Where Does Misery Come From?
Nearly always, a “miserable experience” arises from the evaluation of “things,” but the equanimity everyone wants resides beyond “things” with the Real — and the Real is That which is being this consciousness of things.
For a time one seems bound to the belief that his misery is “out there,” even while his agony is the “awful feeling of fear and foreboding within.” One may believe an errant member of a family is the cause the agony, but it’s the agony of that belief which is felt within as a disturbance of one’s equanimity.
To eliminate the agony, for the past ten thousand years we have been doing everything possible to change the suspected cause of it ”out there” with the husband, daughter, business or something else.
We have believed that if we could see an external situation change, automatically we would feel the restoration of some degree of equanimity; and we did, perhaps, for short time, until something else “out there” failed to gee-haw.
Now listen: This procedure puts us and leaves us at the mercy of “thing”! This makes the ‘feeling within” tributary to appearances without. This is self-imposed slavery.
The presence (or absence) of something we see is good or bad only as we are of the opinion that it is good or bad. The image has no value of its own. We have given it value (hence power) based on its desirability — “I like it; or don’t like it.” Yet, all enlightened instruction speaks of the joy to be experienced when desire is overcome. Can one conceive of a more immediate way to overcome the desire for things than to recognize their valuelessness and then to perceive the impossibility of being one who desires
We have been told that Heaven, Tranquillity, is within. Heaven is opinionless, desireless Awareness. As long as we look to people, things, or conditions for happiness, we are making “heaven” tributary to the object of perception. One who stands identified as tranquil Awareness itself finds people, things and conditions tributary to his harmonious Identity.
Tranquility is our Identity. We are not another identity attempting to experience the absence of desire. If we believe we find happiness and harmony, then we must believe we can lose them. In addition, we must believe they are absent (or can be) at the moment. We can no more be absent from Identity than light can be absent from light.
From: A Guide To Awareness And Tranquillity pp 188, by William Samuel
