Why are we dissatisfied?
The outside world, the relative world, is always re-balancing and changing. We get hot and we want to be cold. We get a small apartment and want a bigger house. We get hungry and we want food. We are single and we want a partner and then we want to be single again. This is the land of desire.
The inner world, the absolute world, is the Self, consciousness, awareness. It is unchanging pure Presence, pure Being. That is who we essentially are. Our essential Self is experienced as bliss. If who we really are is covered over and lost, we end up seeking bliss or happiness only in the outside world, in the land of desire. Then our lives become a world of craving.
Desire is vibrating consciousness set in motion and channeled in a particular direction. Desire is a flow of energy toward an object or outcome. When we desire something or someone we expect an outcome and become attached to receiving that outcome and become averse to any other outcome. When we live in the land of desire we become attached or averse. We become attached to the fruits of our actions and forget we are consciousness.
If there is a conflicting flow of energy that disrupts the success of our attachment, of acquiring our outcome, of fulfilling our expectation, we become angry. We seldom get what we desire in its fullness or with the effortlessness we want or in the time we want so we live in anger. Almost all desires with attachment to an outcome create some degree of anger. The land of desire tends to create a land filled with dissatisfaction and anger. That anger might be very subtle; a rolling of the eyes, a judgment, a righteousness, a criticism, a pursing of the lips or it may be a full-blown rage.
Desire keeps the mind completely involved in the outer world of sensory experience and the inner world is lost. This combination of desire and anger, attachment and aversion, overshadow the true Self, the unchanging pure consciousness. We lose the remembrance, the experience that we are consciousness and we become the author of activity, meaning we forget our unchanging Self and become the changing desires and angers. We become our body, thoughts and feelings and forget we are pure awareness. The motionless is overshadowed by motion. The changeless is overshadowed by change. We become our desires and anger, the attachment and aversion, and we forget we are awareness. Our natural state is to experience ourselves being the witness of activity. But when that witness is subsumed by desire and anger and we live in a land of unfulfilled desires with our true Self covered over, we create a life that feels awash with dissatisfaction. We forget who we really are. The bliss of the Self is overshadowed by the dissatisfaction of desire, attachment to outcomes and anger.
What creates a state of satisfaction?
If there is a remembrance of who we really are, the Self of pure consciousness, in conjunction with activity, then desire is not overshadowing the true Self and activity is supported by Nature. When we remain in the experience of being the witness, of experiencing the pure consciousness of Self, there is not attachment or aversion to outcomes and so there is no anger.
Desire arises from pure consciousness and then covers it over. We become bound by activity. The only permanent way out of dissatisfaction is to immerse ourselves in pure consciousness to the point where pure consciousness remains stable in our experience and then activity can exist along-side the experience of pure consciousness. Then there are no veils covering out true Self. Then we do not lose our remembrance of who we are. Then we do not become subsumed by attachment and aversion and anger. Then we witness activity and desires become the impulse of awareness supporting the evolution of life.
This cannot be done simply by thinking or intellectually knowing this. This can only be done by infusing the actual experience of pure consciousness into our mind, by expanding awareness. If the Self, pure awareness, is being subsumed or overshadowed by activity and desire, then the experience of awareness itself needs to become more predominant and not be allowed to be covered over by activity. This is why the repeated experience of pure consciousness is so important in creating a fulfilled, satisfied and blissful life. This is the importance of spiritual practices, especially meditation and grace, to infuse this state of enlightenment, of remembrance, of Presence, into our actual moment to moment experience. When we live in the experience that we are consciousness, then activity and desire exist to support life.
Profound Wisdom that cannot be shared with greater clarity.
Thank you James.