Following the Deepest Want Through Uncertainty
Siguiendo el deseo más profundo a través de la incertidumbre
A student reflects on how following one's deepest desire often feels uncertain in the moment, and the teacher describes how patterns of conditioning become visible over time, how avoidance of fear and pain drives us off course, and how a lasting peace was always present beneath the turbulence.
Following the Deepest Want Through Uncertainty
A student reflects on how following one's deepest desire often feels uncertain in the moment, and the teacher describes how patterns of conditioning become visible over time, how avoidance of fear and pain drives us off course, and how a lasting peace was always present beneath the turbulence.
I had an image when you were talking about following your deepest want. It seems like most of the time it lives in uncertainty. The image is of squinting through your fingers, trying to tune in: "I think it's that way." It's usually misty in the present. But looking back, you can see the path you've left, and either it's a path with flowers blossoming and green grass, or it's all dead stuff. You look back, see the dead stuff, and say, "I think I need to change direction." Then you feel into it again, but it's always uncertain.
Yes. And to add to that: what happens is you start to see the patterns. You recognize where the mind gets into a certain groove, where what felt like genuine direction has actually become a habit. You notice that whenever you've gone that way, things haven't turned out well. By seeing that pattern, even if it's only happened twice, you start to recognize: "Oh, that's the conditioning. It's not the deep listening. It's not the universal impulse. It's the mental conditioning, the egoic need." That's the learning. You start to see what your mind does, how you use it or misuse it, and the particular way you end up going off the rails.
The root of the bias
Ultimately, the reason this happens is attachment to the idea of what I am. There are many levels of answers, but often there are fears and pains we avoid. The mind keeps saying, "Always go right, don't go left," because left feels like the bad thing we don't want. But actually, it's fear and pain. As we learn, we realize: what I truly want is in that direction, but there's fear and pain to face. I'm describing it simplistically, but my point is that the bias, the conditioning, is the avoidance of something that is present. What I simplify by calling "fear and pain" is a sensation we are avoiding, something we simply cannot be with.
When the problems outweigh the pain
So we come to a point where living in that way creates so many problems that the problems become bigger than the sensation, bigger than the challenge of the fear and pain. And so we start to learn how to face it. There are many ways this happens. Maybe I enter depression, or relationships go wrong, or I get fired from several jobs. Things just don't work out the way I think they should. That forces us to see: what is it that I'm doing? It has to do with a taking of responsibility. Even with depression, the solution is a taking of responsibility. Not in the sense that something in the world I'm doing isn't working, but that it has to do with the use of thought. That must be really tough for someone with a strong tendency toward depression. But it's all about responsibility. Hopefully we learn, and the adjustment becomes faster and faster, needing less and less.
How it becomes obvious
Over time, it just becomes more and more obvious what is coming up. It becomes harder, almost impossible, to deny things, to be in avoidance. It all just comes up and is seen. It still comes up. There is less that comes up, and it comes up less often. My life has been somewhat stable in terms of lifestyle. I don't know what my experience would be if, say, there were a worldwide nuclear war. Maybe there would be much more to face in that situation, and it would be challenging. But within my life as it is: what used to trigger me several times a day, or four times a week, now happens once a year. And the triggering is ridiculously small. It never really takes over. It's just: "Oh, that. Interesting." And it's very short in duration, whereas it used to last a week, or days, or sometimes it was permanent, permanently in a state of being hurt and upset about something.
Would you say that was a gradual learning, or was it gradual and then a big sudden jump?
If I draw a line, it was like this: trigger, trigger, trigger, then there were these breaks, low trigger, and then back to trigger. Like glimpses. Sometimes a period of a week or two of tasting that. Over time, slowly less and less and less. Then there was this stable level of being somewhat triggered, always something missing. And then suddenly, completely, from one day to the next: gone.
There was a little bit of a slow process of adjusting, but it was actually pretty quick. I used to have a lot of triggers around stress and fears about work. Those really dropped. I used to have regular fights with my mother, with my partner. Those pretty much disappeared. It's been years. My mother herself told me last time I was with her: "I noticed we don't fight anymore. We used to fight." And it's not because I'm avoiding anything. In fact, we're both naturally inclined toward confrontation. If there was any disagreement, we'd go toward it. Same with my partner. But in three years I can barely remember a fight with her, whereas before I had them sometimes twice a day, four times a week, week after week.
Breaking the loop of reactivity
And it's not because anything is being avoided. In fact, the opposite: we can go to places where we couldn't go before. But it just takes one. Same with my mother: she's barely triggered by me either. Even when she is, I can very quickly lead it to a deeper place, and she doesn't feel threatened. She doesn't feel she needs to react or defend, and then it deactivates all of her defenses, because I'm not reinforcing that loop of trigger upon trigger. I'm deactivating my own, and then hers. Things still come up, but it really is a big change.
The last several years, let's say three, have been low compared to how it was. Before that, there were moments, glimpses. After a certain point, steady low trigger, but still a sense of unhappiness, still triggerable, still a kind of underlying fear. And then the last thing just completely dropped. What became obvious to me is that what I could call that peace, which is now everything, was always there. I can know that it was there even in my most triggered moments. It was just overlooked. It's obvious it was always there. All of my memories of unhappiness, childhood, adolescent years: through all of it there was this vast love and peace. I see it now. I know now that it was there. It's just not in time.
Capacity to face more
In fact, it became easier for me to go to more extreme places too. Before, I probably wouldn't have been able to handle the business challenges I've had in the last two or three years. Even my co-founders, who are much more experienced than I am, see something in me. They don't know what it is, but they mention it. There's something they find hard to understand. I know what it is, but we don't talk about it. I don't share that with them. But they point to it.
It's so strange, this realization you talk about, being certain that peace was always there. And on the other hand, the suffering, so many kids committing suicide...
It's devastating. And I know the suffering. I was on the edge of that. I got as close as you could get without ending it. And it wasn't just a moment. That close, yes, it was about a year. But a lot of my life it was just a sense of it being unbearable. It's hard even for me to understand. It's not comprehensible. I mention it, I speak about it, and I acknowledge: it doesn't make sense. I don't understand how. But I do know that peace was always there. It's just very obvious, because it is simply that which was always there.
I think I get it, because when I have glimpses of peace, it is part of the glimpse that it has always been there.
Peace as what was always there
Yes. That's what I wish the most for everybody who wants it, who wants to know that. Specifically to those who want it, that is what I wish the most for them. But not everyone wants it. I know it's not universal. Some people don't.
Don't you think that if it were more in the mainstream, more in the educational system, talked about since school, more people could want it?
It's a yes and no. For those who don't want it, they will misinterpret it and make it into a thing, like a religion. And at the same time, yes, it could help those who are ready but haven't had access to it. There's confusion, there's misunderstanding. That's why I speak about this, and that's why you're putting videos out. Some people already know about this, and they hear it and think, "Oh, interesting, here's another version of that." But for some, it might be the first time they're exposed to it. The more people who are recognizing this and sharing it in some way, the better. So that it's available to more people. And the more, the better, because all the different flavors and styles matter.