Tethered?

 What you think will make you happy, means everything else won't. You didn't define what will make you happy, you defined what won't.

Michael A. Singer

Michael A. Singer, in the below linked podcast,  tells us once again that in our search for being happy, our attempts at "selecting", " preferring" , "wanting" certain things in our life circumstances at the exclusion of others, is more about not wanting rather than wanting.  Regardless, the above words  remind us of the essence of the Buddha's teaching: "Desire" is the root cause of all suffering. Desire of course also includes the opposite side of the coin, "aversion" ( not wanting).

In a Hot Air Balloon Going Nowhere? Check the Tethers.

He offers the analogy of the hot air balloon tethered to a big spike buried deep, and firmly cemented into the earth.  We want the feeling of being up, "light", free but we are tethered.  Our goal is to release the tether.  

Most of us seek the release of suffering, ie peace and happiness, through what we erroneously believe is the cause of suffering....that spiked tether end  that is rooted to the earth. We have this notion that if we change what is happening "out there", get what we want  from the material world  and keep the "unwanted" away, we  can be happy and free.  That type of mentality is equivalent to thinking we need to jump out of the Gondola and with pick and shovel...dig through the earth and the cement the balloon is tied to before we can rise up. This is a process that requires so much effort, so little gain.  We cannot change the physical world.  Sure we may get some things we want and feel momentarily good because of it...we may then conclude that such action is fruitful but when we really look at it...we will see that it isn't.  

The external world  is the way it is and it creates rope that reaches up to us.  The problem isn't the end of the rope the earth is holding.  It isn't what we get or don't get from the external world but that we, in the Gondola, are reaching for and hanging  on to that tethers. We and our clinging , our preferring is what is keeping us from going up.  To be free we don't change the world so it gives us what we want...we simply let go of that end to which we were clinging. We stop wanting! We stop averting and resisting what we don't want!

It is our ego that is doing the clinging. Our ego and its attachment to "me, my, and mine" that is the problem.  In all actuality we are up.  Our consciousness, which is high and free,  is looking down at our egoic mind and its thoughts and its feelings...our psyche or ego which is just an accumulation of all our life experiences. I imagine these as a bunch of sand bags. In that psyche is the experiences we stuffed and stored ( samskaras) which ego is constantly trying to appease and keep down. So distracted by this personal  mind stuff, so absorbed into it, are we, that we have the delusion that we are weighted down, tethered to the earth, stuck and unable to rise up.

  If we get rid of ego...throw some of its sand bags over or at least slap the tether out of its hand , we will realize that we are floating above the earth and all  worldly drama. Until we do that, we will never truly enjoy life, never truly appreciate it for what it is and what it has to offer.  The only pseudo joy we will experience, is when ego gets what it wants and manages to keep what it doesn't want away. That is an exhausting way to live because number one: the work required to change the world  so it accommodates us never ends. It is exhausting and fruitless. And Two: we are fighting a battle we can never win.  Life is going to be life no matter what we attempt to do about it.  Reality is reality. Our resistance only makes this journey so darned hard! ...You are carrying around a burden that is incomprehensible and unsolvable.

The Only Real Lasting Solution 

The only solution is to take responsibility for our holding on and let go.   Let go of the rope, let go our our wanting, our aversion and our egos. We will still have the "mind stuff". Thoughts and feelings will come and go but we do not have to base every decision we make on them, on what this personal mind tells us.  We can instead rely in the impersonal intellectual mind. Hmm! At least until we realize how high high up we actually are and how far we can go. 

Hanging on to the tether and seeking to free ourselves by changing the world is not what we want.  Resistance and what it creates in us is what we don't want. Ego creates the illusion of a weight that keeps us down...we can free ourselves of the weight and the tether by surrendering to what is. 

Throw the sand bags of ego overboard and let go of the tether. You were never meant to spend your entire life  grounded to the earth.  Just the opposite.

All is well in my world.

Michael A Singer ( June 29) Letting Go of the Rope.https://tou.org/talks/