Let go of Wants

Our uncontrolled thoughts are full of wants. Wanting something different that what this moment provides. Thus, throughout your life you see yourself as a wanting person. If this is true then logically it should be impossible for anyone to be happy even for a moment. How can you discover a moment of joy when so many wants are present, constituting your thoughts? Unless you clear the table of those wants, how can you gain relief and be happy? To be happy and to have a sense of want centered on thought is a contradiction.

Only when the wanting disappears totally can you experience joy. Logically, then, you can never discover a moment of joy because you never free all your desires at any time. However, you do gain moments of happiness in spite of yourself. These moments may be few and far between, but the potential is always there. Suppose you hear a joke and laugh; what want did you fulfill? Most moments of joy are like that; you catch them without fulfilling any want. Suddenly and without working at it, you see something amusing and laugh, or you see something and admire it. These moments of joy occur when a distraction takes place. You change to focus of your mental energy from the want to the object of distraction.

If you can be happy, you must be able to shed the wanting without having to fulfill all your wants. In a moment of joy you cannot say the world has caused you happiness through the fulfillment of a desire. Happiness never comes from the object; if it did, the same object should always make you happy. Thus, the fulfillment of a want does not constitute happiness. In fact you do not have to fulfill any desire at all to be happy. Merely by looking at the stars you may become happy, or enjoying some sensory experience you may become happy; or someone says, “I love you,” and you see truth in it and become happy.

The world is not absent in a moment of joy. You are looking at something that pleases you, and you are happy; the world is present. Nor do you transcend the mind in a happy experience. The very same mind is present, the world is present, the senses are present—and there is joy. Nothing has come; only the wanting has gone away for the time being. When the wanting is there, you want a change to take place on the part of some object or person. You become a seeker, wanting some change so that you can be happy. There is a seeker-sought duality, a division between you and the world that makes you unhappy. But when the present momentary object in front of you is able to please and absorb the mind for the time being, you give up the seeker-sought division. You suspend all the wants, you forget the wanting person you have taken yourself to be.

That is why when there is real love between two persons, the seeker-sought, wanting-wanted division is resolved; and there is joy which is not caused by anybody or anything. It is an experiential expression of the fullness, the limitlessness that you are. The self becomes manifest in a happy moment when the situation is able to completely absorb the mind so that the sense of want is suspended temporarily. Then you find “I am full, I am all.” I am limitless, Free and complete in myself.

A thought is not a matter of control; it is a matter of understanding understand that thoughts simply come and go in awareness; they have no reality of their own. If this is the truth about yourself and the world, what self-judgement can you make to become sad? There is never any cause for sorrow.

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Decision Making

Decision Making Need Not be Nerve Wracking

I meet weekly with a group of friends for discussions about all things spiritual. This is not a lightweight group, some of these folks have been advanced spiritual seekers for more than 30 years. We get into some pretty heavy discussions, and it is the highlight of my week.“Decision Making
with Certainty”

During the course of an evening, our discussions often tend to focus upon Learning opportunities that some member of the group is encountering, or has recently encountered. This week was a decision making dilemma that Martha was facing with her perfect son.

It involved a decision she had to make; it was a very common values based issue that every parent of a teenager would recognize. The actual issue is irrelevant. What is relevant was the anguish that Martha was experiencing over the decision about making choice of course A or course B. Neither choice offered her any peace of mind. Nonetheless, Martha felt compelled to make a choice.

For almost an hour, 8 of us wrangled over what was right and was wrong, was this karma, ego nonsense, power struggles, frustrations from her childhood relations with her overbearing mother, etc. etc. etc.

We were getting nowhere, and most importantly, Martha was even more confused in her decision making than ever. Finally, a lull in conversation occurred and John said “I think I have an idea that might help”. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a quarter and handed it to Martha. “Heads you take course A and tails you take course B”. Martha was a bit hesitant to leave decision making of such a critical issue to the flip of a coin. John encouraged her to go along with it anyway.

She flipped the coin and it came up heads. She instantly looked up and smiled and said, “can I make it 2 out of 3?”. The whole group gasped all at once at the sudden realization of what just happened. The fact she had second thoughts about the outcome of the coin flip shed all kinds of awareness about her doubts about course A. Martha’s intellect was incapable of sorting through all of the mirad of issues, but her inner knowing did so in an instant. What was most revealing was the certainty that she now had about her decision.

This was a stunning display of a method of tuning into your inner knowing about decision making. I have since used it on myself in several decision making dilemmas, and this method has never failed at surfacing my true feelings. Try it, when and if you experience doubt about the outcome of the filp, take the opposite choice.

Thank you John!

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