The Flawed Gospel of Happiness

One of the most appalling examples of current cultural wisdom to appear recently is distilled in the trite phrase, “Choose happiness!”   This prattle, it seems to me, is not only nonsensical and not justified by the facts, it also is an affront and an offense.  It is obscene for anyone to promulgate this completely unhelpful drivel when so much suffering and tragedy abound.  You can choose a great many things, but you cannot choose to be happy, because the world does not revolve around your ego’s notion or condition of happiness.  You can choose to be merciful.  You can choose to be just.  You can choose to be kind, compassionate, magnanimous and forgiving, but you cannot choose to be happy.  Happiness is a gift, a blessing bestowed — if it is bestowed — after the fact of those other choices.  As Marie Louise von Franz has written, “God is not the friendly guardian of a kindergarten!  Even the Christian dogma says that God has an incomprehensible side, and if you can realize this then you can grow away from the idea that if you are well behaved then you will be happy.”[1]

Some contemporary religious leaders preach a flawed gospel of happiness and worldly success that is certainly not canonical and cannot stand up to the fact that for the past 2000+ years, the central image of Western civilization has been that of a tortured godly man suffering brutally on a cross and dying!  If you survey the history of religion from primal to advanced cultures, the individuals chosen are those who have a talent for conscious development beyond that of the masses.  These chosen ones — sometimes termed “God’s favorites” — are put (sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally) through torture, dismemberment and sometimes death:

1)    The shamans of Native American, Inuit, Lap, Mongolian, and Siberian cultures

2)    The witch doctors of Africa, southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and Central and South America

3)    The Buddha, and Buddhist saints

4)    Yogis and Hindu saints

5)    Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Job and the Prophets (e.g., Jonah, Daniel, Ezekiel)

6)    Jesus, Saul/Paul, Peter

7)    Mohammed

8)    The saints of the Church down through the ages

9)    And, in the history of our country and other countries, innumerable political and civic leaders who lost their lives in the struggle for justice and equality

I don’t know about all the folks under #9 above, but most certainly all the rest went (according to the texts and religious traditions of their cultures) through tortures on the journey to enlightenment which took them first through “hell” (the underworld where they were tortured and dismembered) and then to the celestial (“spirit”) realms (where they communed with the gods) before returning to middle earth where they could impart the knowledge, images and tales “from the beyond” and bring healing to the masses and an expansion of consciousness to the cultures in which they lived.  “Happiness” is not what these shamans/shamanesses, holy men and women, martyrs and saints sought.  Their journey into hell and back is not what they chose.  They chose obedience to the task (the “calling”) set before them.  They did not choose their own happiness.  In every instance, their “resurrection” (which means, psychologically speaking, that these individuals continue to live on in the collective consciousness of a culture, by virtue of having become more highly conscious, differentiated personalities) was preceded by the death of the ego.  The ego, with all its posturing and vaunted claims, was extinguished in virtually every case:  burned in the furnace, swallowed in the belly of a large fish, nailed to a cross, dismembered and then sewn back together.  That these horrific experiences were frequently religious/psychological visions did not make the experiences less real for poor old Jonah, for example, in the moment of transit on the ecstatic journey (the technical term used for the shamanic experience).  The battle with the angel of God was no less harrowing for Jacob who persevered in asking the significant question of his assailant, demanding to know his name, and was subsequently shown the ecstatic vision.  These folks were normal human beings, chosen as it were for their “talent” for combating and enduring their neurotic compulsions (like poor Hosea in his divinely ordained marriage to the nasty prostitute).

In shamanic cultures, the witch doctor or shaman is the “chosen one” who is considered by the group to be endowed with advanced consciousness (“wisdom”) due to his or her special ability to venture to the “beyond” into the realms of the demons, devils, angels, gods and goddesses.  He or she is the one in the group with the most differentiated, developed personality.  The shaman’s neurotic susceptibility to the influx of unconscious material, combined with the “talent” for narrating the events of the ecstatic journey, places him or her at the vanguard of developing consciousness of the group culture. These individuals are not choosing happiness; they are fulfilling a sacred role and calling.

The guru, the saint, the shaman are those individuals in a culture with the most differentiated personalities, capable of relating the stories from the beyond and thereby “making sense” out of the psychological experience of neurosis.  Their advanced consciousness, relative to the collective in which they live/lived, endows them with the ability to fully experience their neurosis (the unconscious material) without identifying with the influx of images.  They are the ones in the culture who may safely tread the “paths of the dead” and make the return from the “beyond”.  The “return from the beyond” is the critical distinction between the shaman/saint and the merely neurotic modern individual who is overwhelmed by their unconsciousness.  The shaman/saint is “called”, “chosen” by their peculiar talent for dealing with unconscious material.  They are not choosing happiness; they know that the journey to the beyond is fraught with horrors.

The saint/prophet/shaman goes down into the neurosis, experiences it fully, but does not succumb (identify) with the unconscious material.  For the shaman, the descent to the underworld is orchestrated by chanting, drumming, and sometimes certain drugs (e.g., peyote).  For the saint, the experience is frequently brought about by isolation, starvation, and meditation.  However, instead of succumbing (remaining in the underworld), the shaman/saint/prophet does battle with the neurosis and returns to sanity and the “real world” out of his or her troubles.  By putting form to their experience (in song, poem, narration, and dance) these individuals objectify (make sense of) the unconscious material and therefore extract meaning out of their trials.  This “putting form to the experience” is the absolutely critical feature (the sine qua non) that allows the saint/shaman to put the experience in context, prevent a psychotic break, and deliver a greater portion of consciousness to the group.  This elevates the neurotic individual’s experience to the level of a religious awakening or “vision” that can be transmitted to the culture.  Their sacrifice is not understood by these individuals as “choosing happiness”!

One cannot choose one’s neuroses anymore than once can choose one’s emotions or the moods which possess one.  But when you dig down to the dregs and muck of your neurotic depression, you will find the gold — just as the saints, prophets, and shamans have done.  The gold appears when (as Viktor Frankl observed in “Man’s Search for Meaning”) one finds meaning in one’s suffering.  Individuals, like Viktor Frankl and others in the Nazi concentration camps, survived because they could attach meaning to their suffering, and that led to a capacity for compassion and to the will to survive.  Happiness (“felicity” in the language of the early Church; “nirvana” in the language of Buddhism) is born of compassion for others and ourselves, learned from doing battle with the sucking pull of our own unconsciousness.

To a very large extent your neurosis chooses you.  Don’t have one?  Just wait.  When you are in the clutches of a neurotic episode, you cannot simply choose to be happy and “normal” (whatever that means).  That is the one thing you cannot do.  The well-meaning friend who advises me (like Job’s friends) to “choose to be happy” succeeds only in sending me “straight up” and further burdening me with a sense of guilt and helplessness.  Being accused of wallowing in one’s problems, completely misconstrues the moral battle that the courageous individual wages within.  It takes an act of God and one’s own perspicacity, tenacity, and not just a little courage to doggedly take a hold of the neurosis, shake it until it is in shreds, and squeeze it until it produces the juice of compassion.  Each of us, if we are lucky, is given a neurosis.  Having to suffer oneself produces humility, endurance, compassion, and, if we are fortunate, some small portion of wisdom gained from the experience.  Those who seem to sail along happily and seem never to have to suffer themselves or ask significant questions miss, in the end, the meaning of their lives.  In fact, one could say that unless and until one has passed through the suffering of his or her own neurotic difficulty, one cannot become a more differentiated personality with a more developed consciousness and a chance at happiness — if, when, and as God pleases.

Wilor Bluege

August 4, 2013

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[1] Marie Louise von Franz, “The Psychological Meaning of Redemption Motifs in Fairytales”, p.46.