… it will become apparent that the underpinning of the ego’s responses is the pleasure that is derived from them. There is an inner satisfaction that is the payoff of self-pity, anger, rage, hate, pride, guilt, fear, etc. This inner pleasure, as morbid as it may sound, energizes and propagates all these emotions. To undo their influence, it is merely necessary to be willing to forego and surrender these questionable inner secret pleasures to God and look only to God for joy, pleasure, and happiness.
Although the mind will at first deny that it gets secret pleasure from suffering, it will reveal upon rigorous self-examination that the reason it clings to its content is for the ‘juice’ it gets out of its positionalities. With even a little self-honesty, this is a rather easy fact to discover.
Everyone gets a secret pleasure from resentments, from being the martyr or the victim, and from feeling misunderstood, unappreciated, etc. Society and the law even reinforce these benefits with legal and monetary rewards so that one can be compensated for ‘having their feelings hurt’, for being ‘slighted’ on the job, for enduring ‘stress’, for ‘feeling uncomfortable’, etc.
When the payoff is no longer valued, these feelings disappear. They persist only so long as they serve a purpose. When this ‘ego juice’ is abandoned, it is replaced with inner peace.