Arranging the Furniture on the Titanic

You want to hope for something better than what you have right now, don’t you? Otherwise you wouldn’t be hoping. But then, you forget that you have it all right now anyway, and you don’t know it.
Anthony de Mello

I love setting intentions for the New Year. There’s something very satisfying about getting clear on where I’d like to see my life heading. I usually come up with a list of twenty or so intentions, such as “to live simply, laugh often, love deeply” or “to invest wisely, see my assets grow, and have a worry-free income of 5%.” When I look back at the previous year, I’m always amazed to see how many of these intentions have manifested—often in totally unexpected ways. I soon learned how important it is to be very specific in what I ask for. One year I forgot to mention that I wanted a year free from legal hassles. That was the year I got sued.

Recently I’ve taken a different approach to setting intentions. I’m more willing to let God, Source, or Spirit be in charge, rather than “me” trying to be in control of my life. I realize that I have no idea how spirit is meant to move through this body-mind. Who is to know if what the “little me” wants is for my highest good? All it wants is to avoid pain and find pleasure. Lately it has come down to one simple intention: to live each moment in present moment awareness—and let God take care of the rest.

I've also begun to question whether setting goals really takes us where we want to go in our personal lives. It works well for business, which is quantifiable, but does it work for finding something as abstract as happiness? There are three important things we often miss:

1) All goal setting is future-oriented—and there is no future. It is essentially an attempt to create a new and better dream for ourselves. If we do the steps in our plan, we believe that we’ll feel better, be more fulfilled and happy. But doing things to make the ego feel better is all happening within the dream of illusion. Because it is within the dream, we’ll inevitably experience the pain and suffering that comes along with it, no matter how successful our action plan is. We’ll have a few moments of feeling good, believing that “we” (our egos) have accomplished something. But then dissatisfaction will set in and we’ll go on to the next thing to accomplish, and the next, all towards some impossible end when all our goals are satisfied. But there is no end.

Fulfilling our goals can at the most bring short-term happiness (otherwise, why would we need to go on to the next one?). We have to ask what it is that we really want, beyond satisfying our desires. What if we were to turn our attention inward to finding happiness that doesn’t come and go, and fulfillment where there is nothing that needs to be filled? The first step is going beyond the illusion that there is something out there in the future that will make us happy.

As Eckhart Tolle says, “The joy of Being, which is the only true happiness, cannot come to you through any form, possession, achievement, person, or event—through anything that happens. That joy cannot come to you—ever. It emanates from the formless dimension within you, from consciousness itself and thus is one with who you are.”

2) Most intention setting is based on the fundamental assumption that there is something wrong with me, and I have to somehow “fix” it. For whatever reasons, I am not enough just the way I am—because if I was enough, what would there be to “fix”? Working with intentions distracts us from the realization that we already are whole and complete.

Can you conceive of the radical thought that right in this moment there is absolutely nothing missing in your life?

The mind will immediately say, “No, no that’s not possible! I need to be a better husband, I need to be more surrendered, I need to inspire others.” But what if there was absolutely nothing missing in your life right now? Where would that leave you? You’d have to let go of all your dreams about the future and realize that right now is all there is.

As Alan Cohen says, “You are not a black hole that needs to be filled; you are a light that needs to be shined. The days of self-improvement are gone, and the era of self-affirmation is upon us. It is time to quit improving yourself and start living.”

3) No matter how many action steps you take, no matter how many goals you set, how many values you identify, you’re still trying to patch up the ego—and the ego, by its very nature, is unfixable. It’s the job of the ego to be dissatisfied and always want more. Trying to fix the ego is like trying to plug the holes in a sinking ship. The boat is eventually going to sink. The question is—are you willing to jump off the boat and be free?

If you were “enough,” if you had no fear, and you were living in the fullness of who you are, would you need an action plan? Does someone like Eckhart Tolle live his life from an action plan? I doubt it. From that place of being fully present, you would know that in every moment you were doing exactly what you needed to be doing, that your life was being revealed in exquisite perfection from moment to moment.

What if your 2009 action plan was not to have a plan—other than to offer love now—and trust that your life is unfolding perfectly just as it is?

David Deida speaks to this when he says, “Enlightenment is the capacity to open and be lived by the love that is already, miraculously, living your life, despite all your current torment and refusal. Instant enlightenment is to offer love now—whatever the circumstance—without waiting for things to get better.”

Setting goals can be helpful in this difficult world, even if it is rearranging the furniture on the deck of the Titanic as it sinks slowly into the silent sea. We might as well enjoy the ride. Action plans, workshops and self-help books help us to feel good about ourselves. But they will never bring us the happiness we are looking for. That’s because we are creating our goals using the conditioned mind—the mind that feels it needs to find solutions and come up with strategies to solve its problems. It asks all the wrong questions, based on likes and dislikes, the past and the future, and avoidance of pain.

To go beyond conditioned mind to clear mind, it helps to enter into a process of self inquiry, asking the question, “Who is it that wants to make goals?” or “What is it that needs to be renewed”? Until we are willing to drop into that place of “not-knowing” that these questions lead to, achieving every goal on our list will not bring us inner peace. That can only come through unconditional awareness, where we don’t need anything and there’s nowhere further to go. That doesn’t mean we don’t do anything with our lives, it just means that there is no longer anyone there “doing” it.

Having said all this, I'm still having fun setting intentions for the New Year—though I'm less attached to the results.