Because your existence, is to exist for the ideas of what others want.

Freedom means you can consciously choose what you want to do right now. If you can only do X Y or Z, that is not freedom. If you have to upkeep your image as a certain persona, then you will never find out who you really are. You may have these things that signal social status, but it should never define who you are.

Who are you? Well that is a deeper question than it seems. The best description of who you are existantially are is that you are nothing, or that you are everything. If you are this and NOT that, then you are separating this existence which is not who you are.

It's a little like cutting off your own finger to define your individuality. How stupid! Is there a reason to live? No and yes, depending on which definition you want to use (nothing or everything). In conventional spirituality, when one dissolves his individuality, he will attain enlightenment.

Misery Source #6 - Comparison

If you are confused over what you want to do for life, then you will be constantly comparing againts others. If my neighbour has an estate worth 2 million, I must have an estate worth 4 million! Fundamentally, this is a confusion over what to invest your life towards.

Do you think that life is precious? After all we only have 80 years if we are lucky. If you choose to invest your time into the ideas of how someone else wants to live their life, are you at the pinnacle of mount stupid? How you want to live your life should be your decision, and there should be no outsourcing.

What is it that you truly think is worthwhile? Is it reversing climate change? Is it feeding the homeless? What is it that you think is so worthwhile that it will bring tears to your eyes? The moment you have an answer, that is what you should devote your entire life towards solving.

Also notice that worthwhile things to do are never about ourselves. Its always about something that we have taken responsibility for (an expansion of identity). If you compare, you may think you are expanding your horizons, but at the end, it is just an exaggeration of what you already know.

To become what you already know, what a terrible life. If right now all you know is joy and happiness, then yes its great. But for 99.9% of people, an exaggeration of their reality right now will lead to 10x the suffering. May your dreams never come true.

Misery Source #7 - Refusal To Take Responsibility

Responsibility is not about who is right or wrong, responsibility is to respond. If a situation have occured and you cannot respond, then you are heading for death. Anything that is alive, takes responsibility for the situation they find themselves in.

What is the situations you find yourself in is largely a conseqeunce of the times you are living in today. Who is right and who caused it? Well who cares. The problem is that it has happened, and it is your problem to solve. What will be your response?

Only a dead creature cannot respond. Anything alive will respond to the best of its ability. Absolute involvement and passion towards breaking your limitations is what makes life feels like an adventure. If you sit there and cry, the only thing that will happen is that the lion will come and eat you.

At least if you have responded, you would have a fighting chance. The importance is not about your attachment to the results, it is that you have tried your best. If you have tried your best, and that is the outcome which is produced, it was anyway the best outcome you could possibly have anyway!

So counterintuitively, by taking 100% responsibility for the situations we find ourselves in, it will always result in the best outcomes in accordance to our capabilities at that moment. Refusal to take responsibility is to refuse life alltogether, tackle your problems with the most intensity, involvement, care and compassion.

Conclusion

Mostly we have discussed how the mind creates suffering for you. These seven bulletpoints on the causes of suffering is a certain distortion of your perception of reality. Your mind is not taking in information the right way, and as a result of that it produces results which leads to your downfall.

In essence:

1. Hold the world as your own
2. Interpret reality for what it is right now
3. Limit the role of survival and dont inflate yourself
4. Everything comes to an end
5. Gain freedom over compulsion and unconsciousness
6. Invest your life in something worthwhile
7. Take responsibility for your circumstances

That's it for me. Best of luck. Please check out my other posts and practice everything holistically. Send me an email if you want a specific topic written. You can see "coaching" to see if I have room to onboard new students.

Cheers,
FriendlyWrenChilling.