the role of wanting things

[FallingLeaves]

the thing about wanting things is, one of the basic things simply everyone wants is the spiritual 'thing' physical money is the 'sign' for. Even those who see past the need to want physical money can't get past wanting that. And over the long term, the more one gets of it the better...

unfortunately when combined with other strong tendencies such as the need to control our surroundings, or the need to come out comparatively 'better' than those we see around us, or the need to 'win', or probably a myriad of other things I can't even remember, that means that any transaction that has someone getting what they want has a bunch of other people going away dissatisfied.

So there can't be any permanent resolution to life's 'problems' the way we are always seeking, because if a basic tenet of having the societies we always make is that many are going to be unsatisfied so much of the time, eventually there will be an uprising. Or on the flip side everyone who matters will get depressed about their perceived lack of options and things will just deteriorate.

Any solution that is accepted at all will cause dissatisfaction for many... so in its life it has the seeds of its death.

But in my view it is not a very 'loving' situation to get what you want at the expense of everyone around you anyway. Though most won't choose to see this for what it is because society lauds getting what one wants and so it is like it has a halo around it.

Christ apparently saw through this though, being willing to listen to god and give away even his very life in the service of others as he did instead of trying to do all the proper things required to maintain his body and want things as long as possible as we are all taught to.
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Another problem is once you get into the loa as heavily as some do, you start expecting to see what you want to see instead of what is there... well isn't that the whole point of the loa? so of course you do end up seeing what you want to see... even if it isn't actually there it is easy to convince yourself it is. Because you so want it to be that you will put a lot of effort into looking for it... so naturally you will find it because you'll start trying to interpret what you are seeing around you as if it were a positive sign about getting your goal... and you'll eventually convince yourself you have it if your wants are strong enough. But dealing with confirmation bias is subtly different than dealing with the reality of things and personally I tire of getting to look but there being nothing to actually touch.

But it is a fundamental problem we all have and none of us are getting around any time soon: we see what we want to see rather than what we would actually like to see...

while it is incredibly easy to disagree with such a statement I will put it out there that I also find it incredibly easy to not have enough real knowledge to know for sure that what one is saying has any relation to the reality of things. And yet confidently suppose one does anyway...

my own pet peeve about wanting has nothing to do with any of that though... I'm just dissatisfied because another thing I see is that I can work very hard to get something, but if I get it (after a long time and a lot of effort mind you) it will eventually be torn out of my grasp. Then eventually I have to come back here and I get a choice, work even harder/longer than before to get it back, or just give up and not have it at all.

Any more giving up and not having things has seemed a better option than working even harder than I had to before for something I won't even be allowed to keep. And practically speaking, if I'm not going to be allowed to actually have things that I can hold on to and keep, and it is going to take a lot of time and effort even to earn something to own temporarily, what is the point in wanting things so desperately? Isn't it better to just accept I can't have things?

Of course at that point I had to question why I even wanted what I wanted in the first place... which as it turns out just wraps back to where I started with this essay.

having said all that, I will say there is nothing inherently wrong with the idea of wanting things. but there IS a lot of smog in the air from the way people are going about it.

[lostsoul13]

The way I understood it was the laws of thermodynamics- no energy can be created or destroyed thus everything we imagine is already ours: we are like giant storage containers, just loa pushes out the thing we want.. and makes it in to our reality..

We already googolplex wealth and furthering more. Just life and fate have a way of giving us lessons that we may or may not be happy with to sustain us for the future or your blue print plan, you already agreed to it but those memories are locked with your higher self- it’s not till the future with mindfulness that we unlock them and likewise with any alternative life’s or past life’s..

We need to understand we are wealthy and abundant as we are without manifesting it in our realities..

We are missing the point about bring forth the situation or item ect by focusing on it out of our means.. that’s why we will live poor lives and rich ones..

It’s hard luck but nothing will beat the matrix the laws are absolute!

[Miss Hepburn]

...once you get into the loa as heavily as some do..... well isn't that the whole point of the loa?...

For new people, new to all this spiritual talk - 'loa or LOA' = Law of Attraction,
and we have a section on it.

[JustBe]

If you focus on the external others doing things their way, you often get caught up in that idea of that way, see flaws and struggle with the whole concepts they chase after it use.

One of my greatest lessons on the spiritual path was learning not so much about what I wanted, but how I perceived myself when I didn’t get it, how I felt in the want, how I weighed up others in their wants up against myself and others. Then undoing all that I realize everything changes as I change those channels in me.

Wants are no longer attached but rather they are just wants. Understanding yourself as this bigger inclusive picture your showing here, then opens a bigger picture to see what’s important to you and you find what you want without all this mind chatter over running your reality.

Abundance mindset in my view isn’t about getting everything you want, when you want and think you want, but rather seeing how the universe can work in your favour when you do the work within and become what you want. Opportunities are abound. Whether it’s within the framework of the external system, or the framework of one’s inwardly reflecting system. I prefer the latter.

Their is no right or wrong way in how you achieve your wants. With choices their comes responsibility. Sometimes not always apparent in each moment people might not be aware of a bigger complex picture of their choices.

Once your aware, open and clear only you can understand the picture you’ve revealed it others have revealed to you.

The spiritual journey takes you deep and far, so does life experiences. You learn that even as you become the abundant self, you also become aware less is more, others are important in your movements through life and consideration in this way births you even more so.

I’ve always said money cannot be contained. Even as it’s necessary to life, if it’s contained in you, the energetic imprint it creates will play out as you feel about it.

[weareunity]

Hello all.

In the event that our "wants" are attempts to make provision for our "needs", by what criteria, by what mechanism, and by whom, is the judgement made regarding whether society can or cannot accomodate such provisioning?

[FallingLeaves]

Originally Posted by weareunity

Hello all.

In the event that our "wants" are attempts to make provision for our "needs", by what criteria, by what mechanism, and by whom, is the judgement made regarding whether society can or cannot accomodate such provisioning?

in my view anyone who tries this has to have something to measure against... so it can be called 'arbitrary' in some sense since everything comes down to what one decides to measure against e.g. value. And choice of what to value certainly looks arbitrary, because, if people value one thing, it seems like they arrange whatever 'facts' are available to them in such a way as to back it up (including ignoring any facts they find inconvenient); they value another thing, they arrange the facts a different way so as to back THAT up. And that doesn't even contend with the fact that people never have enough facts to make enduring conclusions in the first place, that seems more a matter of projecting confidence that they know things than in any actuality that they actually do.

often to me, evidence seems more like it is arranged to support arguments than that it actually has the meanings ascribed to it... even science falls to this in some ways (in my view).

so, arbitrary and noone is really capable of matching their thoughts to the 'truth' of reality. I think the bible may even say that is the case, not sure...
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otoh I assume if you don't get hung up on what to value and don't choose something you must have and find valueable, you would get the chance to learn to make conclusions about the relationships between all these 'arbitrary' values different people have. Instead of trying to grab at the ones you want and dismiss the ones you don't, you would weave a broader tapestry that encompasses both things you like and things you don't like in a more honest way? And then maybe go on try to reason about the relationships between such things instead of trying to play carrot and stick to get others to line up to your own expectations?

Whether that is any less arbitrary is anyone's guess (in some sense at least it isn't I think), but, at least it is more inclusive than the ways we generally go about things... although I think we are all too lazy to try it! Except maybe god did that.

[FallingLeaves]

Originally Posted by JustBe

One of my greatest lessons on the spiritual path was learning not so much about what I wanted, but how I perceived myself when I didn’t get it, how I felt in the want, how I weighed up others in their wants up against myself and others. Then undoing all that I realize everything changes as I change those channels in me.

Wants are no longer attached but rather they are just wants. Understanding yourself as this bigger inclusive picture your showing here, then opens a bigger picture to see what’s important to you and you find what you want without all this mind chatter over running your reality.

i liked this part!

[weareunity]

hello FallingLeaves and all.
On a tangent:--By coincidence a university challenge quiz programme today included a question concerning various classifications of bias. --new information to me.
The classification referrred to as"confirmation bias" has its own entry in wikipedia.
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continuing now Re "needs":-

all living organisms need certain conditions/stuff in order to survive and likely need further particular conditions and additional stuff in order for that species to procreate and--possibly--evolve.

I dont know if it is a generally accepted opinion or not but I'm guessing that if we had to pass judgement as to whether it is acceptable that such organisms are "justified" in making such efforts of which they are capable in order to find/provide such necessary (for them) conditions, we would probably say, ok, yes, after all we are all doing it. --even though in some circumstances we shall be in competition for resources/environments, or we may want to eat or otherwise consume/destroy certain organisms. (These possibilities however being different issues to the "justification" mentioned imo.)

So perhaps we could say that fullfilling that needs for sheer survival is by and large justifiable activity. ?

However, there are species which have real needs which entail the provision of more than the conditions and stuff necessary for survival itself.?? Perhaps we could hypothesise that such needs are the product of sentience?? This is not to present sentience as being an achievement or superior development, but just a factual observation.
We might further hypothesise/suggest that being sentient results in having what we call psychological and emotional needs. Needs which motivate us and other sentient species to behave just as powerfully as the need to survive.

It is imo these needs and the way we attempt to satisfy them that we need (ha!)to scrutinise, study and understand--for in doing so we work imo not only to our own species survival and evolution, but also work toward being true guardians of other species and custodians of the the environment upon which we all depend.

Sounds both vain glorious and noble--but its not--just common sense, necessary and mutually beneficial.imo.

cheers.x

[FallingLeaves]

when I started playing with the 'need' word it was made clear to me there isn't any such thing as a 'need'. Need implying have to have, or can't continue. The actuality apparently being one can always continue if one simply decides to find a way to continue... so there are only wants, but we want them so bad we won't let go even though sometimes our wants come back to bite us. And then we die.

the 'notion' of survival itself being a want that doesn't HAVE to be fulfilled to the level people think desirable, look at jesus on the cross for a prime example of someone denying that 'need' that we all think so fundamental well before the end would come if left to natural cause. And apparently, he was neither the first nor the last to do such a thing.

Say what you want about God, or miracles, or heaven, or any of the christianity or religion, but it is still true that that simple act of denial of a thing hold most dear still fascinates us to this day.. And it begs a question for those of us who are becoming dissatisfied with whatever it is we've got, if we really don't need even to survive, can we get rid of some of the other stuff weighing us down too?

Which is where I completely differ from everyone I hear talking, there is always talk about what one should want and what one can get and how good it is to have what one has... I don't really want any part of it; I just wanna do something more mundane and take out the trash.

[weareunity]

Hi FallingLeaves.

thanks for passing on an explanation in your first paragraph above detailing the nature of "need".
I fully agree that it is not compulsory to seek to provide for need if you dont want to for some reason, however crucial to survival --or other purpose- the fulfilling of that need may be. In short you can choose not to.
Whether that makes the need disappear or simply makes its reality of no consequence to the entity choosing is perhaps a matter of somesort of existential discussion??
The entry "one can always continue if one simply decides to find a way to continue"--as per that same paragraph--suggests that the need remains for else there would be no need to find an alternative way of providing for that need??
I am pleased to share perspectives and opinions, and especially pleased that we are allowed to do so.
All strength to your trash throwing.!