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The Power of Not Trying To Get Something From Others

Alright, so one question that I’ve been letting bubble around recently is “What does it take to just be HAPPY?” I mean really. No B.S. here. A simple question. Pretty basic and universal. What does it take?

It is often said that what we are seeking is always here, yet that’s often not the experience that we have, is it? In fact, we often experience that we don’t have what we want. Why the discrepancy?

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An Update After 2 Months on the Road: The Dying of Seeking through Traveling

So I’ve been living on the road for two months now, mostly sleeping in my car, but occasionally throwing up my tent when I feel like camping somewhere beautiful,  grabbing a hotel room when we get a snowstorm, or staying with friends along the way. It’s been really nice and it’s amazing how valuable I’m finding social interaction and friendship to be. I’m not sure I’ve valued it more my entire life than now after spending so much time flying solo. Have you ever seen the movie Into the Wild? It’s very much been a source of inspiration as me, with a kid my age, living here in Atlanta, with the similar driving forces, taking off and heading out to travel solo across the country. Anyways, at the end of the movie, there’s a quote where the main character, who earlier in the movie had said that God’s place is all around us so the joy of life doesn’t come principally from human relationships, but at the end of the movie, he changes his stance and says that happiness is only real when shared.

There’s been many changes here, many of them amazing and many of them challenging, but they have all contributed to my growth and expansion.

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Stopping the Search

Seeking.

So many teachers have suggested that we stop seeking, that what we want is already here, but how many times do we ignore that suggestion and keep right on seeking?

“What did they find that is already here? Clearly I haven’t found it. I gotta find it!”

Whatever it is that we want, we may believe it is contained in the next experience, the next thought, the next feeling, the next moment, the next manifestation, the next realization, the next guru, the next location we visit, the next lifestyle change, the next meditation session, the next relationship, the next success, the next whatever.

After years of this, eventually we may have enough failures that we quit trying to seek something in the future so much. What seems to be more common in our society, however, is to read a book or take a workshop on how to be more successful, and if so then the seeking-something-in-the-future game continues right along, just like it has for thousands of years.

Heck, we might explore spirituality, learn about “being in the now,” and then engage in spiritual present-moment seeking, trying to do a good job at stripping away the delusion and illusions so that we can see and experience whatever we are “supposed” to see and experience in the now. “I know it’s already here because teacher so-and-so says so, but I’m not seeing it, so I’m gonna find what’s supposedly already here.” More seeking.

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Causeless Joy, What Does Our Happiness Depend On?

When I was 5 years old my mom always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down “happy.” They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.

-Unknown

Okay, so what drives human decisions? In a nutshell, we tend to move towards what we believe will bring us pleasure and away from what we believe what will bring us pain. It’s about our beliefs.

It’s not that we move directly towards pleasure itself and away from pain. I’m sure you can find many examples in the world, and perhaps even in your own life, when you have moved away from pleasure and towards pain. Interesting, no? Why would we do such a thing? It’s because on a deeper level, beyond surface-level appearances, we are moving towards what we believe will bring that which feels good and away from what we believe will ultimately make us feel worse. Much of this is subconscious.

So why do we do those things that we “know” aren’t good for us? For example, why do we resist reality? Why do we try to control others or the world? Why do we try and manifest things? Heck, why do we try and get enlightened!? Why do we do all this stuff?

Simple, because we believe that our happiness and well-being depends upon it! Quite literally! In the end, we all want to feel good. We all want to be happy, to experience joy, to love and be loved, to experience all those good feelings and emotions.

So, joy. We’re seeking joy. We want to be happy. It’s pretty simple, really.

Yet this joy we’re seeking is conditional. We experience our happiness dependent upon things out of our control, and that doesn’t feel very good, does it?

What if there was a better way?…

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Levels of Consciousness vs. Pure Consciousness

Alright, so today I’d like to address a point about consciousness.

In ego-land, we see ourselves as a being with consciousness, someone who has consciousness. If we get knocked in the head, we can lose consciousness. If we get on the spiritual pathway, we can raise our level of consciousness and become more conscious. There is my consciousness and your consciousness and they see different things. Heck, there are even people who are deemed unconscious, spiritually speaking.

Looking at this wording, we notice that in every situation, the word consciousness is used to point to something other than what we are. Consciousness is something we have, something that changes over time, something that can come and go. It is variable. It is something we want to develop, something to get more of, something to expand or improve.

It gives us a target to reach for, somewhere “out there” to arrive called a “place of higher consciousness” or whatever. Yet another goal in the future. We want to attain a certain level of consciousness. From this perspective, we are given something to seek and we can see that we are not there yet.

Now given all this, I would like to talk about pure consciousness itself, that which is ALREADY HERE AS IT IS.

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Hotei Has Returned to the Market Place, by Tom Thompson

So one of my favorite topics currently is the unfoldment of the awakening process, the signposts and markers along the way as the whole “me” identity falls away. Given that more and more people are awakening, this provides us with a deeper recognition of how the human ego based in separation has been constructed in the mind (the fall of man), as well as the undoing of all that (awakening). We get to see it happen again and again, more and more, from a variety of perspectives. The following is a post by Tom Thompson. He published this on facebook and many of the spiritual traps he pointed out cracked me up. Been there, done that, basically… (By the way, Hotei is the Laughing Buddha or the Fat Buddha. You know.. the one you’ll often see in Chinese restaurants. ) With Tom’s permission, I am sharing his essay here with you guys.

Realization is sudden. The fruit ripens slowly, but falls suddenly and without return.

-Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

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Speedlinks, March 2010

Time for a speedlinks post, a collection of awesome content from around the web to share with you guys.

Differences between Oneness / Enlightenement and Neo-Advaita / Non-Duality by Sage Sarojini. She recently published an extraordinarily helpful article detailing the differences between Oneness and Enlightenment. I know I myself have gotten tripped up on many of these points and it is so helpful to have someone point you beyond.

The Feeling that Nothing is Happening as described by Michael Brown, author of The Presence Process. This article was shared by Roger Gietzen, one of our forum posters and it details an excellent process to help us go beyond just using “The Secret” to manifest stuff as if that will ultimately fulfill us and guides us to coming back home towards the no-thingness within.

What Is Enlightenment? Blogger Tom Stine recently elaborated on Takuin’s answer to this very question, leading to a wonderful discussion.

Where the Hell is Matt? Matt has been an inspiration to me, taking off to go travel the world and dance in front of cool places all across the globe. It wasn’t until after he published his first youtube video that he got sponsored by Stride Gum and got funded to continue traveling the world and doing more of what he loved, having fun and helping make others smile in the process. If he can take off and go live the life he loves without knowing ahead of time how the universe will support him, why can’t we? His second video is amazing as well.

The Next Top Spiritual Author Many of you reading this blog are also spiritual messengers. To you have a book within you or already written, ready to be shared with the world? Here’s a course where you can work with some well-known authors like Arielle Ford and Marianne Williamson as well as the CEO of Hampton Roads Publishing Company, the original publishers of the book series Conversations with God. There is a competition where the winner gets a publishing deal and a lot of guidance and support in the publishing arena. Everyone that signs up, regardless of how well they do in the competition, will free guidance, support, and how-tos on how to write a book, present sample chapters to publishers, get published, and so on. There’s only about a week left to register so if you feel called to write a book, and especially if you’re started getting synchronicities and inner nudges here and there like me, this one would be worth checking out.

Inspire Me Today Every day, listen to another amazing person answer the question, “If today were my last day on Earth and I could share 500 words of brilliance with the world, here are the important things I’d want to pass along to others…”

TUT Daily Emails Speaking of inspirational and fun daily message type stuff, check out the TUT daily emails. Mike Dooley, one of the featured speakers in “The Secret,” writes as “The Universe” as he continues to send out amazing content with such a fun and jovial voice, you can’t help but smile at the degree to which he plays and enjoys life. Truly a standout!

Got any more awesome content to share with us? Videos, articles, blog posts, etc.? Share them with us in the comments!

The Rawness of Life

Okay, so just a little jibber jabbering. I figured this whole “go out and live the life of your dreams” thing was gonna be a big epic adventure, and in a way it is, but honestly that seems to be a bit idealistic. People keep saying “Oh man! That’s so amazing what you’re doing! It looks so cool and so fun!” and yeah, I suppose it looks that way from the outside. At times it is, for sure, but perhaps the best word I can think of to describe it is RAW.

It’s not so much about experiencing life as I’m finding out, but experiencing YOURSELF. It’s basically about coming out of hiding and being more honest with myself and authentic than I’ve ever been…

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