'I am unhappy and I must be happy'. In that very demand that I must be happy, is unhappiness. When one makes an effort to be happy, in that very effort is its opposite, unhappiness.

Anything affirmed out of choice contains its own opposite, and effort to overcome strengthens that against which it strives. When you demand an experience of truth or reality, that very demand is born out of your discontent with what-is (facts) and therefore the demand creates the opposite. And in that opposite there is, what has been, from which you are running away.. So one must be free from this incessant demand, otherwise the conflict between opposites will continue.

Happiness through something must invariably beget conflict, for then the means is vastly more significant and important than happiness itself. For example, If I get happiness through the beauty of that chair, then the chair becomes all important to me and I must take care of it, polish it, guard it against others etc.. In this struggle, the happiness which I once felt in the beauty of the chair is utterly forgotten, lost, and I am left with the chair. In itself, the chair has little value; but I have given it value, for it is the means of my happiness.. When the means of happiness is a living person, then the conflict and confusion, the antagonism and pain are far greater. If relationship is based on mere usage, is there any relationship, except the most superficial, between the user and the used? Aren't you really self-isolated?

As nothing can live in isolation, the attempts of the human to isolate itself within the boundaries of safety and security lead to its own frustration and misery. To escape from this sense of incompleteness, we seek completeness in ideas, in people, in ideals, in things; and so we are back again where we started, in the search for substitutes.