The highest form of love is the longing for God’s inner fulfillment. When this longing transfers over to mere mortals, we fall prey to predators who rise up to rule us with godlike powers. Then, trying to be something in the eyes of our “elected,” we become nothing but objects of their contempt.

Were it not for childhood abuses that tricked you into crying outwardly to people, places, and pleasures, you might have known this pure and satisfying longing---with longings always fulfilled. Alas, the fidelity of our inner yearning has turned into a sensuous weeping for love and a resentful fixation to abusers who drain your life away. 

The core of most suffering is the frustration of misguided longing. Understand, and see problems fall away. 

More pleasurable than any object of gratification is the anticipation of a pleasure-giver’s fix. For example: The bite-after-bite mouth-watering pleasure of a chocolate cake that leaves you full but never fulfilled. 

I got a clue as to how pleasure-seeking might perpetuate anxiety while dining in a Japanese restaurant. The menu consisted of 10 servings of little birdie-food dollops on 10 different plates---each serving could fit neatly in my hollow tooth.

I asked the maitre d’, "Why don't you put all the servings on one or two plates?” He said that in Japan, many believe that looking forward to something is better than having it.

"resentment refuels the willful

do-or-die longing"

The reason is that sensual gratification will cause conflict only when it substitutes for the fulfillment of the soul.

Watch how threatened and angry people become when their food is not to their liking. How does the maitre d’ cure the frustration? He makes them happy with a huge delicious portion of dessert. This is the “pain-pleasure-master” principle at work.

Through various pleasures we enlist sophisticated predators, as well as lowlifes, to help us fill a spiritual emptiness with its nearest sensual equivalent. This is like asking them to give us saltwater to quench our thirst, and then resenting them for failing us. Deprived of the spiritual fount, there is no other choice but to go on eating, drinking and being merry while drying up inside --- dying--- and in that dying lurks the stubborn determination to make our abuse-provider go on fixing our needs in the same old miserable way.

The power hungry rich and famous often self-destruct because they are obsessed with bloating their egos on our substance. Elvis Presley was just an innocent victim. Nevertheless, one too many “offerings” of power amounted to an unbearable conflict that invited death as the only relief. As victims, we will die as conflicted depleted slaves, while the powerful and unrepentant perish from the bloat of their inhuman excesses.

The successfully ambitious, also trek the road of endless goals to nowhere. There are proportionately just as many drug addicts and alcoholics at the top as there are broken failures on the bottom.

Misguided longing is at the core; through it, you become (resentfully) fixated to anticipation and despair, damned if you are successful and damned if you fail; resentment refuels the willful do-or-die longing.

Our collective weaknesses draw us toward a variety of pleasure-pain control masters. Emboldened by our unhealthy yearnings, underworld political hacks rise to power coddling the docile, cowering, security-sucking masses; later comes socialized submission. As we individually surrender ourselves for peace --- so might we also surrender America. 

Seize the moment; conquer your excesses lest terrorists appear and become your new master. Let me help.