Stop Looking For It

Whatever it is you seek in this life….

Whether love, happiness, peace, money, joy, respect, knowledge, wisdom….

At a time in your life, release yourself from the deep yearning to have this for yourself….

Allow yourself to experiment, to see that perhaps in stopping the act of searching for it, and in halting the desire for it, it will come on its own….

The desire to make it happen may have actually been holding you back, interfering with your progress….

In my life….

I have said to myself….

To heck with it, if she doesn’t like me, she doesn’t like me….

(After dealing with crippling social anxiety.)

Then she liked me….

I have said, if I stop reading and I become ignorant and foolish, then so be it….

(It’s not that I don’t read, but I am willing to go through periods where I don’t read anything.)

Then I became wiser….

I have said, if I am unable to be tranquil because of a chaotic environment and situation (out of my control), then oh well….

And I found peace through the storms, even practicing meditation/mindfulness through them at times….

I have said if I invest in this thing I believe in, and it fails miserably, then at least I did something I believe in….

Many of those investments (in my own book projects, for example) did fail, economically speaking, but enough succeeded and they carried me forward into a deeper journey of learning, growing, and writing….

Over and over, I found that in releasing myself from the desire for an expectation, the desired expectation came true anyway, often right after I gave up on it.

As a chess player, one of the best things you can do in a losing position is to say to yourself “Okay, I am utterly defeated.” As soon as you truly accept that defeat, you open yourself to strange, threatening problems to pose your opponent.

There is magic in that moment where you see the futility and stare straight into it.

You accept defeat for a moment, but then you press on, never truly giving up. Even if there is one window of opportunity, that is all you need.

True awareness is where you find that thing you were searching for….

You come to understand that “I will never find this love – it is simply beyond me, but one day, maybe it will find me, if I keep on doing what I know I must do in this life….”

You give up, but just temporarily.

Then somehow, people in your life come to sense your newfound inner-worth, because you know you no longer need anyone else, and they become attracted to you.

More importantly, your love for yourself will finally have grown, as you stopped measuring your life by whether another person loved you….

Here is another example….

A few years ago, I developed tinnitus (ringing in one ear), and at a certain point, it was bad enough that I actually didn’t know how I would be able to focus again, with this loud, annoying, constant piercing sound in my ear. I had developed regular headaches, and it was a miserable experience.

But at a certain point, I accepted defeat, rather than searching for what to do about it.

I stopped looking for the feeling of relief from the tinnitus. I stopped hoping for it to go away.

I told myself that this tinnitus ringing sound isn’t even there. My brain is producing the noise (I believe this is actually true, medically speaking). This sound isn’t important. It’s nonexistent. I will go about my life like always. And I did.

And soon enough after that, the “sound” eased off. I barely noticed it anymore. I’m not sure if it actually got better, if I simply stopped noticing it, or both.

Strangely, in giving up on looking for any relief or solutions, it mostly went away. Now, it is quite mild and doesn’t affect my life.

(Of course, the one thing I did and continue to do, is protect my ears from loud noises, but that does not make the tinnitus go away.)

Understand this….

Typically, our life problems are self-created, working in cycles, over and over. And we exhaust ourselves simply to repeat them….

The desire to escape the pain or troubles, somehow actually manifests them, over and over.

If you truly inspect your life and see it for what it is, you are likely to find that you must do something different.

You must actually stop wanting that thing that you think you want, in order to get it.

And if you don’t get it, you may find that your life blossoms in other ways that you never could have guessed.

Of course, if you had a goal, you went directly for it, and you achieved it, then you are done. There is nothing else to do….

But I am speaking to those who have spent themselves totally, drained their life’s energy for a pursuit, only to have it escape them, perhaps over and over….

What else is there to do?

Accept defeat, even if just for now….

What is the worst that could happen?

Abandon the goal, or if not, at least abandon the hope that it will turn out in a certain way.

Let it go.

Find freedom there, in not needing everything to happen in a particular way.

Allow yourself to play with this life, to explore and see where it goes, rather than needing something from it.

Perhaps you can have love, happiness, peace, money, joy, respect, knowledge, or wisdom, just not in the way you had expected to find it….

Stop Looking

But still be there, present, aware, ready for when what you desire arises on its own….

Ready for when the ingredients to make it happen all line up for you….

Give it a month….

You’ve spent years or decades trying to get there….

If it didn’t happen, give yourself a month of not looking. Give it an honest try.

Get back into a hobby, play a musical instrument, get in touch with old friends, write a book, or whatever keeps your mind off of this so-called goal.

See how it goes.

Let me know….

I am the Seeker Who Does Not Seek

For the longest time, I was looking for answers,

To philosophical questions.

Why are we here?

What is our purpose?

How should I live my life?

What is Good?

What should society aim for?

And I gradually found answers to some of these questions and more.

But the answers for one person do not necessarily satisfy the needs of all.

At some point, I became content with not knowing all I had wished to know.

Moreover, I accepted that I would never know those things.

I could seek true knowledge for this life and another life and another, and I will still want to know more.

And one thing I learned is that the pursuit of anything has no end, as one feels the need for more anyway.

If one has more power, one wants more.

If one has more love, one wants more.

If one has more money, one wants more.

And knowledge is no different.

I read enough books where each new one barely adds anything new to what I have already learned.

Asked enough questions to where each new one barely adds to the findings of a prior one.

Sought enough answers to know that anyone is willing to give them, making them worth little.

I was always the seeker, unsatisfied with my present knowledge, with the state of understanding of the people, books, and so forth.

And still, I am not satisfied with it, but I am content in knowing that I ventured to learn what I needed most and am working to do something with that.

Having come to know that I will never get to where I wanted to be, I still seek something, not knowing what it is.

I have sought to no longer seek, which is still seeking. Pursuing the end of all pursuits is still a pursuit.

Letting go of the need to seek or not seek, to pursue or not pursue, seems to be the path to somewhere. Like a wormhole that can transport you to another dimension, this may open up new paths we had not been aware of. When not focused on moving toward or away from something, there may be more energy to get through it.

This is a path rarely heard of and much more rarely taken.