"The pathway to having isn't wanting. If you want something, you need
to have a different relationship with it other than wanting it, in
order to have it."
...
"Happiness
isn't getting what you want. It's wanting what you get."
... Garth Brooks
"So tell me what you want, what you really, really want."
... Spice Girls
What
people
want, is legion. We could make a list. And if we did, it would be a
long list, a really long list. And the thing is that
acquiring / having one of the items on our really long want list,
completes / satisfies only that item on our really long
want list, leaving countless other items not yet complete / not yet
satisfied. Thus acquiring / having each item on our really long want
list, doesn't completely satisfy our incessant wanting ie it doesn't
completely satisfy us, given that each of the other items remaining on
our really long want list that we have not yet acquired / do not yet
have, all contribute to the rampant global malaise "I'm
not satisfied, I don't have what I want, there's gotta be more than
this!". So when I ask you to tell me what you want, what you
really, really want,
the truth
is even if you do acquire / have some (even most) of what you really,
really want, it never completely satisfies the incessant
wanting.
As
an implement
of inquiry, I find it useful to dig into that if I aspire to "I have
what I want / I'm satisfied", it's as a blanket condition covering all
the items on my really long want list. When I aspire to acquiring /
having what I want, it's plural. It's acquiring / having
everything I have on my really long want list. In this
way, even if there were just one item left on my really long want list
that I haven't yet acquired / don't yet have, then by definition I
don't have what I want. "I'm satisfied, I have what I want",
when I deploy my really long want list as a measure, is an all or
nothingproposition:
I either have everything I want (and so I'm complete /
satisfied), or I don't have everything I want (so I'm not complete /
not satisfied - even if I already have most of what I
want).
These days, what captures
my attention
much more than having what I want by acquiring / having each item on my
really long want list, is the possibility of having everything I want
by completing / fulfilling the experience of wanting.
Consider
it's not getting what you want that's the path to being
complete / satisfied: it's completing / fulfilling the experience of
wanting. Gee! I hope you get that. Then the question becomes: what is
it that completes / fulfills my experience of wanting, outside of the
rigmarole of going through each and every item on my really long want
list one at a time, and acquiring / having each one of them? What
affords me the absence of the experience of wanting? ie
what affords me the
presence of the experience
of being already complete / satisfied,
outside of the rigmarole of going through each and every item on my
really long want list one at a time, and acquiring / having every item
on it?
It's widely held colloquially that the way for
people
to be complete / satisfied is to get what we really, really want by
acquiring / having all the items on our really long want list. But
look: another way is to be complete / satisfied - period -
regardless of what's on our really long want list ie regardless of
whether or not we've acquired / have some or all of the items on it. As
to the latter, the question now becomes: is being complete / satisfied
a possibility, regardless of what remains on our really long
want list, regardless of whether or not we've acquired all of its
items, regardless of whether or not we have all its items?
The question is as
disconcerting
as it's intriguing. Now enter
Werner's work,
front and center stage.
We are that we're not complete / not satisfied until we
have what we want.
Werner's work
presents the extraordinary possibility of being already
complete, of being already satisfied. Neither doing nor acquiring nor
having what we want are required for me to experience being complete /
being satisfied. I assert what
people
really, really want is being, transformed.
