Between Happiness and Suffering
Thinking System to Prosperity
Perry C. Douglas
Thinking, that’s what the mind does…all the time even when it’s sleeping, but still, one of the great mysteries in the universe is to know how the mind actually thinks. How the mind moves between consciousness and subconsciousness has not yet been figured out by neuroscience. So, when it comes to thinking, we can only deduce through experience that our thinking can either lead us to one of two paths — to happiness or suffering; and that’s what life comes down to in the end. Our journey in life then ranges between our experiences between these two paths, and all the events, trials, and tribulations we experience lead us to one or the other.
In the teachings of the Buddha, it is taught that what one ponders will become their inclination, the teachings called for the training of the mind to be more in control of the desired outcomes because the untrained mind leads to troubles according to the teachings. The Stoics, like Seneca, also taught us that everything hinges on how we think. Both then, tell us that we are what we think and that all that we are arises from our thoughts, and our thoughts are what makes the world. Therefore, our thinking is our one true superpower, but we allow ourselves to weaken it by becoming slaves to our emotional thoughts. We become trapped in the irrationality of our emotional rationale, which doesn’t work. Poor thinking, illogical, unsound, intuitive, over-emotional, lack of logic, drama-based thinking, etc., call it what you like but the result usually leads to suffering.
In the 21st century, in a globalized and technology-based world, the level and sophistication of your thinking have never been so crucial towards developing your prosperity curve, which is shaped by your thinking. Therefore, an unfocused and distracted mind, in the reality, is dangerous to one’s very existence. Happiness is not a given, it requires a base of good thinking and a clear understanding of the laws of nature, and how things function in an entangled and conflict-driven universe. So, mindfulness, awareness, and the practice of consciousness are all prerequisites for optimal thinking towards happiness. Knowing how to identify distractions, and how to avoid them is also critical towards a purposeful and successful life. The Buddha, once again, tells us that before we can become wise, we must know how to control and manage our thinking, which is the true path to enlightenment.
So, time must be spent on understanding the processes and dynamics of good thinking, and how your environment and experiences can shape your thinking pattern. Awareness of that fact is key to good thinking, actions, and outcomes. And how you optimize your mind to get the outcomes you want is the most fundamental and natural function of human progress, yet we are often not even consciously aware of that. We become lazy and rely on our emotionally driven and experience-based subconscious minds. However, you can only bend your prosperity curve through the conscious mind. And so it is, for Caribbean people of African descent, a good thinking system is paramount for our economic success towards ultimate happiness — to release ourselves from the suffering we’ve endured for way too long now. Therefore, the beginning of the end of suffering starts with the application of applied intelligence in our lives, an intelligent framework for decisioning, critical towards our prosperity in the 21st century.
