NOT TO BE
Realizing fulfillment is not what most of humanity thinks it is. Most of us try to be fulfilled through activity, the pursuit of one beautiful or exciting thing after another. This stream of activity can take an outer form related to the body and its sense pleasures. It can also take the inner form of ceaseless thinking, self-talking and emotional re-acting. In either case, the purpose of the activity is to fill the space of being with something that will provide security, comfort, pleasure and power. This plan of action is based upon the belief that serving the body and the mind will make one happy and fulfilled. Calenders get filled with busy schedules and off we go into life. "Okay I am done with this, what's next, and then what?" Even while we sit in a chair, we aren't comfortable and content.
Basically what I'm saying is that most of us believe that our fulfillment must be sought through experiences. We seek and believe in the value of activities that stimulate our bodies and minds. However, the problem with body and mind experiences is that they don't possess continuity, they don't last. Whatever satisfaction we might get out of an activity dissipates from the moment the activity ends. When the party is over, the let down begins. All great ideas have very short lives. No thing... lasts. Those who pursue fulfillment by this strategy often sense an existential emptiness whenever nothing is going on. An uneasy feeling arises when there's nothing to do or think. Of course, this is the part of the strategy that has not been taken into account. It's not accounted for because very few of us are really clear about what we truly want. It is quite normal for humans to accept mediocrity, half-heartedness and lack of full faith in self and others, because we have the memory of a long legacy of unfulfilling experience. Not asking much for ourselves, we don't expect much from others. The result is the world you see on television. Surely we can be and do better and the choice and opportunity for such belongs to each of us. For those who are willing, the first step is to give an honest look at what isn't working. Tell the truth, be honest and sincere. Decide what you really want from this life. Be willing to consider your Being from the ground up. Only by your open-minded presence can you transcend habitual patterns. In other words, you cannot hold on to old limiting beliefs or failing strategies and expect to be free from their continuing influence.
One of the key forces keeping the strategy in place is our desire for control. This desire is the primal motivation of a strategy that most often prefers an experience of pleasure over pain. Perversely however, some of our preferences are just the opposite and we seek to confirm our identities by pain and poor feeling. Either way, it is by effort and force that we attempt to shape our experience into a habitual pattern that will temporarily reward us with the feelings we seek. Most of humanity is addicted to this worldly experience, the incessant stimulation of body and mind. Since each of us is addicted to our experience of choice, we will do anything to get it and repeat getting it. Only by controlling the form of our bodies and minds and that of others can we make the feelings happen. It is sad but true that most of us are stuck in a strategy that is a proven failure by any honest contemplation of the happiness it provides.
Another force that keeps us from true fulfillment is the force of belief. It is because we believe ourselves to be bodies and minds that we seek the pleasures and pains of the senses and the intellect. It is appropriate for us to be obsessed with the experiential form of life, when we conceive ourselves as mere form. It is natural for matter to attract and repel itself. However matter ages, decays and ultimately disappears. As matter is inherently unstable, it is a poor source of satisfaction. If this is all we are, then temporary pleasure is the best we can hope for. Since many of us believe in nothing more than our physical experience, we are limited to that experience and its fragile dynamic. "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die." This, too, we see on TV, in our shopping malls and holiday celebrations.
Ultimately, our worldly strategy for fulfillment is all about filling the space of life with some form of experience that can be perceived through our bodies and brains. What we have yet to contact is the space of being or pure consciousness. Tommorrow I will initiate that encounter. Blessings, Sundance
________________________________________________
________________________________________________
The separate sense of self, the one who is trying to complete itself, will simply never be satisfied or fulfilled. First, we tried completion through school, friends, sports and many other forms of achievement and attainment. Then, we began searching for satisfaction within a career and its requirements and further achievement. One day, we met our lover and started a family and we began trying to fulfill ourselves through husband, lover, child and family activities. All of these attempts to find true and lasting happiness within the world of form are destined to failure. When we believe that you are a student, a professional, a lover or a mother, those are merely the roles that you are playing. True fulfillment cannot arise within the role that your playing, since the role is only a partial description of who you are. You are more than a successful or unsuccessful student. That role only describes a tiny part that you are. You are more than a wife. That is only a partial description of the broader nature that you truly are. Nonetheless, we continue what we believe to be a very rational search in the life situation to at last find the enduring happiness for which we are searching. However, even intellectually we can see that as long as we believe ourselves to be a fraction, a separate sense of self, we will continue on and on experiencing lack. The lack of fulfillment cannot be blamed on your lover or your friend or your boss. The lack will continue to seem to exist as long as you maintain the delusional belief that you are separate. The activities and experiences of which Sundance is speaking as he said may provide a fleeting fulfillment. We are happy and perhaps have a great adventure in the wilderness. Yet, discontentment resurfaces. This resurfacing is a pointer that there is a mistake here. We have a most primary identity crisis. As a fraction of Totality, you need to complete. As a fraction, you need to protect yourself from 'others' and use others for some ego gain in order to acquire ... to try to be whole. No matter what you try ... as long as you believe you are a fraction, fulfillment is not an option. Anyway, who could be separate from something named Totality? That can only include who you think you are, but you are not limited to that minor, partial, role playing description. Go back to the beginning and investigate. Is it true that dreaming "I" exists? Is it true that it is pointing to the separate self that thinks its limited to a body? The unconditional love of the Still Heart is already complete, you have only to realize that it is so. Then, in intimate relationship, we free one another from any need whatsoever, since we have realized our true identity as wholeness. We no longer have a need for gain. We no longer feel any threat of loss. We are not trying to fill our empty space with our lover and then blame them for falling short. First things first. Realize that you are whole and then what is attracted into your life is whole as well. Blessings, Katie __________________________________________
___________________________________________
T0 Be Fulfilled
Our spiritual awakening is being aware of our divine nature as Spirit, right now, right here. "What is that?" you might ask. Well, I cannot point it out or give it form, because Spirit is not a worldly experience. Spirit is not an object that becomes manifest by the sensing power of the body or cognizing power of the intellect. We know that each moment of our worldly experience is constantly appearing as matter, changing form and disappearing altogether. What many have yet to realize is that Spirit is the continuity of consciousness, the knowing space in which all life happens. Spirit is pure Awareness, the invisible All Knowing and Ever-Present Being. You are this Spirit. We come into life experience as This and then we, the spirited Consciousness, learn mind; that which fragments and divides spiritual Being into thought-forms. The power to think, which we as humans hold in such high esteem, actually causes all of our psychological confusion, misery and sorrow. Why? Simply because we identify with this power to imagine and think. We dream the dream of our personal existence, all the while being the Wakefulness, the continuously present awareness that survives all of our temporary experiences. Our Knowing Spirit is whole, present and free, and This is our true fulfillment. Realize your continuity, that which does not come and go, that which always knows and that which is free Now. Look to your Spirit and be fulfilled. Blessings, Sundance
