Eat when you are hungry, sleep when you are tired

This old Zen saying describes the way an apprentice practices Zen; without effort, without ambition (enlighten), without goals. . . just sitting in silence. In fact, Zen considers turning the goal into a disease of the mind! Quite a contrast to modern life, where without goals we would be rudderless boats adrift in a vast ocean of possibilities.

We are always setting goals to push ourselves. We save for vacations, for children’s education, for whatever. Goal setting is the foundation of almost everything we do. How can we get by without setting goals?

But imagine for a moment that we weren’t allowed to set goals, that Congress passed a law against them or something! What would we do? I know what I would do; I would save all my money and be ready for any emergency that arises! You could even give up a vacation or two in case you need the money for something more important. Certainly my desires would be restricted (and goals have to do with desires, and maybe greed as well).

Why couldn’t we accomplish everything we needed to accomplish without even setting goals? What if we save all of our money and use it only when absolutely necessary? Or, if our goal was to become managers in our company, why couldn’t we become managers without setting the goal of becoming one? Probably because, since we would have to shift some energy from our actual performance to clever manipulation from our superiors, a plan of action is necessary!

When you think about it, a goal is nothing more than a reminder to discipline ourselves to achieve whatever it is that we have programmed ourselves to do, to get what we want. But what if we could magically do the right thing at all times without having to remind ourselves to do it? If we have some money in our pocket, why would we need a goal to remind us not to spend it? If we are doing a good job and we are happy, why live to be managers, unless we are bored with our work or want more money and control?

Is it possible to live without satisfying all desires, including our desire for more and more money, control, and power?

In reality, we may never need goals if we had the consciousness to see exactly what is happening to ourselves in each moment. For example, we could set the goal of sending our children to a good university and, in pursuit of that goal, miss the most important thing a child needs for balanced development, which are parents who have the time and information to help. to the kids. understand themselves.

This is more important than understanding anything else, because if the child never understands himself, he is destined to follow well trodden paths that lead nowhere. Instead of living life on autopilot, as her parents may have, a girl might expand her horizons to the point of seeing the futility of having a title for her happiness and all the wealth that a title promises. What if at the end of the fight she will pass? education, career, family, relationships. . . She is not happy? It means that she has never really understood herself or what her true needs are.

But if parents never took the time to understand themselves, how could they show their children how? Have you ever heard of something like teaching a child about himself, rather than a typical upbringing?

You don’t need a psychiatrist to understand yourself, just an interest, and interest will develop when you see that the things we pursue outside of ourselves, or outside of our understanding of ourselves, just don’t work as well as we think they should. . . Just look at the divorce rate, a staggering example of people misunderstanding themselves on a very fundamental level.

There is a certain freedom in not setting goals. This is where life is lived on the edge and in the moment, rather than living with a stale plan. Sure, we could achieve all the goals that we set ourselves, but the proof of the superficiality of these goals is that we must do more goals immediately because of concern. There is never an understanding of the ultimate goal, the goal of goallessness, at least not within current consciousness or awareness of ourselves.

It takes courage to live without goals, and also discipline, but if we understand ourselves, we will discover that discipline is automatic.

Goals cushion our experience of our moments. If you understand a “moment”, you will see that there is no time enclosed in each moment. Each moment is actually timeless, a flash of eternity, and therefore when we are not in our moments, we are trapped in time.

When we set goals, which limit us to time, it is as if we plan our lives from a set of lifeless planes; a draft from which we can never deviate no matter how our outlook on life expands. In reality, goals prevent our vision from expanding, because goals are always set by yesterday’s mind, and all of our yesterdays are dead.

Perhaps the reason we set goals is not because of our desire to achieve, but rather because of our desire to feel alive, to feel real, as we imagine moving through life achieving things. This idea of ​​a self moving through life is an illusion. Life just is. The desire to feel alive and real is a sign that we don’t really understand each other at all, and then we wonder why we end up being so unhappy.

The art of living, as our children’s daughters will one day discover (if they take the time to understand and discover themselves rather than become automotive for the industry), is to break free, break free from themselves. The desire to be alive and to be real is a subconscious desire to experience the ultimate reality, and the ultimate reality is the only thing that will set us free.

As a wise man, Albert Einstein, said, “The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has achieved liberation from himself.”

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