Unconditional Well-Being: It’s the Pot of Gold at the End of the Spiritual Rainbow
Most people believe we can’t get there. They're wrong.
Most of what I do is clarify spiritual concepts in a way that regular people like us can understand them. After all, what good is any of this stuff if it flies right over our heads?
I’m excited about today’s clarification. Why? Because it’s about truly understanding how great things can be in our lives. Here’s how.
It starts with understanding the basic paradigm by which most people live their lives: Try to get what we want and not get what we don’t want. Simple, right?
The problem is that it doesn’t work. That paradigm cannot bring sustained contentment to our lives.
Why? Because its core premise is,
“I’m going to look to the outside world to cure what ails me inside.”
What are some ways people do that?
- Somebody does everything in his power, including treading on ethical boundaries, to become rich. Why? To fill the hole inside him caused by the humiliation and fear of growing up in poverty.
- Somebody works out four hours a day and is strict about limiting herself to only 1,000 calories a day. Why? To fill the hole inside her caused by years of fat-shaming by her mother.
- Somebody else avoids intimate relationships at all costs. Why? Because their female role model was a loud, domineering mother who drove him crazy.
Pursue what we want. Avoid what we don’t want. All in pursuit of curing what ails us inside.
We might call this conditional well-being. If I can get ‘X’ to happen, I’ll be okay. If I can’t, I won’t be okay.
If I can get ‘Y’ to not happen, I’ll be fine. If it happens, I’m screwed.
This is how most people on planet Earth live.
Get rid of the conditions
The key to living a life of sustained contentment is to get to a place where we can ditch the conditions.
To get to a place where there’s no more:
“I’ll be happy if I find a kind, loving, attentive husband with whom I can have a big brood of kids.”
“I’ll be happy if I can take off ten more pounds.”
“I’ll be happy if I can pay off my mortgage and be completely debt-free.”
All of those are conditions needed to be met in order to experience well-being.
The pot of gold I urge all of you to work toward would be a life where—
- Finding an awesome husband and having kids would be fantastic…but you don’t have to have that to feel whole and complete.
- Shedding ten more pounds would be totally groovy and make you look better in a two-piece bikini…but you’ll be just as happy if you stay where you are.
- Being debt-free would be nice, but it’s not necessary for you to feel at peace inside.
That’s where we want to be, folks.
Some of you might say, “I like having things to shoot for. Life would be boring if I just sat around all day feeling content with the status quo.”
First of all, I’m not saying we shouldn’t have things to shoot for. Yes, find the husband, lose the weight, erase the debt. Great. Nothing wrong with any of that.
The motivation is key
What I’m talking about is the motivation behind pursuing all those things. If the motivation is to heal a suffering soul, things tend to not go so well.
Fine. So what do we do? How do we get to that place where we’re content no matter what the conditions of our life are?
No big surprise here. Instead of looking outside to the world to cure our psychic ailments, we simply go inside to cure what ails us inside.
Working with our minds
What that mostly involves is working directly with our frenzied, often troubled minds that are at the root of those psychic ailments.
The bulk of that work centers on quieting our minds. Calming them. How? Through regular meditation and mindfulness practices. Every day.
Part of that practice involves watching our minds at work. Observing them. Being curious about all the thoughts and emotions the mind generates.
All in the service of developing a relationship with the mind. We don’t fight with our minds. Or get angry with them.
The mind is not who you are
The more we do that, the more we come to realize that the mind is not who we are. It’s just an amalgam of all the experiences and influences we’ve collected over our lifetime, something also known as the ego.
Finally, we do the hard work of letting go of that ego when it is poked in the course of our daily lives.
As we continue the work of quieting down and letting go, we begin to notice that feeling okay for no particular reason becomes more common.
My experience with unconditional well-being
I’ve been at this spiritual game in a big way for almost fifteen years now and I can tell you that this unconditional well-being thing is right at the top of the list of benefits gained.
How so? As many of you know, I grew up in a privileged, hyper Type A family where my siblings went to Harvard and Stanford and my dad was the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.
As the youngest in our clan of six, that resulted in my feeling pressured to be mega successful. To feel okay about myself I had to have a high-profile job on Capitol Hill in my DC years and work on top notch shows like “The West Wing” when I was a writer in Hollywood.
Feeling like a loser
Conversely, when I was struggling to find writing jobs in LA I felt like a first-class loser. It was awful.
That, my friends, is a prime example of conditional well-being.
But now? People ask me all the time, “How are you doing?” to which I often respond,
“You know, I’m about as happy as I’ve ever been in my life. And it’s not like I’m a U.S. Senator or a bestselling author or anything close to it.”
No. I’m just writing these articles, which I hope are having some positive effect for you readers. And I’m raising three great kids and enjoying a fairly modest family life; i.e., no mansion, no private plane, no Lambo. Just a ton of love pouring through our home (except when my 15 year old daughter sets me off or when my wife gets on me about…you get the drift, it’s not perfect!).
Bottom line: The work I’ve done over these many years has helped me immensely in advancing on the path toward unconditional well-being.
And that same work can help get you there, too. That’s not snake oil, people. That’s the truth.
The takeaway
Please take a minute and try and imagine what it would be like.
Waking up every day and feeling at least decent about how things are going in your life and often feeling really good. For no particular reason.
It is absolutely within your reach.
All it requires is putting sustained effort into quieting your mind and letting go of your ego.
It’s the most important work you can do for yourself, your kids, your spouse, your friends, your coworkers and everyone in your orbit.
Great column David!
I totally agree with how you ended this column: "... letting go of your ego. It’s the most important work you can do for yourself, your kids, your spouse, your friends, your coworkers and everyone in your orbit."
But I think meditation and mindfulness are only one way to let go of your ego. If it's working for you, great. But I think there are other ways.
I think the first step for any effort to master our egos is awareness, awareness that you have an ego and how (individual life experiences) and why it developed (to protect us in this world). After awareness of the ego, I think you have to constantly be aware that the ego is always trying to drive your ship. And so, in any situation or event you find yourself in, you need to pause, count to five, and take a deep breath before reacting.
Then, I ask myself "What is my ego saying here?" And then I ask, "What does my ego want me to say or do now?" And I make mental or actual notes in a journal if I have time. And then I ask, "What does my Soul (or Love) want me to say or do here?" Again, I make notes. At that point, I tell myself, "The ego is always wrong and the Soul is always right." Hopefully, at that point, I then say or do what my Soul is quietly guiding me to say or do.
At night, I do a review of my day to see when I was acting from my ego and when I was acting from my Soul (my link to God). The instances where I was ego-driven, I reimagine responding being Soul-driven.
This is just one person's approach to what I think is the ultimate challenge for all of us: mastering the ego and being driven by the Soul.
I simply hate it when you ask me to calm my frenzied, often troubled mind that is at the root of my psychic ailments!! 🙂 Great piece. I let myself spin horribly last week after revisiting old wounds from the loss of my career. It was miserable. So I turned to my new friend gratitude and tried to practice contentment, and it worked!