Stop Looking For It

Whatever it is you seek in this life….

Whether love, happiness, peace, money, joy, respect, knowledge, wisdom….

At a time in your life, release yourself from the deep yearning to have this for yourself….

Allow yourself to experiment, to see that perhaps in stopping the act of searching for it, and in halting the desire for it, it will come on its own….

The desire to make it happen may have actually been holding you back, interfering with your progress….

In my life….

I have said to myself….

To heck with it, if she doesn’t like me, she doesn’t like me….

(After dealing with crippling social anxiety.)

Then she liked me….

I have said, if I stop reading and I become ignorant and foolish, then so be it….

(It’s not that I don’t read, but I am willing to go through periods where I don’t read anything.)

Then I became wiser….

I have said, if I am unable to be tranquil because of a chaotic environment and situation (out of my control), then oh well….

And I found peace through the storms, even practicing meditation/mindfulness through them at times….

I have said if I invest in this thing I believe in, and it fails miserably, then at least I did something I believe in….

Many of those investments (in my own book projects, for example) did fail, economically speaking, but enough succeeded and they carried me forward into a deeper journey of learning, growing, and writing….

Over and over, I found that in releasing myself from the desire for an expectation, the desired expectation came true anyway, often right after I gave up on it.

As a chess player, one of the best things you can do in a losing position is to say to yourself “Okay, I am utterly defeated.” As soon as you truly accept that defeat, you open yourself to strange, threatening problems to pose your opponent.

There is magic in that moment where you see the futility and stare straight into it.

You accept defeat for a moment, but then you press on, never truly giving up. Even if there is one window of opportunity, that is all you need.

True awareness is where you find that thing you were searching for….

You come to understand that “I will never find this love – it is simply beyond me, but one day, maybe it will find me, if I keep on doing what I know I must do in this life….”

You give up, but just temporarily.

Then somehow, people in your life come to sense your newfound inner-worth, because you know you no longer need anyone else, and they become attracted to you.

More importantly, your love for yourself will finally have grown, as you stopped measuring your life by whether another person loved you….

Here is another example….

A few years ago, I developed tinnitus (ringing in one ear), and at a certain point, it was bad enough that I actually didn’t know how I would be able to focus again, with this loud, annoying, constant piercing sound in my ear. I had developed regular headaches, and it was a miserable experience.

But at a certain point, I accepted defeat, rather than searching for what to do about it.

I stopped looking for the feeling of relief from the tinnitus. I stopped hoping for it to go away.

I told myself that this tinnitus ringing sound isn’t even there. My brain is producing the noise (I believe this is actually true, medically speaking). This sound isn’t important. It’s nonexistent. I will go about my life like always. And I did.

And soon enough after that, the “sound” eased off. I barely noticed it anymore. I’m not sure if it actually got better, if I simply stopped noticing it, or both.

Strangely, in giving up on looking for any relief or solutions, it mostly went away. Now, it is quite mild and doesn’t affect my life.

(Of course, the one thing I did and continue to do, is protect my ears from loud noises, but that does not make the tinnitus go away.)

Understand this….

Typically, our life problems are self-created, working in cycles, over and over. And we exhaust ourselves simply to repeat them….

The desire to escape the pain or troubles, somehow actually manifests them, over and over.

If you truly inspect your life and see it for what it is, you are likely to find that you must do something different.

You must actually stop wanting that thing that you think you want, in order to get it.

And if you don’t get it, you may find that your life blossoms in other ways that you never could have guessed.

Of course, if you had a goal, you went directly for it, and you achieved it, then you are done. There is nothing else to do….

But I am speaking to those who have spent themselves totally, drained their life’s energy for a pursuit, only to have it escape them, perhaps over and over….

What else is there to do?

Accept defeat, even if just for now….

What is the worst that could happen?

Abandon the goal, or if not, at least abandon the hope that it will turn out in a certain way.

Let it go.

Find freedom there, in not needing everything to happen in a particular way.

Allow yourself to play with this life, to explore and see where it goes, rather than needing something from it.

Perhaps you can have love, happiness, peace, money, joy, respect, knowledge, or wisdom, just not in the way you had expected to find it….

Stop Looking

But still be there, present, aware, ready for when what you desire arises on its own….

Ready for when the ingredients to make it happen all line up for you….

Give it a month….

You’ve spent years or decades trying to get there….

If it didn’t happen, give yourself a month of not looking. Give it an honest try.

Get back into a hobby, play a musical instrument, get in touch with old friends, write a book, or whatever keeps your mind off of this so-called goal.

See how it goes.

Let me know….

Life is Therapy

When you go through something troubling, remember that life can be its own form of therapy if you allow it. Life always has a way to help you heal the pain.

You can go for a walk or jog and see where your journey takes you, going wherever the path leads you….

You can listen to music, and allow it to take you to a peaceful plane, or to work out a certain emotion….

You can sit with a friend, and talk about the most trivial things, and let it be, or just have a laugh over nothing in particular….

You can see a dog with its head out the window of a car, truly joyful, perhaps beyond what most humans even experience, and let that sink in….

You can plant a seed and watch it grow and flower….

You can gaze into the clouds, or into the starry night, and search as far as you can….

You can lend a helping hand, finding the person who needs help more than you do….

Even when you are deeply troubled, unsure how to proceed, life can act as a form of therapy, helping you along through the storm.

You can sit back and listen with your whole body, not just your ears, and truly take in all that is happening as it happens, wherever you are, quieting the part of you that must explain and interpret all that it sees and hears….

You can find it in you to let go, to truly let go of whatever you have held onto so dearly, unable to let it be, and finally begin to open the path to somewhere….

You can observe a tree, the changing leaves of autumn, flowing with the wind, strong yet still….

You can sit in gratitude for the chance to experience anything at all, even the pain or troubles which have ultimately molded you into what you needed to be….

You can express yourself in any way that your heart would be contented to do, giving of yourself to the world….

You can simply be kind, patient, and heartfelt, even when these have not been granted to you….

How many examples must there be, infinite examples truly, where life is its own therapy? We simply must be aware and awaken to it.

Remember that for any troubles and pains, you can work through them and come out better on the other side.

The World No Longer Surprises Me

When you see what is happening in this world for what it actually is, it is difficult to be surprised.

Look at nature, and animals often do unpredictable things. We call them wild animals. Those unpredictable actions help them to stay alive. We are animals too, perhaps with more patterned ways of behaving, but we can still be unpredictable. It seems that if unpredictability is useful for survival in some ways, then expecting that unpredictability from others and our environment is also advantageous.

As they say, expect the unexpected.

Sometimes I wonder why anyone would ever be surprised.

Understand that because something appears in a certain way does not mean it is that way. Because one event has transpired the same way twenty times in the past does not mean it will happen that way in the future. Because someone treats you as a friend does not necessarily mean that his intentions are pure. Also, having experienced long spans of prosperity or failure does not mean the same will continue.

Consider that the most horrific event of your life could have a tremendously positive outcome that no one could have foreseen. And also, the greatest triumph of your life could have unexpected terrible consequences.

In light of the above observations, I am no longer surprised by what I see. The shock of seeing the depths of the ills can only go so long until it becomes nothing new.

If you have seen the world, you cease to be surprised by the tremendous ills that happen, which have no good reason or purpose but just happen and cause pain and destruction. Particularly, I mean the ills that we humans have created for ourselves and others in our lives.

Given enough time, the things we thought would not happen, or could not happen, will tend to occur. Just wait and see. (This reminds me of Murphy’s Law).

Consider: Would a cat’s head look at its tail and be surprised by how this part of itself is entirely different from the rest? Similarly, would one human be surprised at another just because they may not conform to each other in any way?

Many of us are not surprised when shocking events happen elsewhere, in another country, where the people have different laws and customs. But when it happens in our backyard, we are surprised. We don’t expect it to happen to us.

We may be jaded at the bad that happens to others, losing the space in our hearts to care, but we still feel unjustly wronged when it happens to us. And then, of course, we will feel more wronged if we realize that people don’t care about our misfortunes and troubles.

And I wonder if we should allow ourselves to feel the pain more acutely that is in the world, or at least the pain in those closest to us. Feel what it is doing to them and their lives and to you by being connected to that life. Don’t feel it so deeply that you can’t handle it and don’t know how to manage it. Rather, feel it enough so that you know you have felt it, and do what you are called to do because of that pain. Then allow that feeling to pass and move on with your life.

It is when we ignore the pain of the world and the people around us that we are truly shocked when that pain finally hits home. But if we have gained some practice in feeling that pain along the way, we can better manage it when it is our turn. We will feel peace knowing we did what we could to process, understand, and perhaps heal some pain.

Do not get stuck in the pain and dwell on it, but do feel it and use it as a way to better understand the human experience.

There are different ways to know pain. You may feel the pain as an insider, as someone experiencing it, knowing it, and needing to deal with the reality of it. Or you may not truly feel the pain as an outsider, as someone hearing a story about an event, perhaps reading statistics rather than feeling the experience. We can know the pain intellectually, or we can know it in our hearts.

We should sometimes dare to feel the pain as an insider, to truly feel it. Then we won’t be as jaded, and we will see that we can do something to help others who are in true pain, and we are not helpless and innocent bystanders to it. We are connected to it somehow.

Their pain can be shared with us, which may somehow lighten the load and deepen our human experience.

There will always be events that shock the world. This is simply the reality.

But keep in mind that a surprising negative event, when it happens anywhere in the world, can always be met by an equally surprising force for good.

When you are called upon, will you be there?

The most wonderful surprise will be when we surprise ourselves with an overflowing good that we had not allowed to come out before.

As I have stated, the world itself will cease to surprise one who has understood what it is.

But do not rule out the possibility of surprising yourself. That may be in the form of joyful spontaneity, or it may be in the form of doing good in the face of terrible darkness. This ability to always surprise oneself is a part of our life’s force, what it means to be alive.

Be the End of Pain

What if there is a person who could be the end of pain?

The pain could be of any type – emotional or physical.

Rather than be a cause of pain or a means to perpetuate it, what if a person could end it?

This line of thought may sound strange to most of us because we usually do not consider this a possibility.

But stay with me.

For any pain occurring anywhere in the world, when it reached a person, he would find it in himself to say that the pain ends here, and then it would truly end there. He would not cause any new pain to anyone, based on any of the pain he had experienced, no matter how acute the pain and no matter how much pain he was to endure.

Even if this person received pain from argumentative, hurtful, or uncaring people, he would still not need to deliver that pain to others.

He would lose that desire that we all appear to have, even all of us who consider ourselves good—the desire to inflict pain. We may not see it, we may deny it, we may even shy away from this reality, but search deep in your mind and your experiences and acknowledge that there was a time when you have been joyous to deliver pain to someone.

But what if you were ready to be the end of pain?

A person could belittle you, lie to you, steal from you, and blame you wrongfully and without reason. Nonetheless, you would still let it all go, let the pain dissipate, allowing it to disappear into nothingness.

You would be able to say to yourself:

“The pain ends here.”

This would be one of the most difficult challenges of your life, to receive pain and then be able to say that this pain does not deserve a home. Then let it float away like the wind, with nowhere to stay and linger.

This would require a tremendous commitment and perhaps even need to become a life goal. That is, if a person were ever to have any hope of being an endpoint to pain, giving it no room to breathe.

Of course, the task of ending pain is not an easy one.

Instead, what tends to happen is that the pain infiltrates us, making us angry, hateful, bitter beings. Of course, when that happens, we can only perpetuate that pain. But then, the pain is just magnified, for it finds a home in our hearts, and we also spread it into others’ hearts. Then they spread it into others’ hearts.

One generation spreads it to another.

One civilization spreads it to another.

Eventually, the pain faucet is open, on full blast, seemingly unstoppable.

And all we hear about is pain.

It must be natural to feel pain and then feel the need to release it, but the result is more and more pain. If pain has no place where it goes to die and be finished, the pain can only grow.

We all water and nourish the pain, yet we forget to take personal accountability for it.

I wonder:

Who can feel pain, perhaps even tremendous amounts of it, and then find the strength in themselves to have the pain submit to them, rather than them submit to it?

Keep in mind that much of society rewards or encourages getting revenge when someone has been truly wronged. If the pain suffered is large enough, the only relief may be to inflict that pain back to its source.

Unfortunately, that does not end the pain, and if anything, it makes it worse.

The issue is that the pain will often undermine our goals, and we will become puppets to it. Many of us would consider ourselves good people, but as soon as any pain is inflicted on us, we view it as righteous to inflict the same kind of pain back to its source. The pain becomes greater than us then, and the pain controls us then.

Look around one day and see that every person around you has suffered some pain, even if it is not visible to you, just as you have suffered. If you believe you have suffered greatly, remember that some of the people you see today will have suffered even more than you, and they may just keep quiet about it.

Many of us pretend to have our lives together but are secretly in pain, and we will not know how to manage that pain. The easiest way appears to be to inflict it onto others, as that is all we have ever seen.

Someone feels pain and inflicts it on another person, gaining some temporary relief that way. Then that person passes it on, and the next person passes it on. And we are like a relay race, passing the baton of pain to the next person. Even worse, we tend to carry the pain inside, which means we continue spreading it to more people.

We may even say that the pain has taken the human as its host. If the pain is in control, then you are a host to that pain.

Some people who are ruled by the pain of their lives may pass a baton of pain to every person they meet in a day.

Passing on the pain is all we have seen, and all we know. So, of course, we are inclined to do this ourselves. However, inflicting pain may only offer temporary relief. Ending the pain altogether may help offer more permanent peace to more people, as the pain will have nowhere to go.

The pain itself can meet its end and death, but we are reluctant to wake up to that fact. Most of us would even deny that this is possible.

We cling to the idea that if I am wronged, I can also wrong another person.

Can you move beyond that level of thinking, and find it in yourself at some point in your life to say:

“The pain ends here.”

You may think that the pain will become a burden to those who do not inflict it on others. It will eat this person alive, as the pain will become an obsession and wear away at them emotionally.

Why not accept it as your reward in knowing that the pain has dissipated, not needing to travel further around the world and that it ends with you. If you can learn to cope with it and move on, forgive the person who spawned it, and prevent countless other victims from suffering at the hands of it, then wouldn’t that be a great reward on its own?

Ask yourself what the alternative would be? Is it more worthy to end the pain or to perpetuate it?

Even if ending the pain is a challenge, isn’t it a worthy one to rise up to?

Not many people take even a moment to see all the pain in the world, how it unfolds in our lives, how it perpetuates and magnifies, and what little good or use it has done. In many cases, the pain has only served to create more of itself. And we have acted as instruments of it.

Are we born to receive pain and inflict it back onto others? Does that make any sense?

I’m not sure what it takes for anyone to get to a point where they have no desire to spread any pain or get payback for any wrongs committed against them.

But what if you could begin on that path today?

Of course, you do not need to end all the pain that comes your way. That may be too grand of a task and too grand of an expectation.

However, even if you could end some of the pain, especially the petty or needless pain that would go nowhere other than to magnify itself in the world, then that would go a long way toward doing some good.

Forgive the Past. It is Over.

“Forgive the past. It is over. Learn from it and let go. People are constantly changing and growing. Do not cling to a limited, disconnected, negative image of a person in the past. See that person now. Your relationship is always alive and changing.” - Messages from the Masters by Brian Weiss

I have a friend, Elizabeth, who never forgave her father. When the topic of dads would come up, she would state something she didn’t like about this man.

He was too distant, not helpful enough, didn’t have his priorities straight, or he was never there when she actually needed him. That is what she would say.

Sometimes people around her would get uncomfortable because if they happened to mention something positive about their own father, she would make it a point to say that her Dad did not have that quality. Many people enjoy talking up their fathers and showing them in their best light. She would talk hers down.

I’ve never met her father, so I don’t know his side of the story, but I know that she virtually never sees this man. Yet, she does talk about him, even if what she has to say is often negative. He occupies her mind, but there is something about him that she never let go of. She never forgave him for something.

Clearly, Elizabeth never let go of something that happened in the past.

Or maybe it was something that didn’t happen. I understand that her father was a truck driver, and so perhaps when she was growing up, he wasn’t as available for her as he would have liked or as she would have liked. Perhaps she needed more from him, and he was not there to give it.

Yet Elizabeth is now an adult, in her 40s. I can tell that she has still not forgiven her father. She has not even sought a real connection with him, as in her adulthood, it seems she has turned the tables on him. She perceived him as distant in her childhood. Now, she is the one who is distant toward him. When he has tried to reach out to her, she told me that she would sometimes purposely ignore his calls. If he invited her to meet, sometimes she would decline.

This is a man who she very rarely even sees or hears from. Yet she doesn’t let him close – she keeps him away as if he were a stranger.

No one ever tells us this, but forgiveness is hard work. We have to work to see a perception we have built of someone as just that, a perception. It is a temporary way of seeing someone at a point in time.

But consider this:

We are all in flux, changing, growing, evolving, and time can make us stronger or wither us away. If we hold onto our perception of someone from the past too stubbornly, we permanently grasp at a temporal event.

And this is as ludicrous as it sounds, like grasping at fog and hoping to catch some of it in our hands.

Keep in mind that forgiveness is something we choose to do on our own. Often, we are the only ones in control of this. No one else can induce you to forgive.

In the 10th grade, Jeffrey, a friend of mine, asked me, “Why were you so mean to me in the 7th grade?”

I had vague memories of this by then. But I could grasp just enough of the memories to see that, yes, I had been a terrible person to this friend of mine. My other friends and I had often made Jeffrey the butt of our jokes. I don’t think we were purposely malicious toward him, but upon reflection, I could see that we had indeed been mean to him, without any reason.

By the 10th grade, even after Jeffrey discussed his issues with me about our past, he remained friends with me. It must have been true, hard work for him to contend with what we had put him through. And I doubt it was of much consolation to him that I didn’t recall what we had done very well, whereas the details must have been seared into his memories. He held onto what happened, but at the same time, he was willing to forgive and let it go.

Personally, I lean toward letting things go, moving on, and working on building up friendships and kinships. We should strive to forgive. But of course, we all have a breaking point. Perhaps some things cannot be forgiven when someone has gone too far, and then we must all ask ourselves what that point is.

What is the point of no return?

My friend Dr. Bob Rich (found at Bobbing Around - a wonderful resource on improving our lives and the world), a clinical psychologist, has said that “Normal is the walking wounded.” Here, I understand him to mean that most people are holding onto emotional pain in their lives. Of course, there is physical pain too. But one way or another, most of us are suffering in some way. And if not suffering presently, we are often subjected to memories of a prior suffering that we went through – yet, this is suffering too, even if self-imposed. There are countless ways that someone may suffer, unfortunately.

When you struggle to forgive someone, I will urge you to remember that we all have our personal pain points. We have all been through our personal suffering, which is probably not known publicly to the world around us. Even those who choose “bad paths” in life have suffered their share.

I’ve made it a point in my life to forgive people, and I hope you do too.

Consider this: A dear friend of mine was kidnapped last year and robbed. At first, of course, I was upset. But upon reflection, I decided to forgive the perpetrators for what they had done, as I saw great pains and suffering in the past’s of these criminals, and likely for that to continue in their future. What person with a good life would commit such a crime? They wouldn’t. These were broken, disturbed people. They were clear examples of the “walking wounded.”

I forgave them from afar, in my heart, as I don’t know who they are.

Forgiveness isn’t easy. It is hard work. But this is something worth working on, especially with the relations that truly matter in our lives.

Today I ask: Is there someone worth forgiving in your life? If that person is no longer with us, you can still forgive them in your heart.