What Are You Seeking?

Words from some spiritual tradition might come to mind as proposed answers. When I was younger I came across the works of John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila and learned the term “union with God” for a state that is the aim of the spiritual life. These two authors mapped out stages and pitfalls on the journey to get there and I could say, “good, I’m somewhere ‘here’, and where I’m trying to go is ‘there,’ to the state of union with God.” Because I also had an interest in Buddhism, I alternatively thought what I was looking for was enlightenment. And I would wonder whether enlightenment and union with God were the same thing, or somehow different.

But the truth is those were just words, I did not know what they meant. I knew I was seeking something, and it helped a little to have a name for it, but not much. It’s not like everything else you might be looking for, when you have a good idea what it is you are after. When I am looking for my slippers, I know what they look like, or when I am hungry I know I want food. But when you are a spiritual seeker you don’t really know what you are seeking.

What many of these terms from spiritual traditions have in common is that they refer to something that is supposed to be there all the time. God is supposed to be everywhere so should always be present wherever we are. If enlightenment is to realize one’s true nature, our true nature should always be present wherever we are. At this point it becomes clearer that finding what you are seeking is not an additive process of obtaining something you lack; it is a subtractive process of removing that which keeps you from finding what is there all the time.

Another way to answer the question of what you are seeking might be descriptive words referring to experiences you have had in the past, temporarily and to some degree, such as a sense of peace, fulfillment, or transcendence. You think you are seeking to have that experience again, or to a greater degree, or permanently. You imagine some state based on your past experience or perhaps descriptions from other people, but you are not sure how to get there because those states are elusive; you can’t generate them just by willing them to happen. When they are there you feel right and are not seeking anything else; you only seek when they are not there.

But what if the causality is the reverse? It could be that when seeking stops the states are there, and when we are seeking the states stop. I propose that it is seeking itself that keeps you from finding that which is always there. If you look closely at how you feel when you sense yourself seeking, you notice a kind of dissatisfaction, a restlessness or uneasiness. You are being pulled into a very familiar part of your mind, a problem-solving part that either poses questions and looks for answers or lays plans and takes actions to achieve a goal. When engaging that part of your mind there is something that needs to be figured out or achieved. That capacity serves us well in many areas of life, but it is misapplied in the spiritual life.

Spiritual traditions offer answers to questions and practices to achieve goals, but these only satisfy up to a certain point. They help you sort out your thoughts about life and develop behaviors more in harmony with what you believe, but they do not eliminate that sense of seeking because after applying it so much it becomes a habit. The seeking part of the mind has taken on a life of its own and is, in effect, chasing its own tail.

Spiritual teachers help people get past that point in one of two ways. One way is to push people hard in their seeking, engaging them intensively in spiritual practices of one kind or another until eventually the habitual seeking part of them burns out. The other way is to get them to gradually stop feeding the seeker, to realize when they are moving into that state of mind and trying to solve or achieve something instead of being in the moment. You learn to recognize when you are doing that and move back from it, withdraw energy from it. Eventually the habitual seeking dies from a lack of feeding.

In this article I am following the latter strategy, trying to help the reader recognize the state of mind which generates the sense of seeking. When your mind gets caught in the seeking state, realize that you are trying to solve a puzzle that cannot be solved. There is no answer to the question of what you are seeking, because seeking is the state of mind that looks to the future for satisfaction. What you are seeking is available only in the present moment.

© 2011 Alan F. Zundel
 

Alan F. Zundel is a counselor, author, and teacher currently living in Eugene, Oregon. His talks are available to download for free at HeartAwake Center at www.heartawake.org.