The Power Of Enduring Serenity
Email This Post
Print This Post
100 million people on this planet are afflicted with depression. This number increases each year by round about 800.000.
Each fifth of us endures a depressive period in life. 100 million people represent 1.5% of our world population and leading experts assume that the estimated number of unreported cases is even higher than this.
People tend to be unhappy in our modern society. This development obviously doesn’t comply with the development of our prosperity especially in the western industrial nations.
Compared to humans living in the emerging markets everyone of us lives in pure prosperity and abundance. That’s great, isn’t it!? But why do statistical at least 10.000 people (1.5%) only in Washington D.C. fight and struggle with symptoms like listlessness, joylessness, sleeplessness and many other emotional and mental pains?
Why do we feel this continuous lack of acceptation, appreciation and affection?
Where does this damned feeling of emptiness and frustration comes from?
Affliction and Pain
Before we analyze what we do probably wrong I want to explain the main thesis of this article based upon the philosophy of A. Schopenhauer:
Affliction and pain are essential part of human nature.
This may sound a bit hard and perhaps you feel an internal aversion and would rather stop reading this article now.
This is perfectly normal. Nobody likes this uncomfortable insight. But once you’ve put all your exceptions aside and have taken a second to look deep inside your heart and your soul, tell me, what do you find there? What do you feel right now?
Do you feel happy at this moment? Do you feel enlightened, motivated, peaceful and secure? Difficult question isn’t it? Probably there are some people who would answer “Yes, I am!” instantly. Congratulations, this is absolutely enviable. But unfortunately it’s also absolutely rare.
Probably some readers try to find out at first what the meaning of terms like feeling enlightened, motivated, peaceful and secure is. This would be a very good starting point for our travel to the roots of your consciousness.
I assume most readers of this article would simply answer something like: normal. I feel normal. Or: I feel okay.
This may sound a little bit boring or unspectacular but the sentence: “I feel okay” is the beginning of real happiness which I call enduring serenity.
People who can say that they feel okay are happy people. They are happy although they even don’t know themselves that they are happy.
People who feel okay don’t feel pain or affliction. That is the decisive point.
A human life is full of affliction and pain. The worst affliction is the knowledge about our own finiteness. Only human beings have this self-awareness and know that they and their loved ones will pass away someday.
We try to bear down this knowledge but we think of it now and then.
There are lots of other afflictions and pains:
- Diseases
- Unfulfilled wishes
- Unfulfilled expectations
- Unfulfilled claims
- Lack of love
- Lack of appreciation
- Lack acceptation
- …
Afflictions and pains are real. We are able to feel them, especially pains that are due to illnesses. Most afflictions are due to a certain lack, feelings of unfulfillment or the knowledge about our own finiteness.
But that’s just one side of the coin. Afflictions and pains have also a very positive side: it feels wonderful when they are absent. When they are just not there.
It’s the same phenomenon with smoking for example. Once you’ve smoked for a while you get addicted to it. You have had no need for cigarettes in your life before. But from a certain moment on you are really suffering when you’re not smoking. As soon as you begin to smoke you feel a great pleasure which seems to be caused by the action of smoking.
But when you look at it more accurately you understand that this pleasure is due to the absence of affliction and not to the joy of smoking. It’s the absence of an affliction you’ve never had before. But in this special case you have inflicted the pain upon yourself consciously. So it is a self-inflicted pain.
But you can assign the principle behind this insight to the general afflictions of your life too.
Aristotle said:” The wise man does not strive for pleasure or joy, he strives for indolence.”
The affliction of life that each one of us knows very well is not self-inflicted. It is the essential nature of us human beings. True and lasting happiness can just result from avoiding these afflictions which means striving for indolence.
Indolence obviously feels as good as afflictions and pains feel bad.
Joys and Pleasures
Aristotle already knew that all the things which seem to be so decisive and essential for us humans can be divided up into three categories:
1) What we are
2) What we possess and
3) What others think about us
Reflecting to my own personal issues and priorities in life I can consciously agree to this classification. I haven’t found anything yet that couldn’t have been subordinated to one of these terms. What do you think? Does this list meet your personal list of things that are important for you in your life?
Now the problem is that most of us tend to seek for their personal happiness in category 2 or 3 or even both of them. They strongly emphasize things that belong to this category. They’ve already learnt during their childhood that there are things like jobs, cars, houses, clothes or other status symbols that can turn them into happy and confident adults.
They should possess these things in order to achieve happiness and to be appreciated by others. Category 2 and 3 go hand in hand in this context.
But this is the most dangerous fairy tale in our society. The truth is: there doesn’t exist anything in this universe that can bring us lasting happiness.
(Or have you ever seen a happy man wearing a Levi’s jeans? 
)
Happiness and joy are deceits based upon anticipations of the future. They’re just illusions. They’re not real. You feel something like joy in a certain moment when you think you’ve found something that takes your afflictions and pains away for the rest of your life.
But you will never find such a thing because it simply doesn’t exist in this world.
Ignoring these insights people do something very strange: they lead their afflictions back to the unfulfillment of a certain wish. According to this they work hard and try to fulfill it.
After having fulfilled this certain wish they feel happy for a period of time; just until they recognize that this underlying painful feeling of everlasting affliction has not disappeared. It was just predominated for a while. So they lead their afflictions back to another wish etc.
Very often this process is combined with increasing claims.
The more they try to realize their wishes the more they want to possess.
For a very rich man the cancelation of a golf tournament might be a catastrophe while the poor man is looking for something to eat and defines joy certainly in quite a different way.
This is the reason why the nature of pleasures and joys is rather negative. Pleasures and joys are deceits and lead to a spiral of increasing claims and wishes. They are disturbing your peace and confidence.
What should we do ?
Philosophy and religion have something in common: they try to help people to accept the world as it is. Philosophy uses the human ability to think logical and reasonable. Religion uses the human ability to believe in something. But either way both disciplines try to explain the world to us how it is, how it should be and what humans need in order to receive salvation and redemption in some way.
But this big commonness is exactly what we need in order to become happier people.
We must accept our imperfect life with all its afflictions and pains at first.
This allows us to have an unambitious view at our reality. Afterwards we should strive to avoid these afflictions and pains as far as possible. We can do this most effectively by becoming decent and frugal personalities.
We should accept that there are no profane goods that could make us really happy.
Simultaneously we should work on every issue that belongs into category 1 that means everything that determines what we really are.
These are things concerning our mind, attitude, beliefs, character, personality: Everything that touches us directly.
All the other indirect issues, aspects or topics of life are secondary and not worth bothering with them.
We should willingly do what we can and suffer what we must instead of running from one disappointment into the other seeking for something that does not exist.
This attitude leads you to an enduring serenity which is the real manifestation of happiness.
I feel really okay right now. And you?
Related Articles
- How To Gain More Self-Discipline
- The Hidden Gate To Reality
- How to Stop Your Flow of Thoughts
- How To Create Effective Images In Your Mind
- How To Use Your Subconscious Mind
