Wants and Desires

Related: Modes of Thought, Phases or Elements of Mind and Letting Go of Sexual Thoughts

The Existence of a Want is Not Reason for Its Satisfaction
Short-Term Wants vs. Long-Term Wants
Human Desires
Desires
Strength of a Desire While Withholding from that Desire
Comparison of different desires
Desiring, Seeking, Not seeking, and Repulsing
Ridding a Desire, An Analogy
Getting to the Root of Desire
Desires and Balance
It's All the Same
Connection
You Can Decide How Wealthy You Are

Part of what makes us human, and who we are, is that we want.
Are wants the same as desires, urges, lusts?
We do what we do in life because we want.
We want food, rest, many things.
Our wants drive us in life.
We may also have wants within ourselves that conflict with other wants within ourselves.
Do we allow wants to continue existing, and to continue conflicting with each other? Or, of the conflicting wants, do we strive to eliminate the wants that we consider not to be representative of our true self?

All people want. Some people want things that over time, hurt them (such as drugs). Some people want money and sell people drugs without regard for the way the drugs hurt those people. Some people want to help others and try to do what they can to stop the other people from selling. People want, and so long as we want, those wants will be catered to by others, regardless of their positive or negative impact over time, because there are always people out there that seek to benefit from the wants of others.

All people give and take in different forms. The total net can be calculated by taking the difference between total giving and total taking to determine an overall value of a person’s selfishness / generosity.

A spokesman for a drug company fights for the profits of that company, even though the drug is hurting millions of people (Pfizer, Sudafed, crystal meth). The spokesman was arguing against having Sudafed be a prescription drug.

Some synonyms for desire are: lusting, longing, desiring, craving, thirsting, hungering, animal instincts, instinctual behaviors.

The Existence of a Want is Not Reason for Its Pursuit

be still
let your mind be still
do not wander
nothing must crack your mind

remember

the existence of a want is not reason enough for its pursuit

the thoughts in your mind can shift quickly and abruptly like the currents and eddys of a turbulent ocean

you need to stop this

the thoughts of your mind must flow in one direction, like a still stream, must be uniform through time

Ebb and flow

Waves move back and forth
Ying yang

Scale balance

See two sides, good and bad, but see another side that is not a side, it is another place that is above both sides, good and bad. This is who you really are. Let it be as easy as moving a slider back and forth.

When one side presses hard against the other.

When your mind is unstable it is like rough waters

When your mind is still and in agreement it is still water

Short-Term Wants vs. Long-Term Wants

Goal: remove all short term wants.

We can say that a person is the driver of a car.
We can say that our brain is the driver of our body.
Who or what is the driver of our mind? Who is driving? Where are we driving? And what determines the way in which it/they/he/she drives?

The behavior of a society reflects the agglomeration of many people. The direction a society moves reflects the direction of the people. But what is driving the minds of the people? What relevance is any direction an individual or agglomeration of individuals takes?

The question of who or what is the driver of our mind is of relevance because we need to understand where these short- and long-term wants come from.

We can say that sexual thought occurs because of evolution. Without sexual thought opposite members of a species will have no desire to copulate and thus, to reproduce. So partly we are driven by factors resulting from evolution.

Do animals have long-term wants? Animals do certain things to make preparations for a time farther in the future, such as a squirrel gathering nuts for winter.

There is conflict between short- and long-term wants.

Conflicting Wants

Short-Term Wants	Long-Term Wants
Want to play videogames	Doesn't want to think about video games
Want to think about and cater to sexual thoughts	Doesn't want to think about and satisfy sexual thoughts
Doesn't want to study	Wants to get master's degree
	Wants to develop a reliable trading strategy
	Wants to work on engineeringarchives.com
	Wants to work on EJ Musik
Wants to pick ear	Doesn't want to pick ear
Doesn't want to sit up straight	Wants to sit up straight
Doesn't want to work out	Wants to work out

Agreeing Wants
Wants that are the same for both short-term and long-term
   • Want to be a good person
   • Want to become a millionaire
   • Want to eat food

There is conflict in myself between short- and long-term wants.

Part of it is that I am not fully sure if I am working on something for the long term if it is going to guarantee satisfaction in the long term while I do know that if I do a particular thing for the short term it will guarantee satisfaction. It is less of a gamble to fulfill a short-term want. There is a higher certainty in satisfaction.

There is one very important want and that is to be in equilibrium. In order for that to happen, all short-term wants must be eliminated in addition to fear and anger.

Human Desires

The desire to have sex is necessary for species survival. If there is no desire to have sex, then population growth ceases. All species today could not exist without having some sort of mechanism that instigates sexual processes. Yet in humans, a thinking mind developed. Humans developed the ability to create their own prerogative, where sexual desire becomes a restraint. Sexual desire puts restriction on efficiency. The mind evolved much quicker than other organs.

The body needs to develop better control mechanisms to counter the influences of hormones and to only render them active at the appropriate times.

There are things in this dimension that happen for a reason, and these certain things happen due to a force, or by a means of which we can not comprehend.

We interact in this universe; we are a part of it.

At every instant in my life I am presented a set of circumstances

When I am born I am given set variables. As I grow I develop my logic and reasoning capabilities.

At every point in time my current state depends on my given set of variables, but even more so on the decisions and choices I have made in the past.

Your current position is the result of the actions of your past. Through every point in time, you choose your actions based on where you want to be in the future.

given genetic traits

accomplish

What are some reasons that restrict one's potential to increase efficiency?
Intelligence
Laziness
Lack of knowing what steps to take

People are not required by law to go to work, to perform mental or physical labor but they do so anyway. Why do most people do it? Most people do it in order to provide a certain degree of satisfaction for themselves and/or their family. Most people are satisfied with only achieving a level sufficient enough to sustain adequate sustenance for themselves and/or their family and to provide a level of comfort to which they desire.

At any given time, you need to have a set of current goals to work toward.
Write down your goals. Elaborate on each one: what are the benefits, what will it solve?

When given the option, a person would choose a bad situation over a worse one. for example, I wanted to get away from my family and so I went to Jeff's. But then he had this weird girl come over and so I left, because I would rather be home then over at Jeff's with him and that girl. If the girl didn't come over, I'd probably stay at Jeff's. If my family did not piss me off, I'd probably stay at home. Why does Jeff have the weird girl come over? Because there is no one else currently available nor has there been for some time, so he gives in and seizes the opportunity. What if he had an attractive and cool girl? Then he probably would not have anything to do with the weird girl. If a person is in a particular situation, not counting external factors, then they will only go to a better one, not a worse one. Use this idea in relationships: if a girl is in a relationship with a guy, she will only go to a guy who she thinks is better, she should see no reason to go for less. Point is this is typical human behavior. I mean say you’re in a relationship and a girl leaves you for someone else. You might say why. Because she thinks the other guy is better than you. If your company fires you and hires someone else to take your job it is because they think the other person is better than you (or you're just not doing your job). Or if a girl takes you over another guy, it is because she thinks you are better than the other guy. Etc. Etc.

Getting ahead in life is about creating opportunities for yourself. You might exist, at a particular point in time, with a certain number of opportunities available to you. But as long as you exist, you can always do things that will increase your number of opportunities by making yourself better and more attractive in every way.

Learn
Physical exercise
Communication
Establish friendships
Find organizations to join

As the general intelligence of one increases, the ability for that one to make more logical decisions rises, thus allowing that one to operate more efficiently with respect to the knowledge and understanding of one’s world. The way human society runs today is greatly affected by the natural desires of people. Most people succumb to their desires because they are too weak to exert the effort of controlling them. The human being is a pillar of evolutionary achievement, a great marvel. Yet it is so simple.

The problem is that as humans we have a natural compulsion to do things, whether it be sexual acts, watching tv, socializing, hanging out, etc.

We feel like we need to belong to one or more social networks.

We are resistant towards mental reconfiguration.

Everyone is trying to be a part of something

Oftentimes people will choose the easiest path or that of which they know best.

Ask yourself: what are your interests?

Answer the question of how people can effectively manage / juggle many things in life at once.

Giving in to sexual desire results in self pleasure, but the purpose is not for self but for the relative species, for survival of species.

Hunger desire is for survival of self
Waste removal urge is for survival of self
Shelter, self comfort desire is for survival of self

Sexual desire is for survival of species

God made us so that we have thirsts, which must be continually replenished. This is a cyclic behavior that occurs throughout man.

Pleasure and Peace

Is pleasure good or bad? There is something about pleasure that can lead us to bad places.

Is pleasure and peace the same thing? Is the act of sex peace?

Giving in to desires and temptations – is that peace?

In giving in to desires and temptations, you always pass through a threshold.

Desires

When desires come into play, they create discontent by causing you to want something you don’t have, and only when that something is acquired are the desire satisfied and the discontentment quelled, or relieved.

Therefore, desire represents something that temporarily creates a want, yet wanting peace of mind is something that remains constant through time.

Discontentment is contrary to peace of mind.

Strength of a Desire While Withholding from that Desire

The following chart shows the strength of a desire if someone were to continue to withhold from that desire. The strength grows, it becomes stronger and stronger on you, you want to give in to the desire more and more. Most people give in before the threshold. The threshold marks the point of highest strength, when the desire is acting on you with the greatest strength. But if you keep resisting the temptation, eventually the strength begins to wane, and decrease. From that point onward, The strength required for you to resist the desire decreases.

Really, the strength of a desire and the strength required by you to resist that desire are proportional so the vertical axis could be either the strength of the desire or the strength required by you to overcome that desire.

Comparison of different desires

desire	when is the onset	minimum age of introduction (approx)	maximum age of introduction (approx)	is it possible to live life without the desire ever being known?	introduced internally or externally	Introduced or always been
sexual desire	puberty	11	13	No	Internally	Introduced
hunger desire	before birth	0	0	No	Internally	Always been
sleep desire	before birth	0	0	No	Internally	Always been
desire for drugs (addiction)	any time	0	Never	Yes	Externally	Introduced
desire for things that are gone or you don't have	shortly after birth, development of consciousness	1	2	No	Internally	Always been
fear (part of fight or flight)	shortly after birth, development of consciousness	1	1	No	Internally	Always been
true sadness, not sadness that is forgotten	puberty	11	13	No	Internally	Introduced
have regrets about the past	puberty	13	15	No	Internally	Introduced
desire to play videogames	any time	5	Never	Yes	Externally	Introduced
desire for companionship	shortly after birth, development of consciousness	3	6	No	Internally	Introduced
anger	few years old	2	3	No	Internally	Introduced
physical pain	birth	0	0	No	Internally	Always been

From the time of your birth, you know the desire for food, you know the desire for sleep, you know the desire for things that you wish you had, and the ‘desire’ to feel fear. These desires are ingrained in you from the time of birth. This fact is a reason why these things would be so difficult to control.

The addiction to drugs is an addiction that can be introduced to the human at any time during one’s life. This means that a person could exist without ever knowing this desire. It is even possible for a person to exist without ever knowing of the existence of drugs. This means that this desire is introduced.

But sexual desire is introduced internally, but years later after you were born. So you can remember what life was like before the desire was introduced into your system.

note 1: drugs consist of: medications, illegal drugs, nicotine, alcohol, and all other related
note 2: desire for things that are gone or that you don't have creates other feelings such as sadness, remorse, frustration, anger

Desiring, Seeking, Not seeking, and Repulsing

Also see Seeking Without Attachment

Desiring
•Nothing
Seeking
•Food
•Shelter
Not seeking, but appreciating when it happens
•Beauty
oBeautiful weather
oBeautiful women
oBeautiful car
Not seeking
•Sex
Repulsing
•Nothing

Desiring, Seeking, Not seeking, and Repulsing
These are the modes of acquiring/not acquiring. Desiring and repulsing are extremes which should never be experienced. What is associated with desiring and repulsing is extreme swings in mood. Does one desire to experience extreme swings in mood? I wish to have permanent stability in mood, and yet I desire, long, want, urge for. Are these two things not conflicting? Which one do I want more? Stability of mind and desiring/repulsing are complete opposites. Also, one can associate love with desire, and hate for repulsion. Seeking is necessary. Why? For survival. Regardless of the strongest of one’s ability to control mind, one must still seek to continue remaining alive. If one does not seek food, then one will die. Other things, should not be sought, as they will interfere with your ability to achieve stability of mind.

Sex and beautiful women
To desire sex and to appreciate beauty should be two separate things, yet often they may blur together. When a beautiful day happens, you appreciate it. Blue skies, sunny, warm yet cool, gentle breeze. If there is shitty weather outside, stormy, rainy, grey skies, usually you don’t get in your car and keep driving and driving across the country until you find blue skies. It just happens how it happens. The same should apply for anything of beauty, beautiful women, beautiful car, beautiful jewels, beautiful weather. You should not seek these things, but yet, appreciate them when they happen to be in your presence. Appreciate them, but do not seek them.

Ridding a Desire, An Analogy

Visualize it this way. Ridding yourself of a desire is like ridding yourself of an open cut. (I am NOT referring to a big open cut that is gushing blood) How do you let the cut heal? Let it be. Does this mean that to rid yourself of a desire you let it be? You just be yourself, give in, give in to the desire?

If you keep picking at it, picking the scab off, it's never going to heal. In this way you are giving in, you are giving in by devoting your attention to the cut, by acknowleding it, and interacting with it. You pick the scab off, and it starts anew. It has to start the healing process all over again. Every time you pick it off it has to start the healing process all over. You have to give it a chance to heal itself.

The same way is with a desire. If you keep giving in to it, you have no chance to start healing. If you let it be, leave it alone, you let it go away. You let the cut go away, and you heal. It is calling for your attention but you do not give it your attention.

Desires and Balance

A desire exists to be satisfied.
Desire creates imbalance.
Imbalance creates dissatisfaction.
Because of the dissatisfaction, you seek to bring yourself back into balance by satisfying the desire.
Biologically there are timed events that occur to get you to think in a certain manner.
Do you want to let your body convince you that you’re the person your body is trying to convince you to be?
Sometimes who you are and who you want to be are not the same.
Do you want to continue letting your body tell you what to do?
What is the overall goal? Stability.
Whether you are desiring or not, your goal is stability.
How do you come out of balance?
Why are you always correcting for imbalance?
Imbalance leads to stress.
The higher the degree of your imbalance, the more work is required to bring yourself back to balance.
If you can minimize the degree of swing to imbalance, you can minimize the work and time spent trying to bring yourself back to balance. This work and time can then be used in productive and creative ways.

How do you classify imbalance? How much is too much?
When is a particular activity engaged in to the point where it becomes excessive?

Achieving psychological and physiological balance

Take an individual who is in perfect balance at time t = 0. If you simply let time increase, without changing anything, eventually that person will grow increasingly more out of balance. Therefore, time is proportional to imbalance. As time increases, imbalance increases. The person will grow hungry, tired, will want to use the bathroom, will get dirty, will grow impatient, bored. Therefore, by not catering to yourself psychologically and physiologically, you will become imbalanced. This is why you may strive to live your life in pursuit of certain things, but often find yourself taken away from these things for the reason of bringing yourself back into balance.

To bring yourself in balance, you either satisfy your want, or eliminate your want.

What is interesting is that one can live a life without ever knowing drugs. But if drugs are introduced into the system, it may turn into something that needs to be regularly satisfied. Something that never existed, now requires regular devotion of time.

Do you become more of a person, or less of a person, if you permanently eliminate a want?

There are many psychological and physiological aspects of an individual that naturally detune, without interference, that require regular tuning to bring back into balance. A guitar has strings that regularly detune and require retuning. You can either keep retuning them or you can remove them. But if you remove the strings, why have the guitar? If you remove the strings of the guitar, then what is the purpose of its existence?

Getting to the Root of Desire

A human may have many desires. Let’s consider a human and a bar of gold. A bar of gold is a good example because it is a tangible object and it is something that most people would not refuse. Let’s say you come across a bar of gold that appears to have no owner and is easy for the taking. What makes a bar of gold different than any other object, such as a rock? Society places more value on the gold than on the rock and therefore, you do too, but this is irrelevant as to why. The main thing is the value that you place on it. You can sell the gold and get money to buy other things that will pleasure you. But maybe your life was just fine before seeing the gold. When you sense the gold, you make a connection between you and the gold, it does not make a connection. You create the connections from you to other people, places, things, and ideas. Without you, you have no connections. At one point, before you see the gold, there is no want, there is no goal, there is no goal you have created for yourself, no mission. After you see the gold, you want it, you create an objective for yourself. You create the objectives. Without you, you have no objectives. By creating the objective, you create the problem. Because of the problem you create, you develop a solution to the problem, which is the goal. What is the problem? The problem is an imbalance you create. The problem occurs because of the disagreement between two states. One state is that you want the object in your possession, right now, the present. In your mind, you see the object in your possession. And you see the things you could do once it is in your possession. The other state is that in reality the object is not in your possession. These two states are in disagreement with each other. That is the problem that you create for yourself. One approach to this problem is creating the goal, and pursuing that goal, so that the two conflicting states can be brought into agreement. But, let’s say there are two approaches to resolving the problem. The other approach, is to realize that you have created this situation in your mind -- you have created the connection, you have created the objective, you have created the problem, you have created the imbalance, and you have created the goal. And just as easily as you have created those ideas, you can let them dissolve and fade away. You can let the connection dissolve just as easily as you brought it into your mind. You can let it go. Most of the time we are not conscious of the fact that we create the problem. And we automatically see the goal that we create as the main focus of our thought. This happens because it is a process that is solidly built into us from the beginning of our existence.

Let’s say that before you see the gold, you are in equilibrium or balance. After you see the gold, you are no longer in equilibrium, because now you have something that you want. You create the problem, which results in imbalance or instability. You want to bring yourself back to equilibrium, because you seek to maintain homeostasis. Discussed previously are two approaches to bring yourself back to homeostasis: (1) by creating a goal, and seeking to achieve that goal by bringing both states into agreement or (2) by realizing that you have created the connection, and just as easily as you have created it, you can let it go.

You create the connection.
You create the goal.
You create the desire.
You create the want.
You create the objective.
Because you create the objective, you create the problem.
Because of the problem you create, you create an imbalance within yourself.
Because of the problem, you create the solution to the problem.

I create the disagreement between states.
I create the imbalance.
I create the discontentment.
I create the problem, the solution to the problem, and the path from the problem to the solution.

I can create it, or I can not create it, the choice is mine.

By default, naturally, having senses begets the creation of connections.

You create a connection, this is your connection between you and another entity.
Without your existence, your connection does not exist.

Your connection may lead you to create an objective, this is your objective.
Without your existence, your objective does not exist.
Your objective is associated with a future state.

Because of the objective, you create a problem, this is your problem.
Without your existence, your problem does not exist.
Your problem is an imbalance between the current state and a future state.

Is a want a desire? Is an objective or goal a want? Is it a desire for one to want homeostasis? Homeostasis is equilibrium. At equilibrium, there are no desires, just as there are no repulsions. There is what you do within your mind by thought, and then there is what you do by word and deed. Instability is created the moment you make the connection and create the problem. Regardless of the approach you use to come back to homeostasis, instability occurs. It’s just that if you choose to pursue approach (1), then that instability is reflected through thought, word, and deed, whereas if you choose approach (2), then that instability is contained within mind and only reflected through thought.

Future state vs present state
The dashed line represents a visualized scenario more favorable than the present state. Solid line represents actual, current, or present state of pleasure. A change in pleasure results because of a difference between your actual state of pleasure and your visualized state of pleasure. This change in pleasure is a cause of stress and discontentment.

	Here you start off at equilibrium but create a pleasurable scenario in your mind (such as sexual pleasure). You’re not happy until you take action to reach that satisfaction comparable to your visualized pleasurable scenario.
	Here you already start out stressed (such as if you have anxiety when flying). You create a scenario in your mind where you are at an unstressed state. Your stress is not relieved until your reality meets the visualized scenario.

Also see The Challenge.

To be perfectly content is to be in equilibrium, or in balance. To experience desires or repulsions is to be out of balance.

Some opposites of desire are aversion, disgust, dislike, distaste, repulsion. Opposites of balance are imbalance or instability. An antonym of equilibrium is imbalance. Imbalance is to experience desire or repulsion. To experience desires and to be drawn towards those desires and to experience repulsions and to be pushed away from those repulsions is to be out of equilibrium.

Typically, desires are associated with pleasure and repulsions associated with pain. Therefore, to experience pleasure or pain is to also be out of equilibrium, or to be out of balance. To be absolutely content, is not pleasure or pain – it is neither.

It's All the Same

It’s all different and yet it’s all the same. It’s funny because you’re so stupid you can’t realize this. You keep going through the same cycle, doing the same thing time after time – because you’re ignorant.

That’s one of the illusions that keeps people trapped in a world of desire and wanting. Because you think you are experiencing something different, when it is actually just more of the same.

That’s one of the methods that is used to separate the detached from the dependent. People who are addicted keep doing the same thing, yet they think they are getting a different experience each time. It is an illusion.

It’s a method that is built in to us. Built in to the design. And yet we have the power to overcome, but most of us refuse to accept that.

We don’t have to desire, we don’t have to want, and we don’t even have to need. It is our choice where to draw the line.

Over time you weaken, and eventually you die and return to the earth. Everything you work for you lose. Everything you cherish in this life is separated from you. Through life you gather and accumulate. In the end you dissolve and return. Your existence to you may seem a while, but in the large scope of things is an instant in time. All the energy and stress you expend in your life occurs in an instant. You are here, then you are gone again. You have a mass of clouds, and an individual raindrop forms, it exists briefly as it falls to earth, then is absorbed again. From earth you rise, and to earth you will return.

Look at your life and what you are doing. In the end, how will you feel about it?

Also see Nothing New.

Your Reality Is Created by You

Any endeavor being pursued with the purpose of finding pleasure is fruitless.
It's important to realize that almost every aspect of life is pursued in this way, with the anticipation that obtaining something more in addition to what you already have will bring more pleasure.
The pleasure, or satisfaction, or peace of mind is found from within.

You see something that seems so far away, so unattainable, and you associate with it a feeling that is so great,
and yet if you finally do get it, finally do achieve it, you pass through that threshold, you pass over that peak,
and it subsides and you are left facing the question of the next pursuit.
You ask yourself, was what you experienced what you were expecting?

It's funny because in the feelings of anticipation of the event, you are already experiencing the event,
and those feelings are more than actually experiencing the event.

It's a very ambiguous concept and maybe hard to grasp - but you already experienced everything.
How? Because it's all the same. What does this mean?
There are certain levels of feeling that can be achieved between you and the outside world.

One has expectations of a greater feeling.
it's those expectations that are always more than what is actually felt or experienced during the event.

This applies for both pain and pleasure.

there is the reality and then there is the perceived reality.
or is all reality perceived?
and so one can say that reality is only based on the perception of an observer
as a matter of fact that is all reality is:
reality is not just based on, but
reality is the perception of an observer

what does this mean?
it means that reality is relative to the observer.
any object can mean one thing to one observer, and mean something else to another observer

this means the observer can decide how he or she chooses to interpret his or her surroundings.
the observer has the ability of choice in interpreting one's surroundings
the observer can decide what significance or meaning any one object means to oneself.

what does this mean with respect to fear?
with fear you perceive a future possibility
you associate a feeling with this future possibility

it happens because you don't want it to happen
what does that mean?
because it means something to you, you take notice of it

what does it take to understand that you create the connection, you create the feelings,
and that you have the ability of choice, to decide what connections and feelings occur.

how does one go about determining what matters to oneself, or what is of significance to oneself?
how does one go about determining the value or meaning of anything one happens to experience or come in contact with?

one can choose to live a life of endless pursuits
floating from one thing to the next
whatever happens to grab one's attention, and letting that carry them

one can pursue self-identification and self-awareness
one can understand the system and the pressures
one can understand the natural inclinations between oneself one one's surroundings,
and the natural tendencies to react, behave, and interact based on the design of the system,
where the system is the observer and everything the observer experiences

does one choose to feel the pull of the tethers that one perceives is attached to oneself?
or does one choose to understand that because it is a perception, and that we create that perception,
that we also have the ability to sustain the existence of any perception we create.

Connection

What represents true feeling? We want to share feelings with each other. You can feel a deep feeling, but it means so much more if it is shared, doesn’t it? You can feel deep feelings, but may feel lonely in respect if you have no one to share that deep feeling with. If you look at a person, and you feel a deep feeling for that person, it does not necessarily mean that person feels the same way about you. You can experience a feeling that you think is so deep when you see a person – look into their eyes, but that does not mean that they share the same feeling. But if two individuals share a mutual feeling, then that makes it genuine? If you have a feeling for someone, but they don’t have a feeling for you, than what is your feeling worth? But if someone reciprocates with you, and it is mutual, then it is genuine? We long for a connection – a connection of mutual interest. There is something about being able to share feelings with someone – feelings that you have in common. Then there is a connection. It is a connection that we long for – that we desire. But, to be put in perspective, what is the significance of this connection? Where does this connection come from within us?

You Can Decide How Wealthy You Are

You can look at all the news stories about celebrities, all the money they make, their looks, the cars, houses and things they own, the beautiful people they date. You can think they have everything.

You can look at the comments people write in articles about celebrities criticizing the celebrities for this or that. When you can see these people commenting, criticizing.

You can see the people or the masses as lowly insects, like little sloths or slugs feeding the celebrities wealth and fortune.

You can see the celebrities as people who have everything.

Or you can see the celebrities and the masses that admire them and give them attention as being no different in terms of what they have. The celebrities are living, acquiring, thinking. What are they thinking about? What puts their intellect in a plane above the masses?

Maybe the masses and celebrities are in the same plane if they are trying to reach for something and claw for something that they feel they don’t have. Trying to grab for something they always feel is out of reach. For celebrities maybe it’s the way people look at them or think of them, for the masses maybe it’s something material-related.

Are you just tricking yourself to think maybe you are in a higher plane then most people because you think you can see above most? Maybe you are just tricking yourself. But maybe you are not.

But if we always feel like we are missing out on something because we don’t have it or are not participating in it, then we will always be searching and never be satisfied. It doesn’t matter who the person is.

You decide how wealthy you are. Is this a silly statement? Is this just an attempt to trick myself because there is so much I want and don’t have? But is there much that I want? Do I want a lot? Who instills this sense in you? Does it arise from within or is it fed to you from the outside? Maybe both. Does the media want to control you to make you feel like you are missing out on so many things, so that you get down on yourself and at the same time feel like you must consume? Who is the master of you? Who controls you?

Are you trying to trick yourself? Or is this real? There was a time when you would get down on yourself because you felt like you were missing out on this or that. Now, you are at a point in your life where you do not feel that way because you understand that you can make the choice whether you are content or not.

Are you tricking yourself? But if you give in and feel like you are missing out on things are you not being led? If you are tricking yourself, then the other side is being led, or controlled.

Perhaps there is a difference to understand whether you are tricking yourself and that is understanding. If you understand why you think the way you do, then you are not tricking yourself. If you just try to tell yourself you are not missing out on anything only because you want to avoid the negative feelings you might feel, then you are trying to trick yourself. You don’t understand the reason for telling yourself you are not missing out on anything other than to avoid negative feelings. But if you understand that you are not missing out on anything because you realize that it is all conceived from within, then you are not tricking yourself.

If you understand that it is all conceived from within, then you will also understand that it is the same whether you are at the lowest of lows or the highest of highs. Maybe in the moment you will feel different based on the situation, but in retrospect, you will understand this.

No matter how little or how much you have, you have everything.

Choose the Side That Has No Side

How can desire win over us if we do not choose a side, and thus, do not choose to embody what that side represents?

Naturally we want to align.

There are many different parameters with which to align: race, religion, politics, sexual preference, gender, etc…

We are pressured by ourselves and by others around us to choose a side. Then, when we do choose a side, we are pressured by ourselves and by others around us, to defend the side we have chosen.

But there is a side that has no definition, it is indifference. It is a side that has no side. There is no burden by choosing the side that has no side. By choosing indifference, there is nothing to defend. The flow goes in and out, effortlessly.

Typically in a sexual setting you align: dominant or submissive, feminine or masculine, passive or aggressive. If you can be defined by neither, then you fit no role.

When you choose a side, you also choose to embody that which the side represents.

At work you choose a side. Whatever your position is, you embody that role, and you defend your role, whatever it is you are trying to achieve. You defend your role by carrying out the responsibilities defining your role.

Society may place pressure upon you to choose a side. Different sides may pressure you to join them. Others may pressure you that they do not want you. You are trying to find your place. You feel the need to fit in. You process the input of pressure that society puts upon you to choose a side into pressure that you place upon yourself.

By experiencing no pressure, and by choosing no side, you are still choosing a side. You are choosing the side that has no side, no boundaries, no walls, nothing defining it. You are choosing indifference.

At the very extreme are pain and pleasure, which are two sides. The feelings your body may experience and impose upon you is a beckoning of sorts, to join the side. If you choose to accept and give in to the pain or pleasure your body is presenting you, then you are aligning to one side or the other. What’s interesting is “choose.” Do we have the ability to choose pain or pleasure?

By knowing your role with respect to the other person – you are choosing your side, and they are choosing theirs.

think about a person that thinks about sex all the time preoccupied with sex thoughts all the time

then think about a person that has broken free from it

The existence of all the instances of dualism makes it easy for conflict to existence within self.

By choosing a side you are choosing conflict.

There are different orders of dualism.

First level dualism as mentioned above.

By choosing a side you choose conflict.

By choosing indifference you are not choosing conflict.

But now there is second order dualism which is dualism and indifference.

So by choosing indifference you are choosing conflict because you are still in a sense choosing a side, even though there is no conflict. it's hard to grasp.

There may be other orders 3rd, 4th, etc that exist but i cannot comprehend.

Think of a self that is slave to sexual thought.

Think of a self that has broken free of sexual thought.