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I can’t have what I want

This is a hot topic for many who has read about The Secret. It may also be a controversial statement for those who are able to get what they want.

Let me share the principle of The Secret: You can have what you want.
Stephen Mitchell (Byron Katie’s hubby) in respond to a writer who request the difference between The Work and The Secret has this to say: You can want what you have http://www.thework.com/newsletter_april07.html

I will put a fresh perspective to both that statement:

Your want is what you have and what you want you can’t have.

Both statement seems to contradict each other. Before I go further on this I wish to complete the topic statement made by my meditation teacher: You can’t have what you want. What you have is only suffering. It is important first to recognize that the statement and also all the writings I have done so far is not attacking or defending any subject but rather exposing what the mind is all about. And the word mind is Nature – it does not belongs to me or you except as an experience.

For anything to come into result, conditions has to be laid for it to happen. We tend to forget this common sense. We tend to ignore the journey though it is the most obvious experience that finally lead us to the effect. In fact the effect is, most of the time, an anti-climax. That reminded me back of another statement made by one of my teacher, Hari: Your creation is not at all important as your ability to create. Now when I want something, I am already ascertaining myself that I don’t want something that is already existing. At the same time I also don’t want my wanting to fail. For example, if I want a bigger car, I am already saying that the car I am having is not good enough for me. I am also saying, verbally or mentally, that at all cost I am going to have it – implying that I don’t want to experience not getting it. So I can’t want something and yet don’t want another thing at the same time. Both are the opposite sides of the coin. There is no separation in them.

Whenever I want something, cause and conditions has to happen for the result to occur. Recognize that wanting is one, and creating the cause and condition is another. If I want something and yet do not work on the cause and condition can the result happen? The answer is obvious. The cause and condition are the ones that create the result, not the wanting though it seems like the wanting is the initial point for the cause to arise – untrue. If it is true, then all wanting will have a predictable causes. Do you get the same result of the same wanting, all the time?

There is another way of seeing wanting, and that is creation. Wanting is not creation. Wanting has desire whereas creation has creativity. When I create something, I am creating the effect and surrender the causes to Nature. I trust what comes to me next is supporting my creation and thus surrender myself to the causes that is beyond my comprehension. My creation is out of sheer joy instead of the insatiable wanting. Wanting has fear of not getting, creation has joy of manifesting. Both have different intention and motivation. Let me illustrate a simple example: If I want a carpark at a certain location there is a possibility of me not getting it as at the back of my mind I fear of not getting it. Fear is a meaning not wanting it to happen (don’t want). If I create a carpark and leave the rest to Nature, the possibility of me getting it is extremely high.

Let me come back to the new phrase: Your want is what you have and what you want you can’t have. Whenever I am wanting I am already having that wanting in my mind and in that wanting I can’t have what I want. In other words my wanting is only wishful thinking.

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Stop seeking Truth, instead recognize the Ego

I can only tell you the ways you cannot arrive at the Truth, and when you have found all the ways by which you cannot arrive at the Truth, you will find the Truth: then it will be yours, and not another’s which is but an imitation.
– Beyond the Himalayas

There is no necessity to seek the Truth, what is necessary is to seek what blocks you from the Truth. (ed)
– Your Immortal Reality

My wise meditation teacher loves to hear about problems a meditator faced rather than what the meditator wanted to share to impressed him. To him, it is by understanding defilements can wisdom arise. Wisdom is hidden away due to defilements. That brought me succinctly to question why when a master finally arrive at his/her own enlightenment, he shares the Truth with the world.  Why the word “Truth”? Why not something else like Nature, Universe or what not? It came to my realization that the Truth is the opposite of False. There is a high possibility that what they thought they knew before came as a realization that they are all false, lies and fabrications and thus their need to share what is truly understood by them as Truth. Quantum physics call it optical illusion.

When we start to question the purpose of life at some point in time, we tend to incline ourselves to a specific faith or religion, to seek the Truth. Here lies the irony. When we seek the Truth by imitating what we should and should not do, we moved ourselves further away from understanding the nature of existence, from Truth, so to speak. We imitate what great masters have shared instead of learning to understand what they are trying to convey. So instead of moving closer to Truth, we are in fact moving further from Truth.

It is not the cause of the religionist, neither is it the fault of the seeker. What is more true is the nature of ego is to blind. Remember the quote mentioned by Yeshua? I stood in the world and found them all drunk, and I did not find any of them thirsty. They came into the world empty, and they seek to leave the world empty. But meanwhile they are drunk. When they shake off their wine, they will open their eyes.

And there are those, while still seeking, goes spiritual shopping. Chogyam Truangpa labels it as spiritual materialism. You can never win the ego! except to recognize them when it arise. That reminds me of what Yeshua has to said:

A wise fisherman cast his net into the sea. When he drew it up it was full of little fish. Among them, he discovered a large, fine fish. He threw all the little fish back into the sea, and he chose the large fish. Anyone here with two good ears should listen.

If you don’t fully comprehend the verse, let me share with you a parable by the wise Rumi, adapted by Osho, another wise soul:

One day Jalaluddin Rumi took all his students, disciples and devotees  to a field. That was his way to teach them things of the beyond, through the examples of the world. He was not a theoretician, he was a very practical man. The disciples were thinking, “What could be the message, going to that faraway field… and why can’t he say it here?”

But when they reached the field, they understood that they were wrong and he was right. The farmer seemed to be almost an insane man. He was digging a well in the field – and he had already dug eight incomplete wells.

He would go a few feet and then he would find that there was no water. Then he would start digging another well… and the same story was continued. He had destroyed the whole field and he had not yet found water.

The master, Jalaluddin Rumi, told his disciples, “Can you understand something? If this man had been total and had put his whole energy into only one well, he would have reached to the deepest sources of water long ago.

But the way he is going he will destroy the whole field and he will never be able to make a single well. With so much effort he is simply destroying his own land, and getting more and more frustrated, disappointed: what kind of a desert has he purchased? It is not a desert, but one has to go deep to find the sources of water.”

He turned to his disciples and asked them, “Are you going to follow this insane farmer? Sometimes on one path, sometimes on another path, sometimes listening to one, sometimes listening to another… you will collect much knowledge, but all that knowledge is simply junk, because it is not going to give you the enlightenment you were looking for. It is not going to lead you to the waters of eternal life.”

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The World, an Illusion – Unveiling the Truth

In this very one-fathom-long body, along with its perceptions and thoughts, do I proclaim the world, the origin of the world, the cessation of the world, and the path leading to the cessation of the world.
– Buddha (Rohitassa Sutta)

Whoever has come to know the world has discovered the body, and whomever has discovered the body, of that one the world is not worthy.
– Yeshua

It is interesting to observe similarity with what the Buddha said and Christ (to bring both to the title status). When both names are mentioned, I am not speaking about religion, or personnel, but about how each and everyone of us has the potential of seeing what the masters are seeing. Neither is it about blind beliefs or gimmicks.

A question was posed by one of the Ascended Masters in the book Your Immortal Reality about whether the body is in the mind or the mind in the body. It kept me questioning. Let me share a strange happening I experienced, probably a year ago, when I went for a haircut at a saloon. While waiting for my turn, I was flipping through one of those fashion magazine and came across a fascinating photo of three artisites which I rarely see coming together – Rowena Cortes, Francis Yip and Anita Sarawak. I did not questioned why the mind was fascinated by the shot.

Imagine what happened that night. I was in a function together with them having a conversation! What a creation the mind can achieve. And of course in that situation, everything is as real as you are reading this. That makes me ponder – if the dream is real and I am not aware that it is a dream, what about I am here? Is it too a dream?

If you were to give yourself a little natural awareness in observing thought just immediately upon waking up and at the same time the mind wanting to goes back to sleep again – you will be shock to recognize that whatever thought you have at that moment of time prior to your going back to sleep, becomes a reality when you fall back to sleep again. When I say a reality, I mean that the whole thought is played out as a drama, so real that it is no longer a picture but a video instead with you in it! Should I call it is a real-time movie?

Welcome to the world – a real-time movie with you as a director, producer, cast, actors, actresses, audiences – everything is YOU! If Francis Yip, Rowena Cortes or Anita Sarawak, for that matter, could be conjured by the mind, what more in this real-time movie I called the “world” is conjured entirely by the mind? Is the world, a mind creation? You betcha! Quantum physic is already proving that.

It is bizarre to recognize that when I come to a clear realization of what I truly experience is a dream, whenever I am angry, I will remember that I am not angry with anyone else except myself. Whenever I felt betrayed, I am self-betraying yourself. Whenever I are unable to forgive “somebody outside” there, in truth I am not forgiving myself. I am just fooling myself all the time! More than that – there is no one for me to be attached to except my own illusion as thoughts and perceptions.

The world is me and I am the world. More correctly, when “I” exist, the “world” came into existence, with all its thoughts and perceptions. “I” need to be resolved and in that space peace is regained.

What that is looking for is what that looks. – St Francis of Asisi