28. All Suffering is Born of Desire

When the sense of distinction and separation is absent, you may call it love. Harmony between the inner and the outer is happiness. On the other hand, self-identification with the outer causes suffering.

The self by its nature knows itself only. For lack of experience whatever it perceives it takes to be itself. Real cause of suffering is self-identification with the limited.

Sensations as such, however strong, do not cause suffering. It is the mind bewildered by wrong ideas, addicted to thinking: 'I am this' 'I am that', that fears loss and craves gain and suffers when frustrated.

Life is so full of contradictions because it serves to break down mental pride.

We must realise how poor and powerless we are. As long as we delude ourselves by what we imagine ourselves to be, to know, to have, to do, we are in a sad plight indeed. Only in complete self-negation there is a chance to discover our real being.

The false self must be abandoned before the real self can be found. The concrete need not be the real, the conceived need not be false. Perceptions based on sensations and shaped by memory imply a perceiver, whose nature you never cared to examine. Give it your full attention, examine it with loving care and you will discover heights and depths of being which you did not dream of, engrossed as you are in your puny image of yourself.

You must be serious, intent, truly interested. You must be full of goodwill for yourself. You are all the time destroying yourself, and your own, by serving strange gods, inimical and false. By all means be selfish - the right way. Wish yourself well, labour at what is good for you. Destroy all that stands between you and happiness. Be all - love all - be happy - make happy. No happiness is greater.

All suffering is born of desire. True love is never frustrated. How can the sense of unity be frustrated? What can be frustrated is the desire for expression. Such desire is of the mind. As with all things mental, frustration is inevitable.

Love is a state of being. Sex is energy. Love is wise, sex is blind. Once the true nature of love and sex is understood there will be no conflict or confusion. Without love all is evil. Life itself without love is evil. You are love itself - when you are not afraid.