My wife and I have been watching a series on TV, and every character has a wish or desire to acquire an object or to arrive at a better, happier place. Every character is sure their desire will bring contentment and happiness to their lives. They struggle, scheme, and do all manner of things to reach their goal. They suffer when anything stands in the way. This is living a life of hell.
Once again, we really, truly do not want the desire (object), but the personal thoughts about the desire. We find a weird safety in those thoughts. We want the ache to go away. We are not talking about food or anything necessary for daily living, but the wild imagination of how your life would be heavenly if you acquired whatever you are desiring. Correcting this mistake made by millions puts you into perfect contentment. Happiness and contentment have always been present inside of you at this very present moment. You have forgotten the way home. The mind will only aim at the next desire, and then the next. A life of the next. It’s time to wise up and break all pain cycles.
Thanks Steve, yes, the only worthwhile task in life.
Right, makes one want to examine every single desire or want.
“The pain is a temperature gauge to tell you where you are psychologically.” -Vernon Howard. We spend our hours avoiding anything psychologically painful. Vernon said, You can slow down and go beyond the pain. Realize pain is so very uninterested in this line of thought. The pain has been using you, feeding off of you, infact the pain has become my pleasure. “My I and pain are one thing.” -Vernon Howard.
So true, the mind only wants to live in dreamland. An imaginary camping trip has no mosquitos. A guy I once worked with used to love to talk about his “bucket list”. It was apparent to me that he had no intention of ever acting on those things, but the talking and dreaming was oh so wonderful. For some, this is apparently their best option but to anyone with higher spiritual aspirations it constitutes a wasted life. I’ve also noticed that people buy lottery tickets and then spend the next days or weeks dreaming of and talking about what they planned to do if they if they win.
Good points, John. We can live in imagination, believing it is reality, and this world level is so crazy that it passes as normal.
We already are what we are looking for. Our mistake is looking outside ourselves for what can only be found inwardly. The thoughts of yearning for what the outer world falsely has to offer are not generated by us. Yes they just somehow happen to be received in our heads, but they do not need to be followed. If we see them for what they are, a foreign influence, they instantaneously lose their seeming hold on us. In the seeing and ending of these foreign influences the door automatically opens to reveal the freedom and joy of knowing what we truly are. We are the consciousness, the spiritual sight and insight, which reveals deception, the foreign thoughts trying to misguide our lives. We are the peace, contentment, and fulfilment which was always there but for deception.