Equilibrium in Reality
Prerequisites for Happiness
The diagonals of the Primal QuestTET reveal the two components necessary for the pursuit of happiness or the purpose of life. They have been named:
- Immersion in Reality: To maintain sanity and self-restraint: previous topic.
- Equilibrium in Reality: To bear misfortune and suffering. See below.
Equilibrium
The Equilibrium set of Quests lies on the diagonal running from bottom left to upper right. In order, they are:
Pleasure ↔ Meaning ↔ Enlightenment ↔ Spirituality.
Equilibrium, from the Quest's existential perspective, is about handling the effects of immersion in reality. Unexpected disappointment, accidents, illness and misfortune are to be expected. The everyday world, with its difficulties, confusions, accidents, and messiness causes us pain, frustration, fear, and disappointment. Such states are captured here as misfortune and suffering. Equilibrium Quests assist in bearing this misfortune and suffering.
Note: Misfortune is often 
a projection of wishes on to the world such that when the world does not take care of you, you have something external to blame as the cause of your suffering. Karma, fate, and providence are sometimes used in this way.
Dysfunctional ways to avoid suffering ►
- Lust for Power: Reject self-restraint and use power mainly externally to enforce your personal will on reality. Very popular.
- Become Quasi-Demented: Reject sanity and use power internally to construct a different and more satisfactory private reality. Also popular.
- Combine Power-Lust & Craziness. This is common in politics at its present level: ruling regimes use propaganda backed by coercive power to promote, impose and generate farcical constructions of reality.
To ameliorate suffering and inhibit blaming, each Quest demands active concentration and focus in a particular way: often called «taking yourself in hand». Each permits you to psychologically escape from or metaphorically «rise above» your situation.
These Quests are activated by stress, as long as it is not of traumatic severity.
More on Trauma
A trauma disrupts your connection with reality, making it hard to think straight and decide sensibly. Traumas (e.g. in early childhood or in combat zones) prevent the normal working through of experiences in the mind. Instead there is a «hole» in the mind that must be avoided to prevent recurrence of the traumatic state with its intense fear and inability to do anything.
Equilibrium within reality is then maintained with the aid of protective mechanisms that are neurotic (distorting-displacing) or psychotic (paranoid-depressive). Psychoanalysis was devised expressly to deal with this situation. (More in my publications on repression and narcissism.)
Pleasure provides the simplest method of escape from the burden of your cares and worries. The Quest simply demands that you concentrate on sensual gratification and give yourself wholly to the pleasurable experience.
More:
Concentrating on images and thoughts of pleasure, and doing what is required to realize them, temporarily distracts and provides for anticipatory escape from problems. Once engaged in the pleasurable experience, concentration on desired sensual qualities and inner feelings of happiness can be complete. Following the experience, you are re-balanced, re-energized and able to re-engage with work and other demands.
Meaning lets you rise above events because the Quest requires you to concentrateon feelings and ideals with a focus on goals, that together reveal how your world should be and can be, in contrast to how it is.
More:
Making a difference is difficult and the path hazardous. However, concentration on ideals inspires you and a focus on specific goals energizes you. Keeping aware of how you feel provides additional inner support. The numerous risks, uncertainties and social obstacles often recede in consciousness and become fuzzy or simply ignored (as in"it's a mystery, but it will all work out somehow"). Usually you are engaged with others, and sharing the burden in pursuit of common values is gratifying.
Enlightenment provides for balance by dispelling the illusions permeating the social environment. You must concentrate on misunderstandings and mysteries intrinsic to whatever seems most important and puzzling.
More:
Here is a more determined rising above realities, both pleasant and unpleasant as others perceive them. This clarity, based on self-knowledge, enables a liberation from unnecessary and counter-productive distress in the face of unfortunate events. Insight leading to foresight often guides expectations, allows calm acceptance and patience, or enables withdrawal if situations are hostile or intractable.
Spirituality enables the most radical departure from the world as we ordinarily know it. Equilibrium is obtained by concentratingon a totally different state of consciousness: that is perfect, whole and unifying.
More:
Realizing that the everyday world is an ensnaring delusion is not easy. So spiritual philosophies and dogmas accompany spiritual paths. These pay much attention to explaining and handling the presence of suffering and misfortune. They also offer comfort in the face of your difficulties in achieving spiritual states of union.
Changes Moving Along the Diagonal
The diagonal contains Quests that range from «low detachment + low transcendence» to «high detachment + high transcendence».
Moving up the diagonal, these Primal Quests require ever greater self-detachment (Y-axis) and produce ever greater transcendence of reality (X-axis). As a result, they progressively:
- allow less personal control,
- demand more submission,
- require more openness,
- expect acceptance of what may be disliked, rejected or alien.
Correspondingly, there is a progressive increase in the personal effort needed to sustain pursuit of the Primal Quest. As a result, still moving up but now from an outsider's perspective, persons involved with these Quests seem:
- ever more impractical,
- ever more other-worldly,
- asserting ever more debatable views,
- promoting ever more uncertain nostrums.
Originally posted: 27-Jul-2012.