However, if you look a little deeper at the psychology and motivation underlying the anticipation of future-reward, and the search for hidden-purpose, you may soon realize that people are asking the wrong questions. Seeking a reward "later-on," and looking for one's "purpose" in life, are not going deep enough, and do not address the driving force behind those questions. People are unhappy. They are suffering inside, and not only because of external events. The inherent human need for happiness is at the root of wanting a future reward for enduring suffering, and is at the root of wanting to find one's purpose in life. The reward you seek for enduring suffering is happiness, or you assume that you will be happy if you can only find your purpose in life. Either way, you are seeking happiness, and you are seeking happiness due to your underlying, or very conscious, continual feeling-state of suffering or, at best, your feeling-state of mediocrity. You actually want happiness, and you want it now, not later-on as a "reward," and not later when you find your "purpose" for living. The reward you seek is preferably in the present, and it is happiness; and your purpose in life is also that of finding happiness, also preferably in the present, and to the degree that you believe it is achievable. It is part of the Design that human beings seek happiness; they just have their methodology backwards.

If you were, right now, in this very moment, Perfectly Happy, Perfectly Blissful, you would have no thought or care about finding future-reward or hidden-purpose in life.

People are not happy, yet they continue to live the same natural way of life, day-in and day-out. The ordinary, religious, and spiritual masses are on the treadmill of the natural seeking-cycle, and, instead of relieving their suffering, they maintain and increase it. The error is simple, but profound in negative results: instead of letting-go of the cause of suffering and mediocrity, their fear and clinging which are seen as self-feeding and self-protection, they continually reinforce it. The misguided attempt to relieve or lessen suffering, whether through ordinary, religious, or spiritual means, is the very way of life that is in fact maintaining and increasing the suffering.

Fear and clinging, seen as the subtle and gross actions of self-feeding and self-protection, are at the root of suffering, and that is the essence of the natural way of life, the natural seeking-cycle, of the masses. I term it the natural seeking-cycle, first because they repeat the same steps over-and-over, every day, of attempting to find happiness through the countless means of self-feeding and self-protection; and because it never works, and because they know no other way, they continue the same pattern of fear and clinging, of self-feeding and self-protection, only occasionally changing how it looks on the surface. Second, it is natural for people to continually engage the same essential action of fear and clinging, to continually feed and protect self. However, most people do not see that it never works to adequately lessen suffering or the neutrality and mediocrity. Those who do begin to believe that "happiness is impossible or rare," may resign themselves to a feeling-state of neutrality and mediocrity at best, and will merely occasionally engage some stimulation or distraction, some activity or drug, to make it temporarily bearable, waiting until death ends it all. You may remember the often-repeated idea: doing the same thing over-and-over, and expecting different results.

Right now, at this moment, you are feeding, feeding on the Teaching of Life and Freedom, you are taking it in, and I am facilitating it, but in the attempt to help you interrupt your natural seeking-cycle, and to begin living the opposite Way, which is to begin the Unnatural seeking-cycle. It is ironic that the student of life must feed in order to stop feeding: feed on God in order to understand how to eventually Dissolve in Him. That does not sound attractive to you, the ego. You would rather feed on Happiness, and then do it some more, and while remaining intact. People have and will try to use the Unnatural Way as part of their natural seeking-cycle, as part of their self-feeding and self-protection, but it never succeeds over the long-term, since the two are diametrically-opposed in principle and in action. Also, the Metaphysical Laws will not allow it, not for very long.

The Unnatural Way involves increasingly living by Sacrifice, Faith, and Prayer, which are the opposite of fear and clinging, the opposite of self-feeding and self-protection. Only then, can you make room for That which is Other-Than you and your natural ways; only then can you make room, first, for a better life, and, eventually, for Happiness.

Suffering or mediocrity, and the drive for happiness, compel both the natural and Unnatural seeking-cycles. The only difference is: one works and the other does not. I previously mentioned that there are possibilities in life, not rewards or purposes. These are the two general possibilities in life: the natural seeking-cycle, or the Unnatural seeking-cycle. There are many, many ways and avenues though which a person can fulfill the natural seeking-cycle, as evidenced by the innumerable endeavors people pursue every day. But, there is only one Unnatural Way, only one Way of letting-go and being relieved of the life of suffering and mediocrity. You can at least have a better life through the Unnatural Way, and eventually Realizing Freedom is also possible. Both, a better life, and Realizing Freedom, unfold while active and relational in the world. The Unnatural Way is the antithesis of withdrawal, which shuts-out rather than allows God. Your suffering will not be rewarded, but it can compel you, and can guide you, in realizing your Highest Possibilities. Suffering can guide you in how, and how not, to live the Way of Freedom.

Yes, the suffering is rightly compelling you to seek happiness for yourself, and that is natural and normal, but you eventually come to understand, through much trial and error, and frustration, that the Unnatural Life is not about realizing personal Happiness, but about Freedom. The personal Happiness is merely an effect of Freedom. To seek personal Happiness is, in essence, more clinging to self and the body, and is more self-feeding, and thus more limitation and suffering, and, therefore, shuts-out the very God and Happiness you seek. Seek Freedom, not Happiness; the Happiness will be there, but not as yours to own, control, and enjoy, but perhaps to share.

The Happiness of Perfect Freedom is not going to be Realized in the present, since much preparation and transformation must first occur before that Event, but you can, today, begin to be increasingly relieved of the primary and secondary suffering and mediocrity of egoity, arising from fear and clinging, and realize a far better life than you ever imagined.