Slave to the Grind

Feels like the reason for me not wanting to work, is something I’m not yet ready to admit to myself. I want someone else to point it out to me, huh, that’s interesting.

You’re a slave to the grind. This enlightenment trip you’re on is just another “job” to distract you from the other one. And vice versa. More and more jobs.

Part of low self-esteem is believing that everything is a slog, tough, and a burden to get — kind of like a job. Self-development is a job. Work is a job. Being happy is a job. etc… “I can’t be a successful so-and-so without sacrificing X Y Z from my life” or “Sure, I’m happy, but I had to work so hard to get it.” are the typical thoughts that pop up. Nothing can come free, everything must be paid for.

It’s this transactional nature of your thinking which is letting you down. And these transactions are always some form of hope for the future rooted in hopelessness in the present.

• This job has nothing to offer me.
• If I get enlightenment then I can do x y z with my life.

Even basic psychological literature shows that people who cannot celebrate tiny steps on the way to a larger goal never feel satisfied, even when they reach the larger goal.

The trick is to flip the script. Each moment is a happy satisfying choice to be something***.*** Once you get rid of the transaction (I’m doing X to get Y), all you’re left with is these little joyful moments where you are either:

1. Being skilful, which is great because you’re reinforcing these great mental habits that lead to liberation
2. Being unskillful, which is great because you’re noticing these great opportunities to re-shape your habits to lead towards liberation

Either way, you’re a winner! The trick is to just be aware. It requires no payment. There’s no hope of getting something other than what you have right now. There’s no hopelessness because now it’s all Gucci.

The problem is that the mind has essentially created this cage around your happiness. This cage is conditions. The conditions are reinforced through habit and become part of your character. Part of the path is learning to ease these conditions. Erasing dissatisfaction-stress (dukkha) is about learning to cultivate unconditional satisfaction. Dissatisfaction always comes from conditions (if X, then happy; sometimes we don’t get X). Unconditionality cannot be dissatisfied because there are no barriers (just happy). This can be applied to any emotion or thought. Pride? If I need X to feel pride, there’ll surely arise a situation where I don’t obtain X and I’ll feel ashamed. What if I feel pride no matter what? Proud to be here. Proud to be courageously living one breath at a time. PS: this reference to a “cage” is where the idea of “fetters” comes from. Fetters are: “a chain or manacle used to restrain a prisoner, typically placed around the ankles.” You can see where I’m going with this… Right? You are both the ankle and the chain, if you can realise it. Realising it is 80% of the job. The other 20% is easy and fun. Once you see how you’ve trapped yourself with this little zugzwang, making a move in reference to the cage will always make you feel worse. Ignoring it, acquiring something to distract, or being angry with it, are all just more zugzwangs, like cutting the nose to spite the face.

Find a way to relate to these ideas at a pre-/un-conscious level and you’ll be golden. It’s about being a friend to yourself. Friends make their lives easier for one another (which is why I think metta* is so potent). Putting conditions on your very own happiness is paradoxical in a sense because there really should be nothing stopping you from feeling happy all the time no matter what because it’s there for you all the time. As the great philosopher-poet DJ Khaleed would say, “congratulations, you played yourself”. That’s dukkha. You keep it out of reach due to these conditions and keep playing yourself. That’s enslavement, it turns happiness into a job rather than something to savour and cultivate unconditionally. This is the culmination of knowing no-self/anatta. You are neither essentially happy nor sad, which means you can, at some level, choose to be one or the other. This works for anything. Whatever thought you’re having is not a thought that defines you, you have many thoughts that make “you”, which means they are all optional, at a level. And even that optionality is optional itself (which is why I said, “at a level”). It’s options all the way down. Understanding the profundity of this and how deep it runs means you can basically start re-arranging the mind and how it relates to everything and itself. And, obviously, this is about impermanence too, because all of this can change. And, obviously, this is about dukkha too, because assuming you cannot change or assuming some essence leads to stress-dissatisfaction.

*The reason why Metta is so powerful is because it gets us intimate with being a friend to all the mental phenomena, processes, and critters lurking in our mind. If we can be friendly to them, they’ll be friendly to us in turn. People think its about generating goodwill for a person or whatnot, but that’s impossible. You don’t know a single soul other than the mental phenomena/processes that fabricate the thought of that person in your mind. With this knowledge you can apply Metta to any/all mental phenomena/process that arises and let the entire mental system become friendly with itself. Total joy ensues.

So, to finally circle back to your original point, the thing you can’t admit to yourself is that you are the architect and guard of your own mentally created prison. You want someone else to point it out because you lack the objectivity to see it within yourself (yet!), but that will come with skill, some dedication to practice, and some honesty. So here I am, pointing at it, using language to convey what I mean; the equivalent of trying to shoot a moving target in the dark with a gun that misfires 99.99% of the time.