I can’t live with Myself.

Getting along with others is easier than getting along with oneself.

We can’t part company with ourselves, take a break, or find someone else. We are married to ourselves, and if we don’t like it, we can ask why we don’t or seek an escape through addictions. Addictions are as many as the disturbing emotions that drive us to them.

When reason goes on holiday, addictions drag us and those we care about most down. For the sake of short-term release, we create long-term bondage. Addictions compound the problems we already have, and yet, even knowing it to be so, we are lured.

Oscar Wilde said:

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

Which I adopt in a parallel way to say:

We all have our problems and times when we are down and out, but some see hope where some give up on themselves.

But, if we are going to give up on ourselves, why seek relief of any kind?

There are two kinds of relief. One covers over and buries the adversary by induced fascinations of various sorts. The other understands that Frankenstein is of our own creation and acts to take life away from it.

The godchildren of our mind are our creations, brought about by our thinking, seeking, and acting—born of our karma. Naughty godchildren are born with no regard for social status or economic wealth. They inflict their suffering as much on the people of wealth, fame, and power, as those who don’t have two nickels to rub together.

In this regard, happiness is the same, and peace is the same, whether poor villager or Beverly Hills elite. But the poor have some advantage for they are driven to appreciate what they have and bond with their peers, whereas wealth leads to extravagance that must be constantly guarded against, and wealth, though insulating, is also isolating and dangerous because it enables recklessness.

Solutions are sought after far more than causes. We want relief and don’t have time to figure out how we fell into the sh*t tank. Impatient with causes, we seek to escape. We cause our emotional and physical suffering and yet feel sympathetic to ourselves as if a victim. Of course, grace is obviated by our attitude.

Every negative karma is a snowball created by selfish gratification. Small indulgences become bigger and bigger until their innocence is lost, and they become dangerous. They become dangerous when without regard for others (or ourselves), craving and greed animate us. We try to solve our problems in all the wrong ways, ways that to us who in the thick of it have lost not only wisdom, but even common sense.

Friends and family offer suggestions by the truck-load like a person on the top of a mountain guiding someone on the way up. But, when we are at the bottom, their suggestions seem detached and irrelevant, maybe trivial. We would rather listen to someone on the bottom like us, even though the wisdom is from the top, of course. So, misery loves company is indeed true, and the miserable camp with the miserable. That is where mistakes are compounded.

If we wish to climb above our obstacles, we either have to climb solo or listen to the guy on top. But we must climb; we cannot stay in Camp Miserable. We have to part company with our addictions, sympathetic friends, and advisors and challenge ourselves to accept the rigors of ascending out of the gutter we are in, put our troubles on our back, and carry them until we find a place to put them down.

We will attract whatever we need if we seek a remedy through recognizing causes, for recognizing causes is the brave solution to all misery, but if we try to escape misery, it will haunt us, shadow us, prey on us, for misery knows misery, and misery loves company, and it loves company with the same addictions.

So, we can spiral up or down, ascend the mountain peak, or stay in base camp. Where are we going?