Comes The Dawn

4

OUR PROBLEMS: BLESSINGS IN DISGUISE

Don’t think of problems as difficulties, think of them as opportunities for action. Hard as they are, they may turn out to be blessings in disguise.

—C. F. KLEINKNECHT

Is it not true that most people look upon their problems only as difficulties? Even worse, they regard their problems as dreaded invasions of the serene life. Why this perverse view? Problems should be likened to birth pains; the good life has its genesis in them and their “painful” overcoming. Let’s see if we can make the case for joyfully overcoming them.

This thesis, obviously, is premised on the good life, and that needs definition. Simply stated, the good life is the opposite of stagnation or retirement; it is incompatible with the listless life. It is, instead, emergence, evolution, hatching—day by day growing along the lines of one’s creative uniqueness. There is no destination or point of arrival in the good life but, rather, a perpetual becoming.

Wrote Saint Augustine, “Happiness consists in the attainment of our desires, and in our having only the right desires.” If the purpose of life be an expanding awareness, perception, consciousness, what desire could be higher than expanding one’s consciousness into a harmony with Infinite Consciousness? Pascal put it this way: “Happiness is neither within us only, nor without us; it is the union of ourselves with God.” Of all forms of happiness this one must, in my judgment, be assessed as joyous!

The basic problem that confronts the three billion people who inhabit this earth relates to survival—to having any life at all. The first need is for food, the second for fiber. Solve these basic demands or perish!

Parenthetically, it is enlightening to recognize what it is that largely accounts for the shortness of life of a majority of the billions who are graced with birth. In a sense, it is a lack of “business” knowledge—knowledge of what is our business and what is none of our business. In India, to cite but one example, people perish by the millions because dictocrats—the know-it-alls—engage in what is none of their business. If we are more blessed with longevity in the U.S.A., it is because here, more than elsewhere, each tends to what is his own business. Hardly any freedom of choice in India, a great deal of it in the U.S.A.

For many people in some lands, life has no more problems once their needs are met for food and fiber. And equally satisfied are most Americans who live in relative luxury. Problems, regarded as painful nuisances, are in the past tense—glory be! This wrong attitude is widespread.

It is his attitude toward problems that makes or breaks the individual. “Problems make or kill you,” wrote the remarkable Austrian economist, Böhm-Bawerk. According to one of his students, Ludwig von Mises, they killed his teacher. Böhm-Bawerk, who had a profound understanding of what ought to be, saw the world going to pot as a result of Marxism. The problem pained him; the resulting distress shortened his life, as distress usually does.

Analogous to my theme is the story of a Persian farmer named Hafed. He left his farm and searched for a diamond mine, finding none. Years later, long after the weary and penniless Hafed had died tragically in a strange land, another Persian while digging in Hafed’s deserted garden discovered the diamond mines of Golconda, the richest ever uncovered in the ancient world.1

The point is that those problems we tend to deplore may very well be diamonds—hidden in one’s own mind, not elsewhere.

Epictetus, the Roman slave who rose to become one of the world’s great philosophers, declared that “It is difficulties [problems] which show what men are.”

It is reported that Thomas Edison made 50,000 experiments before he succeeded in producing the storage battery. He was asked if he didn’t get discouraged working so long without results. “Results!” he exclaimed, “Why I learned 50,000 things I didn’t know before.” His 50,000 problems were that many blessings in disguise.

What, then, is the formula? First, solve the problem of obtaining food and fiber; this makes survival possible. Second, find a way to overcome the Command Society and achieve freedom of choice; this makes plenitude possible for one and all. But keep right on finding problems to solve! This is only the beginning.

Having achieved the aforementioned things of this world—accomplishments of this mortal moment—look next to the immortal: life eternal. What aspect of man has the potential to be everlasting? Is it not his consciousness—the mind’s intellectual development of thought—spirit, if you prefer? In my view, it is this and this alone which is immortalized, that lives forever. It qualifies as the highest of “right desires,” for it has to do with the expanding of one’s own consciousness, as nearly as possible, into a harmony with Infinite Consciousness.

The goal is nothing less than ascension in consciousness, and this is a step by step procedure. As one problem is solved or overcome, look for a higher one. For it is an observed fact that the art of becoming is composed of acts of overcoming. Although each problem will at first appear difficult and doubtless painful, once overcome it will be assessed as joyful—a blessing in disguise.

Bear in mind that problems in this higher realm are not thrust upon us as are earthly obstacles, such as the Command Society. To the contrary, they must be searched for and then overcome. Explore the unknown for problems as a means to an expanding consciousness—for gracing morality with immortality.

Finally, it becomes more and more self-evident that the free society will replace the Command Society to the extent that morality is immortalized. Why this assertion? Ours is a moral problem! It follows then that we should labor in the higher realm to free ourselves in the earthly realm. Then, indeed, will our problems—all of them—be blessings in disguise.

• 1In Roman mythology, Aurora is the goddess of dawn.