Truly happy people are rare in spite of the smiles which are usually the brave front for varying degrees of internal misery. Yet everywhere and in every walk of life, man is longing for happiness and searching desperately for some means of breaking out of the trap which his life has become.
It is not his fault if he assumes that the solution to his deep dissatisfaction lies in a sensual life, or in achievement in business or the social world, or in a life of exciting experiences. Neither is it his fault if life is not usually long enough to teach him factually that he would find even more profound disillusionment if these goals were to be fulfilled to the hilt.
If he would suspect that his ideas of achieving a successful and happy life were wrong, and that he must try some new way of living, then the stalemate might be broken. A new line in the divine picture is sketched only when some individual takes life forcefully in his hands, breaks up the old patterns and insists on creating something new by his own inner vision.
– Listen Humanity, p151