Know your conflicting self

Swami Sukhabodhananda

Happiness is what we want but our overwhelming desire to attain happiness and freedom actually takes it away from us.

We are not able to love for we are filled with hope and expectations. We are all working for freedom but freedom is elusive. Happiness is what we want but in our overwhelming desire for happiness and freedom it slips away. We come to a master with the desire to be happy and that prevents us from being happy. What comes between oneself and happiness is desire. The possibility of attaining happiness is weakened by increasing one’s desire for it. So what should we do? It is not a question of doing but seeing the foolishness of the desire. Look what is happening now. There is an experience of what is happening and yet there is another part in oneself that does not want what is happening. That is, “I want something other than what is. I create a conflict with my self”. This conflicting self is the “me”, and with this self one wants to be happy. Unless one sees the whole foolishness of this conflict, unhappiness will exist and you hold it in your desire to be happy.

See that one part of you is experiencing what is happening while the other part says, “I don’t want this and I want something else”. See this basic conflict. Sharpen your seeing and let the seeing just see “what is”.

Now see this conflict of who you are and who you want to become as a dream. Don’t give it the importance of a waking reality; see it as a movement of a dream state.
Learn to dis-identify yourself from this conflict and go on witnessing it from a distance. Learn to see the witness and not the witnessed. See the witnessing consciousness- the ‘sakshi’ and slowly without any desire you will see it is complete and full.

Now from this fullness, you start living life. From this fullness even if you desire, then a desire would be out of fullness and not for fullness. Your desire is out of happiness and not for happiness. This is a state of nirvana — enlightenment.