Description

Our inborn egoistic state never allows us to be completely satisfied. Perceiving Reality describes what we should do with our ego in order to experience boundless, complete and ever-expanding satisfaction.

Transcript

Perceiving Reality: Satisfaction and Dissatisfaction

Why am I never satisfied?

Why are we never satisfied.. Well it’s a good thing you’re not, because that’s the way we feel the motivating force behind all development, both in the physical and the spiritual, hidden, causative level of nature. Anything we feel as movement; from moving to some other part of the world, to the most subtle shift of inner attitude happens only because this force has made us so uncomfortable and unable to fulfill our desires in our current state, that we begin to feel a need for a greater satisfaction that we calculate exists in that new situation. We move just that far, and no further. A person doesn’t even move a finger or scratch their nose if not for this calculation: how to get the maximum amount of pleasure for the minimal amount of effort. It’s the E=mc2 of the ego. The formula’s is so pervasive that we never choose anything unless it’s presented to us in this way. We always choose between what we consider painful or pleasurable, and we always choose pleasure.

Pleasure doesn’t exist in and of itself. There has to be something opposite to it in nature before it can be sensed. We never experience anything as an essence, only by comparison. We feel light compared to darkness; warmth compared to cold, pleasure compared to pain. Pleasure is actually the meeting point between a need and its fulfillment and the greater the need, the greater the pleasure.

So why does pleasure always disappear?

You know what it’s like when you’re a little hungry; you start thinking about what you can eat. Hmm… maybe a pretzel... yeah ok maybe later, but the hunger keeps on growing, maybe I’ll have a couple of a hotdogs, no.. a pizza, no! a steak, prime rib! (Vegetarians, please substitute a tofu loaf in your imagination) with a baked potato and every kind of condiment imaginable. When dinner time finally arrives you could eat a steak big enough that it needs its own area code.

That first bite is pure ecstasy, the next bite wonderful, the next is good, the next is ok, the next is… what it is… the next bite is... no please, no more, one more bite and you’re going to be sick! – the need has diminished, it no longer stands opposite to the steak and now the pleasure can’t be sensed at all because the need has been extinguished.

This all happens because we’re trying to satisfy only ourselves and that kind of egoistic desire is ultimately what makes human experience limited and physical - because our own needs are tiny and limited and can never be satisfied. Yet we find ourselves longing for lasting pleasure and feel that somehow it must exist… but in order to feel that, first we need an unlimited, ever expanding desire that draws a boundless fulfillment. To do this we have to seek pleasure in the fulfillment of others. This desire to bestow is a spiritual desire, and one taste of it is greater than all the egoistic pleasure ever felt by all creatures over all time, because it’s a pleasure not felt in our little subjective needs but in everything. There’s no limit to that desire, and there’s no end to the pleasure derived from that need.