Happiness is what nearly every person on earth is looking for, is chasing, is trying to attain. The reason that people do what they do, is because they feel the doing of it will make them feel better. And the main way that people are trying to reach happiness, is by reaching their desires. But the following truth has the capacity to change the way you are trying to go about reaching happiness as well as put true happiness within reach: To be able to experience true happiness, the truth that you must accept is that attaining what you desire, will not make you happy.
Let me explain… Attaining what you desire will feel really, really good. For a hot minute. And then, it won’t. People believe that once they reach their desires (especially in all the various areas of life) there will be no more contrast in their life.
For example, a person thinks that by finding their soul mate and getting married to them, they will be happy. Or that by becoming a billionaire, they will be happy. Or that by becoming a famous artist, they will be happy. Or that by becoming free, they will be happy. Or that by winning something or achieving a goal, they will be happy. Or that by becoming enlightened, they will be able to experience and maintain a state of happiness. We imagine happiness to be a kind of end-state. We imagine it like we imagine heaven, but here in this life. A pure positive state, where life only feels good and no unwanted things happen.
Contrast is one of the integral elements of this time space reality. Contrast is the existence and the perception of polarities such as positive and negative, wanted and unwanted, dark and light, pain and pleasure. Contrast is the root of both personal and universal expansion. A being is meant to sort through the wanted and unwanted elements of this time space reality so as to give rise to desire. And then, to line up with that desire with their thoughts, words and actions. Doing so, causes a person to actualize the expansion. But this improved state of being will come with a new set of contrast. And so, the process and the movement starts all over again, propelling the person into the ever-expanding state of being. The biggest fantasy that people sell each other is that there can be an end to contrast. For sure the biggest lie that the self-help/spiritual industry perpetuates is that there can be an end to contrast. That it is possible to get to a point where life only feels good with no negatives and where no unwanted things happen anymore. If you want to learn more about this, watch my video titled: The Biggest Lie the Self-Help/Spiritual Industry Sells You. The reality is that anything you want and attain, will come with a new set of negatives, pains and unwanted things. And these things will not make you happy. So, you will desire more.
If you are unprepared for this, what you are in for, is a huge disillusionment. You will work your ass off trying to attain what you want, thinking that attaining it will make you happy. Only to find that it doesn’t. And when this happens, you will wonder what the hell is wrong with you. You will change your values and start chasing something totally different, thinking that attaining that different thing is the answer to happiness. But the same thing will happen. You will get there, and find that it too is not the answer to happiness. Again, attaining what you want, will not make you happy.
The answer to this, is not to give up desire. In fact, despite what you have been told, you could not do that, even if you wanted to. Closing the gap between yourself and what you desire, is one part of happiness. The way to experience happiness is not to give up on what you want. It is to accept that happiness will not come as a result of getting what you want. Wants, by their very deliberate design are meant to create continual expansion. And therefore, they can never be satisfied. To learn more about this, you can watch my video titled: Are You Afraid of Desire? The Truth about Desire.
It is tempting to look at the never-satisfiable nature of desire and to make desire in and of itself the problem. Rather than to make the problem what it really is. That people think attaining what they want (a specific outcome) will make them happy or end their suffering. In other words, desire is meant to create continual expansion. This is why desire is insatiable. The fact that desire is insatiable does not make desire in and of itself the problem. The problem is that we think it is satiable.
When you accept that attaining what you desire will not make you happy, you begin to form a much more conscious, real and dynamic relationship with your desire. You are able to be much more objective about it, seeing it for what it really is. You are able to work with it as an ally, make conscious decisions about it and with the information it gives you. And use it as a powerful inner tool and resource. It no longer controls you. Nor are you in a fight to get rid of it.
When you accept that attaining what you desire will not make you happy, you will stop living your life as a “so that”. What I mean by this is, most people do things that are inauthentic to them. Things they don’t enjoy, in order to attain something else they want because they think this thing that they want will make them happy. For example, they become whatever other people want them to become, so that they can attain belonging; thinking that attaining belonging will give them happiness. Or they work a job that makes them unhappy so that they get money, which they think will make them happy. We all have to consciously choose into some painful, negative and unwanted things in this life. We must consciously choose what set of contrast to say yes to. But this is very different than the subconscious process most people are engaged in when they are doing something they don’t enjoy so that they can get something else they want. This is an unsustainable way to live especially when getting what they want will not make them happy. If you accept that attaining what you desire will not make you happy, you are more likely to consciously choose to do something you enjoy and thus, your life experience will feel better to you. To understand more about this, watch my video titled: If You Want to Be Happy, Don’t Do This!
When you accept that attaining what you desire will not make you happy, you are more likely to live for your deeper values. Things that are far more important to you and that matter more than your own sensation of happiness. This causes you to be much more resilient and have a much, much deeper sense of meaning and fulfillment in your life.
When you accept that attaining what you desire will not make you happy, you will not tell yourself that something is bad or wrong with you because you become unhappy again, even when you get what you want. You will not tell yourself the false story that you are impossible to satisfy or that somehow, you have failed at life. To move through life with this expectation of yourself, is nothing short of a set up and is therefore, a form of cruelty. And by this standard, due to the nature of desire, everyone is impossible to satisfy.
When you accept that attaining what you desire will not make you happy, you will find it easier to fully commit to the adventure of life and to mastering the process of expansion. You can choose to commit to playing the game of life and extracting the benefits from it, including the benefits of desire itself. You will find it easier to no longer be in resistance to the what is in life. You will stop trying to get out of it and transcend it.
When you accept that attaining what you desire will not make you happy, your attachment to and desperate desire for permanence and immortality will diminish, and with it, so will your resistance to impermanence and death. The ultimate object of desire, is to have what you want forever, because you think that getting what you want will make you happy and keeping what you want forever will keep you happy forever. When you no longer see getting what you want as the ticket to happiness, you no longer see immortality and permanence as the ticket to happiness.
When you accept that attaining what you desire will not make you happy, you will be less feverish to get past the present moment, straight to the future… what you want. This will cause you to be more present. You will perceive more. You will start to focus much more on what you are experiencing, and on joys available to you in the here and now. The experience of appreciation and gratitude become far more tangible. You will no longer ignore or deprive yourself of joyful experiences in the now, so as to fixate on and get to a goal line where you think you will experience happiness. As a result, your life experience will feel better to you.
When you accept that attaining what you desire will not make you happy, you will not look to getting what you want as the salvation for painful and challenging times you may find yourself in. Instead, you are more able to resource the joys and even the best times that are available to you in the here and now, in your worst times. Even when your heart is breaking and even when you are afraid and even when you are tossed in the seas of uncertainty. Because, you will realize, they can coexist. When you are in a state of living hell, the answer to feeling better is not to try to get happy by attaining what you want. Nor is it using the idea of one day getting what you want to feel better about what is happening in the now. It is empowerment. For this reason, if you are in a situation like this, you would benefit by watching two of my videos. The first titled: Take Your Power Back and the second titled: Ticket To An Empowered Life.
Accepting the truth that attaining what you desire will not make you happy because it will not put an end to the reality of contrast, nor will it put an end to you desiring more, has the capacity to actually cause you to find true happiness, which occurs in the here and now moments on the way to what we want.
So, with all that being said, if you were to accept that attaining what you desire, will not make you happy, what would change for you? And what would you do differently?
