From Jeff,
Interesting how the world tries to convince you that happiness will come to you if you persevere,
Snow White,
Cinderella.
Seems that the ego has a lot of helpers convincing you that you will reap future happiness from present pain.
Absolutely.
I mean,
Happily,
You know,
The movies,
The stories,
They,
You know,
And of course in all of these stories,
It's just,
It's happily ever after.
The boy finally meets the girl and,
You know,
They go off into the sunset happily ever after as though it's all wrapped up in a nice little bow.
There's never,
Ever,
Ever gonna be anything unpleasant to deal with anymore in life.
And don't forget how we do this with enlightenment as well.
Ooh,
Once I just get to enlightenment,
I'm never gonna feel discomfort.
I'm never gonna experience anything unpleasant.
No one's ever gonna be unkind to me.
That's not true either.
What changes is that you no longer believe the story about who you think you are.
You no longer believe that little voice talking anymore.
And this understanding that the world is filled with ups and downs,
Gain and loss,
Pleasure and pain,
Praise and blame,
You know,
It's filled with ups and downs.
It's how we experience the world.
So there is no future moment that we can get to,
Including enlightenment,
That means all of our ducks are gonna be in a row and nothing unpleasant is ever going to happen to us again,
Right?
It's just that our relationship to it changes.
We're no longer freaking out.
I've got to get over there because my happiness is there.
We're no longer pushing back on that which is unpleasant because life has a certain amount of unpleasantness as well.
We couldn't experience the world any other way.
If we didn't have,
You know,
Hot,
We couldn't have cold.
We didn't have up,
We wouldn't have down.
If we didn't have dark,
We wouldn't have light,
Right?
It's how we experience the world.
So it's not about removing ourselves from this because when we're removed from it,
When we no longer experience the world through our senses,
We're dead.
It's about seeing through the illusion,
Still seeing the world,
But seeing through the illusion that there is a little me somewhere that's happier other than where I am now.
If it could just get all of it,
What it wants,
It would be happy.
If it could just get that difficult person out of my life,
Then I would be happy.
If I could just not have this bill,
This broken iPhone,
This whatever it is,
Then I'd be happy.
I could just get over there,
Then I'd be happy.
It's seeing through that illusion.
There is nothing there.
There is nothing there that's going to be happy when you get over there.
The only thing that changes is the thought goes away and then the presence that was always here,
You are just now feeling it.
You are finally feeling it for a moment and it feels good and then it starts up again and you're back in the chase.
So yeah,
Yeah,
There's a lot,
Not just stories,
The movies,
Our consumer society,
The commercials,
The advertising,
All of that,
Social media,
The news.
I mean,
The news,
Right?
I mean,
That's a,
You know,
Gets us all agitated,
Gets our ego agitated as well.
But for this week,
It's really just focusing on,
Focusing on the chasing mind.
I'll be happy when I get over there.
Notice it,
It's a lie.
It is a lie that we have believed our whole lives and everyone around us is believing,
But we're trying to wake up from that to see what's really going on.
So do the practices that I was suggesting,
Like feel the body,
Feel the tension that comes from that thought.
It's not in getting that over there.
The suffering is from the tension and ask yourself,
Who is it in here that's gonna be happy when it gets over there?
We should be able to find it.
If it exists,
We should be able to find it in the present moment.
If we can't find it in the present moment,
Then it doesn't exist.
