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Unhappiness & Depression

by Bruce Di Marsico, 1973

The Cause of Unhappiness

The cause of unhappiness is a belief. What happens, no matter how undesirable or destructive to our life, health, desires or loves, does not cause unhappiness. The belief that we have to be unhappy is the only cause. To state it simply:

“If a person did not believe they had to be unhappy, they would not and could not be.”

We merely believe we need to have things or avoid things in order to avoid unhappiness, which we would not have to fear if we did not believe we needed to be unhappy.

What Causes Unhappiness
The Seven Understandings of All Unhappiness

1. Unhappiness is the feeling of a belief about a perceived or imagined phenomena; not an experience caused by the phenomena or anything else.

2. Unhappiness is experiencing your own believing that an event is bad and/or should not be because you believe IT causes unhappiness.

3. Believing something causes unhappiness is the very reason it seems to “cause” unhappiness.

4. Believing that something can cause unhappiness is the only cause of the fear of it. By “fear” is meant loathing, need to avoid, need to cure, need to kill or eliminate, disgust, hatred, terror, horror, repulsion, disdain and all such similar feelings.

(Fear is not a simple desire to avoid, destroy or otherwise prevent or eliminate a threat to your desire values. That attitude does not need to presume avoiding unhappiness in order to justify a simple desire.)

5. Believing someone or something is morally wrong or evil, psychologically “sick” or behaviorally inappropriate is to fear that person or thing as if it could cause unhappiness.

6. Unhappiness is fearing that unhappiness can “happen” or be caused by anything.

7. Unhappiness is believing that something is necessary, something has to be, should be, ought to be, or must be other than what it is.

When a person is believing he/she has to be unhappy, what they are believing is that they have to be unhappy because they believe they are against themselves. The belief in unhappiness is the belief in being wrong for oneself. Unhappiness, in fact, means that I believe that I do, or want, or think, or feel a way that is bad for me.

A person believes: Certain things I do not want to happen may happen or are now happening. I don’t want them to. I feel bad (and am worried or afraid now) because I “shouldn’t” be thinking negatively about my life now. Maybe I shouldn’t be not wanting what is evidently happening anyway. I am (as-if) denying reality, and that is wrong. I will be unhappy about this in the future because when certain things I do not want or do not like happen I will feel a way that is bad for me. It is wrong to expect misfortune. That is “unhappy” of me.

It doesn’t matter that if the undesirable event happens to me from circumstances out of my control, or if I think I am the cause or part of the cause; unhappiness comes as me believing that I now have proof that I am bad for myself.

“Bad for myself” means I am not really wanting for me what I “should” be wanting for me, and something can prove it. The belief is that this event “proves” it.

Basically, feeling bad means that I believe that what I do, or think, or want, or feel means I am against my own best interests. I believe these are a bad way of doing thinking, wanting or feeling. The way I am being is a bad (wrong, self-defeating) way of being.

This could be called the same as believing that I will be a way I shouldn’t be, or think a way I shouldn’t or want or feel a way I shouldn’t. If we didn't believe that we could be a way we “shouldn’t” we couldn’t feel unhappy no matter what else we felt.

All unhappiness is the fear that we have a bad attitude for ourselves. We are afraid that something proves we are bad for ourselves in the sense that we are in some way against what we are for, and for what we are against. We are afraid that we have a self-defeating attitude.

The fear that we have a bad, or self-defeating, attitude is the same as distrusting the very source or cause of our motivation. We are unhappy when we believe our very life, our heart, our self is against all that we live for; our personal happiness.

Happiness is the freedom to be as we are, however we are; richer or poorer, in sickness or in health, gaining or losing, succeeding or failing, wanting or not wanting, approving or not approving, forever. Happy is what we are and what we’ll be if we don’t believe we are wrong to be as we are.

by Bruce Di Marsico
Montclair, Saturday, July 3rd, 1993

If you’d like to have someone help you through the dialogue questions the first few times, consider working with an Option Method Master Teacher.

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