Dissatisfaction

 

On Page 9 of his book, The Passionate State of Mind, Eric Hoffer writes of inner self-deception and self-dissatisfaction, and how that plays out in people’s lives. I quote his two entries and then respond to them.

 

 

Hoffer (H after this): “             5

 

It is strange how the moment we have reason to be dissatisfied with ourselves we are set upon by a pack of insistent desires. Is desire somehow an expression of the centrifugal force that tears and pulls us away from an undesirable self? A gain in self-esteem usually reduces the pull of the appetites, while a crisis of self-esteem is likely to cause a weakening or a complete breakdown of self-discipline.

 

Asceticism is sometimes a deliberate effort to reverse a reaction in the chemistry in our soul: by suppressing desire we try to rebuild ad bolster self-esteem.”

 

My response: If we are dissatisfied with ourselves, our feelings of personal worthlessness are telling us that it is right for us to feel so bad about ourselves. It seems as if our trampled, mauled conscience deep inside is communicating to our surface consciousness as felt passion, that we cannot disguise our self-loathing from ourselves. We are born bad and feel bad about ourselves, but if we take up our cross, self-realize and serve the good deities, then our merited sense of self-esteem or self-satisfaction will lead to these feeling of inner pain and uneasiness to disappear, to be replaced by feelings of contentment and love for the self, for others, for the universe and for the good deities.

 

It seems that H has identified the accrual of and pursuit of a clump of insistent desires as a substitute investment of our time and energy to enable us to run away from a self that we cannot stand to be aware of or listen to.

 

 

 

 We are and should loathe ourselves if we fail to obey God, because then we actually are detestable and contemptible for our moral and spiritual failing to embrace the self, one’s cosmic and social adult duties, and get on with completing them while growing in love, talent, knowledge and wisdom along the way. If we have no self-esteem or inner satisfaction, our self-disgust leads us to sinful indulgence, but that makes us even more distant from goodness and right-living, so the self-contempt will then grow by leaps and bounds. This feelings of unhappiness and uneasiness will become anger, rage, and resentment, and we could then commit great evils against the world as yet another attempt to be rid of the self and these bad inner feelings.

 

We could be ascetic to improve self-esteem, or we could lead a life of moderated hedonic pleasure while self-realizing, for the latter method alone will restore self-satisfaction.

 

 

 

H: “      6

 

To believe that is we could have had this or that to be happy is to suppress the realization that the cause of our unhappiness is our inadequate and blemished selves. Excessive desire is thus a means of suppressing our sense of worthlessness.”

 

My response: His wisdom and knack for grasping psychological truth, and then capsulizing it in a few, sharp, tight words is a large part of Hoffer’s appeal.

 

We will only find happiness if we live as God intended for us to live, as living angels growing God’s kingdom here on earth. Either we serve God as the sole means of really being able to esteem may ourselves, so we can finally enjoy life and ourselves in inner peace and contentment. If we elect to stay self-dissatisfied and to double-down by serving Lucifer increasingly and permanently, then we will and should forever hate ourselves and work for Sa as his living devils, now our sense of self-dissatisfaction is very deep and ineradicable. Our pain and suffering will then never end, let alone abate with time. Hell is not a place to find assurance and comfort.

 

Indulging our appetites and chasing materialistic gems will delay the day of reckoning for a while, but our inner self will feel the hurt, the dissatisfaction passionately.

 

Alternatively, if and when our inner selves are noble and whole, we esteem ourselves, and then secondary sources of happiness may be indulged in.

 

 When we sport a rotten, sinful consciousness all our lives, no substitute can bring us lasting happiness; or conquer the nagging feeling of inner dissatisfaction.