Life teases our mind, tickles it with the idea that true fulfilment is there, just a ‘bit further away’. As the mind starts the hunting and carries on the chase, all it finds is wanting and more wanting for that which is just that bit further away.
The more we run after the mirage, the further it goes away, but we keep on running, hoping, wanting and dreaming. Everyone is thirsty and we’ve heard others say “out there, look! Out there is the water you desperately need.”. For millennium seeing others pointing to the mirage, in our innocence, we have believed them, saw the water and have been running since. All our bodily needs have been satisfied from the outside; as a baby we learnt that milk comes from ‘out there’ and as adults we’ve worked, fed ourselves, housed our bodies. All these needs have been fulfilled from going out of ourselves. But the thirst that doesn’t seem to ever get satisfied does not belong to the ‘physical’ world. It doesn’t belong to the earth, it is the thirst for that which sustains the earth. It isn’t for any objects of the world but for the source of the world. In fact, this thirst comes to us when all our physical needs have been met and still we see we want even more.
This thirst is real! We feel it in our bones, and knowing we have to do something about it, we run after the mirage! Who wouldn’t when thirst engulfs their being? At one point though, if we let the true intelligence come forth, we’ll notice that the distance never lessens and the thirst is never quenched. A question is raised: Why can’t I get to the water? We can’t get to the water because, it doesn’t exist. Its source is ‘our’ perception – so as long as we run, we carry the water with us but never within reach of an unquenchable desire. Nothing in the world can satisfy our thirst while we’re on the move for more. Our thirst can be satisfied when we stop and when we cease to want . As long as our awareness is out there after what is in the distance, we miss the fountain of life pouring water presently, here. To drink from this fountain our awareness must be here, now, for eternity.
There is nothing wrong with running after a mirage, it may even be the only way to realise it will never be reached. So if you find yourself running fast, determined that this time what you see out there is definitely real, keep running, but only as long as you’re enjoying it. If you find yourself closing, tightening and getting overly tired and frustrated, you know you have the choice to stop. This stopping sometimes happens involuntarily, naturally. At some point in our journey, we felt so tired of running, we’ve fallen exhausted on our knees and stopped in despair. Just at that moment, we might have noticed what is here and for nanoseconds our thirst disappeared.
Unfortunately, we keep forgetting that the thirst disappears when we let go of the mirage.
We overlook the fact that we are brought to the fountain of life the moment we become present and forget our never ending desires. At the next sight of the next mirage we get up and start again. There is no point beating ourselves up when we notice we’ve gone out there again to quench our thirst, that will be the same as creating another mirage that represents ‘the future me that never goes out to quench thirst’ and then we start running after this new mirage. The more we live, the more we realise that these mirages are what they are: a projection, an image in our head that has no physical reality and it is exactly what stops us from drinking from the fountain of life.
Words are so inefficient in describing the truth. I feel the desire to write, so I write. There is no distant future, no mirage. It is not desires that are the cause of our blindness to the fountain, but the getting stuck in the imagination of what the fulfilled desires will bring. It is when the mind is busy thinking about what ‘could’ be, rather than what is. It’s about when the entire attention is about imagining how it would feel to satisfy thirst. The mirage is the imaginary world we prefer to live in, instead of the real world in which we can truly act. The running is a mental running after what if’s, which never end. In reality, when the mind is anchored in what is, full, vibrant and already satisfied, there is ever more chance of satisfying desires without being bound by them.