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On Motivation, Transcendence and The Principle of Pleasure and Pain
Because I’m obviously doing a lot of looking, the question became “what am I looking for?” And the contemplative response was “motivation” - something to motivate me. So I looked at the feelings of motivation I’ve had before and came up with sex, money and the quest for power, supremacy, which seems to have been a major motivation in my study of Islam and my following the Sufi path - that I would surely become something, or somebody - not ever having wanted to become anything other than that. These classic motivations however, still come under the heading of pleasure. So it might be said that the quest for pleasure, imaginary or real - a heavenly state of being - is probably the major motivation of mankind; the “Pursuit of Happiness” as stated in the Declaration of Independence. And the different kinds of pleasure become the lesser, more personal objective goals. Most motivation boils down to two things – desire for satisfaction, either imaginary or real, and fear of pain; notice that fear of pain is not pain, it’s fear. Being caught in the world of attraction and avoidance – that is suffering, for neither is real in the real-ity of the moment. So even though in reality you are always in the moment, the focus of your thought, being on pleasure or pain, is not on the reality of the moment, and therefore imagining and therefore imagining suffering. The domain and the dominion of the Law of Karma can only be transcended by a strict adherence to the Truth of our reality – Dharma. This requires a mental discipline attached to an infallible knowledge of truth that is not surmise, conjecture, opinion or desire. This knowledge can only come by devoted study and the experience of its reality by true dedication. In other words, thoughts are power. Thought heals. Absolute thought heals absolutely. And this by virtue of Reality, not by imagination, although imagination helps in the approach to Reality because honestly, there is no way the human mind can comprehend Reality, but it can hear of it and start imagin-ing. And it is through the means of an ever-refined imagination that we approach the reality of what we are imagining until it dawns on us absolutely and the reality of it precludes any possibility of or further need for imagination. Then we are said to be realized. The desire for this realization is the only true motivation because it is the desire for the transcendence of desire – for freedom from the dominion of the driven personality attached to desire and in fear of pain. This is the only true motivation and it is true because the reality of its truth is in the nature of God, and that’s what makes it real and therefore true. And that motivation is our quest for freedom. And it’s a true moti-vation because it’s a reality of our spiritual nature and the inevitable destiny. The quest for freedom exists within us as long as there is the slightest feeling of absence of it. The quest for freedom exists within us by the very nature of – and in response to - any sense or feeling of its absence. The human spirit tolerates neither servitude nor subjugation, for that is not its reality, and the mortal man is ever in quest of his Reality – for his Reality is ever in quest of him. |