Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch. The graveled pathway announces approaching footsteps jarring me back into the here-and-now. I’m relaxing on a rock overlooking a bluff a few hundred feet above the coast of the Pacific Ocean. It’s a beautiful fall day, blue skies punctuated by the occasional billowing white cloud stretch over the expansive sea. My little pal Hanuman, a six-pound Chihuahua who’s utterly convinced that he’s the second coming of somebody, sits on my lap. The crunches grow louder, then stop.

“I thought I’d find you here.” I turn to see Annie peering at me around a berm of earth and shrubs.

“How’s that?”

“Well you’ve been using the example of the vastness of the seascape in your teachings all week, so I just figured…”

“Excellent work, Columbo.” I smile, “Sit?”

“Thanks.” Annie takes a seat on a boulder next to mine. Taking a moment to get comfortable, she reaches over and pats Hanuman on the head.

“So what’s the news?” I ask.

“I’m still trying to process everything we talked about the other day, I think.” She sighs, “Do you remember our conversation?”

“Of course.” I nod.

Two days prior Annie had come to me with her frustrations about the retreat. More specifically, she had hoped that coming to the monastery would fill a cavernous yearning she felt for fulfillment, wholeness, ease. It didn’t.

“Well, I was just having lunch with Jeremy,” she begins, “and we were discussing your idea of Spiritual Hypochondria and more specifically how being here, at this retreat, isn’t a solution to anything.”

The idea behind Spiritual Hypochondria is that our minds obscure the fulfillment that we always already are by distracting us with stories of comparison, lack, and an endless parade of ‘what ifs.’ In the same way that regular hypochondria distracts us from our perception of health through ideas of illness; Spiritual Hypochondria robs us of our perception of fullness through ideas of lack.

“Okay,” I say.

“I guess where I keep getting hung up is on the reason I’m here.”

“Why are you here, Annie?”

She chuckles, “That’s a good question. If you would have asked me that three days ago I could have told you.”

“Alright then, let’s start with that. What would you have told me then?”

“I would have said that I’m here to find a deep and abiding sense of fulfillment. One that will last.”

“That sounds like the perfect reason to be here.” I say.

“But I thought you said that being in a monastery wasn’t the answer.”

“I did say it’s not the answer.” then I look her in the eye as if to emphasize the point, “but I also said that it is an opportunity to investigate into what the answer might be.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot that part.”

We both laugh.

“Alright then,” she closes her eyes to solidify her remembrance. “I get that it’s an opportunity, but I guess that still leaves me feeling stuck as to how best use the opportunity. I mean, as I told you the other day, my mind is often more busy here than at home.”

“Fair enough,” I say, “let’s start at the beginning, shall we?”

Annie nods.

“Do you remember how we talked about happiness or fulfillment being uncovered, not created?”

“I think so.”

“For example, you’re desperately craving a new car. You’ve picked out the model, the color, the options, you’ve spent time reading about it on the Internet, you’ve been to the dealership, you’ve taken it for a test drive, you’ve saved your money…what happens when you finally buy it? You get in, you close the door…tell me how that feels.”

“Fulfilling.”

“More specifically.”

“It feels good.”

“Why, what has changed?” I ask, “I mean in your mental and emotional experience?”

“Ah, yes, it’s peaceful. The nagging pull of desire finally goes away.” She beams like she just won the Daily Double, “The craving, the anxiety, the struggle are over, done with.”

“Leaving you with?”

“Fulfillment.” Hanuman jumps over into her lap and begins sniffing around her book bag in search of something to eat. She picks him up and is treated to a kiss on the nose. Annie gives Hanuman a peck on the head and looks back up at me. “Okay, now I really got it.” She says, “Happiness, or we could call it fulfillment, is just a label we give to the absence of craving.”

“And the end of struggle.” I add.

“Right, peace and ease equals happiness and fulfillment.” She says with finality.

“Now let’s look at your strategy for achieving this happiness, or as you say, this peace and ease.”

“Okay.”

“So, what’s your strategy?” I ask.

“I’ve always been taught to focus on what you want, work hard, and sacrifice.”

“Is it fair to say that there is a certain amount of effort or even struggle in getting what you want?”

“Often that’s the case.”

“And remind me why you are trying to get what you want.”

“So I can be happy.”

“And what does that mean?”

“So I can be free from craving and…” She stops mid-sentence.

“Yes?”

“So I can be free from craving and struggle.” Her eyes widen, “I’ve been struggling all of my life just so I can experience the end of struggle?!”

“That’s weird,” I say. “Don’t you think?”

“Wait a minute, so what you’re saying is that my thrashing about to get what I want is obscuring the fact that I already have what I want.”

“I’d say that’s true,” I answer, “but only if what you want is the experience of happiness and fulfillment. Which are as we’ve already seen just different ways of saying peace and ease.”

“Isn’t that what everyone wants?”

“Probably, but very few are of aware of it on this level.” And then I add, “But don’t believe that…”

“I know, I know,” she smiles, “check it out, right?”

“Study your own experience to verify if this is true or not. Notice what you’re doing in order to obtain happiness, and feel how it affects your happiness now.”

One of the most interesting parts of the yogic process to me has always been to see how our unconscious and unexamined habits actually foil our attempts to get what we want. We’re constantly working against ourselves, and don’t recognize it. We’re funny animals.

Annie smiles to herself, stands up and hands Hanuman back to me. He circles three times to the left and lies down in my lap. She strolls over to the edge of the bluff and gazes at the crashing surf below.

“Hey Annie?”

She turns.

“Look at it this way: sooner or later you always end up at peace and ease, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And so then what happens?”

“I get some idea in my head that I need something more.”

“And you want that something more, why?”

“So I can finally relax, I suppose.”

“But you were relaxed before you decided you needed something more; why all the commotion?”

“I guess that’s the $60,000 question.” She laughs.

“Check this out.” I dig down into my knapsack and pull out a pen and a white piece of paper. Annie steps back over to my perch and I draw the following diagram:

“You start fulfilled and then an idea pops in your head that something needs to be different.” I say, “It could be anything: your weight, your bank balance, your shoes.”

“I got that.” Annie nods.

“But at this point, the idea is just an idea, and as such, has no power over you.”

“Like right now I can conjure up the idea that I should have a waterslide in my backyard?” Annie adds, “I don’t really believe that I need it so I don’t feel like I need to do anything about it?”

“Exactly,” I say, “And the fact is that nearly all of these cravings start out like that: as just an idea, innocuous, harmless. But in some cases, an idea is adopted to be true. In other words we actually believe that if we had that waterslide, or whatever the idea is about, our lives would be immeasurably improved.”

“And that’s what turns the idea into a craving?”

“I don’t know, you tell me.”

Annie pauses, “That seems to resonate with my experience.”

“Okay, so now we don’t just have an idea floating in our heads, we have a craving, which is a bothersome animal indeed.” I say.

“You can say that again!” Annie smiles “And so what you’re saying is that on one level the craving for the waterslide is really just a misinterpretation of the craving for the end of craving?”

“That’s my suggestion, but I recommend that you…”

“That I should check it out.” She completes my thought.

I smile. “You’re getting the picture.

“The craving then, really has very little to do with getting a waterslide.” She says.

“Yes ma’am. You know that tightness in your chest, heaviness in the belly when you really, really want something?”

“Oh yes, I do indeed.”

“Begin to watch the process; watch how those feelings and sensations drive you to struggle for the object of your craving. And also, ask yourself: “if I knew that the waterslide would do nothing to relieving my dis-ease of craving, would I have any interest in it whatsoever?”

“Probably not,” Annie answers, “because it wouldn’t solve my problem.”

“Which is?”

“The need for the end of struggle and the experience of peace and ease, or happiness. All my struggling to get the waterslide is because I know that once I get it, the nagging craving will evaporate.”

“And you’ll be left with?”

“Peace and ease.”

“And…” I tap my pen at the top of the circle.

“And I’ll be right back where I started from.” Annie says, “So what you’re saying is that…”

“You never have to look further than your own backyard, Dorothy.”

“And I don’t even need a pair of ruby slippers?” She smiles.

“Nope. You’ve always had the power to go back to Kansas.” I wink.

“Does this make you Glinda the good witch?”

“I hope not, I look terrible in a dress.” We chuckle, “I’m just voicing your inner knowing, helping you to see what you already on some level know.”

A look of recognition comes over her face, “I think I get it. But back to my original question: how do I use this retreat to break free of this cycle; to find that abiding peace and ease?”

“To what?”

“To find…”

“Ahh!” I stop her.

Annie smiles, “To uncover that abiding peace and ease?”

“Tell you what, Annie.” I say, “Why don’t I give you a hint and then you come back and tell me how to best use your time in the monastery.”

“I like a challenge.” She puts her hands on her hips, “What’s the hint.”

“Nothing has to change.”

“Do you mean like, my outside circumstances?”

“No-thing has to change.” I say a bit more slowly, with a wry smile.

“Alright. Got it.”

“So I’ll see you tomorrow then?”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” She smiles and looks at Hanuman, “And your little dog too!”

Blessings to all,

E

Yogi E, a.k.a. Eric Walrabenstein is the founder and director of Yoga Pura in Phoenix, AZ. He is the architect of Yoga Pura’s year-long Advanced Studies Program and trains yoga teachers nationally. E regularly travels the country holding workshops on the process of enlightenment and translating ancient yogic truths for daily living. He is currently at work on a book on unreasonable happiness.

Copyright 2007, Eric Walrabenstein, all rights reserved.