Let’s look at what you want, what you really, really want (zig-a-zig-ah).
Say it’s a new job. Why? Because it pays more money. Why is that desirable? To pay the mortgage—that’s a desire for security. To have enough money for everything you like—that’s a desire for abundance. To fund exotic holidays—that’s a desire for freedom. To look after children—that’s a desire to express love.
Say it’s a romantic partner. Why? Fun, intimacy, support, and companionship? That’s a desire for joy, love, abundance, and lack of separation.
Or say it’s for a peaceful mind, a peaceful life. Behind these, a simple desire for peace, which doesn’t need a qualifier.
You get the idea. Everything you want is a proxy for love, peace, freedom, joy, or abundance. Yet this proxy so looks like it itself is THE thing that it’s easy to overlook the essence of the desire. It so looks like the proxy (the job, the partner, the quiet mind) will bring fulfilment. We’ve been conditioned into this model where I, the person, require circumstances, others, even thoughts to be a certain way for us to feel OK. In this conditioning, fulfilment becomes personal. Something I, a person, can chase, acquire, protect and lose. For as long as fulfilment looks personal, you and I will seek personal answers.
But, what if it’s not personal? What if no one has yet found (nor could they ever find) a separate entity called a “person”? What if the idea of a person is no more than a cluster of transient thoughts, feelings, perceptions and sensations? And what if everything it seems we really, really want is on behalf of this non-existent person?
What then?
Beyond the idea of a person, beyond the belief that fulfilment is personal, the recognition of who we are is unveiled. Maybe slowly, maybe in one fell swoop—indeed, this recognition is timeless. The nature of the recognition is all the love, peace, freedom, joy and abundance that were ever sought. And more. Naturally, when what was sought is truly found, this marks the end of seeking (apart from when conditioned habits kick in, of course).
To be clear, this recognition of love, peace, freedom, joy and abundance is not a bells and whistles, glittery experience. It is the most ordinary recognition of who we are, of our one, infinite being. What could be more ordinary than the recognition, “I am aware”?
Here’s a suggestion. When a desire formulates within awareness, and it looks like that proxy is the thing that will deliver, consider this: What we really, really want is to be knowingly aware of who we are. And that impersonal desire, the desire for the essence of our being, can’t help but be fulfilled because it already is . . . but for the thought that it isn’t.
With Love,
Sara
