You know, in many ways we are all the same, making our way through life, trying to be happy. Happiness is a natural inclining. But as time goes by, many things we run after ever lose their mystique, and we find ourselves back at square one. For one reason or another, our promised happiness runs through our fingers like water, because it changes, we change, or something changes, and this is the first reason we continue to search. . . Because nothing satisfies us for long.
And we do this all the time, this searching, and we may conclude that if nothing can keep us happy for long, we can keep ahead of the unhappiness by simply going from one thing to another, discarding each one as it becomes tiresome, and then grabbing onto another. This works for a while. However, the problem we face face is that at some point our energy, and capacity to continue the search, becomes exhausted. Then we become trapped. . . and we should never let this happen. Long before we became ensnarled in chasing illusions, we should consider alternatives.
If we are aware of how the world works at all, we will begin to see that looking for happiness outside ourselves does not keep us happy for long, and that our very thirst and relentless pursuit of happiness becomes a stressful unhappiness in itself. And if we ever get this far, in understanding our own happiness, then an outside chance exists that we can take it a step further, and conclude that we should possibly look elsewhere for our happiness – other than outside of ourselves. But where else can we look? It seldom occurs to us to look inwardly, because we would not know how to do that.
And this is the second reason we continue to search. . . Because we are looking in all the wrong places.
What if Kant was right when he said that a definition of enlightenment is man's emergence from a self-incarnated immaturity, and that man's self-incarnated immaturity is nothing less than the inability to use one's own understanding without relying on the guidance of others? What if all the wisdom of eternity could be found inside every one of us? What if we could courageously stop pursuing happiness, and instead pursue an inward emptiness? The wisdom of the ages then shift our consciousness and introduce us to the possibility of enlightenment; a happiness we could really count on?
But most of us go through life continuing to search outside. Few are open to new ideas about real, lasting happiness. Few seriously consider transforming them through their own understanding because they lack the confidence to say no, to those who want to merely plant images in their minds and tell them what to believe. They refuse to become proactive in finding their own truths, in finding a creative, genuine purpose in their lives.
And this is the third reason we continue to search; Because we can not yet see what it is we really search for. And what is it we really search for? It is nothing less than the eternal Reality we are inherently are, because as much as everything changes, a part of us remains the same. And when we become that part completely, we become enlightened.
