There is a fundamental misconception and often unconscious misconception in human beings. We believe that the world has the ability to make us happy, but this is being withheld from us. And that we regard that as a personal insult that life is doing to us.

 Why is life withholding happiness from me?  Why all these things always happen to me?  Because it’s not happening to others!

 You read their Facebook posts!  They’re all happy!

They’re eating meals. You see pictures of meals. And then you see their happy faces. And not only are they happy, they’re also so good looking..  Everybody’s good looking. What we forget is that it’s the technology of filters and stuff. Everyone can look beautiful using technology.

So people watch that and said wow, these people’s lives are so great.

 My mind is so awful. And then you also pretend to be happy. Because everybody else is pretending.

So, the misconception is, “The world is here to make me happy, but it’s not doing it.”

 And this is a very serious misconception because it makes your whole life miserable.

Because that  means  something  that should be happening is not happening in my life.  It’s just not happening.

But of course, that misconception is that the world is here to make you happy, and it can’t do that. It’s not here to make you happy, it’s here to make you conscious, to awaken you.

Then you realize, ” I was wrong all along. I’ve been complaining uselessly for all these years . I’ve been complaining uselessly for 40 years that’s there’s something wrong with the world.”

But there wasn’t anything wrong at all. Because the world is here to awaken me.

If humans are not challenged, or why just humans, any life form, only grows through being challenged, which means encountering  obstacles and difficulties in their process of growth.

Even plants and animals, all encounter diffficulties. Every life form is precarious, its existence is precarious, and it encounters obstacles to its unfoldment. And that, ultimately, is how evolution happens. Through encountering difficulties, obstacles, challenges.

 Because as you encounter the obstacles and challenges, they seem to block you. And you think life would be much better if I did not have these challenges. But it wouldn’t because you would go to sleep if you did not have challenges.  So having challenges brings about an influx of energy on whatever level, even if it’s physical. And every organism gains new strengths by attempting to overcome these limitations. If you want to become physically stronger, you have to exercise.

( Unless you have a job that is physically hard working andforces you to exert yourself physically. )

Otherwise you have to exercise if you want to grow stronger. You have to lift weights. How does that feel at first? It feels painful. You are making life difficult for your body. Because your body is not going to grow stronger unless you make your the body’s life difficult. Your body would be so relaxed sitting on the on the sofa and watching Netflix. But it’s not going to grow stronger. It’s actually getting weaker because it’s not being challenged. But challenge it, and then there is a demand for added energy and this  just operates on the physical level and there’s a moment when there’s a gap. Exerting yourself and the energy isn’t there yet, so it’s very hard, but at some point the energy comes flooding in because there was a demand for it. And at that point you may actually begin to enjoy the physical movement because of this added energy and suddenly,  strength is increasing and this is just on the physical level. But it can also operate on a psychological level and on a spiritual level.

When you become very unhappy in your life then there is a possibility that the unhappiness causes you to awaken because at some point you realize either because you had a spiritual teacher or  even in some people it happens spontaneously.

The psychological suffering that humans undergo can at some point bring about an awakening when you just can’t stand it anymore.

 And something snaps and suddenly an awakening happens. But it would not have happened if you hadn’t gone through those sometimes years of suffering.

People tell that they  would not have understood the spiritual books or open to anything spiritual if they  had not experienced a serious, very serious illness or an accident or some deep loss in their personal lives.

There would not have been an opening if you had not gone through that suffering. And at some point the suffering awakens you. And really the ultimate purpose of suffering is to awaken.

And then you realize that most suffering is actually unnecessary. It’s actually created by the ‘conditioned entity’- ‘unconscious thought processes’ . Physical pain isn’t suffering. Suffering is a psychological phenomenon. This suffering, can be transcended. If you awaken, you transcend. In other words, you transcend unhappiness. You are no longer unhappy.

 The mind loses its power to make you unhappy because most of your unhappiness is created by the ‘unconscious thought processes’ , not situations. Most of unhappiness is created not by difficult situations that you encounter, but what your mind is  telling you about the difficult situations.

The situation itself is as it is. Then you impose an interpretation on it. The interpretation says this should not be happening. This is awful. Why always to me? Why, why did he do that? That causes the unhappiness and strengthens the fictitious self. is the commentary, the interpretation. And it is an amazing realization that most of your unhappiness is ‘created’!. by your mind.

As you become more present, unhappiness  disappears from your life.

Is it saying  that you will then always be happy? No. It’s not so. Obviously even as your unhappiness leaves you and you become more present, situations arise where you cannot say that you’re happy. Somebody close to you dies. Your father, your mother, or even a child or somebody or something very bad. An accident happens to someone you and you can’t say  I’m still happy.. Sadness will come. And yet, you are not consumed by the sadness. It comes as a wave. And you may weep because somebody close to  you died. There’s still a substratum of peace underneath it.

It may not be called happiness, but it’s deeper than that. There is an all abiding peace underneath it, although there may be tears on the surface.  And you don’t perpetuate emotional pain by continuously thinking about it for months and years. It comes as a wave and then it subsides and even when it’s there, there is still a presence of quietness that you can sense underneath it.

From the talks of Echkart Tolle, the German born spiritual teacher.