ADDICTION TO THE PREFERRED

This life is appearing to you in the way that fulfills the deepest part of you, without exception, 100% of the time. Your life is always a manifestation of your soul’s deepest wish and yearning. Otherwise, it would be some other way.

We are not taught this growing up. We are taught that life as it is couldn’t possibly be desirous, especially if life as it is contains pain and discomfort and grief. So how do we learn to embrace the soul’s deepest yearning? We affirm, in our words and our actions, that the perfect fulfillment of our deepest desire is happening right here, right now.

Now, our conscious minds may have a problem with this. Conscious minds can make a problem out of anything. The conscious mind, the ego structure, cannot embrace anything that does not fit into its notion of what is preferred to experience. The conscious mind does not embrace pain, loss, change, discomfort, or other challenging experiences and sees no value in them. But have you noticed that your conscious mind’s attempt to only have preferable experiences has utterly failed? 

Yes, the surface version of you, the character you play in consciousness, will always prefer pleasure over pain, health over illness, comfort over discomfort, ease over challenge. But in the depths of your being, who you truly are desires life to be precisely as it is right now, whether you prefer it or not.

Agreement or disagreement with this is irrelevant because agreement and disagreement can only happen in the conscious mind that only agrees with what it prefers. Set agreement or disagreement aside for a moment. What does it feel like in your body to hear that who you truly, deeply are wants nothing more than life exactly as it appears right now?

If you take your time with this, you may notice an opening, relaxing, gentle quality enter your experience as you sit with this, despite the protests of your mind. That’s trustworthy feedback. You can trust the wisdom of your body that responds to truth when it comes into contact with it. Otherwise, you may spend your whole life trying to meet your mind’s impossible expectation that it should only have preferable experiences that just so happen to never quite be here. Addiction to the preferred is the root of all addiction.