The chief question in therapy is "What do you want and where do you think it is?"

We have long since stopped asking what we want because we assume it cannot be acquired, and so we settle for manipulating to get a modicum or survival amount of what we want.

And even if we do get what we want, the things we wish for are only symbolic. If you want a million dollars, what does that symbolize? Power, security, wholeness, completeness, love? It would be well to ask a person what they want and what it symbolizes. In other words, What do you want that for? A million dollars symbolizes the lost treasure of Self. People who have a million want two or four million. The want is infinite.

It is equally as important to ask what a person does not want, because what the ego does not want is change. Self-change . We may want others to change and siuations to change, but self-change? No. Change means growth; and growth means risk. It means giving up some "control". The reason we don’t have what we do want is that we are always resisting what we don’t want. To know that you are infinite means tremendous growth and tremendous change. It would seem like incalculable risk..What the ego wants is satisfaction without change. Power without change. Success without change. Freedom without change. None of these things are possible. To accept that I am not separated, not deficient, and not trapped would require unbelievable change.

The ego wants better results with the same effort, with the same belief system. What we resist most is the changing of our beliefs, especially the beliefs about our identity. We want others to change their beliefs and behavior so that we won’t have to change ours. Why do we resist and fear change? Because we believe the way I am is me. My ego is me. If I were to change my ego, I fear that I would be a failure, a freak. I would disappear. I have grown accustomed to the idea that my ego is me. Habitual me. Chronic me. Self-programmed me. The me I have been taught and learned that I am. Each ego sets out to prove or disprove something, and we spend a whole lifetime doing it.

The real issue when someone misses a session or drops out of therapy is "Are yiou important? Are you worth the time and cost required to discover yourself? Can you honestly say that you are yourself?

You never possess anything. You only experience things. You only experience your own consciousness of things. You experience "your car" just as you experience "your moon". That is, according to your interpretation of your car and your moon. You never experience your car or your moon, only your interpretation, your story, your judgments, your beliefs about them You experience your chronic interpretations or habitual judgments about a thing. All of those experiences are filtered through your self-concept, your habitual self-interpretation. Your ego.

Don recalled a smidgeon of a dream that his friends were impressed that he was such a good knife sharpener, as they prepared to go hunting. I commented to Don in our dream analysis that perhaps he is impressed as he is sharpening up his tools for the hunt. Don has spent his whole life trying to avoid and deny certain childhood experiences he had which shaped his self-image. We call this his symptom. None of the things he has done have really changed his symptom after 20 years. Now he is in therapy and is doing some good dreamwork. We noted that only 1% of our life is conscious and that 99% is unconcscious. This means that we don’t know ourselves. I ask Don to question himself daily as to the positive meaning of his symptom. I remind him that his unconscious knows the beneficial meaning for his terribly shameful conscious opinion of his symptom. Now he is engaging the conscious use of his unconscious through his dreams and dream analysis. He is sharpening up his tools for the hunt. The "hunt" is his search for the meaning of his symptom and for the meaning of his life.

We are all being challenged on a daily basis to "sharpen up our tools for the hunt." We are always hunting, fishing, seeking, desiring, looking, wanting, searching. We desire something and we think it is to win the lottery, to get a new suit or dress, to own our home, to find the perfect mate, to get ahead, to get rich, to get even with someone, to put our kids through college, to retire, to leave a legacy for our grandchildren, to prove or disprove something, etc. On the surface, in our story, we think we know what we desire and what it is for. But we do not.

Everything is life is symbolic, metaphorical. We are spiritual beings living in a "physical" world. We are infinite beings living in a finite world. We have never had one physical, finite experience. Not one. We have never eaten one physical hamburger or drank one physical cup of coffee. All of our eating and drinking is symbolic, metaphorical, spiritual. We only experience the meaning we assign to things. We are creatures of meaning. Even our so-called meaninglessness is meaningful. We eat, drink and live our interpretations. We are consciousness and we only experience our interpretations of things.

Your mouth does not experience a peach. Only your consciousness of the peach is experienced through your senses. Your senses do not experience anything. They merely report electronic impressions of data. Cameras do not experience what they photograph. Neither do our senses. Your senses are like a camera. They report data. But you have the experience of the data. You like or dislike it. You want it or you don’t want it. Cameras don’t like or dislike data. But you are not a camera, nor are you your senses. You are the experiencer of all data. You are the interpreter of the meaning of data. And for the most part you are the unconscious interpreter and experiencer of that data. In actuality you are the chooser of what data means to you. Those choices are largely made by your ego. But those choices are shaped and given a false meaning by the ego because the ego is itself a false interpretation of your identity. We had better "sharpen our tools for the hunt." Otherwise we will have misled ourselves into thinking that what we want is to win the lottery.

No one wins the lottery. The lottery is all just electronic data, digits in the mind. So are the beliefs in bankruptcy, poverty, inadequacy, loneliness, and entrapment. What you want is to discover your Infinite Self and to escape from the falseness of the belief in the finite self.

Incredible, isn’t it? All of this time we have been misleading ourselves. Unless the want-er becomes self-realized, there will be no lasting peace or satisfaction. Lotteries, large and small, come and go. The elusive "pots of gold at the end of the rainbow" always seems to escape us. Let us sharpen our tools for the hunt. Consciousness itself is what we are always unconsciously and frustratingly hunting for in the wrong places.

As the Russia fairy tale explained it, the King’s Archer had to cross the river of fire and go into the Land-Of-I-Know-Not-Where and to bring back I-Know-Not-What in order to save his beautiful wife. I interpret this to mean that we also, in order to rescue the beauty of life, have to cross the river of fiery experience, and go into the Land-of-I-Know-Not-Where to bring back I-Know-not-What. Our "hunt" is for Infinity Vision. When we begin to recover Infinity Vision, we find Infinity in a grain of sand, as Blake put it. God is in every form, in every experience, under every rock, in every moment.

 

Where do you think God is? That is the most important decision you will ever make. God is the lottery. God is the moon. God is this website. God is the hunt. Your entire story is about the hidden god that you are. The ego is just a mistaken interpretation of all of the god data in the world. The ego is a paradox. You will never find your self as ego, but the ego will lead you to yourself because it carries symptoms in its wake. Symptoms are the ego’s most embarassing creations, but they are the constant reminder of something more, of forgotten Infinity. It is my fervent hope that this website is a tool sharpener for your hunt. It has been and continues to be, for me.

 

What is Worth Hunting For?

 Is Selfhood a given?  Does self-awareness come with the package? Is the first birth enough?

Do you have to be be spiritually awakened? Do you have to seek this awakening each day?

What are you hunting for?

Cars rust; what doesn’t?

Muscles sag; what doesn’t?

Flowers wither; what doesn’t

Houses burn; what doesn’t?

Eyes dim; what doesn’t?

Clothes wear out; what doesn’t?

Weather changes; what doesn’t?

Reputations fluctuate; what doesn’t?

Money disappears; what doesn’t?

Computers crash; what doesn"t

Bodies age; what doesn’t?

Relationships sour; what doesn’t?

Beauty fades; what doesn’t?

Sex declines; what doesn’t?

Minds alzheimer; what doesn’t?

Whatever doesn’t would be worth hunting for, right? Jesus asked it this way

And how do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul (Self) in the process? Is anything worth more than your soul (Self)? Mt 16:26

And if you hunted, where would you be apt to find it? Outside somewhere? Is Self-awareness something society can give you? Is it something you can inherit? Is it something you can buy or earn? Is it something you get from your spouse? Is it something you get from religion? Is it accidental? Where is the greatest treasure in the world located? Can you find it by inquiry?