Do not love the world, or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
1John 2:15 NSV
What do you really want? Do you know?
Alan Watts speaks of wanting ....in another video I cannot at the moment cite.... He speaks of our inability to know what we want as desirelessness, which, he believes, is a state we can benefit from. Of course it is a Christian , Buddhist, as well as other teachings' aim...to be desireless...to want nothing of this world.
I am not sure, however, that desirelessness means to put away all our wanting. When we put away all our wanting, we are denying a very human aspect within us that keeps us moving forward...are we not? I often write of the "giving up on wanting" cancer that afflicts many of us and by that I mean we may reach a certain state of hopelessness, usually after a series of defeats, where we give up on wanting and expecting anything and we simply "endure" life rather than see it as as the miracle it is. This desirelessness, I believe anyway, is not what is meant by Watts and the Buddhist teachings.
What was done with this so called "Law of Attraction" is not what is meant either. The world we live in is not meant to be a big Pez dispenser we can simply push with a thought so a "desired" treat pops out. Even if we get that treat...that is not what we really want and making that the aim can even make us sick. This is why we are warned by certain teachings to put away our desires...at least for the things of this world. Focusing on getting the treats can confuse us as to what we really want.
When I look at the above bible passage I think what was meant was not to be overly attached to the things of this world...at least not above the Love that makes us who we are.
So what do we really want?
So Watts in this video I cannot cite at the monment ( sorry) tells us that what we really want is unknown to most of us. He says it is unknown for two reasons:
- We already have it.
- We don't know who we are.
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