I cannot say it enough times. Your fascination with anything begins with its excitement or resentment value—and this gives you the tension energy, the libido or drive your fallen ego needs to function, survive and express itself. 

And the release factor—the sex, violence and hard work—can follow so closely on the heels of the resentment/excitement factor that one may never observe the underlying resentment at all. We notice only our “righteous” rage, or our love and devotion to our work or partner. 

To describe our involvement with anything, we often use the word “into.” We are into this or into that. And part of the pleasure of the hate-love or love-hate-love “love” relationship is the escape into something.

So, unlike animals, people lose themselves into whatever or whomever that something is. Consequently, your reaction to what you are aroused by and lost in is not a normal reaction. It is an over-reaction, a trauma that lowers the consciousness and triggers the evolutionary (devolution­ary) process of identity. 

Becoming more of an animal and demon is the only “more” there is for us in our pride. It is growth through an unholy escape into an animal self. But losing ourselves in identifying with the body is not enough. We go on to lose ourselves in people, places and things. 

The soul, too, must have an identity. Guilt and emptiness drive us to cling to the spirit of temptation for its identity and for what appears to be life and growth. Do you see now that the main value behind both pleasure and pain is partly escape, partly growth and partly identity? 

"The main value behind both pleasure and pain is partly escape, partly growth and partly identity"

The less tease-reaction or tension, the less escape and, of course, the less pleasure. To find less “happiness” through experience means that you are either reacting less and developing true love for people through love of God, or, it means that pleasure is causing you so much pain (damage to the body through abuse) that the guilt is disenchanting you. 

Now when you are too guilty to enjoy pleasure any more, you are ready to enjoy pure pain. You may feel that you are not worthy to enjoy pleasure or the good life, so you give it all up for pain.

Pain, or the tensions caused by resenting the torment of cruelty or harsh circumstance, is the way we originally produced feelings of life and release. We can revel either in pleasure or in self-inflicted punishment.

But remember, we are not really punishing ourselves—we are enjoying ourselves, attempting to relieve guilt in our escape through judgment (hostility). 

Strange how we can find pleasure in pain alone, and how the intensity of the pleasure can be increased with the intensity of the tension—even when it makes us dangerously ill (we can resent that too).

Pain distracts, just as pleasure does. A physical discomfort distracts and thus relieves a severe spiritual discomfort—that is how we come to enjoy pain. 

The basis of false happiness is the avoidance of the painful encounter with God. We think we are God, right in our wrong being, doing and having. Like the naughty kids we are, our secret ego-pleasure lies in eating the forbidden fruit in Papa’s pantry.