Many people devote themselves to attaining perfect happiness, as a goal. They’re tired of being unsatisfied, and they want to be satisfied. They want to be happy and not suffer, not experience things they don’t like anymore.

The source of happiness and unhappiness is clear enough: you are a being with desires. You prefer certain experiences, beliefs, and ideas to others. You are happy when you manifest the things you desire. You enjoy those experiences and want to hold on to them. And, you are unhappy when you manifest the things you don’t desire. You suffer those experiences and want to be rid of them.

Your desires can extend over all possible types of cognition, including desires themselves. So, you might desire to structure your personality and character a particular way, and so you might have preferences about what desires you want to manifest in your mind.

At root, though, all these desires sprout from having a vision of a future you prefer, which is contrasted from your vision of a future you do not prefer.

A problem that often develops is that people become confused. They begin to think that what they don’t like is being dissatisfied, in abstract. They think they want to avoid suffering. They begin to think that what they do like is being satisfied, in abstract. They think they want to chase happiness. They start to run away from the fact that they’re running away from things. They start chasing after the state of not chasing after things.

They start to think that if they just override their normal desiring tendencies, they can manifest eternal happiness in their mind. What this desire to be happy and avoid suffering amounts to is a desire to avoid desiring. It’s a feedback loop of suffering.

What ends up happening is that the people pursuing this path gradually learn to adjust their desires. They become less and less concerned with the state of the world around them, eventually becoming unconcerned with even their own body. They exclusively develop tolerance to and disinterest in outer phenomena, because they learn to take more direct control of their own bliss. Taken further, they lose concern for wisdom v. ignorance. They lose concern for understanding their own condition. Eventually, if we imagine this process playing out over many lifetimes, such a being will enter a state of disembodied, timeless, stateless, inner bliss-button pushing. They’ll have no concerns or interests other than experiencing and maintaining their psychic bliss-drug.

But, they’ve finally hit the wall here. Do you see it? They’re still concerned with maintaining a state of psychic bliss and avoiding desires. But that itself is a desire! They’re still maintaining a sense of desire and unhappiness because they have to constantly be on the watch over their own mind and intentions to make sure they don’t go back to having desires anymore. Alas, they’ve finally come to see that their desire to be without desire is unquenchable.

At this point they have a few options:

• Either they accept a slight degree of unhappiness and desire, and realize that what they wanted was simplicity, nothingness, and dullness (and imo boringness, but maybe this is what some people are after). In that case, they will continue to live with the almost-bliss-drug in infinite nothingness.

• Or they try to attain true desirelessness by giving up their desire to be desireless and eternally blissed out. In doing so, they open themselves up to flippantly re-manifesting all sorts of possible desires, because they no longer prefer bliss to desire. Without a preference, the ever-present decision to manifest bliss v. desire will eventually recreate new desires. Thus, they unintentionally and ignorantly return to the sort of life they were running away from.

• Or, they realize that they’re quest has been futile, and they understand the inherent desirousness, and unsatisfactory nature of cognition as a sentient being. They embrace having desires and preference and stop rejecting themselves and fighting themselves.

Pleasure (as in satisfaction/gratification) is not something to seek after. Pain (as in dissatisfaction/non-gratification) is not something to run away from. Seek that which you desire, and run from that to which you are averse. Don’t knot your inner world up and get caught desiring not to desire. And then desiring not to desire not to desire. And desiring not to desire not to desire not to desire…etc. It’s a huge source of confusion and anxiety if you try to fight desire itself, if you try to get happiness or avoid suffering in themselves.

Instead, embrace yourself. Don’t fight yourself. Make your goal self-understanding. What are your desires, regarding all aspects of cognition? Is there anything about your apparent world, or about your psychic structure you desire to change? How can you most effectively manifest whatever it is that you desire? What is the path to attaining your desires? This is how you develop wisdom and, the natural byproduct of wisdom, power. Learn about your desires, and then respect your desires and practice taking responsibility for yourself by working to achieve your desires.

You’ll never attain perfect, pure happiness. There is no state of unending bliss with no desires or preoccupations. And even when you achieve whatever you desire right now, your desires are not fixed. It’s very likely that you will change your desires over the aeons, and then the new task of satisfying those desires will begin.

You cannot escape the desire-based cycle of happiness and suffering. Embrace desire. There is no escape. By embracing unhappiness and understanding it, you free yourself from the anxiety about being unhappy. You free yourself to infinitely explore your desires, to understand your desires, to accept yourself for who you are at the deepest level, rather than running from your desires, being ignorant of your desires, and rejecting who you are at the deepest level.

Sit in your unhappiness when it rises. Explore it. Don’t always run from it. Pain is a beautiful teacher. Love yourself. Take care of yourself by understanding and taking responsibility for your desires. Don’t be afraid to be in pain, and to admit you’re in pain. When you acknowledge your own pain, you can acknowledge everyone’s pain. You can acknowledge the fact that you don’t like the way certain things are, and can acknowledge that others don’t like the way certain things are.

Love your pain. Get to know it. Become friends with pain. Say “how are you, pain? Have I been neglecting you?” Love your suffering. Love your unhappiness. Love your sadness. Love your anger. Love your hatred. You’ll only make things worse if you hate your pain.

You’ll be comfortable with the fact that you’re unhappy with certain things and want to change them (or want to keep happy things the same), and you’ll be comfortable with the fact that others are unhappy with certain things and want to change them (or want to keep happy things the same). You won’t have to demand that you are always happy, or that others are always happy. Of course, your desires and their desires are different. But, you all have desires nonetheless.

Understand your desires. Love your nature as a being who desires. Don’t run from yourself. Love yourself. Take care of yourself. Focus on what you want. That’s what you always do. Just realize it. Know thyself.