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On Chasing, and Really Wanting It
Imagine telling a man that the thing he has been chasing for years, is something he doesn’t really want.
He is likely to become outraged.
He will say, look how much money I’ve spent on this. Look how much time and pain has gone into getting it. Every day of my life for the last 10 years, I have suffered because I did not get it.
But what is this “it,” exactly?
And where did he get the desire for it?
Suppose you tell this person that what he is looking for is already here, all the time.
More outrage ensues. This is a useful clue: something here is being rejected.
Thus he is forced to find refuge in “taking action.” The inverted commas denote his search for the right person to give the right prescription. They denote his assumption that action isn’t already within him.
If he were told that somewhere on the other side of the country his child is about to be kidnapped, he would have no problem taking action.
If he were told by his employer that unless he did X, Y and Z he would be fired, and as a result of losing his salary his house would be repossessed, he would have no problem taking action in the form of X, Y and Z.
A man fails to take action when he is far from home and the available actions are disconnected from his essence.
He fails to take action because something in the core of his being is indifferent to what’s on offer.
So then what makes him chase?
The intolerability of sitting quietly in a room, waiting for his core to waken.
