The mind is in constant need – need to feel good, need to be understood, need to be loved, need to be approved, and need to be needed as to escape from the experience of loneliness.
And it is exhaustingly stressful when I don’t investigate these unquestioned thoughts as and when they pop up in my space as I become a slave to them trying to fulfill their needs. I seldom see it as the condition of the mind replaying itself, and subscribing it as mine instead.
It is an addiction, albeit a subtle one as I took it for granted that it is part and parcel of survival. I may not even see it as addiction but simply a need! “Is it necessary?” is the first question that I am invited to investigate if I wish to address it at the core level.
Is it necessary for me to feel good? Is there anything wrong when I am not feeling good? But isn’t feeling good or lousy part and parcel of my experience? Am I not seeing that? What I am doing is seeing them not as part and parcel of the nature of the mind but choosing the good and omitting the lousy instead. But can I omit anything that is already occurring in the mind except to fabricate something else to hide it? Am I making a fool out of myself? Am I not seeing that what is already here cannot be hidden or pushed away except to acknowledge its existence?
It will leave as and when its dance is complete and it has little or nothing to do with me. For what I am experiencing are merely effects of causes that I am not aware of and for that it keeps coming back to be re-experienced within my vicinity. So long as the cause is not addressed, its effect will play itself out. Needs are merely effects of causes I did not, or rather have yet to come to question.
Similarly, why the desire to be understood? Is it because I do not understand myself well enough that I pass on that responsibility to someone else to understand me? Sounds ridiculous and absurd, but this is what it is – insanity at its greatest height when I don’t question or inquire about my needs.
And what about needing to be loved? Could it be that my misperceptions camouflage love presence hence I have to seek it out there in the world? But does each love I seek make me feel fulfilled or does it make me feel inadequate that I need to seek further? Where is love, where is love, when I am in constant gratification of fulfilling my desire to be loved? Why have I been living a life so unconsciously that such sane questioning does not cross my mind in its place of using those moments to simply fulfill the needs? And to do that I have to manipulate, scheme, and lie just to have that little need fulfilled.
Is there a better way of living? By facing what is in front of me with true acceptance without any purpose of resolving it except to come into understanding the true nature of the mind. And by doing so the mind disentangles me instead of I trying to disentangle the mind.
