A Most Ingenious Paradox

This is truly a most exquisite paradox....

It seems that my wanting something often keeps me from it; and only when I  SURRENDER the desire for something does it become available, but in the surrendering it no longer holds power over me.  I then reach the place of accepting the process without desire for an outcome.

I feel that my desire for a certain outcome addicts me to that desire and it becomes an attachment that then holds my addiction firmly in place.  When I can move beyond wanting an outcome I begin to detach from whatever I have been attached to; person, place, or thing.

I let go of my desire for an outcome, how I wrap my mind about what it is that I want, and how I think it should manifest for me.  As I journey through life I learn to be mindful in the moment; not in where I have been or where I will be, but to be in the present moment.  This practice takes away my desire to attach to the outcome as the outcome always manifests in each moment, and despite what I hope for it always occurs in the perfect way.  If I will accept this I move beyond attachment and when I am no longer attached then the outcome is always more than I could want.

Ah, a paradox, a most ingenious and most exquisite paradox exists.  As the Dalai Lama points out in "The Paradox Of Our Age" we have more material things today, but although there is much in the window there is nothing in the room.

  

It seems to me that our desire for an outcome leaves us addicted to people, places, and things, and like any addiction we are then left with nothing, so the widow is full but the room is empty.  When humans experience a hole at their core they most often attempt to fill it with things including relationships. As the Dalai tells us we are long on quantity but short on quality.  We have more things but do not value or enjoy what we have.  People horde possessions but can't tell you what they have. Relationships hold no value other than to meet some basic need of possessing and being possessed.  There is no richness of spirit in such relationships; there is only an insatiable hunger/need.  That hunger/need says repeatedly "feed me, feed me", and the more it is fed the more hungry it is.  Like an addiction it will never be satisfied.

So we have to eventually stop feeding this insatiable need, remove our expectations from wanting a certain outcome, allow life to live itself, recognize when it offers us opportunities, detach and move on.  This can seem difficult to do, but I believe to continue to feed an insatiable need keeps you stuck in an impossible situation.  The ingenious and exquisite paradox is to stop feeding the insatiable hunger, no matter how logical this feeding seems, to allow ourselves a moment of discomfort in change that will produce more than we ever dreamed possible.  This paradox teaches us detachment.