LIFE BEYOND PREFERENCES

The secret lies in nothing more complicated than being a willing participant of ones own life, free of the attempt to make it go one way or another.

A complete willingness to be present to the unfolding mystery of our lives.

There may be thoughts and emotions present, or there may not be. Sometimes there is pain and sometimes there is pleasure. The content of our experience is not what is important here, its the fundamental space from which we make contact with our experience.

In the beginning it can take some discipline to overcome our reflexive pushing away of discomfort. We may have to willingly sit in the internal burning that comes when we turn away from seeking our fulfillment in the outer content of our lives. It can be uncomfortable to turn away from our habitual pleasure seeking, we start to feel uneasy when we are not chasing the next thing on the list.

This turning away can be useful however if it allows us to make deeper contact with whatever forces within us are causing us to look for satisfaction with such fervor. Beneath all of our desires is an existential longing for wholeness. We want the things we want so that we can feel a certain way, even if we are not aware of this. All desires break down to motivation to fix an inner division, an inner separation.

This isn't to say that desires are wrong, or that they even disappear , but more so to suggest that our intense need to make sure they get fulfilled comes from an inner sense of lack.

The intense need to fulfill each of our desires is what is being spoken about here, not the desires themselves. When we can really feel this need, well that need becomes the doorway to a much greater arena of questioning. This need which drives us through our lives is the both the tool of our suffering and our liberation.

If we allow ourselves to really sit in that longing, to sit in that state of lack and barrenness , we open a doorway for some miraculous things to occur.

If to this day none of the desires you have ever fulfilled have given lasting satisfaction, why not really investigate why we want anything at all? At the end of the day all of us must be broken down to this point eventually, where we must truly encounter why we want something different than what we are experiencing right now.

When we are aware of this longing, we can use it to affect transformation of our inner experience. We can stop covering it up and distracting ourselves from this existential longing and when we do that our lives can start to come into balance.

As long as we look externally for our solution to our longings and discontents, we are endlessly unfulfilled. However, when we investigate the source of the longing, we can turn that longing inward unto itself. When the longing begins to only desire its own fundamental resolution, well a good thing has occurred and we are well on our way.
Steven