If you are acting in the world in order to find pleasure, you will be unhappy and dissatisfied. You aren’t fully awake or aware; your body is just trying to move from discomfort to pleasure. It is seeking a reward.
If you achieve contentment and detachment, and then act, you will experience pleasure from the activities you do, and it will be a heightened form of pleasure.
For example, I had a breakthrough the other day and read a book on Astral Projection, a book I knew would serve me, but had been avoiding. It felt great to be on the path, doing what was best for my development in that moment… If I were to read it again, to try experience that feeling again, I wouldn’t experience it, because of the motivation. When you are acting in order to try make yourself feel good, you will always be led astray.
When our actions are done in order to make ourselves feel good, we are acting from lack; we are trying to stimulate ourselves with the external world in order to modulate our consciousness. This is how the body is conditioned to behave. If we act from conditioning, we are on autopilot. Our actions are the result of the past. We are little karmic windup toys; each step we take is a result of previous actions. We aren’t acting fresh, from the spirit. We have lost our free-will. Instead of being a spirit using the body as a vehicle, the vehicle is piloting itself. The body is piloting. The servant has become the master.
To have free-will, we must overcome the restlessness and compulsiveness of the body. We must bring an end to the automaticity. To do this, we must discipline the body. We must impose our will upon it. Break it like a horse. That is part of it. Along with that, we must remove tension from the body and create blissfulness instead. You want the body to feel good. It is tension and lack that give rise to craving and desire, which gives rise to restlessness and compulsiveness. You end up trying to alter your internal state by engaging with the external world of form. Endlessly seeking that which you don’t have or rearranging that which you do have, thinking it will lead to lasting relief and fulfilment. This isn’t achieved. Your energy becomes continually drained, and you then end up in a lower state of consciousness. You become convinced by the illusion of separateness and then develop lots of attachments which continue to drain your energy like payment subscriptions draining your bank account.
You want to feel permanently blissful, peaceful, and collected.
This is achieved through internal work only.
Overcome restlessness by settling the body down. Discipline it, but also love it. When you practice loving kindness meditation, it settles the body down and removes tension from the body. Then feelings of bliss and wholeness can arise. Whenever tiredness or tension arises in the body, seek to resolve it without help from anything external. Maintain a feeling of blissful contentedness. Only then are your actions expressions of freedom. Only then are you awake with free will.
As long as you need to act in the world in order to relieve discomfort and increase pleasure, you will be merely a piece of biology. An amoeba, only just more complex, but the same in the sense that you are moving from discomfort to comfort. In order to be fully in the world, but not of the world, you need to be detached. You want to use the body you have as an instrument, a vehicle. You want your spirit to have the reins.
Use yoga to attain freedom over the body.
Below is a journal entry I wrote while feeling totally whole and blissed out:
Just did a BOTEC and it went so well. So blissful. At the end where he asks to manifest something, I just didn’t want anything. I just tuned into the future of continually feeling this present. Feeling this full. Feeling this whole. Feeling this much love. I don’t want anything in particular. I have no egoic preferences in this moment and it feels heavenly. I don’t care how external reality looks. I don’t care what happens. I don’t care who I become or what I do or what I achieve or how much people respect and love me. I just want to feel this whole. This totally free from desire and lack. I feel complete. Totally abundant. Blissful. Full of love.. and it isn’t dependent on anything. I don’t mind how life unfolds, as long as I feel like this. As long as I feel totally complete in and of myself. As long as I feel this anchored in my body. This grounded. This sane. This awake. Nothing else matters.