There's a sincerity of search in the human being that's looking for something.
And granted,
We can put words to what that something is,
But those words are just kind of like placeholders.
They point in a particular direction,
But it's not the word itself that we're looking for.
And to really get close to this,
We have to just get more and more deeply sincere with ourselves about what we're looking for.
Now,
That could be a whole exploration on its own about what this is,
But I want to kind of fast forward and see if we can find a point of agreement about something.
And that is,
At the core of what you're looking for is something real.
You're in search for something real.
In contrast,
All of these other things that we think we find,
They seem real as we chase after them,
Or else we wouldn't chase after them.
But then when the quote-unquote reality of it emerges,
There's something about it that doesn't scratch the itch of our craving for something real.
It's almost like getting what you chase after in something and you says,
This isn't what I thought it was going to be.
What did you think it was gonna be?
God,
That's such a beautiful and important question.
What did you think it was gonna be?
And again,
There's many different ways we can go down that rabbit hole,
And maybe just to offer some examples,
It could be some flavor of,
I thought I would feel like I'm enough.
I thought I wouldn't have to deal with this sense of inadequacy.
I thought it would remove that sense that something is missing.
I thought it would eliminate this pain that I've been carrying for so long.
It's kind of like the example of chasing an idealized relationship where we say,
I don't feel loved,
And so the mind says,
Okay,
We'll find someone to love you,
And then of course you create an image of that,
And it feels so good,
And it looks so beautiful,
Because you're also imagining yourself feeling loved,
The thing that you want.
And then you find that relationship,
And then it feels amazing,
And then there's this unfolding of reality,
And whatever it was that we were running from reemerges.
It's still there,
And furthermore,
The more we don't deal with it,
It just messes with our relationship.
It's like those tendencies still come out,
And they wreak havoc if they're not addressed,
Which is what was happening in the beginning that we were running away from.
And my goodness,
This is an endless exploration.
