I visited a website today that is packed with articles about 5 steps to this and 7 steps to that, about happiness, about your body, about money.
And people are eating it up. They share it. They comment… Yaay, some different ways to pursue what you desire.
But all those readers are like lemmings throwing themselves off the cliff… What?
This past week I took a break from nonfiction reading, and have been reading novels and novellas again.
But as the lemmings prove: blindly following, pursuing a desire or urge is taking you to ruin.
One of the books I read, actually re-read this week, was Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. One thing in particular struck me in that book, something I didn’t get the first time I was reading it, the method with which Mr. Rochester made sure that Jane falls in love with him, deeply, irrevocably: pretending that he wasn’t loving her, pretending that he was interested in someone else, giving hope and taking it away.
Now, I don’t necessarily recommend that you toy with people you love, but the idea surely works in other areas of life.
Let’s talk about the pursuit of happiness…
Happiness is a fickle mistress, and hates to be pursued. But it loves the person who is interested in creating something, building something, something worth building.
Riches, money, is more like a male energy… and as all males, it hates to be pursued, but when it is pursued, it will rape you, abuse you, toy with YOU, which, I have found, is devastating.
When you allow your desire to cover your vision… and desire is always future based: the whole bases of desire it the missing, the wrong, the imperfect in the present moment…
So, when you allow your desire dominate your vision, you become a dog that is wagged by the tail. You become owned, dominated, and destroyed by the object of your desire. Bloodied, bruised, played with. Desire is the kind of “animal” that plays with its food before it kills it, like a cat.
1. You are not able to look at the present moment, where everything happens, without disdain. Result: unhappiness, illness, frustration, anger.
2. You are not able to and not willing to do what would even produce the result that the desire indicates… because for that you need to be able to be in the present moment, not in order to get to the prize, but in order to do what you do well, fully, all power put in it, with the right attitude.
These ways of being, that desire created, of course, produce not the desired future. You will take shortcuts, you go into wishful thinking, you are now looking for shortcuts, and, of course, you are both ineffective, and unhappy in the process.
To be sure, everything you will ever attain, you’ll attain by virtue of being in the present moment, in earnest, and doing, being what you need to be, who you need to be, to do what you need to do, the present moment well.
Most of you who want money (generalizing from the people I know well) will refuse to learn skills, to grow, to become the person who can make and have money. To grow and have the money be just a side effect. You divide your life to “until I make the money” and to “once I make the money” times. You postpone who you need to be, what you need to learn, until… name your carrot.
Most of you who want health, generalizing again, will refuse to even do the basics, to let go of bad habits, bad information, bad attitudes, and are looking for the magic pill, or miracle. You know this is you, if health and healing advertisement still interest you, hook you, make you want to buy.
Most of you who want happiness, love… well, you get the drift.
Happiness is what you bring to life, not what you expect from life. Love is what you bring to life, what you give, not what you expect to receive.
By the way: life is a gift. Not from your parents, from All-of-it. From existence. You never deserved it, you never earned it, but you are not appreciating it at all. Your whole attention is turning away from life, into an imaginary future, hoping that you’ll get what you want this way.
No chance.
This can be best seen, by the way, when you look at wanting “spirituality”, peace of mind, a silent mind. You are sitting, or meditating, or want to fall asleep.
The wanting makes all these things, peace of mind, silence, sleep, avoid you.
These are like everything else: they are willing to come to you, when you stop pursuing them. Do what you need to do, with no concern of your desire… and the result will come to you.
Maybe even surprise you.
This is the hardest for you to do, because you equate yourself, identify yourself with your desire.
But as long as you do, be prepared to be poor, restless, dissatisfied, unfulfilled, sick and unhappy.
Sorry to be the one to break it to you.
Here is a quote from Osho:
Why can’t you enjoy life – which is a gift? You have not earned it, that’s why I say it is a grace. Existence has given it to you – you can call it God – it is a simple gift, a pure gift; you have not done anything to achieve it, to gain it. Why can’t you be blissful and thankful and enjoy it? It should be enjoyed dancing. But what is the problem? It is because greater awareness is needed to enjoy bliss; to suffer anguish there is no need to be aware. To suffer anguish, more darkness is needed, less consciousness is needed – night is needed, not day. But to enjoy bliss, more alertness is needed.
So if you see a saint who is sad, know well that he is not a saint, because awareness will give a blissfulness, awareness will give a deep laughter to his whole being, awareness will give him something so that he will become childlike. He can run after a butterfly, he can enjoy simple food, and he can enjoy the ordinary things of life so much that everything becomes a gift. Everything becomes a grace from God and he can be thankful moment to moment – even for his breathing. He can even enjoy his breathing, simple breathing – it is so blissful! If you find a saint who is sad, know well something has gone wrong. He still lives in the valley, he has not moved to the peak. Otherwise, he has a radiance, a lightness, a childlike enjoyment, unworried, unafraid – he is fortified in his consciousness.
Why does consciousness fortify you? – because the more conscious you become, the more you know you cannot die, there is no death. Death exists only in the dark valley. And if you are fortified against death, you are fortified. The more conscious you are, the more you know you are the eternal, the divine. Right now you don’t know who you are. This is the valley of ignorance, and there only death happens, nothing else; and you live trembling, shaking with fear. If you look within you will find only fear and nothing else, because around you there is only death, nothing else. So this is natural: with death all around, fear inside is a natural counterpart. Continue reading the whole talk from which I took this quote
