If happiness has no cause, it is the condition of having no reason to be unhappy.
I don’t understand the above so I better not comment.
Have a good day.
Don’t stop there. Freedom is not an end to be achieved . We just don’t want to work out the question.
Which is what?..
If happiness has no cause, happiness is having no reason to be unhappy.
In other words, unhappiness always has a cause.
If the mind sees that its problem is dependency, it has gone from mindless dependency to mindful dependency. It’s like what happens when a true believer realizes how irrational it is, yet can’t help but go through the motions of believing until every reason for doing so is gone.
No K is suggesting that dependency is only a result of a deeper problem, the mind’s fear of being alone, loneliness…that our dependency is the attempt to placate that fear.
As I see it, it’s worth looking into.
If you see as a fact that dependency comes from the fear of being lonely why stop there ? What is loneliness. What causes one to feel lonely?
Dan,
alone = all one (literally from the German “allein”), whole, sane
loneliness is something entirely different…
Please don’t mix up these two words
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from the Second Coming by William Butler Yates,
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
1919
(have left out the 2nd stanza - Christian rubbish)
I don’t see it as a fact but as a possibility. Is it necessary to know the “cause”? Or is all that is necessary, not to escape from the thought / feeling / image if and when it arises?
Thanks for that - I was wondering if they were Bald Eagles. It must be wonderful to live so close to such wonderful wildlife sights!
Hello Charley.
I just wanted to comment here as I’m interested in words and meaning.
The two words are different in many ways: Firstly, “alone” is an adjective while “loneliness” is a noun. Dan spoke about “the mind’s fear of being alone, loneliness” so the word “alone” was used in part of a sentence which modified the meaning of the adjective “alone” and expressed the unpleasant and strong emotion that is felt when one senses that one is or will be alone in the future (fear of being alone).
The meaning of “alone” is “having nobody else present” rather than “all one, whole, sane”, although I am sure you are right about the root word being “allein”. For example, in the sentence “He had a strong feeling of loneliness without anybody to talk to”, the writer communicates the sadness felt by the subject of the sentence at being alone. The noun “Loneliness” expresses sadness at not having company, friends etc.
Personally, I found Dan’s sentence “If my dependence is the result of the mind’s fear of being alone, a deep fear of loneliness, then if the mind is to be free of the trappings of dependence it must dissolve that fear.” completely coherent with no mixing of words.
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Yes, loneliness is hard to look at because who is looking? I’m feeling sad, despondent, because no one is the least bit interested in me and no one cares whether I live or die. And even if anyone is interested in me and cares whether I live or die, it’s for what they have to gain or lose from their relationship with me. So all of us, it seems, are living in the solitary confinement of our personal solar systems, orbiting our beliefs, isolated from everything but our thoughts and feelings about everything, including how to make our confinement more habitable.
But isn’t that dependency? Aren’t I totally dependent on my ability to think my world, my bubble, into existence and maintain its supremacy? And isn’t my thinking totally dependent on the beliefs I have formed from my experience?
Unless you’re interested in “the thought / feeling / image”, you won’t escape from it, but who’s interested in disabling their security system? Who wants to threaten the confinement they’ve toiled for decades to design. build, and maintain?
The conversation started there.
The question is : " Why do I depend psychologically on anything or anybody to be happy? "
That is the question.
Because I depend on my ability to create my own reality through imagination and belief, I am totally dependent. Dependency is all I know, is what I am.
In other words I am mentally ill to live in my own imagination.
If we look closely at Dan’s sentence, the problem was the fear of being alone. So doesn’t really matter (how others define my use of the word “alone”) there is the fear of some idea/image - my subjective relationship with some image of mine is one of fear.
“Mentally ill” is putting it euphemistically. We’re insane.