What We’re Looking For

There comes a time when we realize that we’re not ultimately looking for a new job, a new house, better relationships, a different place to live, a fitter body, an abler mind.

We can’t be truly looking for being better, doing more, or being different.

For don’t we come to recognize that everything above is subject to coming and going?

Coming and Going

Observe your experience very closely. Isn’t it true that everything comes and goes, is born and dies? 

This is hardly a trivial insight even if people commonly mention how “fleeting life is.” The trouble is just that they haven’t yet gone deep enough. 

You feel good on Monday morning and terrible by Monday evening. You had a pain somewhere, it got worse, then it went away. You want job X, you get job X, and then you realize that job X, while fine, isn’t as great as you would have hoped. In fact, your thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions are all coming and going, coming and going, coming and going.

At this point, people will point to experiences (going to Burning Man, say) or to mental states brought about by taking psychedelics. But don’t all experiences end? Don’t all mental states (like bliss) end too?

Ultimacy

What, then, doesn’t end because it never began? What is always already here? What is the Unmanifest, the Unborn, the Unconditioned?

Beginning this Existential Inquiry into the Ultimate

Just start to meditate throughout the day. Go within.

1. If I am not the physical body, what am I?
2. If I am not the finite mind, who am I?
3. Could I be something else?

To begin with, just be open to this third possibility–that is all.

Later on, the following truth will be clear: finding out what you’re truly looking for is the same thing as finding out who you truly are.