I’m very glad you brought this up. ‘Thinking everything is perfect’ can easily become another effort at self-improvement, and by that means become something we’re striving to do. Trying to think everything is perfect simply won’t work — because we feel very certain everything is not perfect. It becomes an effort of trying to convince ourselves of a new perspective, which is exactly what we’re not trying to do. Even when we see (as you pointed out) that our usual methods don’t bring us peace, it’s tough to break the addiction, because we’ve been taught that the only way to achieve happiness is through continued effort.

Your question is like asking how one falls asleep. There is no easy answer, because any effort to fall asleep usually prevents us from getting there. This ‘Just Being’ is the same way — it is something that we ‘achieve’ through a strange sort of non-effort. We don’t try to get it, nor do we just forget about it and go watch movies. We have to re-discover that magical childhood ability to get things done in the way that play was ‘accomplished’. You just go out and do it, with no mind for any certain results.

The funny thing, as I’ve pointed out elsewhere on this site, is that we actually find ourselves better able to accomplish our life goals when we’re not spending most of our life energy standing in our own way. Our dualistic mind is expert at this self-defeating practice, and will usually manage to make us unhappy no matter what our life situation is. So you don’t have to give up your ambitions (in the sense of just deciding ‘to heck with it, I think I’ll just go eat chocolate and drink cocktails until I’m broke and homeless’). Rather, we just look at our ambitions carefully, see what they are telling us about our core ideas regarding life and the world, and examine our mind’s activity as it rationalizes our current actions and life philosophy.

Often, there comes a moment of ‘giving up’, when you have discovered, through careful observation and awareness, that all of your current efforts are only creating the need for more efforts. If we look at this carefully, we see the circular nature of this game, and that is when we might discover that there is something besides this game. But I’ll say again – this is not something we can accomplish through our normal type of effort, and it’s important to always examine your ideas and actions regarding Awakening. It’s tricky! You might examine things and decide that you are making an effort to Awaken, and then apply a more subtle effort to try to stop your first effort! The key is not to force anything – just use your natural Awareness to look at things. If you’re trying to have no desire for accomplishment, just look at it – see the feeling for what it is. By this means you will develop the ability to look at all of your mind’s activity, and that simple act of looking will unfold the experience of seeing what’s Really Going On =)

Sweetwater,
Kenton

Thanks again for your efforts to shake me out of my dreams.

Great to hear from you again! Thanks for the quote, and the always thought-provoking comments. They help add clarity to things =)
Here’s where this one led:

I suppose one might wonder — does a cloud have a happy mind?
If so, we’ve learned what we mean by discipline. If not, (or if we say it has no mind at all), then we’ve answered our own question better than we could have with words. In either case, we’re just asking questions about our system of thought, and thus we come full circle to see what we’re really talking about.

Sweetwater,
Kenton