All longing, seeking, wanting, searching, striving, hoping (ego) is the out-going energy, or expressed desire to find and attain happiness, peace, and/or love, from somewhere other than the fullness of what’s here. Most humans long for this feeling of fulfillment of love, happiness, and peace, and go looking for it through the “attainment” of relationship, money, success, food/drugs, etc. This outgoing seeking, outward energy, is the effort to attain happiness, love, and peace from some thing, some where other than what’s right here. This outward movement is the very birth of unhappiness and dissatisfaction, as it’s the very denial of your present completeness. The belief that I am incomplete, and need something “out there” to fulfill something empty “in here,” is where unhappiness and discontentment lives and breeds. This unhappiness and dissatisfaction is sometimes a deep, subtle gnawing, like “something is not quite right.” Most run like hell to fill this up with the next shiny object (thing, person, activity, consumption of choice, etc), hoping THAT will be the thing to give lasting fulfillment. But alas, it “works” temporarily, only to leave the seeker even more unfulfilled, and back out seeking more and more, or sinking more and more into discontent feelings of lack and incompleteness.
All outward energy (desire, wanting, seeking, striving, hoping) is the very denial of the actual completeness of this moment. This denial, or veiling of completeness (the outward attempt to fill something perceived as missing) is the root of suffering. When longing, wanting, seeking, etc., dissolve back into its’ native nothingness, the presence of inherent happiness is experienced. It’s never anything that needs to be attained. It’s something that is already here to be experienced. By seeking it, there’s a subtle declaration that it’s not inherently here; there’s a declaration that you don’t have it and need to go out and find it. That denial itself is the very core of the suffering cycle. Any attempt to attain happiness, love, or peace externally, is the very energy that veils its’ actual current presence, and pushes it away experientially. Ironic?!
Carole Griggs, Ph.D. 2014 ©
