Why we Suffer
Finishing a Habit
Cessation requires will, but not conscious, intellectual will: "I should stop this for that reason."
Rather, will as instinct. Changing direction on a dime, as with one's revulsion at the site of a corpse. This requires no effort, no "will power". Will in its purity is power in itself.
Suffering
The reality is objective, you can see it if you care to look: we are enslaved and we are murdering each other. This is not a game. Our existence is not virtual, it is not spiritual. The actuality of our suffering is immense; beyond our concepts of good and evil or positive and negative. Our suffering is literal, not theoretical, real, and we suffer because our image of ourselves and the people around us is not real. We are under a terrible misapprehension.
What is real ?
The present moment is real. The past is not real because it is not present. All that exists in the past is not real, this includes the wealth of accumulated knowledge that we use to compose our image of the world; our perception of ourselves and those around us. Our perception is not real, it contradicts reality, so we suffer.
We suffer because there is a conflict in our mind. Suffering is the result of conflict.
The conflict is produced by the collision of incompatible information in our minds: our perception of the world vs. the reality of the world. Our perception of the world, our image of it, is what we were taught about fear, hate, evil, gender, god, romance, health, beauty, nature, happiness, cops, money, anger, success, ethics, morality, professionalism - and these are concepts (to name a tiny fraction). When these concepts are held in the mind and compounded by our seeking of their validation, they stand between us and the present moment; reality.
Since our concepts are incompatible with the information that we receive from the present moment, which is naturally relentless and unapologetic in its replinishment, we experience the strain of reconciling our old ideas with the new information, the real information; the actuality of our existence. This strain comprises our internal conflict, the source of our suffering.
Belief
Belief is a pseudo-solution to the suffering, covering dog poop in the living room with a blanket and pretending it isn't there (welcome to the Western world). Rather than discarding the concepts that do not correspond with reality, which requires honesty, we convince ourselves that our concepts actually do jive with reality. This "convincing ourselves" is belief, and there are many, many systems of belief to choose from: government, religion, philosophy, nationality, culture, science, drugs, education - to note a few. We jump from system to system, yet we continue to suffer because we are trying to force a square block into a round hole; our concepts into the actuality of our everyday existence.
"Enlightenment" is to be enlightened from the burden of belief in favor of reality, in favor of embracing the waves of epiphany and astonishment that are derived from a sober consciousness in the present moment.
The Outer Reflects the Inner
Conflict requires at least two. In the case of our mind, the two parties are represented by our concepts on the left and our reality on the right, so there is a division of our mind. Understand the absurdity: we only have one mind; one mind per human being - yet we insist on dividing it in two.
Our belief is the result of a division in our mind and our belief systems are used to create a lifestyle from the denial of actual life.
Our belief systems allow us to function in the world and this is where our internal division, our internal conflict, is vomitted over others. Our belief systems define our interactions, our relationships, and this is why we are physically enslaved, why we are actively killing off millions of human beings, and why we do not give a fuck about it. The outer world's conflict, the perpetual war, is immediately and literally reflecting our inner conflict, our inner division.
The degree of suffering in the world is exactly the degree of suffering in the individual.
Without Belief
In the absence of all artificial comfort - all belief - one is left with the actual purpose of life:
Other people
We are here to build relationships. There is simply nothing else.
Relationship is an essential nutrient that has been truncated into empty calories, or perhaps outright poison, through the process of belief.
Intention (personal)
My intention is to see the value of my relationships. Not only those which I maintain with friends and family, but every interaction I have with humanity: in person, in writing, in art. I want to grasp the capacity of relationship.
Thanks for reading