One of the most intense aspects of our personality is the voice of desire. Buddhists point to this aspect of the human experience as the source of all human suffering and yet life without desire would be a very passive and dull experience if life were possible at all. It would be foolish to try to eliminate desire from our lives, but at the same time it’s equally foolish to allow our lives to be run by our desires. One of the things we must come to terms with is that the aspect of us we call desire is insatiable. When we get what we desire we quickly move on to desire more or something else. I think this is what the Buddhists are actually pointing to with regard to desire—satisfying a desire is like filling a bucket with a hole in it. So the task becomes one of managing desire such that it serves us and does not enslave us.
Several years ago a video was released called The Secret. Since its release, many in the spiritual community have come out to criticize the video as being just another appeal to the base desire of wanting stuff, including money. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. The premise of the movie is an idea called The Law of Attraction. This is really an ancient idea that had an incarnation in the early 1900’s which provides the material that is with us today. This principle tells us that we get what we focus on. But the big question for many who have spoken about this principle is: how clear is our vision of what will satisfy us, and is this just another way to allow our desires to run our lives? Are we really attracting what we think we are attracting?
I think those who have criticized this video are not questioning the validity of the Law of Attraction but are pointing out that this may just be a way to put that voice of desire on steroids. A drive that is already so powerful in most of us that it distracts us from really enjoying the amazing gift that is our life.
Checking in with the Buddhists again, we begin to see the irony of how desire works. Desire is usually rooted in some dissatisfaction with whatever is currently so. The irony is that the Law of Attraction then tells us that what comes from dissatisfaction is just more dissatisfaction. It’s a kind of Catch-22. This is why many tell us that to eliminate human suffering we should simply eliminate desire, and yet without desire we would probably just fade away and die.
Now, let’s look for a way to live our lives in such a way that we’re sustained and excited by life, a way in which things flow to us without us having to desire or even envision them beforehand. Is there good evidence that this could actually work? Yes, and we even have a word for it. It’s called “serendipity“! So if serendipity works, why don’t people rely on it? Simple, we’re distracted by our desires. We’re so distracted by our desires that we feel like we need to buy books and videos to learn how to get the stuff we want. I call this effect the “Law of Distraction.” We’re distracted from noticing and appreciating the gifts that flow to us in each and every moment.
Virtually everything that we’re offered on TV is telling us that we’re missing something we need to have in order to be happy. It’s not that the Law of Attraction isn’t working, it certainly is, and often we get exactly what we ask for. But along with it we get more wanting. Let’s face it, “wanting” is a lot of work and according to the principle of the Law of Attraction, it cannot result in contentment.
So what’s my answer? Simple: to attract contentment we must already have it! No, this is not some type of double-speak. Because we’re content things flow to us through serendipity, but the catch is that we’ll get what the universe freely provides and not necessarily what our voice of desire is insisting we need. Can we come to trust and be content in each moment that the universe will always take care of us? Can we feel deep gratitude for this process and all that it provides? I think what those who use the Law of Attraction successfully are trying to tell us is that when we stop being so distracted by our desires, a space of contentment, love and abundance will naturally arise within us and we’ll attract more of the same. Our desires can then be seen as things that might be “nice to have” rather than dire necessities.
[su_panel background=”#f2f2f2″ color=”#000000″ border=”0px none #ffffff” shadow=”0px 0px 0px #ffffff”]by Michael Jenkins
