It's just life

Understand why you're unhappy and depressed

Guys, I want to start this one with a revelation. Are you ready for it? Yes, I think you are.

Life doesn't happen to you. You happen to life.

Chew on that for a couple of seconds, because it may be difficult to grasp straight away. What this means is that we are not and never have been just helpless victims of circumstances. Get this - unhappiness and depression doesn't happen to you. On the contrary, you DELIBERATELY make it happen to yourself. Yes, you heard me - when you're unhappy it's because you want to be.

"Are you saying I want to be unhappy, Eivind? Come on, are you an idiot, an arrogant pompous arse?" Yes I'm all of those, but that's besides the point. What's important now is that I'm right. And I propose that there are two ways we create unhappiness for ourselves:

The gross way
The gross way of creating unhappiness for ourselves is the way of the ego. At one point we may become so accustomed to being unhappy, to bringing ourselves down, that we install it in the mainframe of our own identity. Being happy then means being someone that we're not, so we can't allow ourselves to be happy for an extended period of time. We may get the occasional burst, but then we run the unhappiness program again to fall in line with our perceived identity. We don't need a reason to be unhappy, we just choose to be.

A few people have this unhappiness program running on most of their psychic RAM. Nearly all of us, however, have it installed on segments. These segments are what Jung referred to as shadows, parts of ourselves that we're not aware of that triggers the habitual unhappiness program.

The subtle way
The subtle way of creating unhappiness for ourselves is, unlike the gross way, really good news. This isn't triggered by our ego at all, it happens when our intuition, our inner wisdom is calling out to the ego "Pay attention! You're not living in accordance with your master plan!" This one often gets us by surprise as we may feel unhappy for no apparent reason. But there IS a reason, we just don't have enough awareness on the surface to grasp it.

I'd like to point out that this is fucking awesome guys. What this means, get this - is that when you are unhappy or depressed, it's because deep down in your subconscious mind, you know that you're not - right now - living in accordance with your highest potential. Understand that your unhappiness is the best teacher of happiness that you can ever find as it always lets you know when your current activity is other than what you REALLY want to do. So let's start paying attention to what makes us happy and what makes us miserable and gain the wisdom to let the master plan unfold before us. Our lives will never be the same again.

Take unhappiness as your teacher and watch life unfold before you

Some of you out there may feel that you're somehow special, that everyone else is happy and content whereas you feel miserable all the time. You're a worrier, but even more you are a wonderer. You also hold yourself to excruciatingly high standards and want everything to be perfect. You're looking for meaning, but somewhere along the line you ran out of steam and became chronically depressed. You my friends are the lucky ones. There are people in this world who are content to live a life devoid of any real meaning, who will never feel what it's like to have an existential crisis. They know no real problems, but they know no real happiness either. You may sometimes despise their apparent superficiality, but you would do well to honor their choice, to respect them and love them. They just chose differently. Understand, however, that your plight, the very essence of that which makes you feel different is a source of greater power than you could ever come to understand. You were never one that looked merely for comfort, you look for ecstasy and union with the very fabric of reality. You want more than material surplus, you want surplus of the spirit. Enter your depression fully, take responsibility for it (for it is the sound of your soul shouting out for you) and some years down the line, you will be on the vanguard of the social transformation that is bound to come when humanity takes the next step into the light. You, my friend, will lead us there.

Okay, so I'm about to post the first two installments, key #1 and #2 of my happiness project. I don't know how many installments I will write and I post them in no particular order of preference or importance. Understand that I do this mainly for myself and that it is not my intention to preach. I believe that writing down my life lessons will give me increased focus and incentive to stay true to these principles. Because make no mistake, I break them all the time. I promise, however, that everything I will write here is based on my own life experience. Some of the principles I've only just tasted, others I've mastered.

Even though I do this for myself, I believe that I will present some genuinely good ideas and perspectives that will most likely offer you great benefit. So I ask that you take these principles seriously.

Understand also that as this is a learning experience for myself, I may see fit to rewrite and reorganize these principles as I go along.

I hope you will find this series useful. Everything herein has changed my life

Eivind