A wonderful thing is happening. I'm actually starting to enjoy writing, which, by the way, was the point of this blog. I just finished an hour of meditation and immediately wanted to write. This is what I want to share today; when I envision a perfect life for me I am earning a living helping people transform their lives, I'm happily married, I see my children often, I'm healthy, and I'm financially independent. I'm sure each of these external realities will lend themselves to my happiness. What occurred to me at the end of my meditation is the importance of having desires for states of being. Internal goals can be relied on better to help us reach our external goals and desires. With this thought in mind I asked myself what I most desire for my internal state of being and this is what came up: may I be open, may I be filled with loving kindness towards myself and all beings, may I be well in both body and mind, may I be peaceful and at ease with things as they are, may I be happy. To those of you who meditate, I'm sure this sounds very familiar.
Yesterday I happened to listen to a pod-cast in which the speaker (I've forgotten his name) referred to a study done at Harvard in which they've shown the moment we set an external goal for ourselves, we put ourself into a state of stress. This stress makes it much harder for us to realize our goal and even if we achieve it, we're not satisfied. Kind of sounds like what the Buddha was talking about when he said the source of our suffering was grasping. Pushing reality away and grasping are the two sides of the coin called suffering. This is good for me to remember as I develop more awareness and skill. What matters most is my internal state of being--then I can let go and see how things turn out.
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