The Impulse to Fix
El impulso de arreglar
A student describes a persistent feeling that something is fundamentally off in their life, and the teacher traces this impulse to fix and overcome back to a deeper misidentification at the root of the self.
The Impulse to Fix
A student describes a persistent feeling that something is fundamentally off in their life, and the teacher traces this impulse to fix and overcome back to a deeper misidentification at the root of the self.
I feel cursed, or there's something that just doesn't make sense about my life and I can't get it. I can't figure it out. Something's off. Something's blocked.
That whole thing, which you put perfectly because it's in your own words, that whole thing (which will probably come in different words in a different moment) is exactly what I'm talking about.
There's a whole bunch of things wrapped up in that, and some of it has to do with things in life that you can address and improve. But we often try to fix it through doing something in life, whether worldly stuff or spiritual stuff. That's what I meant by power: spiritual power or worldly power. It's a very deep desire to gain something so that we can fix that feeling.
The cycle of trying and failing
Often we try one way, gain something, and it doesn't fix it. We try another way, gain something, and it doesn't fix it. We try worldly stuff, gain something, it doesn't fix it. We try spiritual stuff, gain something, it doesn't fix it. Through trial and error and elimination, we get frustrated, and despair grows.
All of that is actually a successful process, if that is happening, because we start to see: none of that is helping. None of it is fixing this. Then we can start to look at what the actual problem is. Because we really only look there when nothing else works.
Thank you. I get the feeling that even at the root of that is impatience. This pattern that something's off, something's different about my life, something's not making sense. That's really what I need to find, to shine a light on.
It's impatience, probably a rage of frustration and pain. And yes, that's the heart of where the illusion stems from. That's where we lost the garden.
Biting the apple
This might not help right now. You just hear the words, but it might click in another moment. It's because we decided we know what we are. That's my interpretation of biting the apple: the knowledge of intellectual knowing. "I decided I know what I am."
When we define ourselves to be something we know, we lose what we truly are. There's a gain and there's a loss. The gain is "I know what I am, party time." But the loss is what we truly are, and that loss hurts.
Then, because we're attached to this knowing of what I am, we interpret the hurt as something we can do something about. "I know what it is. I'll figure it out and I'll do something about it." This continues until all of that striving and trying fails so badly that we get so tired we finally say, "Maybe I can't do something about it. What is this about? What is the source of this?" It really starts to feel like: I am the problem. The source is me. And that's where we start to look in the right place. It has to do with the illusions of "I."
So this impulse to fix, to overcome. In this context it's unhelpful, but is it helpful in other contexts in life?
Sure. It's helpful if the tap is broken and you want to call the plumber. Problem-solving, creating, troubleshooting: there are infinite possibilities of goodness. And there are infinite possibilities of mistakenly doing the wrong thing, because we are confusing what the problem is, and then we're confused about what the solution is.
Projection
What's actually happening is that we're projecting the issue at the core somewhere else, and then trying to fix that. But it's not really the problem.
There are problems in life where the ambition to fix them is an awesome thing. It can be an awesome thing if there is wisdom, meaning: I see that I'm not projecting the issue at the core of the illusion of self.
This projection is the most normal thing in the world. The problem is the government. The problem is the world. The problem is the politician. The problem is the partner. The problem is the parent. The problem is the job, the employer. You could even internalize it: the problem is my mind. It goes on and on.