Investigating the Notion, “I’ll Be Happy When…”

Today Ariel hiked up a mountain, but nobody came back down.

As I was hiking up the mountain this evening, I noticed how the egoic mind was doing the egoic mind thing. You may be familiar with the following notion: “I need to figure out or achieve or get something and once I get there, I know I’ll finally be happy, be at peace, and be able to relax and enjoy life.” Something to that effect.

Yet when we take a good hard look at this idea and be genuinely honest with ourselves, we may open up to the recognition that really, not just in theory but deep in your gut, that will NEVER actually happen. You’ll never get there. No one will.

Have you noticed that in the past, shortly after you got what you wanted you started feeling lack again? Well whatever it is that you desire from life now, you’re going to have the same experience once you get there. That’s how this thing works.

That thing within us, whatever it is, that thing that feels lack and subsequently strives to fill the void will never feel that it finally has enough… It’s built to feel lack. It’s built to tell you that you can fulfill this sense of lack with the very next thing. It’s built to tell you that when you finally get this one last thing that you’ll finally be happy. It’s also built to return back to that initial state of lack once you do achieve your goal. Rinse and repeat. If you follow this pattern thinking that your pot of gold is at the end of the next rainbow, you’ll be playing this game forever. It’s not until you finally see the absolute and utter futility of trying to reach fulfillment in this way that you let go of the idea entirely. That whole thing just drops away. You don’t have to try and stop doing anything. You just see the reality of what’s happening without buying into this particular delusion of mind any longer.

Dropping the False Notion

So as I was hiking up the mountain past all the fall colors this evening, it was so amazing to see how hard my mind was working, like a worker who’s working overtime without being asked to, to try and figure things out so that I could take care of whatever I needed to do, fulfill certain needs and desires, and hopefully finally get whatever I want, whatever that happened to be this time.

When that game was seen through, it just dropped. It wasn’t a technique. It wasn’t an effort. It was just a natural byproduct of the clarity of seeing, “Oh, this game doesn’t work. It never will work. It’s designed not to work. And that’s okay because this thing is working perfectly!”

You don’t have to seek Truth. Just recognize the false as false and the illusion will fall away on its own, revealing the light of Truth automatically.

So I hiked up to the top of the mountain in peace and enjoyed the beautiful view of the golden light of sunset as it skimmed over the tops of the colorful trees. After enjoying the view from the peak I started making my way down the mountain. Since I was wearing my trailrunners (hiking running shoes), it was a perfect opportunity to zip back downhill along the trail, flying around trees and soaring over rocks and roots. When this body/mind character reached the bottom of the mountain, suddenly it was noticed that no one had run back down!

Sure the body went down the mountain in the movie of life, running happened, thoughts arose, desires happened, the interaction with a supposed space and time still occurred, but there was no longer a separate self doing any of that. It was all just part of one big story. Everything that happened was just content within awareness and awareness itself felt like it had blossomed and opened up. It’s like awareness had become a blooming flower, and I AM that awareness.

Recreating a Sense of “Me”

Now the mind continues doing what the mind does, such as trying to understand, wrapping itself around things, explaining, putting into words, describing, narrating, and so on… and yet all that was seen to be like just a game happening within the infinite unnameable presence of the I Am. From this place, it didn’t matter what the mind does for none of that could touch This.

And yet the mind is resilient, continuing to toss thoughts and tasks up into awareness, hoping that awareness would get caught back in its game, allowing mental processes to function as a sort of snare of consciousness, at least in an experiential sense. In actuality, even the experience of getting caught is just more of the story happening within awareness. There’s nothing to resist. Besides, who gets caught?

When we a thought successfully creates a sense of “me,” it recreates a new sense of separate self experientially, seemingly pulling a “me” back into consciousness. This process has been covered in more detail in a previous post titled How To Make Yourself Unenlightened.

The thoughts that recreate a sense of separate self, Adyashanti calls these “velcro thoughts.”

The Experience of Desire, After Awakening

Speaking of Adya, he had a live radio broadcast tonight where someone asked about desires after awakening. The discussion that ensued was bang on with today’s experience on the mountain.

Adya said that after awakening he, too, still had desires, but that they were treated with a sense of lightness. First of all, there was no more sense of “When I get ABC, I’ll be happy.” Secondly, there was a loss of the sense of, “If I lose XYZ, then my happiness will go with it.”

When we experience a loss of desire itself, our experience of life becomes “flat” as he put it. This totally matches my experience. Have you guys experienced this too? It’s like we can lose our creative impulse to live and express who we really are. Something is missing when our creativity and desires aren’t infused with love and allowed to flourish in this world, illusory or not. It’s not about getting rid of our desires, but rather losing our attachment and clinging to desires, as if they hold the key to salvation and happiness.

So yeah, that whole notion of “I’ll be happy when…” Well, not so much…