Has it ever occurred to you that you may be going the wrong way? That your lefts might ought to be rights, that your forwards might be better reversed? If you’re like most people, you’re running so fast that you may never have paused long enough to consider it. But considering it is something you might want to, uh, consider.

Why? Because so many of us spend our time paddling in the wrong direction; our lives spent running after this and that in a never-ending bid to finally “arrive.” And I know, because I’ve spent years doing the very same thing and, much like everyone else, never “arriving”, never really. This insight was a gift to me, bestowed as a result of all of my struggles and travails, my practice and study, my teaching and mentoring, and of course the accumulation of wisdom that has been gifted me by my amazing teachers over the years. The revelation that I received was this: the way we chase after what we want is tragically inefficient at best, cataclysmic at worst. Making matters even more interesting, this misdirected search is a global phenomenon, rampant in nearly every culture and socio-economic corner, and, curiously enough, the whole mess has been caused by just one tiny, little misunderstanding. But we’ll get to that later.

The Game

Getting what you want. It lies at the heart of what makes the world go around. Relationships, economics, politics are all just fantastically complex patterns of individuals interacting in a way to do just that: get what they want.

For you see, this thing we call life is a game of sorts: Gordian, ever-changing, and one in which we all have a stake. And despite its universality, it’s a game we all play differently: some with great joy and playfulness, some with intensity and vigor, while still others seem to sit idly on the sidelines pondering their next move. Yet, no matter how you play it, to be sure, a game it remains, and one that has a single universal goal for every player: you guessed it, to get what they want.

Despite what philosophers and pundits, politicians and theologians might say, getting what you want is the driving force behind what you do. And as anyone can tell you, at least anyone who has paused long enough from their own mad rush to get what they want to take a good look around, it’s precisely what everybody is doing.

But wait! Isn’t life about family and friends? Isn’t it about helping others? Isn’t it about making the world a better place? The short answer is no, unless of course those are the things that you want. Then for you it is. But if not, it’s about getting whatever it is that you do want. And while this might be the last thing that so many of us would like to hear, it’s a simple, observable fact. Life is about peace, love, and understanding in the same way that the earth is about being flat. It just ain’t so. And whether we like it or not, it’s hard to argue with reality.

Now, lest anyone get their dander up, I’m certainly not arguing against peace, love, and understanding, or family and friends, or helping others for that matter. Heck, my whole life is dedicated to nurturing those things. No, that’s not my intent at all; rather I’m simply making an observation, one based upon empirical evidence that any one of us can easily tap; just turn on the evening news.

For those of you who are tempted to throw this article down in disgust, believing in life’s purpose as something more grand and noble, please recognize that I’m not speaking to the reason life exists, but rather the purpose for which it is being used. And in this measure, we find ourselves here:

Purpose of Life = Getting What You Want

It’s not my idea. It’s just what’s happening.

The Wrong Way

So, back now to our question of wrong way or right way, this way or that way. If you’ve been paying attention, you may have noticed that I’ve seemingly painted myself into a tidy little corner with the above. For if:

1. The name of the game really is getting what you want

and…

2. Everybody is scurrying after what they want

then…

3. How is it possible that most of us are running in the wrong direction?

Stated differently, how could you possibly get what you want by running in any direction other than after it? And the answer is not The Secret, the law of attraction, the power of positive thinking, or any other metaphysical trick of the trade.

No, the answer is more simple, much simpler than you might think, in fact, though most likely completely off your radar. The answer has to do with the tiny, little misunderstanding I mentioned earlier, the one that has set us all up for a lifetime of unnecessary struggle and strain. It’s a dirty little secret that very few people on the planet have tuned into, and you my friends are about to join the ranks of that exclusive club. Here’s the secret: what you want is not what you want.

All together now: “Huh?!”

Let’s look at it. Undeniably, we’re all chasing after something: a business empire; world peace; a new car; spiritual mastery; a promotion; environmental salvation; the perfect relationship; a good cup of coffee; a vacation in Uruguay, it’s always something—and this is true not just for you and me, but for just about everybody on the planet. Getting what we want (or at least giving it the ol’ college try) is what we do.

But… (and this is an extremely important but which is why it gets its very own paragraph)

…although we are all chasing after different things, in different ways, with different attitudes, we are all in reality chasing after the very same thing. To put it a another way: while on the surface we are all chasing after different things, we are doing so in order to get the same thing. This thing we are all clambering after? Happiness.

The Payoff

To be clear, this happiness travels under various names: happiness, satisfaction, peace, contentment, fulfillment, wholeness, joy, but whatever you call it, it still remains the common denominator intrinsic to all human endeavor.

Think about it. When you get a new job, when you find the perfect mate, when you taste that first mouthful of a delicious dessert, when you help a person in need: what’s the payoff? It’s not the job itself, for the very same job is likely to drive you mad just a few years down the road. It’s not the mate, for she’s the same one who you’ll trade in on someone else in six weeks (yes, I’m talking to you Jason Mesnick). It’s not the dessert, for the taste of sweetness is patently unreliable in creating any kind of lasting satisfaction. No, it’s none of these. Rather, it’s the feeling of happiness you get from each of these. A new job, the perfect mate, a delicious dessert, helping the homeless, or even one billion dollars is worthless to you unless it brings with it one thing: happiness.

If we’re honest, we’ll see that we’re all engaged in the battles that we are fighting, struggling toward the goals we’ve set ourselves, working our way toward our next achievements, all for one reason: we believe that obtaining the result (whatever it is) will make us happy—at least for a time. And by all means, don’t just take it from me. Look at your own life.

What is Happiness

So at this point, we’ve established that what we all want is happiness—by whatever name you would like to call it. But the question we’ve still to answer is this: what exactly is this happiness animal? Is it an emotion, a mental state, something else? The answer may surprise you.

Imagine this: you’ve just gone car shopping. You test drove a new Lexus. It’s beautiful, handles like a dream, and you’ve decided this is the car for you—although you’ll just need a few more months of savings before you make the purchase. In the meantime, you read the brochures, you visit the Lexus Website, you build your dream car online. Lexus’s, they’re everywhere you look; and every time you drive by the dealership you crank your head over your shoulder admiring the shiny models lined up with military precision. With just a couple of months to go, you plan your first road trip—to the coast—and with visions of your trip in your head, you go back to the dealership and order your car: you pick the colors: the exterior: metallic gray, upholstery: black leather, trim: mahogany. You select your options: sport package, 18” wheels, ipod interface, and GPS navigation. The car, they tell you, will be delivered in four weeks. Only four weeks to go!

The day arrives. Today you are to pick up your new car. You wake early from a fitful night’s sleep; the excitement in your bones harkens you back to a childlike, Santa-inspired impatience you haven’t felt for years. You make a cup of coffee, toss back a quick breakfast, and out the door you go. A 20-minute drive to the dealership and as you pull into the lot, you get your first glimpse. There she sits gleaming and waiting.

Your old car barely reaches a stop before you’re out and making a bee-line toward the showroom. You find the salesman, complete the paperwork, hand over a check, and the moment is finally here. She’s yours. The dealer walks you out to your new car, hands you the keys, shakes your hand, and you get in. Inhale and you take in the sweet scent of virgin leather; exhale and you close the door with that reassuring clunk of quality. Ahhhhhhh. Happy. Payoff.

But here, let’s pause for a moment. And instead of dismissing the experience with a convenient label like happiness or contentment, let’s really look at what has happened and ask critically just what this payoff is. For in truth, only one substantive thing has changed between the time before the payoff and after. At first blush, one might conclude that it was sitting in the luxurious, new car that did it. But if that were true, every time you sat in a new car you’d have the same feeling—and you don’t. In fact, the act of sitting in a car, luxurious or not, new or not, isn’t particularly interesting or rewarding at all. So then, what happened? What changed?

The Nag

Conventional wisdom would have you believe that you are now happy because you gained a new car. And while on the surface that may seem an obvious conclusion, it’s truly far from the mark. You are not happy because you gained a new car, rather you’re happy because you lost something. That something? Desire.

Look back at the driving force behind your willingness to go through all you have in order to obtain the new car. You’ve been reacting to a craving, a desire, an inner nag that is so effective in pushing you around that you’ve been willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars and untold number of hours or days of your life just to get it what it wants. It started rather meekly, just a whisper really: “you need a new car.” But with the shopping and the test driving and the Web surfing and the brochure reading, it has built to a crescendo, and an overpowering one at that. This inner nag that has fueled your quest to buy the car has the power to literally take over your life—and it routinely does. It can have you obsessing over things as mundane as a candy bar or as sweepingly grand as world peace.

So if it’s true, that this inner nag of desire has been responsible for driving you to sacrifice for this and struggle for that for your entire life, the question still remains: how? How is it that this tiny emotion has such power over us all? And for that answer we need to revisit the payoff and our still lingering question: What happened the moment that you plopped down in your new car? What exactly was it that changed to yield the relief that we call happiness?

It’s simply this: the nagging discomfort of desire has left. Desire gone, you are left with the experience we’ve been calling happiness, or stated more precisely: the absence of disturbance, the eradication of desire. The payoff for all of your work isn’t the car; it’s the evaporation of the craving for the car. Your inner nag has finally shut up.

And this is the same process that happens every time you get what you want—at least to some degree. Whether your inner nag is demanding a donut, begging for beer, or pushing for a pedicure, when you finally give in and fulfill the desire the nag shuts up. That’s the payoff, and it’s what drives us all to do what we do.

The truth then is that we are all engaged in an impressively circuitous and inefficient endeavor to rid ourselves of this inner nag, the nag of desire. The relief from the nag is the only reason we would go to the lengths we do to get what we want. Indeed, it is the reason we want what we want so fervently—to show this nag of desire the door. So this leaves us now with a new equation:

Purpose of life = Eliminate desire

Addition and Subtraction

Again, what you want is not what you want. For as we’ve seen, what you really want is to be liberated from that nagging desire. Your efforts, whether recognized or not, are designed to banish longing, to remove craving, to eliminate desire from our lives. By subtracting the nag of desire, you get what you really want; you experience that which we call happiness, the relief from the nag of desire.

It’s this insight that poses an interesting question: if our objective is really to subtract the nag of desire from our experience, why is it that we are all so busy adding things to our lives? If all I really want is the peace and deep relief that results from the removal of the nag of desire, why do I spend so much time, effort, and money in an all out attempt to add acquisitions, accomplishments, and accolades to my life? Why wouldn’t I simply work to subtract desire directly?

It’s a good question, and fortunately, one to which a very straight forward answer exists: programming. This is the thing, we’ve all been taught that the preferred, if not the sole method for the removal of desire is accumulation and achievement; we’ve been programmed to get rid of desire by giving in to desire. It’s a process that began way back when someone first stuck a pacifier in our mouths: addition (of a stimulus) leads to subtraction (of desire). And this is what has set us up for our tiny, little misunderstanding. We’ve come to believe that our desire for the car is really about the car; the desire for the relationship is really about the relationship; that the desire to lose weight is really about losing weight. And because of this, we find ourselves standing toe to toe with the irony of ironies: each of our desires is simply the desire for the end of that very same desire. It’s our misunderstanding that has us running in the wrong direction.

Perhaps worse than the inefficiency inherent in using addition to create subtraction, in buying a $40,000 car to rid ourselves of a desire for a $40,000 car, is the effect that this strategy has on our lives. Quite simply, it binds us to this inefficient process with an ever-tightening spiral of habit.

The phenomenon is not unlike what is apt to happen with spoiled children. Let’s imagine that standing in front of you is a child, one who has thrown himself headlong into a fantastically spectacular tantrum, with kicking and screaming and biting and scratching and all manner of carrying on—all for a piece of candy. For you, the tantrum is irritating. It’s distracting, and depending upon circumstance, may even be embarrassing. There is nothing you would like more than to have it stop and best of all, you have it in your power to end it in this very moment. For in your hand is a delicious piece of chocolate. All that you need to do to get relief from the tantrum is to give the child the candy. So why not do so?

As virtually anyone could tell you, to do so, would be the worst possible thing you could do. For in doing so, you are creating a monster. You are effectively teaching the child that tantrums work; that if he makes a big enough stink, he will get what he wants. And from that point forward you will find yourself hip deep in tantrums of all sorts and sizes and will as a result spend your entire life doling out candy and toys and anything else the little brat wants just to be able to live in peace. A short-term gain leads to a long-term loss.

But strangely enough, while the folly of this approach is more than obvious in the case of our child, it is rarely noticed in our own lives. For what is so often missed is how this process of rewarding tantrums is precisely what so many of us are doing with our minds—a.k.a. the spoiled children living in our heads. If you’re like most people, your mind, like the brat, has been taught that if it throws a big enough tantrum, you’ll give it whatever it wants—and you’ll go to herculean lengths to do so.

Once the mind sets its sights on that new car (or whatever the object of desire de jour may be) the tantrum begins—albeit as a whispered longing at first. If not heeded, it gathers momentum until you’re overwhelmed by a fire-storm of craving. Instead of kicking and screaming and biting and scratching the mind’s version of a tantrum involves craving and dreaming and crying and lusting. Though perhaps less noticeable to those around you, the mind’s hysterics are nevertheless every bit as uncomfortable as the spoiled child’s, and just like the stressed-out, seventeen-year-old mother who, knowing no better, will do whatever she needs to just to get her kid to quiet down, we give the mind its pined for candy. The tantrum ends and we get our relief—at least for the moment.

The problem is, as we alluded to before, we are creating a monster. We are training the mind that it too can get what it wants, if it can just muster a tantrum of sufficient bluster and bother. Each time we give in, the monster gains strength and we are more tightly bound to the process.

What’s more, our efforts yield only temporary relief. Because we’ve learned that giving in to desire yields happiness, we eagerly participate in the recruitment of new desires at the mall, online, and in fact everywhere we go. We set ourselves up again and again for tantrum after tantrum, struggle after struggle, and remain blind to our own complicity in the madness.

Alas, without an alternative, without a way to subdue this inner nag of desire directly, we are left to our slipshod strategy, forever fumbling our way towards mere brief bouts of happiness, and all the while remaining at the beck and call of the spoiled and unruly child in our head.

Fortunately, it’s here that the promise of yoga can offer an alternative. A way of being that doesn’t require more and better and faster to fuel our sense of well being. And your recognition that what you want is not what you want is the very first step. Next month we’ll look directly at how specific practices of yoga can once and for all set you free from the ceaseless circularity of desires fulfilled, and yield an abiding happiness that transcends circumstance. Until then…

Many Blessings,
E

Copyright 2008, Eric Walrabenstein, all rights reserved.