Just One Look Forum Archives

Hello JOL Community,

It has been a while since my last post. I have had a little career upheaval which has really put me through the test. As I have said here before, I lucked out in my life and married a very sane partner, therefore, most of my challenges are in the realm of work and career.

After four very hectic years, I left a job and returned to a position in a private club that feels safe to me... like a final landing place. I was in this "comfortable" position for six weeks before I was thrown into a much more intense position with a tremendous amount of responsibility... a position very similar to the one I left!

There is much more to the story than this, but what I realized after fighting the situation for several days is my tendency to want to be finished... to have everything all set. Well, that is not what this life is about. I am never finished. The challenges keep on coming and so does the beauty.

It also dawned on me that some of my frustration with the looking is that it defies my desire to be finished. The attraction that I have to certain Advaita teachings is that the ultimate reward of these teachings is that we transcend life itself and are finally left alone... but are we???

I have a strong desire to be finished, to have the challenges be over, to be all set and I now realize that these are symptoms of the fear. Life by it's very nature continues and expands and nothing is ever set!

Thank you to John and the rest of you for helping me to see this... and as the looking continues, so does the joy of life and it's challenges and opportunities. Never finished. Never set. The plot keeps advancing

With love,

Brian

Yeah. I myself have come to realize with increasing sharpness that all the troubles I'm having with my life are coming from the fear and nothing more. All of it...the self-hatred, the compulsive negative thoughts, the anger, the avoidance, the torment and misery, the desolation, etc., etc... all of it is coming from the internal fear, which I call Angst.

Seeing this, it makes me very very hopeful indeed for eventual freedom from that Angst, because in the brief times now when I am relatively free of it I can see how happiness, love and sanity reign. However, it also makes me all the more terrified that this might disappoint me in the end... tasting freedom only to learn it was a mirage. How cruel. Haha.

Gerrit