What Interests You Most?

This is a very important question; what interests you most, because your answer to this question determines your destiny. So before you answer, look carefully at all the options and decide which is truly the one thing that interests you more than any other. n The obvious ones - relationship, career, family, health, religion, love, success, money, possessions, power, fame - they all fall a little short of insuring any kind of a solid destiny for you. This is because they are all outside of yourself, and anything outside of yourself is subject to change. In other words, you cannot control it, and that means you will end up losing it, without a doubt.

If you count on any of these things for your security, strange emotional/psychological states develop when you lose them. This is because when we try to control things and keep such things together, such as a relationship, family, religious beliefs, career, etc., and then out of left field, the first characteristic of material existence kicks in; (that everything changes and is in flux), we can't help but lose control. This is the reason we fear death so much . . . losing control of everything.

When we lose control, a loss occurs, and at first, we don't believe it. But after we see that the loss is real, then we might begin bargaining with ourselves. All we know is that the feeling of loneliness and worthlessness is not fun, and we do whatever we can to change that feeling. It can happen with any of the above categories, i.e., when rock stars get old, when relationships go sour, when our health goes south, or when our religion doesn't work any more. The rock star might gamble with embarrassment and try one more tour, or we might try a new relationship, or maybe a health kick. Or we might start shopping for spirituality.

As human beings, we are pretty smart cookies. When we lose control of something and realize that we can't get it back, we find ways to stave off the depression that is sure to follow. We do something new. Because if we don't find something new to do, then the depression from losing control of our dependency can overwhelm us.

We are intelligent enough to know that we have to keep moving, but not smart enough to understand the whole process of control and loss, even though we indulge in it every day of our lives. And we wonder why we are not happy. This happens to all of the categories above. Things change, and when they do, what we have relied upon for our interest and happiness, maybe for many years, disappears.

A final stage of our loss would be accepting our situation, but few accomplish this stage. Most still have the energy and intelligence to attempt an escape route through a back door of activity, because that's all we know. When we get older, however, this becomes a little more problematic, a little more dire. Then we may begin to realize what our real interest fundamentally is and always has been, which is truth.

Truth has nothing to do with any of the above categories because truth is not susceptible to the first characteristic of material existence. Truth never changes. The above categories are merely what we do to escape truth,

Truth is probably the most interesting thing that we can pursue, and we actually pursue it all the time, but we are seldom aware that this is what we are pursuing, because we are forever looking in the wrong places for it. Since truth never changes, how can we look for it amongst those things that can't help but change? That is our fundamental problem, and why we are never happy for long. We are simply looking in all the wrong places all of the time.

So how does one pursue truth? This is an important question because truth is the only hope for a happy destiny, both in this world and the next. Do we read about truth? That would be someone else's truth, wouldn't it? That would mean that we are looking outside of ourselves for truth, just as we did with all the above categories.

Our truth can only be inside of us, it can never be outside. If it were outside, it would changeable and in flux like everything else in material existence. We could read one thing today, and something better tomorrow. How would we know what is the unchangeable truth? We can only know that by experiencing it for ourselves. And this is the key for pursuing truth; looking inside, because this is truth's bible; the interior search by each one of us. nn