Chapter 7: The Internal StateTo correctly combine internal states with external occurrences is to know how to live intelligently.
Any event, intelligently experienced, demands its corresponding specific internal state. Unfortunately however, when re-examining their life, people think that it consists exclusively of external events. Poor people! They think that if a certain event had never happened, their life would have been better. They assume that luck abandoned them, and they lost the chance to be happy. |
They lament what is lost, bemoan that which they undervalued, and grieve as they remember old blunders and calamities.
People do not want to realize that vegetating is not living, and that the capacity to exist consciously depends exclusively on the quality of the internal states of the Soul.
Of course, it does not matter how beautiful the external occurrences of life are. If in such moments we are not in the appropriate internal state, the best events can seem monotonous, tiresome, or simply boring to us. Someone may eagerly anticipate a wedding reception. It is a special occasion, however, it could happen that one may be so preoccupied at the precise moment of the event that one really finds no pleasure in it, and the whole thing becomes as dry and cold as protocol.
Experience has taught us that not all people who attend a banquet or a dance truly enjoy themselves. There never fails to be someone who is bored at the best of parties, and the most delightful compositions can make some people happy and others cry.
People who know how to consciously combine the external event with the appropriate internal state are very rare. It is lamentable that people do not know how to live consciously; they cry when they should laugh and laugh when they should cry.
Control is different. The wise can be happy, but never filled with a wild frenzy; sad, but never desperate and depressed, serene in the midst of violence; abstinent in an orgy, chaste when surrounded by lust, etc.
Melancholic and pessimistic people think the worst of life and, really do not want to live.
Every day, we see people who not only are unhappy, but who also—and this is even worse—make the lives of others miserable.
Such people will not change, even living daily from party to party. They carry the psychological illness within. The internal states of such people are definitively perverse.
Nonetheless, such people consider themselves just, saints, virtuous, noble, obliging, self-sacrificing, etc., etc., etc. They are people who think about themselves a great deal, who love themselves very much.
Such individuals feel a lot of self-pity, and always look for ways to evade their own responsibilities.
Such people are accustomed to inferior emotions and, obviously for this reason, every day they create infrahuman psychic elements.
Unhappy events, reversals of fortune, misery, debts, problems, etc., belong exclusively to those people who do not know how to live.
Anyone can develop a rich intellectual culture, but very few are the people who have learned to live honorably. When someone wants to disassociate external events from his internal states of consciousness, he clearly demonstrates his incapacity to live with dignity.
Those who learn how to consciously combine external events with internal states advance on the path of success.
People do not want to realize that vegetating is not living, and that the capacity to exist consciously depends exclusively on the quality of the internal states of the Soul.
Of course, it does not matter how beautiful the external occurrences of life are. If in such moments we are not in the appropriate internal state, the best events can seem monotonous, tiresome, or simply boring to us. Someone may eagerly anticipate a wedding reception. It is a special occasion, however, it could happen that one may be so preoccupied at the precise moment of the event that one really finds no pleasure in it, and the whole thing becomes as dry and cold as protocol.
Experience has taught us that not all people who attend a banquet or a dance truly enjoy themselves. There never fails to be someone who is bored at the best of parties, and the most delightful compositions can make some people happy and others cry.
People who know how to consciously combine the external event with the appropriate internal state are very rare. It is lamentable that people do not know how to live consciously; they cry when they should laugh and laugh when they should cry.
Control is different. The wise can be happy, but never filled with a wild frenzy; sad, but never desperate and depressed, serene in the midst of violence; abstinent in an orgy, chaste when surrounded by lust, etc.
Melancholic and pessimistic people think the worst of life and, really do not want to live.
Every day, we see people who not only are unhappy, but who also—and this is even worse—make the lives of others miserable.
Such people will not change, even living daily from party to party. They carry the psychological illness within. The internal states of such people are definitively perverse.
Nonetheless, such people consider themselves just, saints, virtuous, noble, obliging, self-sacrificing, etc., etc., etc. They are people who think about themselves a great deal, who love themselves very much.
Such individuals feel a lot of self-pity, and always look for ways to evade their own responsibilities.
Such people are accustomed to inferior emotions and, obviously for this reason, every day they create infrahuman psychic elements.
Unhappy events, reversals of fortune, misery, debts, problems, etc., belong exclusively to those people who do not know how to live.
Anyone can develop a rich intellectual culture, but very few are the people who have learned to live honorably. When someone wants to disassociate external events from his internal states of consciousness, he clearly demonstrates his incapacity to live with dignity.
Those who learn how to consciously combine external events with internal states advance on the path of success.