(Republished from December 2014)
I’m involved in a business venture that has me saying to people with some regularity, “But you have to want it.” I’ve come to realize, in that way that comes with hearing something repeated again and again, that’s true of everything in Life.
In I Don’t Want To, I Don’t Feel Like It, we lay out a process that includes an unstated and often not understood portion of a karmic story: “I want to…” is the stated, “…but I can’t” is the unstated. For example, “I want to lose weight” is the stated, “but I can’t” is the unstated, unconscious, defeated-before-I-begin assumption. In this example, I believe “I want to…” and “…but I can’t” are two different processes. But they’re not, they are one process. They arise together in unconsciousness.
The importance of realizing this is that when we uncouple “I want to, but I can’t,” our lives change dramatically. As long as they are a “pair,” when what I want to do becomes too difficult I can quit. The “too difficult” is proof that even though I sincerely want to, I just can’t.
If this were happening in conscious compassionate awareness, we’d have a whole different situation. I wouldn’t even attempt things I can’t do! Why would I? I can’t do them! Simple—and very relaxing! But because “but I can’t” is kept in unconsciousness, I keep getting talked into attempting things (losing weight), being told I can’t as soon as my endeavor becomes challenging (and it’s challenging only because I’m listening to voices telling me it is) and quitting.
As soon as I realize “I want to, but I can’t” is one karmic, ego-maintaining process, not two, I can separate them. I want to lose weight. Good. How do I do that? From conscious compassionate awareness I go on an all-out campaign to learn how to do that! Will it be easy? No, because the voices of ego maintenance (“but I can’t”) will do everything they can to sabotage my efforts, keeping me in thrall to them. Okay. I see how it works, I see what’s required, and I want to do this.
Game over, ego maintenance system!
In gassho,
Cheri