Our level of being is shown to us, symbolically through internal experiences, by the masters in the superior planes when we learn how to invoke them.
The point of the work is to free the consciousness from its conditioning so it can remain in its primordial, natural state, distinguished by happiness, serenity, cognizance, contentment, and liberation from suffering.
By removing the conditions that make us suffer, we gain self-knowledge and learn not to commit mistakes again (which condition our psyche and produce suffering on a physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual level).
We gain enthusiasm for meditation when we see how it works. By perceiving the causes that make us suffer, we resolve, with diligence, confidence, and zeal, to change.
With recognition of a superior way of life, we strive to follow it, not from coercion or venerated precepts, but due to our direct experience.
Happiness emerges when we see what conditions our psyche, because by discovering the causes of our suffering, we are empowered to change them for the better.
If your practice is pessimistic and stale, you need to revise your approach, because meditation is not a chore or terrestrial obligation: it is a lifestyle, a superior way of being.
As Samael Aun Weor explained, the greatest joy of the gnostic is the discovery of one of his or her defects, because a discovered defect is a dead defect.
If the gnostic work is negative, it is due to the ego.
The consciousness experiences happiness when discovering the causes of the ego through self-observation, because it knows that in this manner, it will be liberated and returned unto divinity in a permanent fashion.
For thirty years I sought God. But when I looked carefully I found that in reality God was the seeker and I the sought. -Bayazid al-Bastami