Issues with wanting..

We are self indulgent people. We try not to deny our wants. It is important here to distinguish between wants and needs. We need very little but we want a lot and then we tell ourselves, if only I got what I want then I would be happy. That is the greatest lie, we tell ourselves. Getting what we want may give us a short lived burst of pleasure but it really does not give us lasting happiness. Very soon the effect wears off, we do not even notice possessing these objects of our past desires. The only time we notice them is when there is a chance of them being taken away from us.

So after a period of time things of our want which we pursued so grimly sacrificing our happiness for them are ignored not enjoyed once possessed and then they become sources of potential unhappiness when there is a threat of them being taken away.

Some people say the solution is not to want. Is to be without want. Easier said than done, I do not think that I can live without wanting. So the what is then the solution. I believe the solution is to accept the fact that we will always want and not fight it. However recognizing that we will always want something and also recognizing that what we want will not be important once we posses it, gives us some clarity. We no longer consider it important. We no longer say, if I do not get what I want I cannot be happy or worse I will be happy if I get what I want.

I think therein lies the key to our being at peace.

Falling Asleep

I haven't blogged in a while and I am going over some of the blogs I wrote in 2009 when I felt awake. I feel like I spent 2010 asleep. Just like a fat boy who fell of the wagon and started binging on food even though he knows it would make him sick or an alcoholic who went back to booze. Old thought patterns of anxiety, upsets and anger  resurfaced. I started working like I used to pushing myself, struggling, feeling overwhelmed. And when I felt overwhelmed I would try and push myself to do more.

It is all very interesting because I know there is a better way. Entire 2009 I lived and practiced a better way. Of accepting what is and not struggling with life. Some people may say well 2010 was probably worse than 2009. Actually in retrospect it was not. The issues were trivial, it was my attitude and how I viewed the issues which made them so important. I did not choose to be upset or angry or unhappy. In fact I did not choose anything. It was habit. Same old mind patterns which I had adopted long long time ago as a child and I was not alert enough to be aware of them. I became my thoughts and I paid the price for it.

2011 I decided I would get back on the wagon. No more unhappiness or anxiety for me. So first step no coffee or caffeine. Since December 2010 I have not had caffeine and it has helped me tremendously. I am able to slow down my thoughts and am able to step back from them. Second step is start working out again. Exercise to me has a hypnotic quality. It helps me shut down my mind and thoughts that flow. Two and half months down the line and I can see huge improvements in my attitude. I am still not where I was in 2009 but I can see signs of quicker recovery. I don't stay upset for more than a few minutes and I don't cling and justify my feeling upset to myself. I am also going to through the whole process of waking up.

When I am awake, I think my thoughts are conscious which means I choose what I think. When I am asleep, thinking happens to me. I have no conscious choice in my thoughts. They happen automatically. We spend most our time asleep. I spent 2010 almost completely asleep identified with my thoughts.

2011 I have shown signs of stirring. May be one day I will wake up again :)

Authority

When you make someone an authority on a topic you stop questioning and when you stop questioning you stop learning. You blindly accept whatever he or she says because in the past they have been right. Just because they have been right in the past does not mean they are right now. The second problem in making someone an authority over a topic you stop listening others. You narrow your listening to one person and that too without critical thought. You passively accept input without much thought. You might as well be sitting in front of a TV.

Is there anything more destructive to learning than making your teacher an authority on that topic? The student is destroyed and in that process so is the teacher and teaching is lost.

Wanting..

Wanting is structural. What you want is content and the content is interchangeable. In other words it doesn't matter what you want. If you get it you will just switch your wanting to something else. So then why are we upset if we don't get what we want? Is it because we think that we will be happy when we get what we want? Is that not a delusion?

Infact we prefer to wanting to having. Once we have something, we no longer want it and we shift our wanting to something else. So while I am not saying we should not want, thats impossible.  I believe we should stop thinking that getting what we want will make us happy because it does not.  So then its alright to want and not have because having is not going to change my state. Thinking it does makes me unhappy or makes me to wait to be happy till I get what I want and then I shift to wanting something else. So pursue my wants like its a game, doesn't really matter whether I get what I want or not but because it is fun to pursue my wants. That way life is fun.

Self Pity

It is an interesting indulgence we have, this feeling sorry for ourselves. Today I spent the whole day feeling rather sorry for myself and in the end of the day, I have a headache and I am exhausted. Not working out very well this whole feeling sorry for myself. Its like I ate something which doesn't agree with my system and I feel bad.

So my poor wife asks me why I was wallowing in self pity. She would never say something like that. She would instead ask me what was wrong and I could trot out a dozen reasons on why I was wallowing in self pity today but the real reason, if we are honest with ourselves, was that we indulge in it. It is something we like. We like to feel sorry for ourselves even though its not good for us. We cling to this notion of how much of a victim we are and how unfair life is. And when I look back today, it is funny, idiotic and ridiculous. But for ten long hours, I was so convinced that I was this poor hard done by soul. Around eight in the evening after I had watched my thoughts for ten long hours, I started laughing. The whole idea was ludicrous.

Life is a funny thing. You think you have it all figured out and boom, one day you wake up feeling sorry for yourself. :)

Life and Death....

If you had one moment to live would you be enjoy that moment or would you be upset about the fact that you had only one moment to live and not more. Now stretch this moment to a life time. You have this one life to live, are you going to enjoy it or are you going to be upset that you are going to die.

My wife and I were having this conversation about why people get upset when they learn they are going to die and it does not make sense to me that when we know we have two three months to live we waste our time being upset about it. I have three months to live and instead of going and living it and enjoying the life I have, I will instead spend it by living in the future when I dont have this life when I will be dead. That future is going to come anyway, so why dont I wait till I die to die.

If you think about how much we crib and complain about uncertainty and then you are told you are going to die. There is certainty finally we know something for sure, you would think we would be happy and yet we choose to be unhappy. So may be we are not unhappy about uncertainty or unhappy about dieing. We are just unhappy. We are in a habit of being unhappy.

I think unhappiness is a habit people learn from childhood. We learn to complain, criticize, judge. So to be happy all you have to do is to consciously choose it. Make it a habit.

Stages of Grief

The five stages of grief was first introduced by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in her 1969 book On Death and Dying. It describes a process by which people deal with grief and tragedy.

The five stages are as follows, Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. I think we all go through these five stages but I wonder why we do it in these five stages.

When I talk to people they clearly accept that the need to go through these stages but the first four stages clearly make us unhappy and the fifth gives us peace. So why do we not just go to the fifth stage? Why do we have to go through pain and suffering before we say we have enough with pain and suffering and accept? Is it possible to bypass the first four stages and come directly to the fifth stage? When I ask people about it, they look at me like I am crazy. But why should we say that it is inevitable to go through these stages just because thats what we have been doing it all these years. We might have a predisposition to it but cant we overcome our predisposition?

Why should we go through these first four stages of suffering and emotional pain before we decide we have enough of pain? Why should we not just move directly to stage five?