What You Really Want
Lo Que Realmente Quieres
A question about discipline and consistency turns into an inquiry into freedom, responsibility, and the difference between mind-wants and a deeper true desire.
What You Really Want
A question about discipline and consistency turns into an inquiry into freedom, responsibility, and the difference between mind-wants and a deeper true desire.
I have a question, though I don't know exactly what it's about. Let me start with a story. I was researching frying pans, large ones, trying to find the best with the best coating, non-toxic, and so on. I really nerded out on it. Last night I did that for about an hour past my usual bedtime, then woke up six hours later still with those thoughts in my head. And I thought, what am I doing? I know better than this.
Sometimes when you're doing well, you're doing so well that something pulls you back and you relapse, you indulge, the pendulum swings the other way. It felt like I did that, but in reverse. I didn't want all these frying pan companies marketing in my head. I want control over my own energy, my own thoughts, my own decision making around what I do with my time and attention.
I was piecing together bits of things you've said, things other teachers have said. I got quiet and meditated in bed. I reached a place where I could feel my body, the spots of tension, and a sense of not being my body but feeling connected to it. I regained, "control" is maybe too strong, but influence over how the energy circulates in my body. Almost like giving myself an energetic massage with my mind.
What surprised me was how readily I could do that. I thought, I'm not doing the thing I want to do, so let's just do the thing I want to do. And it felt really good. From that place I moved into a sense of responsibility, and a desire to heed the good advice I've been given. Even though I haven't always heeded it in the past, it somehow stayed with me, and I could pull it off the shelf and cross-reference it with other lessons.
I've been here before, where I say, enough is enough, no more excuses, I'll carve out time to be with myself and meditate. And I often find myself, hours or days or weeks later, not in that zone. So I was going to begin by saying I have a question about discipline, or consistency, or what my dad calls stick-to-itiveness. I'm often amazed by my capacity to ignore what I know is good for me, and conversely fascinated, like last night, that it's all there, and it doesn't even have to be effort.
It's not about stick-to-itiveness. You're talking about freedom.
Beyond sticking to it
There's an aspect of working with this that belongs to conventional wisdom: how to stick to it, all these practices, entering flow, and so on. But there's a level where, once you get that and you're in and out and you can improve this kind of practice, those approaches stop working. They don't get you further. Sticking to it, at a certain point, won't take you much further. It will be very slow improvement until you see through deeper illusions and beliefs.
When you say you come to this place and decide to stay there, my interpretation is that you decide, "I'm just going to be the person I am now, and stay here, and not be the one who gets distracted." That's a great decision. But in that decision you are still assuming the reality of the person who's distracted, or the person who's not distracted. It's still at the level of "I am this thing that can get distracted or not." It has a level of reality, a relative reality, but it can be seen through.
Stepping out is already here
When we step out of the illusion, as you described last night, or when you're sitting in meditation, lost in thought, and then you realize you're in thought, there's an instantaneous stepping out. It's always present, always available, and it's only available now. There is no process to get there.
In seeing that, you find this wakefulness and presence are already here. Even in the obsession with frying pans, you can see that what you described as responsibility comes with freedom, and the freedom comes with responsibility. They're different aspects of the same thing, different words, different ways to reference the same reality.
True want versus mind-want
Freedom, to me, is the capacity to do what I want to do, and to do the right thing. There's something that is not freedom: doing what I want, but where the want is mind-want, the needs and illusions of the mind. True freedom is when "this is what I really want" comes from a deep place, from love, from beauty, from an alignment that is wisdom. That's what I call a deep true want, a deep true desire. And then there are the mind-wants, this whole complication that comes from illusion.
When I am free, I'm doing what I deeply want, not pulled by the wants of body and mind. Sometimes there is alignment: if I feel hungry and want to eat, that's right. But a lot of the time the mind's emotional needs pull us away from freedom, and we obey them. Then we are servants, unfree servants of the wants of the mind. Freedom is being free to ignore that and do what I really want.
And it really is what I want to do, because we tend to think the right thing is what I don't want to do, like discipline. But a person who is truly a master of what we call discipline is just doing what they want to do. It isn't a struggled, forced experience. A master pianist doesn't achieve mastery through struggle and force. It's the freedom of "I really just want to sit and work with this thing," doing it for hours and hours, days and days, since the age of five, and then happening to become a master. It's the freedom to do what is really wanted.
That dispels the interpretation that what I deeply want is something I have to force myself to do. At the deeper level it's what I wanted, even if it's work, even if it's a difficult conversation, even if it's facing a challenge with someone or a difficult problem. I really want to face it, to sit in it and go through it.
Responsibility as the ability to respond
Now look at responsibility. Everything I've just said you could simply call responsibility: the ability to respond, to do the right thing, to face the difficult things and not run away into the mind, into thoughts and beliefs, becoming a servant of mental addictions. That's avoidance, avoiding what is really here, avoiding what is really needed. It's the opposite of the ability to respond. It's avoidability, not responsibility.
Maybe that's closer to the challenging part of my question. There are aspects of my work and family life I find challenging. Sometimes "this has to happen now, I have to do this" feels like the right thing, in the flow, coming from a deep care and desire. Other times it's, "Okay, I've just got to get through this, I have to finish this project."
When you work from that perspective, notice there's a belief, an interpretation. You could be doing what you really want and doing the right thing, and there can still be the belief that it's unwanted, that it's a drag, like doing dishes. "Well, I have to do the dishes, it's the right thing, I'll do it, and I'll do it from a meditative place. I'm just going to be doing it, and seeing how little I want to, seeing how much I dislike this."
But you could see through that interpretation, and see why it's there. The interpretation "I just have to get through this" is a thought. If you give it any substance, any reality, it becomes part of what is happening. It becomes more than just a thought. It creates emotions, and those emotions create a bigger part of the experience, sensations, until it all feels like, "Well, I just have to get through this."
So the pivot point is when the thought arises, when the narrative spools up, recognizing it as such?
Just see that it's a thought. "I just have to get through this. I don't really want to do it. The other thing I do in flow, this one I don't, I just have to do it." That's a thought. Believing that thought is what makes it seem like not flow.
Choices, not circumstances
It's interesting, because if you take that logic and run with it, you could be incarcerated, and from many people's perspective you'd say that's not what you truly, deeply want out of life.
Give me more detail, because I'm lost. You'd just do whatever and make a mess? What are you talking about?
I'm thinking of situations where you don't have it the way you do with dishes. Doing the dishes is a good example because everyone has to do it. You could get takeout, or use disposable dishes and throw them away every night. Some people do. But you'd have a mess on your hands if you didn't do it regularly.
What matters is the how, not the thing. How you do it.
But you could say that about anything.
Yes. So where are you going with this?
Where I'm going is, when you talk about freedom, organizing one's life responsibly and with respect to other beings, so that, for example, if you're motivated to be a great pianist, you can be. But many of us find ourselves in a position where we have to pay rent, or feed a family, and we have only certain options.
You don't find yourself in that position. You made choices.
Right. And some of those choices, I think, were made with a form of wisdom, I'm now realizing.
But even if there wasn't wisdom, even if there was ignorance, choices were made from ignorance. And that's where you are.
There's a place where both perspectives are complementary and valid. On one hand, you simply find yourself where you are. This is this moment. All the conditions from the beginning of time, the evolution of the planet, from the apes to humans, have brought you here. This is what this is. Infinite conditions have created it. It's completely out of your hands, and here you are.
But at the same time, if you look at the more recent, your life in the last few years, then an interpretation creeps in, which I sensed in your language: "Well, this just happened to me. I find myself a father, I'm here." Wait. That's too far on the other side, interpreting your choices as something that merely happened to you. So it's really about interpretation.
Responsibility toward the person you were
Responsibility is also seeing that the person you were then is not the person you are now. What you are is only what is now. Everything before is memory. The person you were then is also a person who is not you; it's you in the past. But you carry the karma, the consequence, the conditions of those choices. You are responsible, in the sense that you can also be irresponsible.
You can blame the person of the past for what you are now, and then it's not your problem, it was that person's problem. You blame the person of the past and avoid being responsible to the reality of now. But then you're also not free, because you're bound by the interpretation that you are screwed, that something is negative now because of what the past person, that ignorant, unwise person, decided, and now you're bound by the consequences and can do nothing, a victim of it. This is regret. This is the whole downward spiral. That illusion is the lack of freedom, the absence of responsibility.
That's why what you said earlier is very true. You recognized responsibility when you fully took on what was needed: "I don't want to be obsessed with frying pans, I have to do something better." You meditated, you connected, and you discovered that you were looking for a good feeling in solving a frying pan issue. But you could just access that presence, that good feeling of letting energy flow in your body, and it dispelled the obsession. And you felt: this is responsibility, and it's also freedom.
This is always available now. Not tomorrow, not in five minutes, not yesterday. Regardless of what activity you're doing, it's only about what's happening right now. What is the mind compelling, saying, "You want this, you want that, you'll find the solution to everything once you follow," and so on? Sometimes that's useful. But often it's seeing that this isn't it, and asking: What do I really want? What really matters now? Even if it feels challenging, even if it feels uncomfortable, even if the mind says, "No, you don't want this, you're only doing it out of obligation." That's the belief.
The miracle in the dishes
Even washing dishes: you could see through this and never have an unpleasant dishwashing experience for the rest of your life. It's only the belief, while washing the dishes, in the thoughts that make it seem the way you described, "I'm just trying to get through it, just doing the right thing to get through it." When you believe the thought "I'm just getting through this, it's a struggle, I'm doing the right thing but I really don't want to," it creates a sense of reality. It creates emotions, an unpleasant sense of getting through it.
Or you can just do the dishes: warm water, the smell of soap, the textures, the aliveness, the hands, the sounds. It's a miracle. And the mind says, "This is boring, this is a struggle, you're more important, you should be doing something else, you're wasting your life."
What do you say to the idea that there's a spectrum? Dishes are maybe on the easy end, and walking on hot coals on the other.
You have to give me more real examples. If you're comparing being tortured to washing dishes, fine. But think of more normal, real examples so I can understand your question.
Maybe a work deadline, where I have to think in code for consecutive hours, and at some point I lose a sense of what it feels like to just be human and feel healthy in my body. I manage it, I take breaks, and the kind of responsibility I'm aiming for is a way to have appropriate pacing with things like that.
That's basically an art. It's the art for you to develop and discover how it works for you, your body, your mind, your situation: how much of a break I need, after how many intervals of sitting, whether I work standing, the whole art of managing it, which you're already addressing when you say you take breaks.
Now, if you compare the challenge of a big work project with a deadline, putting in the hours, to washing dishes, I'd say washing dishes from complete freedom is more challenging than completing a work deadline.
Is that because being present enough to notice the thought before it takes root and drives a belief is the most challenging part?
Yes. You can finish a deadline, you can complete a work project. It's a very normal thing. It doesn't require much deep practice to get work done. Conventionally, it's a normal practice: I have a deadline, I do what I have to do, I complete it.
Co-creating the negative thought
But if we're talking about seeing through the deep, subtle illusions of thought, seeing how tempted we are to simply believe, to create a thought, or have a thought arise, there's often an aspect of co-creation. I'm wanting a negative thought right now, and what does the mind do? Here is an abundance of negative thoughts. Anything you can imagine. How negative do you want it? Scary? Sad? Self-pity? Anything. Pick and choose, and the mind will do it.
It's like being a child sitting down to play with toys. The mind will imagine an army, it will imagine death, it will imagine everything, and it will be wildly entertaining. We've been doing this since we first had a mind. We learned to create and imagine fantasy as children, and we keep doing it as we grow up, except now it feels like reality, not toys and imagination. Now the problem is, "I need to solve the issue of the toxic frying pan, that's reality." So you spend a day and an evening struggling in your imagination about the toxic frying pan, and then you can see: that was just my playful imagination. There's something more important to do.
Why it doesn't happen more
That's what surprises me. I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often, that regaining presence isn't more of the status quo. Last night, when I put in the effort, I thought, this is available. If freedom and responsibility are so within reach, why don't I?
I'll tell you why. You don't want it.
Well, I've been finding more and more moments where I actually do want it, but then I...
Exactly. That's when it's available. When you truly want it, when it's number one, it's available. When it's number two, you might really want it, but it's number two. Number one is fantasy. What are you going to choose? Priority number one.
We begin with responsibility and freedom at number forty-five million on the list of mind-things I want. Then you start to realize it doesn't work, and the priority of responsibility climbs the list: my life goes really wrong if I don't take responsibility. Then you see that responsibility requires freedom, requires all of these things, for life not to become a mess. It requires quite a lot. And it requires seeing my mind, seeing my emotions. All these practices become the toolbox. But it's really just about responsibility. When that becomes number one, you can choose it anytime. You're just not choosing it, because something else is suddenly number three and more tempting. That's your priority.
What's coming to me now is that even though I know better, even though I've been told, even though I've had the experiences, in very many moments the frying pan obsession feels not more important, but more tantalizing, more attractive.
Yes, it's a temptation.
Tasting what isn't nutritious
This morning I watched my son pick up part of a leaf. He was studying it, and I could tell he was going to put it in his mouth. So I made a spitting sound before he did. And of course he put it in. But I think he was primed, and he tasted it and spat it out. Maybe we all need enough experiences of tasting the thing that isn't actually nutritious, in order to learn.
A hundred percent. I use a similar metaphor, and it's interesting you bring up your son. If you ask a five- or ten-year-old, a little older than your son, what they want for lunch or dinner, it's going to be McDonald's, pizza. If you give them only what they want, it'll be pretty toxic: Coca-Cola, candy, pizza, McDonald's. They're captivated by something in that experience that, on a deeper level, just isn't good. It's fine in a measured way, but there's this temptation toward something in it.
This metaphor is tied to maturing as a person, maturing with wisdom. At any moment, there's something happening in the body, the mind, the emotions, that pulls toward what seems like really what I want, like that child who wants a McDonald's burger or a Coca-Cola every day. Ignorance refers both to "that's not ultimately good" and to "I'm wanting the wrong thing."
So you can see, that want is just an experience, a pull. First we work on seeing it: I'm wanting the wrong thing, I see the energy pulling toward it, there's a temptation, a magnetism, but it's the wrong thing. Then we ask why, and how to address and change it, and so we start to struggle with desires.
Wisdom as the real antidote
But the real cure, the real antidote, is wisdom. Take the burger metaphor again, which won't work for everyone. You can see in your own experience, at least once, that if you had a McDonald's burger next to you, and I offered you something else of your preference but healthy, in my case really good Indian food, or sushi, or an amazing salad, or even a gourmet burger, side by side, you would choose the salad. The child chooses the McDonald's burger. But you would truly prefer the salad, the healthy thing, the right thing. And it wouldn't be you fighting a temptation. If you've had that experience, "No, I don't want the burger, I don't want the Coca-Cola, I want this other thing," and it's a real experience, your true desire, that is wisdom.
The whole process is a process of wising up. Wisdom is when you're so in touch with what comes from love, beauty, truth, reality, and responsibility that you don't want anything other than that. You're not fighting the desires. Once in a while there's a poke, but it's so clear to you what is right, what is beautiful, what is loving, what is caring, what is real, what is responsible, that you don't want anything else.
That's my metaphor of those miracles, the concert pianists. This is my wheelhouse. If you hear the masters tell their childhoods, they weren't forced to practice. The teachers were catching up with the force of the children's desire to learn and practice. They would go to the piano without any discipline and do the most disciplined practice, not from discipline. They just needed guidance, and then they did it, because that's what they really wanted. It's a miracle, because some people are so in touch with that in a particular way.
You could have a concert pianist who is deeply wise in practicing and playing piano, and very unwise in everything else in life. This is not awakening. It's a metaphor. What I'm talking about has to do with any moment, whatever is happening, in any way. Relationships, work, your relationship with your body, with your mind, with any moment that's happening now. With washing dishes or working. Maybe with working it's, "I need to work less. I need to take more walks and then focus, be less distracted when I'm working," rather than forcing myself to sit, distracted and not actually working. That's the art, the way of figuring out what works for you. And it gets refined the more you see through your illusions, the more you see through your desire to avoid.
When wisdom starts to appear, to awaken, you'll just do the right thing. You'll be doing the thing you want to do, and it will be the right thing, more and more. That's the definition of wisdom: when what you really want to do, and do, is the right thing for you and those around you. The right thing is loving, caring, responsible, and free. What is loving, what is right, we can't put in a book. But over time you'll recognize the smell of wisdom, because there will be more and more well-being in you and those around you.
The process is the point
I really like the subtle aspects of what you're saying. One is the art. I think of watching my son learn to walk. It was a long process. It started before he stood. He stood, and then it took months before he had any interest in walking, and then it was just here and there. I like that it's not binary, not "you're unwise and then one day you're wise." There's a whole process.
And the point isn't to arrive at walking. The whole process is delightful, and is what I recommend be enjoyed. Once you arrive at walking, there's something next. You don't arrive at walking and think, "I made it, I'm fully satisfied, at ease, in bliss and well-being."
Your parents might be, momentarily.
For a minute, maybe not even a minute. There's that bliss for you as a parent, but then it's the next thing for the child. So we're talking about growing, developing, growing up, and awakening. This is where the well-being and the freedom are always now. It's in savoring the process, savoring the movement, savoring the growing, rather than the belief that when I reach a certain stage I will finally be okay, that I will finally be able to rest and be at peace. There's this longing, this craving, for peace, for a satisfaction that is possible, but not where we're looking for it. It's available always, here. The more that's recognized, the smoother and freer and wiser the process of growing, of life.
That's why finding it in the dishes, in the dishwashing, is harder, and can also be more significant. Doing the dishes leaves room for many interpretations: "I'm not doing the important thing that will finally get me to arrive at the important thing." And once you arrive at that other thing, it too seems meaningless, pointless, not helping you get somewhere. All that illusion comes up in dishwashing. If you can see through it and really discover the infinite satisfaction and pleasure of the simple experience of washing dishes, then what will working be like?
Taste it here, right now: your aliveness, the beauty, the mystery, the kaleidoscope of sensations and thoughts and colors and sounds. Whenever that isn't here, those are thoughts, the belief in thoughts.
Thank you.
Thank you.
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A brief closing exchange about using the mind rather than being used by it.
I'd just like to let you know I'll be traveling in two weeks, to China.
Oh, nice. A big trip.
At first I thought it would be challenging, but it's actually very simple. More and more I can tell the difference between destructive thoughts and thoughts that are useful for planning the trip.
You got cut off for a moment. Useful to prepare?
Yes. I can easily disregard the destructive thoughts, and keep the thoughts that are useful for planning the trip.
Exactly. That's perfect. That's where you start to, as my teacher would say, use the mind rather than be used by the mind. Just see: this thought is distraction. This one is useful. Let's use that.
Yes. It has been a very great help talking with you. Quite emotional, actually. I didn't expect to be emotional, and it suddenly comes.
I felt that. Thank you for sharing it. The heart. I feel you. You're very welcome. Lots of love to you, and good wishes for your big trip.