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Beer Money Baron
Industry Role:
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: brujah / gmail
Posts: 22,157
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Quote:
Originally posted by Amputate Your Head
To some degree we all find life difficult, perplexing, and oppressive. Even when it goes well, as it may for a time, we worry that it probably won't last.
Nobody believes his or her life is perfect. >We are caught in the contradiction of finding life a rather perplexing puzzle which causes us alot of misery, and at the same time being dimly aware of the boundless, limitless nature of life. So we begin looking for an answer to the puzzle.
There are many people in the world who feel that if only they had a bigger car, a nicer house, better vacations, a more understanding boss, or a more interesting partner, then their life would work. We all go through that one. But if you reach one of them, then you need another new little cookie.... a new 'if only'. "If only I had just this one last thing, then my life would be perfect!"
Our whole life consists of this little subject looking outside itself for an object. But if you take something that is limited, like body and mind, and look for something outside it, that something becomes an object and must be limited too. So you have something limited looking for something limited and you just end up with more of the same folly that has made you miserable.
We have all spent many years building up a conditioned view of life. There is "me" and there is this "thing" out there that is either hurting me or pleasing me. We tend to run our whole life trying to avoid all that hurts or displeases us, noticing the objects, people, or situations that we think will give us pain or pleasure, avoiding one and pursuing the other. Without exception, we all do this. We remain separate from our life, looking at it, analyzing it, judging it, seeking to answer the questions, 'What am I going to get out of it? Is it going to give me pleasure or comfort or should I run away from it?" We do this from morning until night.
Underneath our nice, friendly facades there is great unease. If I were to scratch below the surface of anyone I would find fear, pain, and anxiety running amok. We all have ways to cover them up. We overeat, over-drink, overwork; we watch too much television. We are always doing something to cover up our basic existential anxiety. Some people live that way until the day they die.
As the years go by, it gets worse and worse. What might not look so bad when you are twenty-five looks awful by the time you are fifty. We all know people who might as well be dead; they have so contracted into their limited viewpoints that it is as painful for those around them as it is for themselves. The flexibility and joy and flow of life are gone.
All your life you have been going forward after something, pursuing some goal.
We all know the picture of the important executive working until ten o'clock at night, answering the phone, grabbing a sandwich on the run. His poor body is being short changed. He thinks his frantic efforts are essential for "the good life"; he fails to see that desire is running his life. We are controlled by our desires, and have only a dim awareness of the basic truth of our existence.
Caught up in desires: to be important, to possess this or that, to be rich, famous. But we begin to suspect that our life is not working quite the way the TV commercials say it will. TV suggests that if you have the newest hair spray and makeup and garage door opener, your life is going to be great. Right?
The selfish greed which runs your life will not work.
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This was pretty long, I saved it for last. I wanted to read it all, because it started out well.. and then it ended even better.
Reminds me of the wisdom of the great prophet Tyler Durden. |