How Thoughts and Desires Cause Suffering

The egoic mind is the cause of suffering. Nothing more. Suffering only happens in response to a thought. We suffer because we think something about what is happening, what happened, or what might happen. We create a story about what is, what was, or what will be; then we suffer over it. We create an imaginary reality, and then we live in it. We particularly suffer over fears, which are negative ideas about the future, although any idea can cause suffering if it is believed.

Even positive ideas can cause suffering. Something as simple as, “I’m doing great” can cause suffering because there will come a time when the mind will declare, “I’m not doing great.” Every positive thought has as much potential for suffering as a negative one because it carries with it the fear of losing what is desired.

In either case, whether we are thinking a positive or negative thought, we have thought the egoic self into existence. The mind creates the me through thought. Before thought, there was no egoic self, only the Self. This birth of the me is the cause of suffering. The two go hand in hand. The me and its story is about separation, and separation is painful. Anytime the focus is on the me, we suffer, whether the me is being painted positively or negatively.

We suffer not only because we make ourselves separate from others but because we make ourselves separate from the Self. However, this suffering is not a mistake; it is part of the Self’s plan too. Suffering is what wakes us up out of the egoic state of consciousness. It is not only grist for the egoic self’s mill but a prod to awaken us to our true nature. Suffering is not a mistake.

The Self allows whatever reality the egoic self is creating. It is perfectly willing to have whatever experience we choose. It enjoys learning from it all. It is fascinated to see how the story will play itself out. After all, that is why it created these forms in the first place: It wants to see how each individual with its unique personality and set of drives will live out its drama in the world. How will it interact? What conclusions will it draw? How will it see life? What will it choose? The Self is enthralled with its creation and joyously anticipates its every move.

When we awaken and our identity shifts from the ego to the Self, we feel this joy and the love the Self has for itself in all its many forms. When we are no longer identified with the egoic mind, any judgments, evaluations, stories, or points of view that still arise in the mind are seen for what they are, and they stop shaping our reality. As the Self, our reality is our true nature, which is love, acceptance, joy, and boundless happiness.

The egoic mind is also behind many of our desires. Desires, themselves, do not actually cause suffering. Desires come and go. They arise in the mind and then disappear. If that were all that happened, there would be no suffering (the same could be said about thoughts). However, something else happens: attachment. Attachment happens as a result of a story we tell ourselves about a desire: “I will be happy when….” Desire is a drive, an impulse, which comes and goes; attachment gives that impulse fuel and makes it burn: “I want this because….” Thus, the story is born. The general story is that fulfilling our desires will make us happy and not doing that will make us unhappy.

This becomes the prescription for happiness. The trouble is that the drug being prescribed is addictive and has little lasting effect. All we are left with is more craving. The more we pursue egoic desires, the emptier we feel and the more we think we need to fill that hole. All we really want is happiness, but we look for it in all the wrong places. We look for it in the fulfillment of our desires, but that only leaves us wanting more.

We become addicted to wanting and never question its value. We are so sure that something is going to satisfy us sometime, even if it hasn’t yet: “The next million dollars will do it.” Like a heroin addict, what we really want is our craving to end. We want an end to all this wanting and never feeling satisfied, but that will never happen by continuing to pursue our desires. It can take lifetimes of seeking pleasures, money, fame, love, beauty, success, perfection, and ideals before we are exhausted and see this.

The suffering from this endless seeking and never getting enough is what eventually wakes us up from the illusion, which so often feels like a nightmare. Thus, desires play two roles in the illusion: Following them creates the illusion (the story) through which the ego learns and evolves, and disillusionment with them dissolves the illusion.

Exercise: Examining Your Desires: What is something you desire right now? What is it you are telling yourself about this desire, that is, what do you believe fulfilling it will do for you? Is it possible that you already have that right now even without fulfilling your desire? You can still pursue this desire, but if you are clear that it doesn’t have the ability to give you what you really want, you won’t suffer if it doesn’t get fulfilled. We give our desires so much power: We believe that fulfilling them will make us happy, but that is not the source of true happiness.

When we finally see the truth about our desires, we surrender. At first, this may feel more like giving up after being defeated. Eventually, this surrender is experienced more like a dropping into the moment, into the Real. When we finally give up on our desires, we send our mind into retirement. What else does it have to do if we are not listening to its prescription for happiness?

When the mind is quiet, something else can come forward with its agenda. It doesn’t speak to us like the mind does, though. It may not speak at all, but we feel it. We feel moved to do this and do that. We may not even know why, but we don’t care. It feels so right that we don’t need a reason. The rightness is reason enough. This feeling is so simple, so clear, so unobstructed by thoughts, so free. All of the identity that is usually attached to taking some action is absent. Before, when we did something, we imagined how others might react and what that might mean for our self-image. Now, we are not spending time thinking about me. We are not spending time thinking at all. Our actions are no longer centered on building an image that will keep us safe in the world.

As the Self, we are safety, we are peace, we are happiness, we are love—we are everything. We don’t need to become anything because we already are everything. What a relief! At last we can just be. That is all we ever really wanted anyway. All of the struggle and effort was just an attempt to be okay enough so that we could just be. We had to find out for ourselves that the struggle and effort were never necessary. Like Dorothy and her cohorts in The Wizard of Oz, we had what we needed all along! It was always possible to just be.