So tired of gurus telling me I need to suffer first to deserve happiness

[Shodburrito]

I've noticed a common pattern among certain spiritual teachers who position themselves as having reached "advanced cognitive and moral development." They create elaborate frameworks where you must follow specific paths (often involving suffering) to become "truly good" or "advanced."

This fundamentally misses the point: I don't need anyone's permission to exist as I choose or to experience pleasure now.

Why These Moral Development Frameworks Miss the Mark

When a guru tells you that you're "corrupt" or "selfish" and need to follow their specific path to goodness, they're:

1. Creating a New Master to Serve: They've simply replaced traditional religious authorities with themselves and their framework. The question remains: "Who are you and why should I care what you say?"
2. Denying Your Fundamental Freedom: I don't need anyone's permission or approval to live as I choose. My existence isn't conditional on meeting someone else's arbitrary standards of "goodness" or "development."
3. Imposing Purpose as Limitation: Any purpose, no matter how noble-sounding ("becoming a truly good person"), inherently restricts freedom. It says "you don't deserve pleasure now" because you haven't met some arbitrary condition - whether that's suffering enough, developing enough, or achieving enough. These are just sophisticated ways of telling you to deny yourself what you want.
4. Establishing a False Hierarchy: They position themselves at a higher level of development that you should aspire to reach. This creates the exact same limitations as religious frameworks, just with different terminology.
5. Presenting Their Opinions as Facts: They present their understanding of moral development as objective truth rather than recognizing that their entire framework is just their opinion, no more inherently valid than yours.

The Alternative: Freedom to Be as You Are

A more honest approach recognizes that:

• I don't need to justify my existence or my desires to anyone
• I deserve pleasure and fulfillment now, not after meeting someone else's standards
• I can decide for myself what's valuable without adopting someone else's framework
• No one has the authority to tell me I must delay gratification to meet their definition of "goodness"

When someone tells you that you must suffer to become good, the appropriate response is: "Who the hell are you to tell me what I deserve or when I deserve it?"

Their framework is just another attempt to control how others live and experience the world. What these teachers want is conformity to their vision, not your freedom.

What these teachers don't understand is that their entire developmental model is just another limitation on consciousness—another purpose saying "you don't deserve pleasure now." True sovereignty recognizes that such limitations are themselves created and can be transcended.

This isn't about avoiding self-reflection or responsibility—it's about recognizing that all frameworks, including those of "advanced moral development," are relative constructs that consciousness creates rather than discovers.

Anticipating the Responses

I can already hear the response from development-focused teachers: "Your consciousness is just premature. True sovereignty comes after development, not before it. You're just avoiding the painful work of growth."

This response perfectly demonstrates the trap these frameworks create. By positioning any rejection of their framework as "evidence" of your undeveloped state, they create a system where disagreement itself proves them right. It's a perfect circular logic:

1. "If you disagree with me, it proves you're undeveloped."
2. "Your undeveloped state is why you can't see the truth of what I'm saying."
3. "Therefore, your disagreement confirms my framework."

This is precisely what makes these frameworks so insidious - they create a closed system where questioning the system becomes evidence that you need the system.

What these teachers fail to recognize is that their entire developmental model is itself a creation of consciousness - not an objective reality independent of perspective. When they claim to simply be "pointing to developmental truth," they're actually creating that truth through sovereign will while denying they're doing so.

The real question isn't "Have I met the conditions to deserve pleasure?" but "Why am I accepting someone else's created truth as objective reality?"

[Leo Gura]

You don't have to develop at all if you don't want to.

But if you follow Actualized.org then it's assumed that you care about developing. And if you are going to undertake the goal of developing yourself to high stages, that will involve emotional labor and suffering. It certainly won't be easy or automatic.

Can you be happy without developing at all? That's an interesting question. It much depends on your psyche. Some psyches can be happy living unconsciously, others cannot.

Could you just live a happy life of career, family, sex, success, travel, etc. and never think about development? Maybe. But you might also get stuck and unhappy doing that.

Realistically, your life will stall out at some point and you will seek for solutions. Those solutions will involve development, which will involve work and suffering.

It's like if you wanted to start a business. Starting a business involves suffering more so than if you didn't. Doing difficult things is difficult. There's no way around that other than not doing anything difficult. Which will ironically create its own kind of suffering.

As the Buddha wisely said, life is suffering.

This work is not about me or anyone telling what is good. It's about you recognizing the Good using your own conscious intelligence. The highest intelligence in you sees the Good, at least to some degree. The more development work you do, the clearer you will see the Good.

Do you have to be good? Nope. You can be a psychopath. But you won't be happy with those results.

The reason for being good is not because you're told but because your intelligence recognizes that it is objectively the best way to live. Living badly is not intelligent.

Edited yesterday at 01:51 AM by Leo Gura

[ExploringReality]

Amazing Leo, that struck me like lighting.

[RawJudah]

I feel the same way sometimes. I always wonder if I was fine as I was before I found ‘self help’. 

[Leo Gura]

Doing self-help comes with its own burden. Self-help has a cost. Which is why most people don't do it and remain common fools.

You want to know what happens when you don't do self-help? Look at Elon Musk. He's hyper-successful externally, but he's a man-child internally. That's why we take on the burden of self-help.

It's not really self-help, it's the philosopher's life. The ancient Greek philosophers lived in pursuit of The Life Of Virtue, The Good Life. This requires cultivation of character. Which requires deep inner work, which is a burden. They took on this burden because otherwise you will become a corrupt, animal-like man who lives for nothing more than sex, money, power, fame, and pleasure. This is the life of a beast.

Religion and philosophy is about elevating oneself towards the Good, towards God, towards Truth, towards Love.

Those who do not do the work remain children.

There are many different ways of doing the work. But no one is forcing you to do the work. You can choose to remain a child.

Edited yesterday at 08:20 AM by Leo Gura

[Norbert Somogyi]

@Leo Gura Thoughtful input, thanks!

I've been doing the work for years, but there are always moments where I look at people without much self-awareness just going through the waves of life. Not knowing where they are supposed to go themselves, just enjoying the simple things in life. There is something envious in this blissful ignorance.

Some people had the ability to build a solid life from the get go, I guess the urge to developing inwards (not just outwards) isn't as strong with them. While others, including myself, had a rougher beginning - however this rougher beginning itself gravitated me towards self-development, and I don't know how I would be able to live without it. The fruits of this labor are just so tasty!

Edited yesterday at 08:53 AM by Norbert Somogyi

[Breakingthewall]

The fact that you listen to gurus shows that you're seeking to develop and purify yourself. There is a lot of people who would think you're sick and a loser just for listening to gurus. That you'd be better off going to a nice restaurant for dinner and then drinking a couple of gin tonic and doing some cocaine with a pretty girl and then sex. They'd think you only listen to gurus because you can't get girls; they wouldn't understand that there are other motivations, they really wouldn't understand, they'd think you're crazy. Those people are happy with a superficial life as long as they have money and health. They won't think about anything else. They've never felt rejection or been depressed, their parents were functional, their life has been normal, everything has worked out without too many problems, they've studied a degree and have a good job. It's what everyone would want, in theory: a functional life without problems

Edited yesterday at 09:47 AM by Breakingthewall

[Leo Gura]

Do you know how many times I've thought: my life would be so much easier and happier if I never started this. I could have just made money and fucked. That could have been my life. No headaches.

But no, I had to figure out all of existence. Clawing my way up God's asshole.

Edited yesterday at 09:50 AM by Leo Gura

[OBEler]

2 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Do you know how many times I've thought: my life would be so much easier and happier if I never started this. I could have just made money and fucked. That could have been my life. No headaches.

But no, I had to figure out all of existence.

Do you regret it or did it pay off if you consider all the costs you made?

[Daniel123]

4 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Do you know how many times I've thought: my life would be so much easier if I never started this. I could have just made money and fucked. That could have been my life. No headaches.

I feel this very strongly.

I remember a spiritual teacher saying before giving his first teaching to a group of people: Take a moment to think about if you really want to go down this path for enlightenment. Because it will involve suffering and once you reach a certain point, you will have seen some things that won't let you turn back ever again.

Edited yesterday at 09:51 AM by Daniel123

[Nemra]

32 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

But no, I had to figure out all of existence.

@Leo Gura, well, that is what you wanted.

But I don't understand why you are less happy with the result.

Edited yesterday at 10:20 AM by Nemra

[Leo Gura]

15 minutes ago, Nemra said:

@Leo Gura, well, that is what you wanted.

But I don't understand why you are less happy with the result.

If you knew the amount I have suffered on this path, you would wonder why do it at all. And my suffering isn't over.

The reality is that Awakening involves more suffering than ordinary life. Which is why people are not Awake. If Awakening was purely a net positive then everyone would cheerfully do it.

It's an investment, just like starting a business. You suffer a lot to build a business so can have fruits decades later.

Everything great requires serious long-term investment. The Universe doesn't just hand out greatness for free.

Edited yesterday at 10:31 AM by Leo Gura

[Rishabh R]

@Leo Gura I am grateful that I made an investment for myself by doing self-help which later transitioned into a philosopher's life. 

By the way-- What are your views on how ancient Eastern philosophers lived ?

As per suffering Leo the most advanced stuff Self- help has taught me to accept suffering and see it as temporary as happiness.

Edited yesterday at 10:28 AM by Rishabh R

[Leo Gura]

7 minutes ago, Rishabh R said:

I am grateful that I made an investment for myself by doing self-help

Self-help has a much lower cost than serious Awakening.

Most people can tolerate the cost of self-help.

Very few can tolerate the cost of Awakening.

The cost of self-help is like a bee sting. The cost of Awakening is like getting mauled by a bear.

Edited yesterday at 10:34 AM by Leo Gura

[Nemra]

3 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

The reality is that Awakening involves more suffering than ordinary life.

By now I'm aware of your health problems, which have caused suffering.

But I didn't know that awakening itself caused you so much suffering.

[Leo Gura]

3 minutes ago, Nemra said:

But I didn't know that awakening itself caused you so much suffering.

Have you ever meditated for two weeks straight?

You know what that feels like?

It's basically self-torture. And you may not get any awakening out of it.

Edited yesterday at 10:38 AM by Leo Gura

[Rishabh R]

@Leo Gura Then it's mind boggling why most people spend their time watching YouTube shorts or instagram reels . In college my friends used to make fun of me by reading philosophy books , self-help books , watching videos. But they were a little surprised when they came to know that I meditate for 20 minutes and they also made fun of my insights which I came to when I contemplated.

[Rishabh R]

4 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Have you ever meditated for two weeks straight?

You know what that feels like?

It's basically self-torture. And you may not get any awakening out of it.

I have meditated for 5 years straight with frequency of daily meditation only with little breaks of 4 days 5-6 times.

But yeah you have done more radical practices than us which is why you are at a high place in life.

Edited yesterday at 10:41 AM by Rishabh R

[Nemra]

@Leo Gura, yes, I meditated for long periods. I know the physical pain that comes with it.

There were times I was close to harming myself. Once I was about to lose my consciousness.

[JosephKnecht]

9 hours ago, Shodburrito said:

I've noticed a common pattern among certain spiritual teachers who position themselves as having reached "advanced cognitive and moral development." They create elaborate frameworks where you must follow specific paths (often involving suffering) to become "truly good" or "advanced."

I think you are onto something here. It's time to drop teachers and teachings and create your path. 

As long as you look up to something or someone, you are not at your highest peak. 

You have to keep climbing alone.

Or not.