Addicted to Seeking

A confrontation piece originally published in the TAT Foundation Forum newsletter

For many years I lifted weights, and although I never competed as a powerlifter or bodybuilder, my training, diet and overall discipline were much like that of a competitive athlete. For the most part, after some initial trial and error experimentation, once I found a regimen that was effective and suited my body type and goals, I pretty much stuck with it year after year, and I transformed my body and maintained a very high level of fitness as a result. Along the way, one of the most common pitfalls I noticed among people aspiring to effect similar transformations was impatiently jumping from one workout routine to another, without giving nearly enough time and effort to any one of them to allow it to produce a noticeable result. It was a syndrome that veteran trainers sometimes referred to in shorthand as CRC — chronic routine change. Not surprisingly, many of these aspirants sooner or later quit in frustration, having achieved little or nothing.

You get where this is going, right? These days I see many people CRCing their way through a “spiritual” marketplace so cluttered with rebranded ideologies and technique-based bells and whistles and the experts hawking them, it’s like a seeker’s Mall of America — and unfortunately the seekers are addicted to shopping. The situation is further complicated by the fact that, unlike working out, which (if done intelligently and diligently) tends to follow pretty predictable cause-and-effect patterns to an unambiguous and readily achievable end goal, what’s really motivating many seekers is often so ill-defined that the “end” they wind up chasing after is their own tail.

So, for those who feel that this CRC business may apply to them, here's a thought experiment for you to try right now: imagine that you stop all reading of materials on spirituality, awakening, etc., and stop all participation in retreats, satsangs, formal meditation practice, and so on, not just for a few days or weeks, but pretty much indefinitely. You just live your everyday life of work, family, friends, hobbies, bills, laundry, groceries. And when you’re not legitimately engaged in any of these facets of life, you simply sit down, relax and enjoy the simple experience of being, for perhaps hours at a time, without looking for something to happen. Stop now and seriously consider this. What comes up in the body in response to this prospect? What keeps you from actually living like this all the time?

What if this frequent impulse we feel that compels us to reach for yet another book or website or activity deemed as "spiritual,” is actually the exact same impulse that drives addicts to drug themselves into comfortable numbness, or shop or gamble themselves into bottomless debt? I know this isn't a new idea. But if we acknowledge the validity of this connection, and yet we believe that what the addict reaches for when that impulse strikes is harmful, while the fix we seekers keep reaching for we consider to be at least potentially helpful, aren't we just fooling ourselves? What does that say about our alleged interest in realizing capital-T truth?

So now let’s look at this again from the perspective of being addicted to seeking: what if the next time you feel that impulse to read a book or blog on awakening, watch a teacher on YouTube, or register for a workshop or satsang, you instead simply sit quietly, relaxedly, contentedly, and without escaping into daydreams, or turning it into some dauntingly formal practice involving rigid postures, mantras or breath watching, or anything else that becomes just another remedial fix? What do you think might be the result over time of this frequent simple resting versus relentless grabbing after the next new thing you hope will save you?

Going even deeper now into the heart of the matter, what's actually behind the feverish and driven quality of the seeking? Could it be good ol’ garden variety boredom? What if what you’re looking for lies hiding in plain sight on the other side of that boredom threshold, but you never find it because the very practices you’re always engaging keep you well occupied and thus not-bored? What's your greatest fear in life? Might it be the fear of truly realizing that without all the seeking activity (not to mention the general busyness), there is simply void? Not a person experiencing a void—that’s boredom, one of the sentries at the gate of death—but nothing at all. No one and no experience. Just an elaborate and compelling mirage. Instead, like a propeller spinning so fast it looks like a solid disc, as long as one stays in motion with all the purposeful "spiritual" activity, there's a convincing (and, I contend, deeply comforting—even amidst suffering) appearance of a real and solid someone, or at least something.

Forget about "awakening" and "true nature" for a moment. Forget even about “awareness.” Let's say a sudden traumatic event occurs—a head-on collision with reality, all shocking and painful—and in a surge of terrifying and overwhelming lucidity you realize that 1) you are absolutely alone and helpless and 2) this is your time to die, to disappear without a trace—no body, no mind, no spirit, no you: Nothing. Are you ready? If you answer yes, is any of that readiness based on belief in ideas such as "what I truly am isn't born and doesn't die" and so on? If you answer no, what exactly is it you think you’re seeking? If you’re savvy enough to speculate that maybe your seeking will exhaust you into surrender at some point, what’s to stop that idea from becoming another crutch, yet another way to justify staying in motion to avoid the crucible of boredom and terminal despair right now, and always again, right now?

This isn’t intended as a blanket condemnation of practices and disciplines. Some sort of discipline will typically be necessary—until it’s not. Nor is it to advocate clinging to a practice that has proven barren—or narcotic—after a genuine trial. Rather, for those to whom it applies, it’s a call to stop compulsively jumping from practice to practice, or from teacher to teacher, and look very closely at what is motivating the CRC behavior and the very seeking in the first place. And then be ruthlessly honest about what begins to come into view as the lifetime of stirred up dust is finally allowed to settle, maybe letting you see for the very first time.