What is the source of human suffering and is there a way to truly overcome it? Dr John Demartini shares an eye opening presentation that will shed light on what it means to suffer and will give you the power to transform your so-called 'suffering' into something to be grateful for. The truth is, we don’t have to be victims of our history, we can be masters of our destiny by taking command of our perceptions.

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A real objective is embracing both sides,

a fantasy is searching for one side.

And the greater our fantasies that we seek in life,

the more nightmarish our life becomes.

John Milton said, you can make a heaven out of a hell or a hell out of a heaven.

There is no such thing as a one-sided event,

unless you with your mind are choosing to subjectively bias,

your interpretation and label it so, and you've created your suffering,

by your narrow-mindedness.

Every event has two sides.

If you choose to see only one side and label it positive or negative, well,

you just increased your suffering.

Covid is a good example. I've seen some people go 'St Covid'.

They see all the upsides. I've seen other people see all the downsides.

They're fearing the loss of this. They're fearing the gain of this.

Covid has two sides.

There's advantages and disadvantages it's bringing you in your life.

If you can see them both at the same time,

you're going to reduce your suffering.

Now let's take that and let's put it into neurological constructs.

Your brain is set up with a forebrain and a hindbrain.

Your forebrain is for foresight. Your hind brain is for hindsight.

Your forebrain is for pre-planning. And the other one is for reacting.

Pro-acting, reacting.

The forebrain has an executive center for governing down the impulse and

instinct of seeking and avoiding, and keeps you objective.

Objectivity means neutral minded.

So if you're living in your executive center, you're more resilient,

more adaptable, you're more present.

If you're not, you're going to go into your amygdala,

when you're living in your amygdala,

you're going to be trying to avoid pain and seek pleasure.

And therefore you're searching for one side,

it doesn't exist and you're trying to avoid that which is unavoidable.

So suffering is a survival strategy of the animal part of our brain called the

amygdala. Now,

you probably have known that I've never done a talk without talking about

values. Well, this is no exception.

Everybody has a set of priorities in life, a set of values in life,

things that are most to least important in life, that's unique to them,

like a fingerprint. Whenever an individual lives by their highest value,

the blood glucose and oxygen goes into the forebrain where you're more

objective, you're more neutral, you're more resilient, more adaptable,

less distressed, more proactive, and you're disciplined,

reliable and focused, and you achieve, and you expand yourself.

That's why they call them executives that have self-governance.

What they mean by self-governance is they're governing the distractions of

impulses and instincts of their lower brains responses of

survival. They're in thrival, not survival.

But the second they do lower priority actions

and don't live by highest priorities, the

unfulfillment that comes from lower priority actions,

because when you're doing things that are high on your priority,

you feel fulfilled. When you're doing things low on your priority,

you feel overwhelmed. One's on top of the world,

one's the world's on top of you. One you're resilient and adaptable,

and you're grateful.

And the other one you're on grateful and you feel the world's running your life.

The second you do low priority things,

either because you've injected values of others,

trying to please everybody else and lost your own focus and clouded the clarity

of your own mission in life, you're going into your amygdala,

your amygdala is going to try to separate the inseparables,

divide the indivisibles and make you seek that which is unobtainable and try to

avoid that which is unavoidable.

And you increase your fears, the fear of loss of that what you seek,

the fear of gain of that which you try to avoid.

So suffering is a by-product of not living by highest priority.

Suffering is a by-product of having an amygdala,

want to avoid pain and seek pleasure all the time.

Wanting to avoid challenge and seek support.

Wanting to avoid difficulty and seek ease. You're looking for a one-sided world.

Imagine you're in a relationship with somebody that you're dating or married to,

and imagine you only want support, never challenge, only want kind, never cruel,

only want nice, never mean, only want positive, never negative,

always want peaceful, never wrathful, always want considerate,

never inconsiderate. You want a one-sided reality,

I guarantee you you're going to suffer in that relationship because you have an

unrealistic expectation on a human being to be one-sided, which they can't be.

If I say to you, you're always that way, one sided, always positive,

never negative, your own BS meter would go off and go, 'No, no, no, no.

That's not true.' And you would immediately think of

other side.

Your intuition is always revealing the side that you're unwilling to face that

you're unconscious of to put on a facade that you're probably one side.

A moral hypocrisy that you're going to be one side.

There is no human being one sided.

There is no real hero that hadn't got a hidden villain.

There's no villain that doesn't have a hidden hero.

So if you have an unrealistic expectation to look for one side and try to get

only one side and get rid of the other side, you're going to end up suffering,

because life's not going to give you that.

You only have certainty when you embrace both sides of life.

If you love your spouse or the mate you're with,

you're going to have things you like and things you dislike,

things you admire and things you despise,

and things you're attracted to and things you repelled from,

things that you wish was the same and never change and things you wish would be

different. You're going to get both sides.

You're not even being able to look in your mirror and look at yourself and think

one sided.

You have times when you're build yourself with pride and times when you beat

yourself down with shame. You are both sided. They're both sided.

World's both sided. A real objective is embracing both sides,

a fantasy is searching for one side.

And the greater our fantasies that we seek in life,

the more nightmarish our life becomes.

I always say depression is a comparison of your current reality to a fantasy

you're addicted to.

Suffering is an addiction to this fantasy joy life that you're hoping for.

I gave that up at age 30,

I'm not interested in a hedonistic pursuit of one sidedness.

I'm not here to be positive all the time. You're going to beat yourself up,

trying to be one sided and expect the world to be one side.

And pray,

pray to some anthropomorphic deity that one sided world's going to happen. Well,

that's delusion. It's been shown that biologically,

that we require both support and challenge to grow.

The entire ecosystem has prey and predator, support for prey,

you eat, anabolic. Challenge, predator, being eaten, catabolic.

Your autonomic nervous system has both sides.

Your brain has set up for both sides.

Your breathing mechanism is set up for both sides.

Your entire physiology is set up to master life.

If you've got prey without predator,

you'd end up being gluttonous and fat and not fit.

If you got predator without prey, you'd be emaciated and starved and not fit.

But you put the two together, you get maximum performance and fitness.

If you go out and run and expect to have a fitness without a little exercise and

challenge, not going to happen,

you need a balance of opposites. Nature has the pair of opposites.

This has been written since the time of Heraclitus, Parmenides,

great philosophers, it's nothing new and Pythagorus wrote about it,

who predecessored them.

So Galen,

the great physician knew that you had to balance these pairs of opposites for

wellness.

So the number one source of your suffering is the pursuit of that which is

unobtainable and trying to avoid that which is unavoidable.

The idea of the amygdala response, a survival response.

And please get this and hope you write this.

The suffering is your feedback to let you know you're not living by highest in

priority. So your identity revolves around what your highest priority,

whatever your highest value is in life, the thing that's most important to you,

your identity revolves around it. Mine is teaching. I'm a teacher.

Whatever's highest on your value your identity revolves around,

and that's where your authentic self is expressed.

And so if you live by priority and you fill your day with the highest priority

actions and your most authentic,

and you delegate the lower things and stick to the thing that's most meaningful

and most inspiring to you, most meaningful to you, and most authentic to you,

every symptom in your life is pointing you back to authenticity.

Trying to point you back to embrace both sides.

You want to be loved and appreciated for both sides.

You don't want to be loved only for one side and neither does anybody else.

So the moment you live by your highest priority and wake up your executive

function and start being objective and living by what's truly meaningful to you,

you're more resilient and you can embrace both sides of your life.

And you'll realize that if you get cocky,

you automatically get humbled and criticized by society

equilibrium. And if you get humbled, you get lifted up by society,

gets you in equilibrium, everything going on in your life,

your physiological symptoms, your psychological symptoms,

your business responses, your sociological feedback, your family's response,

are all trying to give you a feedback to embrace both sides and be

yourself. Your authentic self embraces both.

I'm not a hero or a villain. I'm a combination of the two.

I'm not a saint or a sinner. I'm a combination of the two.

I'm a pair of opposites. An individual is an undivided being,

a persona is a mask we wear that covers up our true nature.

Our whole nature. In the study of physics and thermodynamics,

there's a thing called entropy.

Entropy is the tendency to go from order to disorder.

And entropy is defined by Claude Shannon and others as missing information,

which psychologists call the unconscious.

So if we're blinded and we're thinking we're all proud,

and we're only seeing the upsides and we're blinded to our downsides,

we attract events to humble us, pride before the fall.

If we're looking only at the downsides, we get supporters to lift us up,

supporters, the tall poppy syndrome,

in the dole in Australia, they used to call it.

Everything is trying to get us back into authenticity. If we're proud,

that's a facade. If we're shame, that's a facade. If we're infatuated,

that's a facade on somebody else. If we're resentful,

that's a facade on somebody else. We're not seeing who they are.

We're seeing only one side and we're narrowing our mind with a bias.

And the more we polarize it in good or bad or right or wrong,

any absolute black and white thinking is going to make us suffer,

because we have no resilience, no adaptability,

because we fear the loss of that which we make all positive,

and we fear the gain of that which we make all evil.

That's why the savior and the devil was used in Christianity as a

ploy for that state of mentality and you might say

polarization. But the true in a sense,

love, in the center, loves the synthesis of these pairs of opposites.

The mean is the synthesis between pairs of opposites as Aristotle described.

The moment we embrace both sides simultaneously and see both sides,

and we're now neutral, and we're not one side or the other, we're centered,

we're empowered, we don't suffer, we're grateful.

Our executive center comes in and it's our gratitude center and we're grateful,

because we see the hidden order in the apparent chaos.

Chaos and disorder is missing information.

Order is seeing all the information, mindfulness it's called,

not mindlessness. So the source of our suffering is very simple,

it's our addiction to fantasies about how life's supposed to be.

And one of the common ones is you expect other people to be one sided.

I expect them to be more kind than cruel, more nice than mean,

more positive than negative, more happy than sad, more one sided.

And you're not prepared for the other side and when it hits you, it smacks you.

And anytime you're addicted to one side and the other side smacks you,

you have distress.

And distress is the suffering that is there to try to let you know that you're

holding onto an unrealistic expectation and fantasy about how life's supposed to

be. And it's not your enemy. Suffering's not your enemy,

suffering smashes to pieces the fictions that you're running your life by and

get you grounded into the reality about how life is,

and the magnificence the way life is,

is far greater than the fantasies you'll impose on it.

So suffering is a biological mechanism that we create in our mind when we strive

for unrealistic expectations of one sidedness,

or we expect other people to live in our values, they can't live in our values.

We have our values, they have their values. They can

So if you expect them to live in your values, you're going to end up suffering.

Because you now expect them to be living in supporting your values,

not challenging your values, again, another fantasy.

Or you expect yourself to be one side,

or you expect yourself to live in somebody else's values.

When you're infatuated with somebody you tend to sacrifice to be in their

values, eventually you get resentful to that to get your own values back.

And you learn that that doesn't work because then you

lose yourself, trying to be with somebody else.

Or trying to get other people to live in your values and trying to, you know,

get rid of them so you can be yourself. Both of those end up not working.

And they create symptoms to guide you back into authentic state,

where you have equanimity within yourself, neither pride,

nor shame and equity between yourself and them, neither infatuation, resentment.

You just get to see them for who they are. The totality,

and people are deserved to be loved for who they are. That's what you want.

That's what they want.

The mastery of that is the mastery of living in a state of appreciation

for life.

And I believe that all the suffering is nothing more than trying to get us back

to that awareness. It's not our enemy. It's our friend.

It's guiding us back.

It's helping us break our fictions in life and get down to the facts.

The objective facts about how life really is. And really the truth is,

there's two sides.

So when you finally get to the realization of that and quit running the racket

and the story of being the victim of history,

you start to become master of destiny.

And the master of destiny is somebody who's prioritized, living by objectives,

setting plans, mitigating risks,

calming down the impulses and instincts of the animal nature and staying

inspired, kind of like the Stoics of Marcus Aurelius described in his times,

and allowing us to go on and do things that are really executive function,

do something extraordinary. And then when we live by our highest values,

we're most unique, we're most original, most authentic,

and we make the biggest difference.

Cause when the second we try to live in other people's values and live in the

fantasy of moral hypocrisies,

we automatically go through our suffering to get us back to authenticity.

We can't make a difference fitting in. We make a difference standing out.

The way we stand out is to live authentically according

and learn the art of communicating whatever that

needs and values. And if we fill our day with challenges that inspires us,

it doesn't fill up with challenges that don't.

We fill our life with high priority actions that inspire us,

it doesn't fill up with low priority distractions that despires.

So the feedback from the suffering is actually a guide.

It's not a terrible thing. It's actually a gift.

If you look very carefully, pretty well,

whatever you're perceiving at the time you're suffering,

turn it around 180 degrees and that's probably an answer, you know,

and it's just like the stock market. When the stock market goes up,

ignorant people get all excited and elated and keep buying.

And then they buy overpriced stock. And then they end up when it crashes,

they end up going, 'oh my God', they lost their money. Then they sell out.

So they guaranteed foolish management of money.

Cause they let emotions run their life,

which are polarized instead of wisdom and objectivity run their life.

Because when the market goes down, the market goes down,

it looks like they've lost money from the past,

but they're actually now can buy and get savings of the future because you're

buying cheap. In other words, there's pros and cons when the market goes up,

and there's pros and cons of the market goes down,

it doesn't matter what the market does.

You don't have to be run by the external world. If you dollar cost average,

no matter what happens, you win. You get an average,

you get the mean and you put expectations on a mean,

you have realistic expectations, you don't get let down. You don't suffer,

because you're now having realistic expectations. Well,

the same thing on a human being,

I'm not going to be up all the time or down all the time.

I'm going to have both sides. If I have an expectation to be one sided,

I'm going to feel let down. If I have an expectation to oscillate around a mean,

I'm going to have a realistic expectation that I can live.

The difference between a fantasy and objective,

is a fantasy is looking for a one-sided world and objective's embracing both

sides in the pursuit of something deeply meaningful, the mean. Because

you're not going to suffer if you have grounded-ness and what you're actually

pursuing in life and expecting in life. We have control over our perceptions,

decisions and actions in life.

If we balance out our expectations for our perceptions and balance out our

expectations and our motor actions, we have an amazing life,

and we're very grateful and we actually have meaning in life.

So our suffering is optional. We can choose to it, but the thing is,

is if you go and you think something doesn't match your fantasy and you tell

people how terrible life is and run your story and dramatize the story and feed

your amygdala and myelinate the amygdala and don't myelinate the executive

center, you're just going to prolong the process.

And then you're going to go to a shrink, which will shrink you further probably.

And then they're going to say, well, you're a victim of some outside thing,

blame it, and live in the zoo instead of,

by perpetrator and innocent victim models.

Instead of actually being accountable and realizing it has nothing to do with

the world around you.

It has everything to do with your perceptions of the

you decide to do with it and how you act upon it.

And if you change your perceptions,

you change your decisions and change your actions,

you can take anything that ever happens in your life,

and you can find the center and power yourself and go do something extraordinary

with your life.

That's what I teach in the Breakthrough Experience program every time I teach

that program and when I teach the Demartini Method,

it's the science of how to take whatever you think is perturbing you and

bringing you back into homeostasis in the center where you're not suffering.

Suffering is perceptual. You probably thinking, 'Well,

what about this happening?' And people throw that at me every week in the

Breakthrough,

'but what about if a person does this and death and this?' All kind of things.

There's nothing your mortal body can experience that you're immortal soul can't

love and use to its greatest advantage.

You have massive amount of resilience and adaptability available to you,

if you ask the right questions.

The quality of your life's based on the quality of the questions you ask.

And the most powerful quality questions are the ones that bring you back into

equilibrium, not polarize you. Don't ask,

'why is this happening to me?' How is this experience that I'm perceiving,

how is it helping me fulfill what's most meaningful to me?

You ask that question.

And what is the highest priority action I can do to help me fulfill what's most

meaningful to me? If you live by priority of perceptions and actions,

you're not going to suffer as much,

because you're going to be more objective and you're going to get more grounded

and you're going to get real with about what you're going to do.

And that doesn't mean you have to play small.

It just means that you're now going to put a strategy in place to play big,

you're going to give yourself permission to go and start with what you know,

and let what you know grow in the achievements that you want in life.

Because you're not going to get great achievements setting up fantasies.

You're going to have let downs. I see this every week.

I see people going out and trying to get rich quick by gambling on

cryptocurrencies, or do some crazy things on gambling in the markets.

And they're going,

this is going to get a high and it's going to be quick and immediate

gratification. And they have unrealistic expectation, they get smacked.

Instead of patient long-term objectives, that build momentum.

That are unstoppable. Those are the ones that end up with less suffering.

You're more grateful in life.

So I just wanted to take a moment to go through some of those principles of

suffering and make you look at it, again, It's an all seven areas of your life.

And unless you can and balance out your perceptions and decisions and actions

and set real objectives in life, you're going to suffer. And you don't have to.

And I just want to take a moment to say about a masterclass that I'm giving

called Balancing Your Emotions for Greater Achievement.

This is for leaders and influencers so they can know the values and power of

managing emotions. Because when you live by your highest value,

you're going to wake up your super power, not your sub power.

Because if you got something out of this little session that we just did,

you'll get something out of that, I'm certain, that's a bigger class,

this is just a little quickie.

But I'm a firm believer that, in my own life, I looked,

up until I was 30 I was trying to be positive all the time.

And then I'd beat myself up and go,

'why am I not staying positive all the time?' And then I'd be angry at other

people. And I'd want to avoid all people that were,

that had any negativity or criticism. And then I realized that when I was proud,

I was attracting criticizer to get me back in equilibrium.

And when I was down there was attracting people to lift me up.

And I was being homeostated by people.

And my addiction to one side was making me constantly get the other side,

the criticism to bring me down. And if I was not living up to this one side,

I'd beat myself up. And I realized the more I was trying to build myself up,

I ended up beating myself up.

And I realized I don't need to build myself or beat myself up,

I just need to be myself.

How am I going to be loved from other people,

for being who I am, if I'm not being who I am? You're not here to be proud.

You're not here to be shamed. You're here to be you.

And the magnificence of who you are is far greater than all the fantasies you'll

impose on yourself, which create your nightmares. So, yeah, at age 30,

I had a wake up call and I realized that looking for a one-sided world is a

futile attempt. You have futility. Every time you infatuate with somebody,

you're going to want to change yourself to be like them.

And if you try to live in their values, not your own, you have futility.

Every time you're resentful to somebody,

you're going to try to get them to live like you

and you're gonna project your values on them and try to get them to live in your

values, which is futility.

But when you actually just love people for who they are and embrace both sides

of them and yourself, wow, you have utility,

not futility.

That's why I want you to go in and go on the masterclass to Balance Your Emotion

for Greater Achievement, go back and grab that.

Take advantage of that. And hopefully somewhere along the line,

if you want to really master it,

come and learn the Demartini Method at the Breakthrough Experience.

That tool is a goldmine. And come and learn how to live,

to determine and how to live by your values, because of

Because if you're not, you're going to keep suffering in your life.

You're going to create and it's absolutely just healthy biological response to

feedback to get you back to priority, and to get you back to authenticity.

As I said,

everything that's going on in your life is trying to get you to be authentic.

And that's what you want. And when you do it, you're in the zone.

You're in tune and on target with life again, you're in the flow,

whatever you want to call it,

and life is actually pretty grand and you're pretty inspired and grateful for

your life. So, suffering is optional. It's up to you.

You can choose to keep looking for a one-sided world and create your own

crazies. Again, one last statement on the Buddha,

the desire for that which is unobtainable and the desire to avoid that which is

unavoidable is the source of human suffering.

Set realistic objectives that are really deeply meaningful,

that are in priority on your life.

Do small incremental steps to build momentum to great achievement.

You'll have more resilience, more adaptability and less so-called suffering,

cause the suffering is a feedback to guide you to authenticity. Anyway,

take advantage of the masterclass, sign up for it now.

I look forward to seeing you next week. Hope you got something out of here.

I certainly love presenting these things cause it's hopefully stimulating to

make you think, you got some notes. And if you get something out of this,

please go out and tell other people about this little weekly class.

If you have somebody you care about and you think that this might be and make a

difference in their life, please let them know about it.

Cause we all know that when we go out and make a difference in other people's

life, that's part of our own fulfillment. So until next week,

this is Dr. Demartini,

live your life by the highest priority on a daily basis and dissolve your

suffering into gratitude. Thank you.