Pleasure Principle

What it is

The soul naturally seeks pleasure. The pleasure principle is our innate movement toward life, fulfillment, joy and expansion. When painful experiences become linked with this life force in childhood, the pleasure principle becomes distorted, attaching itself to destructive patterns instead.

Why it matters

When the pleasure principle becomes distorted, our life force becomes unconsciously attached to painful patterns. We then find ourselves re-creating experiences that bring suffering because they also activate our energy.

From Bones

~1~

Here’s an example that might help clarify how negativity keeps going… Understanding why others behave the way they do makes us feel strong and helps us see ourselves with more insight. We’ve set the self-perpetuating wheels of insight and understanding into motion.

Unfortunately, there are still a few remaining areas of negativity in us we haven’t yet recognized. So our negative pleasure principle attaches itself to our newfound understanding of the negative directions that remain in the other person.

We start dwelling more and more on their faults. And we begin to enjoy seeing their blindness… The old negative forces have just taken on a new disguise. (Chapter 16)

~2~

There is something that makes all this infinitely more complicated in a relationship. It’s the fact that everyone has attached both their positive feel-good directions and their negative hurtful directions to the pleasure principle.

This is the real crux of the problem.

This is what makes it so hard to change and give up the negative direction. And it’s why our pain keeps on tearing us apart. (Chapter 16)

Continue with: Negative Intention • No-current • Pain