Soul Strand

Canandaigua Lake from Bristol Harbor

Wanting is often rooted in a deeply held belief that you are not whole.  You prowl the world looking for everything you believe will make you happier, more complete, more content.  but when wholeness and happiness are externalized, disappointment follows.  Nothing in the world can provide what you cannot give yourself.  You abandon yourself, believing that if you had just a little more fame, love, security, recognition, or approval, you would finally be complete.  Yet you never seem to get enough, so your quest goes on (Compassion, by Christina Feldman, pg.29).

Ain’t that the truth?????

In moments of clarity, you can see the pain of being caught in this web of unfulfillment.  It is exhausting and disempowering.  Experience has proven that wanting causes suffering.  You don’t like what you have, where you are, or how you are, then find yourself reaching out for something else as a means of getting rid of what you are experiencing.  You bounce between aversion and craving, creating such a cascade of busyness that you are deafened to the cries of your own heart (pg. 29-30).

Learning to make peace with what is, to love what you have, to care for where you are, is the timeless message of all spiritual paths.  It is not a surrender of vision or aspiration; it is a surrender of alienation and disconnection.  To discover the end of suffering, inwardly and outwardly, you much understand the causes of suffering.  How much pain in the world is born of wanting and self-cherishing?  How much happiness in the world is born of acceptance, generosity, and compassion? (pg. 30).