External changes are not going to solve your problem because they don't address the root of your problem. The root problem is that you don't feel whole and complete within yourself. If you don't identify the root properly, you will seek someone or something to cover it up.
Michael Singer, the untethered soul
What About The Law of Attraction?
Still confused about this law of attraction idea, this wanting something to change and be different in the future and probably will be until the day I die...but what I do know is ...the biggest part of practice, whatever practice we choose to partake in, is to be perfectly okay with what we have in our now. We need to focus more on the "What is...' than the "What if", on present moment rather than some future moment. And I guess that means, we also need to focus on accepting and allowing, more so than on wanting or desiring.
So if you were to ask me what I really, really want...I would say, I want "peace". I just want peace. Of course, true peace of mind is this true acceptance of what is...whatever is.
Does there have to be external change for me to have peace? Peace of mind is not conditional, it is not dependent on what I got going on in my present moment or what happened in the past or what may or may not happen in the future. It is being okay with what is now.
What confuses me is this idea that we are creators and we create our worlds with our thinking. Even the Buddha who was all about embracing each moment as is, taught that our worlds are a projection of our minds. Yet, would he be a proponent of this law of attraction?
Hmm! I hazard to guess, that he would say...the law is okay and has great truth in it but what we have done with the law to make it fit our present egoic way of thinking is where the problem comes in. We are confusing pointers with what the pointers point to. In other words, we are thinking and labelling our present experiences and the experiences we want to have in such a way to suit the egoic frame of reference, not the spiritual. We are seeking to make external changes to end suffering and that won't work.
Huh?
Happiness or peace and contentment?
We are all on the pursuit of happiness, right? But what is "happiness"? I never really liked that word. It never sat well with me. To me, the ego can be happy but the spirit is "content". I prefer contentment and peace to happiness. These I see as a deeper unconditional, eternal and internal form of "happiness".
The term "happiness," which I associate with the law of attraction, is all about the temporary, the physical and egoic satisfaction. The happiness ego seeks is a very temporary experience that is up ahead somewhere.. "I will be happy when...". I see it as an elusive and very conditional experience. When I project that only something outside of me will make me happy and I cannot get that thing...what then? I am not going to be happy...I will be the opposite of happy, right? If I believe a soul mate is going to bring me happiness and I don't have one now, in this present moment, I am not happy now. I may find some hope in the law's formula, that teaches if I plant and water the seeds in my mind someday in the future he or she will show up. That may diminish some of my suffering which is brought on by my focus on what is wrong with my moment, what is lacking in it. All my focus then is not on "What is" but on "What if" . I am using this moment as a gardening tool to bring happiness in the future. "I am not happy now but I will be."
"Happiness" does become a present moment thing rather than a futuristic one, when we achieve that thing we equated happiness to but only very briefly. We use every present moment for years planting and hoping for the "what if", ignoring, denying, supressing and repressing the "what is" as we wait to be happy and voila! we finally find our soul mate. It is all worth it then...the law is a success. It brought us happiness!!! Wonderful...or is it? For all of how long will this achieved goal of finding a soul mate bring happiness? Until our first disagreement, or fight, or betrayal...until we realize that that person cannot make us happy(because nothing outside of yourself can make you happy or make you unhappy). Then what? Back to suffering?
Nothing Outside you will bring Peace and Contentment
With enough suffering...you will eventually realize that nothing outside of you can bring happiness or unhappiness to your life...it is an inside job. All you had to do to find real lasting happiness= peace and contentment, in the first place, was to go inside. Is the investment in the law of attraction, then, not the long way around to achieving what you really want? You thought the soul mate would bring happiness...but the whole time you were focusing and watering this "thing" outside of you, when true happiness, which is more of a peace and contentment, was already inside you all along...in the moment you dismissed.
We already have, according to so many spiritual masters, including Christ and Buddha, all the conditions we need to be happy( again...I replace that with "content" and "at peace") inside us. Searching outside for this takes us away from the moment and the very thing we are looking for.
Let's know what it is we really want
So when we were searching for the soul mate we were searching for this idea of happiness, right? The soul mate was just a means to bring us something we wanted...the happiness. So it wasn't the soul mate you really, really wanted but the feeling, the living experience you associated with that idea of having a soul mate. We are clear on that right?
Why Take the Indirect Route?
So why take the indirect route? Why spend all your present moment affirming that the soul mate is coming or pasting pictures of some strange dude on a dream board. If what you really want is something the soul mate would only offer in some diluted and temporary form, why chase after that for years when all you have to do is go inside. All the soul mate (or the idea of a soul mate) did was open you up to what was already there, what is always there. ...the wonders of life, the experience of Love which is so much grander than what we find in one special relationship.
If you are like me, you have, throughout your life, devised these lists in your mind about what experiences would bring pleasure ( make you happy) and which experiences would bring you suffering. Having a soul mate , you decided in your mind, would bring you happiness when all it was really doing was allowing your mind to open up enough to experience what was already there. If the soul mate is nothing more than an idea or experience that opens you up to what is already inside you, why wait for that thing to open you? Why wait to be happy? And why stay closed just because you do not have one in your present moment now?
Michael Singer, in an untethered soul, speaks to this idea of staying open...well..."not closing" to the peace and contentment already within you. When you project all your energy into that future time when you will have a soul mate and become dependent on that experience to open you up...are you not closing to what is already in your experience now? All the conditions needed to be peaceful and content, to feel love and joy that are already there?
By all means we embrace our human nature to want and desire but we need to know what we really want. We want the experience of happiness, contentment, peace, love and joy we assume the money, the big house, the car, the special relationships, etc will bring us. They do not bring us this ...what brings us this is our ability to stay open to what is already within us. Ask for that from this law!
Peace and contentment is not dependent on how things are going on around us. It comes when we embrace things as they are, whatever they are and we just stay open to the wonders of life.
Hmmm! It is so challenging to completely understand all this enough to articulate it clearly...but I will keep trying. It is all good!
Plum village ( May31, 2020) Dharma Talk with Br. Phap Hai. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4pa9jItkI0
Michael A. Singer.(2007)the untethered soul. New Harbinger
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