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#2985 - Tuesday, November 13, 2007 - Editor: Jerry Katz
Nondual Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
Read the book inspired by the
Nondual Highlights, One: Essential Writings on Nonduality,
edited by Jerry Katz
ONE is on the
shelves of most Borders Stores: http://www.bordersstores.com/locator/locator.jsp?tt=gn
Or order online:
Amazon.com site: http://snipurl.com/1rycd
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Sentient Publications: http://www.sentientpublications.com/
Canadian shipments, write jerry@nonduality.com
In this issue a beautifully written article by Gina Lake taken from her book Anatomy of Desire: How to Be Happy Even When You Don’t Get What You Want.
From Anatomy of Desire: How to Be Happy Even When You Don’t Get What You Want
by
Desiring is wanting what is not presently true, or
real. If it were true, or real, you wouldn’t need to desire
it. Inherent in desiring is a feeling of lack—of something
missing. Also inherent in it is the feeling, or belief, that if
that were not lacking, you would be happy.
We long for what we don’t have because we
believe that having it will finally bring us peace and happiness.
We don’t realize that the lack of peace and happiness we are
feeling is actually a result of desiring what we don’t have.
The desire is the cause of our unhappiness, not the fact that the
desire is unfulfilled.
When we examine this, this seems so obvious. Desire
is painful. We suffer because we believe we are lacking something
necessary for our happiness. That is a very sad (and untrue!)
story, but it is essentially everyone’s story. Everyone
feels this way because the mind is programmed to be unhappy with
whatever is happening. No matter what is happening, the mind
comes up with complaints about it or ways to improve on it. That
is its job. That is what it is programmed to do, and it does it
very well.
This situation is painful for two reasons: It is
painful to not have what you want, but it is also painful to
discover that there is no end to wanting, even after you do get
what you want. What we really want is the peace that comes from
no longer wanting. We hope to experience peace and happiness once
and for all by getting what we want. However, peace and happiness
are not achieved by getting but by loving what is,
just the way it is. We are so afraid that if we love what is
we will never get what we want, when that has been the secret to
happiness all along!
Loving what is would seem to be the simplest
thing possible. It involves no effort, no struggle, no longing,
and no disappointment. But loving what is goes against our
programming, so it is difficult. It requires vigilance to
counteract the egoic mind’s automatic rejection and
resistance to whatever is happening. To experience the peace and
happiness that exist in this moment, it is necessary to stop
listening to the egoic mind, which undermines this peace and
happiness with complaints and judgments. These are the tactics it
uses to take us out of the present and into its world of desires,
hopes, and dreams. It woos us with fantasies of a more perfect
world, a more perfect mate, a more perfect experience, and a more
perfect you, all of which are unreal and will never be real.
Your fantasies, dreams, and desires don’t
create reality or even reflect reality accurately, although they
do affect your experience of it. When you are focused on your
desires, dreams, and fantasies, you are not experiencing this
moment, and you are missing out on the real richness, peace, and
happiness that are right here, right now.
The Nature of Dreams
Most of us assume that our dreams are meant to be
fulfilled. We believe that our dreams are meaningful and have a
purpose. They spur us to take action, but is the goal—the
dream—a worthy one? We assume so, or why would we have it?
Like every other thought, we assume that our dreams are true and
meaningful. We believe in our dreams, and they define us to some
extent: “I am someone who wants….” Our dreams
shape our choices and our actions. They shape our lives.
The problem with assuming that our dreams are
meaningful and that they will make us happy is that dreams
and the desires that make them up are just thoughts, most of
which come from the egoic mind, which is not so wise about what
will make us happy. We assume that our dreams are our personal
prescription for happiness, and that just isn’t so.
Dreams are just not that important. It is an
illusion that our dreams are meaningful. Just because we have a
dream doesn’t mean it is meant to be fulfilled. Everyone
has dreams, and many people have similar ones. They are part of
our programming as humans and not meaningful messages from “above.”
They are messages from the egoic mind, but that is hardly a
worthy guide for our lives.
This doesn’t mean there are no true dreams
that do have meaning for us; however, these don’t come in
the form of specific images. Essence, our deeper self,
releases impulses to create something in the world, but the
specifics of how it will look are not given ahead of time by
essence—or even known. Any specific image you have is
generated by the mind, as it attempts to foretell and affect what
will happen. The mind doesn’t like uncertainty, so it makes
up a complete image and pretends that that is how it will be—or
should be. This image may have little to do with what essence
intends, and it has the potential of sidetracking or shaping the
end result, but essence allows this. Thus, the manifestation of
every dream is usually a co-creation between the egoic mind and
essence.
Although many believe that holding an idea in your
mind long enough and strongly enough will cause it to manifest,
this simply isn’t true. If this were true, then many more
people would have exactly what they wanted and imagined. We all
know that getting what we want isn’t as easy as that, and
even when we do get what we want, it doesn’t look exactly
like we imagined. It is impossible for anyone to imagine
something exactly as it will be, and yet many feel they have
failed because they haven’t been able to manifest what they
have imagined.
The mind comes to some very irrational conclusions
at times, and the idea that you can get what you want by holding
the thought of it in your mind is not only irrational but
contrary to all evidence. Nevertheless, the egoic mind clings to
this belief because it wants this to be true because this would
give it some sense of control in a world where the ego, in fact,
has very little. Rather than delivering the desired result, this
strategy brings suffering because it is ineffective and people
tend to blame themselves when it fails. However, if they looked
around, they would see that no one else is succeeding with this
strategy either. But the ego doesn’t encourage such a
rational approach because it doesn’t want the falseness of
this cherished belief exposed.
The ego wants you to believe that it can get you
what you want. It wants you to believe that it is a worthy and
trustworthy ally so that you will continue to turn to it. If you
didn’t believe in the egoic mind’s ability to guide and
assist you, it would be out of a job, and it wants to exist in
its current capacity, even though it fails miserably at bringing
you happiness.
Desires and Dreams Are Not Meaningful
The belief that our desires and dreams are
meaningful is a core assumption we rarely question. We can’t
become free from the domination of the egoic mind without
questioning this core assumption because desires and dreams are
key thoughts, which keep us tied to the egoic mind and keep us
busy with plans for getting what we want. They also generate a
majority of our feelings: When our desires and dreams are getting
met, we are happy and confident; when they aren’t, we are
unhappy, sad, angry, ashamed, and fearful.
We don’t like it when we are not getting what
we want because this results in feelings we don’t like. In
particular, we feel powerless and afraid. We feel that if our
desires and dreams are meaningful, then we should be able to
attain them. If we aren’t able to, we feel we have failed at
something important. We feel as if our life is going wrong—or
worse: We are afraid we will never have the life we want, and
that will mean we are doomed to unhappiness, failure, and shame—forever.
We take our desires and dreams very personally. This
assumption that they are meaningful implies that they are
personally meaningful, that they are specially made for us. If we
aren’t able to attain them (preferably immediately), we feel
ashamed, as if we failed at a mission we were given. We feel
betrayed by life and by ourselves. We thought we were powerful
enough to make life happen our way, and now we see we aren’t.
That is a blow to the ego, which assumes that it is that
powerful. This humbles us, which is a good thing because it shows
us the truth: We are not the one in control of our destiny. We
co-create alongside something else that is shaping our life.
It can take many experiences of the failure of
our dreams before we begin to catch on that maybe our dreams are
not true. Maybe other things are more important than them. Maybe
the dashing of our dreams and what is learned from that is more
valuable than the fulfillment of any dream.
Having our dreams dashed forces us to see that life
goes on, and it goes on as it always has: unpredictably and in a
way that is beyond our control. Having dreams and desires gives
us a story line, a sense of destiny, while life is never that
clear. We don’t really know where our lives are going, but
having desires and dreams gives us a script, so we think we know:
The plan is to fulfill our desires. This plan, however, was
created by the ego, and it doesn’t really know what life
intends for us. It doesn’t know essence’s plan or even
that there is a plan beyond its desires. It is convinced its
desires and dreams are what life is all about, and we believe it.
Having desires and dreams gives the ego something to
do. It gives our life structure. What will I do today? I’ll
go after what I want. End of story. No need for further
questioning. They also keep us focused on the mental world, where
plans are made for getting what we want and fantasies are
created, which drive those plans forward. All this mental
activity keeps our attention off the deeper questions and gives
us a pseudo reason for being. It would be one thing if this
strategy brought us happiness, but its lack of success at doing
this eventually causes us to question the value of our desires.
If life isn’t about desire-fulfillment, then what is it
about?
The ego has no answer for this, but essence does.
Essence’s answer, however, doesn’t come in words. Its
answer is released in the moment, as essence moves us forward
toward more meaningful activities, ones that don’t
necessarily fulfill our desires and dreams but fulfill us on
deeper levels.
Freedom from Desire
You will never be free of having desires, but you
can be free from the need to have your desires met. We suffer not
because we have desires but because we feel we have to have them
met. It is possible to have as many desires as you have
always had but not suffer over them. We suffer over them because
we believe they are essential to our happiness. This belief is
actually what causes our suffering.
For most, the solution to the suffering caused by
desiring what you don’t have is trying to get it.
Consequently, many spend their lives going after what they want,
which is what they believe they need to be happy. But there is
another solution to this problem of desiring what you don’t
have, and that is to see it for what it is: Desire is just the
thought “I want….” Can a thought cause suffering?
Yes, if you agree with it. Who is this I that wants?
When you see that the I is the ego and not
who you really are, it puts wanting in perspective. Wanting is
forever coming out of the ego. If you give your attention to it,
you will be chasing one desire after another. The ego is in
the business of manufacturing desires. There is no real rhyme or
reason to what it desires; it wants one thing and then another.
Often, it wants opposite things (e.g. “I want a relationship
and I want to be independent”). It wants whatever it thinks
of or whatever it sees. It is easy to see the ego at work in
small children in stores: “I want that. I want that. I want
that!” People are designed to want. It is automatic and not
meaningful.
Once you are able to separate yourself from this I
and see how undiscriminating, random, and constant the ego’s
wanting is, you gain some distance from your desires, and there
is freedom in that. You can be more objective about them. They no
longer seem like they belong to you, and that makes them less
compelling. What makes the “I want” so compelling is
that it is happening inside you, so you identify with it and
believe you do want that—and need that to be happy.
Once you have some distance from this I, you
are free to choose whether to listen to it or not. You are more
able to evaluate the desire and come to a conclusion about it
yourself. Sometimes desires are worth listening to, or at least
harmless. The desire for some ice cream, for instance, or for
some other pleasure, can bring enjoyment if it is not indulged in
too often.
Giving Your Attention to Essence
It is exhausting to be wanting so constantly and so
strongly. If you give a lot of attention to the ego’s
wanting, it increases, and so does your suffering. By giving the
ego’s wanting less attention, you decrease your suffering.
Then, it is possible to give your attention to something more
rewarding: essence. When your attention is being given to the
ego’s wanting, it is not being given to something more
fulfilling and true. Shifting your attention from the ego’s
wanting to essence not only lessens your suffering but increases
your peace, contentment, joy, and happiness. That is a
good tradeoff!
The peace, joy, happiness, and contentment of
essence are right here, right now, but we overlook them because
we pay attention to the loud and noisy mind and its demands:
“I want!” They get our attention not only because they
are so loud in comparison to essence, but because they are so
insistent and full of fear. The ego tells a story that makes its
desires feel urgent and important: “You may not survive, and
you certainly won’t be happy unless….” The fear
that is stirred up fuels action, but it is painful to have this
as a motivator.
Copyright © 2007 Gina
Excerpted from Anatomy of Desire: How to Be Happy
Even When You Don’t Get What You Want by
Gina is available for astrological and channeled
phone consultations that support spiritual awakening. For more
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or to download Radiance: Experiencing Divine Presence for
free, visit http://www.radicalhappiness.com.