Find The Missing Key To Enlightened Living GF Live 1-31-26

Learn to be still and listen: the less you have to say about life, the more Life will speak to you, and start telling you things that ears can’t hear.

We have not been created to interpret the revelation of creation…let alone make ourselves captive of an unconscious nature whose identification with its own limited perception makes it, in turn, a prisoner of its own false conclusions. Rather, who we are in reality – our True Nature – is part of Great Creation itself… endowing us, by grace, to share in its Eternal Revelation.

The reaction OF LIFE, including our part in its revelation is -- the real mandala: the silent awareness of all that has created it…is (the) experience; which means that the so-called experiencer of any moment is as unreal as is a shadow born of the light that creates its temporary existence. Anything that is carried over from this revelation of “God’s Now”…is “dead on arrival.” When the seer and the seen are one, two is seen for what it is: an illusion.

Transcript

I think that it's important to state at the outset that what I'm going to present to you at the beginning here, It's going to require some attention on your part. I understand some of these ideas are difficult to grasp. Even the language can seem foreign at times, But you know, If you were to travel to a new country because you were drawn to what you had seen or heard about it, You would enter that new country a stranger in a strange land, So to speak. And so it is when it comes to the language, The lessons that are involved in the revelation of another world within you, A higher world, Another order of kingdom, That you must learn the language. The beauty of it is that the language lays dormant in you. It isn't that it has been created specifically to confuse you, But rather to eventually bring you into a relationship with another kingdom where the language isn't just known, It is practiced. So with that said, Katie, Let's bring up the talk title and we can get into our material of which there is an abundance today. The title for our material is Find the Missing Key to Enlightened Living. I'm not going to make a big deal out of the title, It's not necessary, But whatever it is that you and I have always imagined as enlightened living needs to be enlightened, Which is what we're going to do together today. So let's get into it. Here's the first key lesson, Kate, If you'll bring it up and we'll start the material. Learn to be still and listen. The less you have to say about life, The more life will speak to you and start telling you things that ears can't hear. We're often told, You know, When you're young, Experience is our greatest teacher. That wisdom as needed naturally follows what happens to us and that if we have enough experience we'll gain enough wisdom and we will finally be free of the problems that seem not just to follow us but sometimes pursue us through this life. But what if, And it's an important question I'll ask you, What if this assumption about experience as the teacher, What if that's not true? What if there's a misunderstanding inherent in the conveyance of this long-held tradition, This idea? And I would argue with you if you would allow me to use the word that experience proves that experience doesn't teach us anything. Experience seems to provide a momentary platform where we look at the moment and we say, Oh my God, Now I understand. And then within a heartbeat, Whatever it was within us that understood what it did in that moment, It fades into the background and steps forward to this nature that is ready to repeat the reactions, The relationships and boom, We have the same experience again. I'll ask you, I will as I often do, Is that not true or not? That we love to think experience changes us but the fact is that if experience changes, For if the experience, I can remember one when I was a boy, A young man or a teenager or whatever and I did this unconscionable thing. I treated a creature, Not a human being, A dog that I love deeply with this cruelty because it wasn't behaving the way it was supposed to behave and I lost my temper. I didn't strike the creature but I had such remorse at that point that I had done some inestimable damage to the spirit of that creature that it's carried forward through these years with me to where I look at life and my relationships by and large through that same lens. I don't want to damage anything and I've had so many experiences where afterwards I can see, God, That was damaging. Why didn't experience teach me? Do you understand the point I'm making here before I go to the next point? So what if what we call experience, As we understand it, Is not the guide we imagine it to be? Because experience is always reflective, Isn't it? I look back on the experience and then sort through what happened and derive whatever it is that I'm supposed to do the next time except when the next time comes, Whatever it was that gained that experience has walked off stage and I've left there struggling to figure out what to do again and again and again. What if we understand or at least that what we call experience is not something that we can count on but rather is something that for counting on it in the moment when the lesson comes takes us out of the actual moment of the lesson and leaves us subject once again to this nature that acts as it does with its cruelty, Its violence, Its greed, Its ambition. That's what we're setting the stage with. Everybody tracking with me. We'll get into it now. So imagine three people, Three different ages. They're on a nature walk and they there are somewhere, I don't know where else out here, I'm not in Oregon anymore, But there's these beautiful national forests with these massive sequoia trees, These redwoods. So the three of them walk up to this 2, 000-year-old tree and if we could see inside the mind of these three people, We would see very clearly that there are three distinct experiences, Three experiencers of the same experience. The experience is the massiveness of this tree, The sentience in it, As I would see it. But one of them, Maybe one person would go, God, That is awesome. Another person's looking at it and go, God, Isn't it awful that climate control is going to kill all of these things? And if only that, And then their mind gets into a political conversation. So one person is in proper awe, Another is in an awful state, Caught up in comparing how things should be, And another person's looking at the tree and they're angry. And why are they angry? Because the tree reminds them of a time when their father didn't build them the tree house or something fell and destroyed, Whatever it was. So three people in front of the same experience, But three different experiencers so not all are having the experience in the same way. Do you see that with me that much? Yes. And if we were to engage these three people, It might be, If you're looking at something else, That they would argue over the experience. They would fight with they not to prove that their experience of the moment is different than and should be seen in the same light that you should see it. And if you don't, We're going to have a war. We're going to fight. And so all arguments come out of the fact that there is the fact of an experience. And then there is the experiencer, The person that makes out of the impression from that moment, Something very personal to themselves, And then proceeds through all of their relationships that follow to push the point that proves their experience is the right one. Yes. So in this, We have evidence, If you're with me, That what we actually experience in the moment is not the event itself. The event is me, You, Before an open bay, Before a massive sequoia, Before a person with an angry face. But something in us takes that moment, The experiential moment, The experiential moment in which there is no one separate from the experience, And makes of it something that we then say is the event. But what we experience now, To the point of this introduction, Is not the event. I know this is going to be challenging to some of you. And honestly, By the grace of God, You will see what only the grace of God can open in a man's heart, In a woman's eyes. That what we call this constant experience of life, Isn't the experience of life at all. The experiencer, The man or woman there, Is having the experience of what happens when, And I'll go slowly now, There is a reaction, A reaction between what is. The wind is blowing. It can't not blow. It can't change its own temperature, If only you had a thermostat you could control. The wind is blowing. You can think of it in a manner of speaking as the active will of nature, As endowed by heaven to reconcile itself. There is the will of what is, The will of heaven, And then there is the will of what was. And the will of what was is what this will that is active is acting on. So you have active, And you have something that is being acted on. And we must learn to realize that what is being created in that moment, As these two wills meet, One timeless, One in time, Is transforming what is in time. The world that you look out and see with your eyes is never not in a stage of transformation, Because it is never not being acted on in such a way to reconcile the greater whole to what is requiring it to continue to be harmonized to itself. I hope you could follow that. So here's the point. Here's this reaction. We can see it's taking place, And we look out at nature and we understand that this reaction that we are having, Or that we see taking place, Always comes with a largely unrealized, I'll use the word impersonal awareness of this disturbance in the field of forces that are created by the forces themselves. Let me show you. The awareness of a reaction is itself still. The awareness of a reaction is the awareness of the movements of what is forceful and what is being acted on. But the awareness itself, Like the light that has everything moving through it, Is not moved by what it is reflecting. This awareness of a reaction is actually belongs to another order of intelligence in which the forces responsible for that reaction are reflected. Think of the surface of a lake and how that still surface of the lake reflects the sky and the clouds above it. Everything can move into and through that reflection, But the waters themselves are not moved by all of the reactions creating the reality that it reflects. But key here to our understanding, And I hope I've not lost you, Is that this awareness more than just reflecting this reaction, It is at the same time reconciling everything that is moving into and through it in a way that the forces themselves can't. Here, You say something, You're active, I receive it, I'm passive, I have a reaction. Now, Certainly what you're saying doesn't bring up in me awareness by itself, And certainly my reaction, The resistance isn't awareness itself, But suddenly I can be aware of the fact that you have said this, And this is unfolding in me. The awareness is not just what's unfolding, The awareness holds what is unfolding and what is stirring it into that state, So that this awareness is actually a relationship to all of these reactions and their subsequent states that allows us to see there is the possibility of something that is capable of seeing all of this tumult, All of this disturbance, And understanding that the disturbance which we can see in nature, It settles itself. I've told so many different stories about how the grandfather invites the granddaughter and there's this massive storm she's never seen before, She's afraid, He says let's watch, And they sit together and they see how the storm comes, The storm goes, And everything is made new and fresh, Everything has been reborn, So that there is no storm that doesn't come into a situation that doesn't already contain the elements that will not only settle what it is unsettled, But reveal for that disturbance something deeper, Beautiful, And more perfect. This understanding of the nature of these stormy reactions of this so-called experience that we keep having can be understood in a new light where we start to see, Well, If it's true that nature settles herself, Not only settles herself, But you take a great fire passing through an ancient forest, Some pine cones won't even sprout without those flames, Without that heat. So we can see, Yeah, This all settles itself, But when we look out there, Even though we may see or know some of that is true, Why don't we look inside of our lives and see, You know what, I wonder if that's true, As above, So below. If that's true out there, Why isn't it true in here? Why is it that whatever the storm may be, God help me, That thing starts, It blows, It gets bigger, And then it blows itself out. It doesn't change anything. What it does is crystallize the part of ourselves that will be more adamant the next time that something happens that we don't like. So we have this lower nature, If you're following me. We have a lower nature that can't see what truth talks like this help us see, What maybe we can experience when we're in nature. We love nature because we just sit there and let it tell us its story. And its story is the moment-to-moment experience of everything that is producing that beauty that we are now a part of. Because we're not apart from that beauty in quotes trying to experience it or remembering the experience after its past. Imagine a person who sees this beautiful rainbow, And instead of enjoying the phenomena of the elements that has produced it, Instead goes into thinking about, Whoa, What a great rainbow. He's not with the rainbow anymore. He's in a mind that has blown through itself certain sensations that are familiar that he loves, And he calls those sensations of the past the present moment. Do you see that? So here we are in a nature that can't see what is actually taking place because it believes that it is life itself. It doesn't experience life. The life it experiences is itself as it weighs and measures the reaction it has to what is unfolding around and within it. So it believes because it is sure that it must keep life the way it's supposed to be, And it knows by God because its experience tells it what must be. It believes that it is responsible for settling anything that disturbs it. And that's how it meets moments that it doesn't want. Because being outside of life as it is, It isn't just blind to the nature of these interacting forces that are producing the revelation of experience itself. No, It's blinded by its own reactions to that reaction it's having. And when this happens, Yes or no, It goes, Oh my God, What does that mean? Oh my God, How could this happen? How could this happen to me? Innocent me, Loving me, Kind me, Generous me, How could I be treated like this by the world and the people in it? And by the way, I'm not saying that the people in this world aren't cruel and don't punish one another, But they do so because that's what they believe will settle the moment that they're complicit in creating. Let me go back to the start. I'm trusting you're still following me. And the moment that happens, Yes or no, How many of you love that feeling of, Oh my God, No, What is it? I'm not going to do it. Will I ever get there? Does anybody like that feeling? Or is it horrible? It's a horrible experience to suddenly feel like somehow or other, Everything about life has converged on me for the purpose of creating a conflict that now, Because of this disturbance, I'm going to have to start struggling to save myself from again. That's called hell. It's actually a form of purgatory. Not that the world itself is purgatorial, But because the mind that makes of this world what it does is itself purgatory. So yes or no, Terrible. How could this happen to me? And the minute that happens, And one day you will actually see something in you like some kind of insect eating flower. You'll see something in your nature close in. It'll close in on an idea, A thought, A belief, Something that's explaining the moment. It'll close in on it. And in that moment, The identification trap is sprung just like that. Oh no. Oh, I can't. I'm not ready. Just like that. And when that identification trap is sprung, I'm trusting you can remember this feeling. You know this feeling. We're not trying to bring up ideas. We're looking at experience. What happens in the moment when that self fly trap, The stickiness catches us? What happens? In that same moment, We see ourselves not just being the center of that moment, Because after all, Look at everything that's going on around me. But what is it that's going around me in that moment other than these conditioned reactive thoughts and feelings whirling around out of control? And then try to get this picture. Ever seen those game shows? I don't know if they have them anymore. I don't wouldn't know. But they put a man or a woman in a big glass cage, And then they set off this blower, And all these dollars and hundred dollar bills are flying around the person. And he gets to keep as much as he can catch. You ever seen that? People are so frantic, Like their whole life depends on catching that bill. Well, Just like that, As all of these thoughts and feelings are starting to whirl around this new temporary center called self, That nature is trying to grab, Recognize the most significant string of thoughts and feelings, Because it's looking for a way to define itself and know what to do with that condition it has been complicit in creating. And so it derives the meaning of that moment from whatever it can grab as it's blowing around it, Inside of it. Is that picture clear enough? I want you to see how frantic that is. No one wants to think of himself or herself as being a frantic human being. Frantic is a pretty good description of the human mind, Living in a constant fear of a condition, The experience of which it creates and then tries to resolve by catching and clinging thoughts and feelings that are part of the problem. And so without knowing it, Moving along, We become identified with whatever this subsequent set of conditioned thoughts and feelings, These very familiar sensations. And what are we doing with these thoughts and feelings, These familiar sensations? We're analyzing, We look for them, We hope that that thought about, If I could just get you like this, If I could just get that done, If I could just get through this moment, We cling to that thought as something that's going to rescue us from what? That's what we don't see. We're hoping it will rescue us from this unwanted experience of ourself that our lower nature, This self just created. And that's why it never ends. And that's why experience as it's understood is not the way in which we learn the lesson. Our present experience ensures the lesson of the moment is lost. Because we find in ourselves the reasons for this moment we don't want. Failing to see the moment we don't want doesn't exist without the nature that has created it. I'll pause for a second. Everybody's still tracking. So now a little transition. So what is it that we're actually trying to escape? What is it we're actually trying to escape? Think of something. Oh, You know, I've got this relationship with this, This problem in the past. I've got this thing coming up, Whether it's 10 minutes or 10 days down the road. What is it that I'm trying to escape? All of this fervent activity, This so-called experience of something set against me. What am I actually trying to escape? Now listen, Well, The mind says, Well, I'm trying to escape this, That, Or the other, And it can name it. And it does. But here's the thing. The moment that we blame for this pain or anxiety, The thought that came up that triggered all the rest of the dominoes and dragged us down that strange road where we find ourselves struggling to get to be this or get in that same moment, The moment that was an experience is long gone. The actual experience of that moment is gone, But what lingers is that nature that we believe is the experiencer. The experience, Look, Can you see the, The, The experience is gone. It's gone. You look at the tree here, I'm looking at a palm tree. The, The, It's moving. Oh God, It shouldn't be moving. But me not wanting it to move in the, The one experience, It doesn't stop at the thing. The movement is perfect. It's constant. So what we look at and call a moment is not the moment we continue to experience. What we continue to experience is the moment that this nature has made out of that experience so that it can be the experiencer struggling to escape what it's creating and has created out of that relationship. This is important stuff I'm telling you. I hope that you can hear it. This is why, Whether you know the name or not, Immanuel Kant, He wrote a long time ago, Experience is the mother of illusion. Experience is the mother of illusion. Not because experience itself is false, But because it is the mother of illusion. It is shaped and made to feel real and continuous by an unconscious nature that's interpreting it so as to bring an end to the disturbance that it has registered because it sets against whatever it imagines is the necessary conclusion of that moment. I don't know if you've noticed this. You end a conversation and it doesn't end well. That's not the end of the conversation, Is it? You do something and that's not the end of what you did. No, I'm going to, My mind's going to go back and it's going to think about it and it's going to regret all the stuff that it said and did and why was it like that? So the experience where I would have maybe could have seen in that quiet awareness, The nature that was acting and acting out in my name, That moment is replaced by something that comes in and wants to make a me. Wants me to be the center of that moment. You're superfluous to it. You're involved in the situation, But by and large, I'm the one who must create and otherwise restore what has been disturbed. When the only thing that is disturbed, We should have sweatshirts, Human beings, Danger disturbed. We don't understand that this nature continues all the time to be the experiencer of something that it continues to keep in place so that that sense of self as the center of the universe can remain continuous. Are you following me? I know it's deep. I hope you can hear some of it anyway, Because we're moving on to a very important point. If you can see any of this is true, And I assure you all of it's true and far deeper than that. If this level of experience arises as it does within a closed psychological system, Within the darkness of a closed psychological system, Then no amount of experience of that experience can liberate that system. So, This experience, Which is really this experiencer ensuring that the experience, Imagine something wanting to continue the experience of what it doesn't want. It doesn't care what it does to itself or anyone else. What matters is that it consistently can struggle with trying to figure out how to liberate itself from the experience that it has made and continues to make the more it doesn't want that. This is what makes the idea of awareness, Higher awareness, Mindfulness, The idea of a quiet witness, Of an observer impartial. It's what makes it so important because if you understand, You can relive a moment for a million years and it will never change one thing about your presently unconscious nature that ensures its continuity by reliving an experience. Try to see the depth and breadth of how pernicious this is. I know nobody wants me to say certain things. Why do you think people are glued to their iPhones or their whatever their handheld devices are? Always revisiting pictures, Always remembering something from the past. And by the way, Inextricably experiencing some form of pain that appears with the pleasure of a recollection of constituted sense of self. Because it can't stand by itself. This is interesting. It can't stand by itself because it can't stand itself. And because it can't stand itself, It has to find some new self that will stand by it. That's all a fact. So if there is the possibility of what we would call enlightenment, Transformation, It is not going to come from repeated experiences and reflecting on them and hoping that we can revise ourselves through the retrospection of that moment, But rather understanding that there is no retrospection required in the experience of a moment. The moment speaks for itself. And what the moment speaks is what God has willed. And what God has willed is that everything continually be brought into this matrix of reaction and revelation so that everything can be as it's intended to be reborn. Because at the root of what is true experience is rebirth. Because experience is not separate from all that is unfolding in that moment to bring about the beginning of something new as that which is old passes. So if you can see with me to any extent of all, That transformation is not going to come from all of these different experiences. And I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I'm going to have to go on a little bit longer than usual here. Because I am not saying by any stretch of the imagination that experience in and of itself is invaluable, Because it is. But the value of experience is gradually to help a person understand, I'm so hungry for experience. I don't care where I go, What I do. I don't care any bit about this. Because what starts as a natural need, The nascent soul, How else is it going to discover the qualities that God has imbued it unless through the relationships that it explores. And so this nascent nature, This relatively unconscious self struggling to come into the light that reveals the content of itself to itself, The only way it knows the content of itself is through relationship, Is through the experience of relationship. And so it seeks experience. But at some point an individual must recognize there must come an end to this need to seek experience as the way in which I find and define myself. Because no matter what the experience is, By which I am defined, Or which by I in quotes learn about myself, It is still not the change of the nature that doesn't have to look for experience, Because it is the crown of experience itself. How can you separate experience from awareness? And if awareness is pure and silent in the moment that experience is revealed through it, Then what would be the difference? And then you'll see there is none. So what we think of as the experiencer, We think of ourselves as being the experiencer. And I'm trying to get you to see the experiencer, The commentator, Is outside of this timeless holy moment. Why? Because awareness does not react. Reactions take place, Unfold, And are released into this awareness. And in this awareness, Their energies are reconciled. And in the stillness of this observation, The authority of experience dissolves. I don't need an authority anymore. Experience is my authority. It brings into it all that needs to be understood. It settles everything that hasn't been, Because now it's revealed as the source of the suffering. And the action that's taken in experience is out of experience. And that's the end of that moment and on to the continual experience of what is true and divine. I better keep going. Kate, Let's bring up the second key lesson, Please. Read along with me, Everybody. This is a bit of a summary. We have not been created to interpret the revelation of creation, Let alone make ourselves captive of an unconscious nature whose identification with its own limited perception makes it in turn a prisoner of its own false conclusions. Rather, Who we are in reality, Our true nature, Is part of great creation itself, Part of the creator himself endowing us by grace to share in its eternal revelation. These things remain posted. Copy them if you have any inclination at all to let them go deeper. So now, Let's recover. Yes, We've agreed experience has values, But experience has limits. I've described them. At a certain point, A young man goes to an amusement park, And he has the experience of discovering certain parts of himself as he interacts with some kind of interactive ride. But at a certain point, He has explored those parts and he realizes this ride no longer has any meaning for me. But in the scheme of things in this world, He'll find another ride. What if it is so and I assure you that it is at some point we realize that pursuing and trying to prove who I am to myself or anyone else through experience is a dead end. But it's only a dead end when I fail to realize that the problem isn't in the experience, But in the residue of experience. The pain isn't in the purity of that moment. The pain is in the rehashing of what a mind makes of that moment to prove or disprove itself as the knower of it. So when we start to understand that this awareness that I'm describing to you stands free of, I don't even like those words, This awareness itself, The third force in a way that it is, That within which all of this experience unfolds, Then the grip of experience or all that, It loosens its hold. We begin to shake free. And we're not doing anything because we're shaking, We're being shaken, Understanding light is shaking us out of one world and bringing us into a new order within ourselves that is pure and that is an undivided experience of the revelation of the moment where we start to see as best we can that this uninvited, One day you'll see that, Right now when something uninvited, Some vicious thought, Some anxious feeling, Some angry sensation, You'll actually be present enough, This is what it means, I go before you to make the crooked places straight, You'll actually see something will be there, This living Christ, This intelligent, Timeless awareness, It'll be there and this will come in and you'll actually see, You know, Who asked for you? I might have known you and you might have had my phone number and address, But I've moved on, Beat it bud, Because you'll see when it comes in, It's trying to make an experiencer, Oh no, This is what, Ah, Now I know, And then you start to see that the experiencer of that moment, Meaning the one that reacts to the initial reaction, The experiencer is the real source of our suffering. It doesn't exist without desire, It doesn't exist without conclusions, Without demands, The experiencer, That's how it knows it doesn't want the experience, Because it compares it. And so we begin, If you're following me at all, To catch our first glimpse of a kind of a divine light that reveals everything that enters into it, And the revelation of everything entering into it is the whole experience and the end of that particular moment in which some self would be created analyzing it. Just like everything in all realms of being, Experience is not meant to be carried over. Imagine a tree in the wind, And it doesn't like the experience of something blowing through its leaves, And so it goes, No, That's it, And it freezes itself. What would happen to something that became as static and crystallized and stiff as a creation that has decided it doesn't want to participate in the experience of creation itself? And we know the answer, It will fall. It'll crack, It'll split, And when we, By the way, Fall and crack and split and shout out, It's because we are meeting another moment from that stiffness of mind and heart, The demand of the experiencer that life somehow or other corroborate what it says should constitute our reality. Okay, Let's bring up the last key lesson. It's a summary. Read along with me, Everybody. The reaction of life, Including our part in its revelation, Is the real mandala. The silent awareness of all that has created it is the experience. Don't go past this point, Because I want to convey something that is probably impossible to convey. You all know the mandalas you watch sometimes in Eastern traditions, Where they create these beautiful, Elaborate images on the ground. Each and every one of these images of the true mandalas represents some part of the greater cosmic scheme of the divine intelligence that is responsible for the movement of yin and yang, All of that in this drawing and colored dust. And part of the discipline, At least as it was in the days of these mandalas, Was that as soon as it was finished, It would be swept away. A reaction is swept away when we don't cling to it. It settles itself. The reaction of life is the real mandala. It's here. It fulfills the purpose. It's there in complete reflection of the whole of existence. Not the individual parts, But all the processes that produce what we experience as reality, All of that, The heaven, The earth, And the reconciling, All of it there in a reaction. And that's the real mandala. And we are intended to be towards that real mandala exactly the same way we see the so called treatment of it in this world. So the silent awareness of all that has created that is the experience, Which means the so called experiencer of any moment is as unreal as is the shadow born of a light that creates its temporary existence. Anything that is carried over from this revelation of what we can call God's now, Anything carried over is dead on arrival. The experiencer doesn't think it's dead on arrival. It was dead before it began. So that when the seer and the seen are one, Two is seen for what it is an illusion. When the seer and seen are one, When this great mandala is allowed to do what it is and to reveal and produce the experience of this revelation of the divine life, When it is allowed to be what it is, The whole idea of two is seen as an illusion. There's always two when I'm having this. Oh, No, There's two when you shouldn't. There's two when why am I? There's two in any form of judgment. And that is the experiencer. And it needs to be seen for what it is. This is the talk. We must leave experience as it's given. We must leave experience as it's given. That experience is the entrance and the fulfillment of a life that is enlightened. You can find this, You can see this for yourself. I can't do any more than talk to you about it, Help you see what is meant to be seen. But if I were you, I wouldn't waste any time. And as best you can, At least examine that which remains after a certain experience and see how it is that I'm drawn into something that as I'm drawn into it, I'm trying to escape it. Then you'll know something of the difference between what is true experience and the nature of this experiencer that lives to continue its own unhappiness.