Happiness and Suffering
“Any happiness we feel over the pain that someone else goes through — regardless of who or why — insures we remain a blind prisoner of the fact that hidden within our present idea of happiness also lies the source of our suffering.” Guy Finley
I thought that this was very interesting. I have always thought that the smile hidden deep inside when we see “karma” come into someone’s life was me being small. That I was “happy” because they were reaping the harvest of their bad seeds. I thought it made me feel good because it meant that my keeping all of the rules paid off.
Yet this is showing that some if not all of this smallness inside of me is related to the thought that somehow I developed the belief that you can’t have good without the bad. That the flip side of happiness is suffering, and that experiencing happiness itself guarantees that I will also have suffering.
Maybe this is why some people are afraid of being happy – because they believe that it will be taken away and that suffering will take its place? This is probably the source of the sayings such as, “it is better to love, and lose than to never have loved at all” – and similar thoughts come from. That if we are experiencing anything positive and good, that the negative will follow to take it away.
So instead of being a blind prisoner we can examine our thoughts the next time that this happens to us, to see what is underneath the surface. If this is keeping you a prisoner you can work this belief loose and free yourself from it. Knowledge is power and holds the key to our freedom, if we take the time to examine the layers beneath the surface.
