Many of our motivations in life come from deep seated desires that are drivers in our lives. What are these desires and where do they come from? Can one see and watch these desires acting in our lives or is one much more concerned with pretending we are only driven by so called high-minded and social ethics and morality that are acceptable to ourselves, and what we think others will like to see emanating from us?
Is not the problem here that one's ideals are not what is actually going on inside of us so we are in conflict. 'I should not be this, I should be this'. 'What I should be is not actually what I am, so hence I am in conflict'.
We are making judgements; the ideal we want to achieve and become, is good and what we actually are with our greed, ambition, resentment, jealousy selfishness and all the rest of it, is bad.
This is what we are doing in our lives. We have decided what is good and what is bad rather than just looking at ourselves and seeing it all without judgement and comparison. These notions of good and bad, right and wrong are passed round the society or group we are in and conformity is expected. One conforms for whatever reason and conflict follows. The ensuing battle within ones self goes something like 'I want to feel part of this group or society and be accepted'. 'I do not want to feel outside of the group so I had better conform despite my reservations and inner conflict; it is better to be accepted than it is to worry about my particular reservations, after all we need to belong don't we?' This seems to be true whether we are talking about nationalism, a particular religion or some smaller grouping.
So for many of us we not dealing with the reality of what we are, but we are trying to fit in to someone else's idea of what we should, be whether we have read things that tell us how to be, or whether we are conforming to what we think others expect of us.
Have you looked at your motivation driven by your personal desires and seen that many come from the fear of isolation, of being rejected and of death? Have you noticed that you want and desire something, whether it is a relationship or money and from that moment when the desire is recognised you start to think of ways to get what it is you desire? Where does desire come from? Does one think one's life needs more, some improvement. If that is the case then one is surely thinking that ones current life has something missing and by acquiring more, the missing things in ones life will disappear and ones life will be a success with endless fulfilment. So we end up trying to escape from what we truly are without understanding ourselves, and without this understanding how can we possibly take the right action to end conflict?
Do we then not have to understand what are our deep desires without judgement by observing them as they arise and move, however we have labelled them in the past either personally or by society?
Watch how you are driven to impress your boss at work but are much less respectful to someone doing what is considered by society a more menial task. Watch how you are much more engaged in the conversation with someone you desire sexually than you are with someone you want nothing from. Watch all the things we do and say to gain favour and acceptance from those we want to impress and gain from. This is self awareness and it moves from moment to moment.
There is nothing to change until one knows what one is motivated to do at the deepest level because all change without real understanding is merely endlessly trying to think oneself out of the conflict one is in and how to escape from it rather than look to at the reality of it.
