How Are Happiness and Suffering Related?
What exactly is suffering? What is its source? Does each person have some kind of fate that causes them to suffer? Can we develop without suffering? How is suffering connected to happiness?
In technical terms, suffering is the feeling of a lack of fulfillment. We feel that there are certain empty spaces within us that need to be filled in order for us to feel happy, but they are not. The feeling of suffering is necessary for us to advance in life. Every development throughout human history has occurred through the force of suffering pushing us from behind, time and again. Thanks to the feeling of suffering, we developed society, culture, science, and technology.
Today, we have reached a peak of progress and abundance. We would seemingly be expected to be happier than ever, but we are not. When we investigate why this is so, we discover that ultimately all our suffering stems from the lack of positive human relations.
We live in an age of enormous egoism. It pushes each person to elevate themselves above others, to seek more and more ways to exploit them for their own benefit, to build their success upon the downfall of others, and to derive pleasure from seeing others fall while they rise.
What determines how much a particular person suffers? Is it written in their fate? Can it be changed? In nature, nothing is accidental, and neither is anything in our lives. Everything that exists has a plan of development. This plan is concealed from us because we are unable to balance knowledge of the general plan with our individual desires, inclinations, and abilities.
If we were to develop ourselves to a level at which our participation in our individual plan was one hundred percent aligned with our participation in the general plan, then that plan would open up and become revealed to us. We would no longer interfere with its course but would become aligned with it and accompany it consciously, knowingly, and by choice. At such a level of development, we would not experience suffering, but rather pleasure from participating together with all of humanity. This is why “Love your neighbor as yourself” is the fundamental law of creation. The more a person becomes included with others and desires their well-being, the more they acquire the ability to feel the plan of development of everyone.
In the meantime, the constant fear of the unknown, of the next moment, causes a person suffering, anxiety, and distress. Our entire life is essentially one long act of self-protection, a construction of defensive walls. Knowing the plan of development would help us in this regard, because when we understand where development is leading, we can adapt ourselves to that direction in advance. We will not be taken by surprise.
In the nature around us, we see a force that develops life, gives birth, advances, and strengthens all its parts. The individual nature of each person, however, is the opposite. The excessive ego pushes us to swallow everything for ourselves alone, without limit and without consideration for anyone else.
Whether or not we are aware of our egoistic nature, it is the source of our feeling of suffering because it places us in conflict with the general force of nature.
From a broader perspective, the intensification of the ego is now bringing us to a state of existential danger. The world has become highly interconnected and interdependent, yet there is also tremendous hatred. We are like people sitting together in one boat that is approaching an abyss, unable to rise above our egoistic games in order to stop it.
Recognizing narrow egoism as the root cause threatening the future of the world is therefore extremely important. It should focus us on changing human nature as the key to changing the world. If we discover a method for changing human nature, everything will fall into place. If not, every additional technological development will only work against us, and consequently human suffering will continue to increase.
Indeed, without suffering it is impossible to reach happiness, just as without night it is impossible to reach day. But it is preferable that both suffering and happiness be purposeful, i.e., aligned with the general plan of development.
Our advanced state is one in which humanity becomes like a single association, connected and complementary, just as all of nature is an integral system operating in harmony. When we place this before us as an elevated goal, we will have the strength to overcome all the difficulties that appear along the way, and even now we will begin to experience happiness of a new degree.
Based on "New Life 232 – Happiness and Suffering" with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.