Sufferings force the person to look for a reason, to ask, “What is the meaning of my life that is so hard, unhappy and empty?” If this feeling arises and gets stronger and stronger, a person will start to look for answers. If he does not ask this question, he does not care, or he is busy with other things, he does not spend time thinking how to get answers for these questions. The mind will start searching, from where will I find the answers. In and out of books and clubs and friendships. Ups and downs. Who and from where will I find an answer to my questions?
In our world, all the various advertising campaigns and slogans, take those slogans and put ‘em in a pot and cook ‘em up. You’d make a slogan soup and on the menu it would call that soup, “How and Where to Enjoy More and Pay Less”.
That’s our new world motto. Get the most for the least. Even altruists want to maximize their return on investment. Who wouldn’t want a solar/geothermal system installed in you home for a minimal cost and thereafter, you’d never have a utility bill again. What relief worker wouldn’t want to create immediate, affordable health care for sick populations?
Clever, clever mind picks up the signal from the heart and comes up with machinations and fascinations on how to best acquire. How to make the least effort possible to get the maximum results.
Before I go on, test this. Do you recognize an unfulfilled need arise in you and then your mind runs through its Rolodex of all the possible ways it knows to fill that empty feeling (friends, work, booze, TV, $, exercise). If your experiment on yourself yields other results then you wouldn’t have had the same experience and this won’t ring true. I’m writing about an experience, like going to a beach or something. You’d have to have experienced it to understand what sand underfoot feels like and what it is like to jump and rise each time a wave washes in.
A fetus does not think about from where will her food come. She does not think of which clothes to wear to fit in or to make a statement. While a toddler fusses, it is still mommy who chooses the food and the clothes. Yes, people today, capable, professional adults even, inside, are not psychologically developed enough to feel themselves. To feel himself in comparison to everything else.
Comparison to the force that is ever energizing all levels of all creation. Some Light enters a person and the person finds the best and cheapest way to grab that pleasure. Is it to buy a pack of ciggies? An ice cream cone? Go see a movie. Workout, buy a new car. Read a book. Publish a paper. What ever you can do at your level that makes you feel fulfilled, running to do this thing to grab that Light. After a walk to the coffee shop, or after 12 years of med school, you arrive at the goal, if the goal is achieved, the desire for it is not there anymore, it is cooled.
Eventually, eventually and this is what we are talking about, that a person realizes that he is not the heart in his chest, but that he exists somewhere. There is nothing I can do about the body, this is where he lives. He must feed it and take care of it, heal it. Make it an hospitable environment for life. He feels the ‘I’ and he feels the ‘heart’ as the body. This clarification enables him to see the difference between the nature of the two things.
The body and all bodies from a sunflower which arches its back to catch some southeastern exposure, to the bird that flies south for warmer winter, to the millions of 20 year olds in bars hunting for a catch, all levels of creation are coming up with the best ways of How and Where to Enjoy More and Pay Less. Less shade, more sun. Less flapping more getting there. Less dead end relationships, more good matches.
Now, at this point the person has planted his seed in a place where a certain desire can grow. Like a boy at baseball camp will eat, drink and sleep baseball, this lucky person in our example creates a system of reminders, friends to remind and reinforce the goal. Less and less time is relegated to engaging in plots, intrigue and scheming. It becomes clearer to him what to focus on.