When Desires go Awry: Redefining Success to be Inclusive - Episode 55

Awareness That Heals, Episode 55.

Because desire has been the leader of mankind and universal needs have been a distant second place.

The Awareness That Heals podcast helps its listeners learn to develop the capacity to have a more healing response to emotions and situations rather than becoming stuck. Your host, Robert J. Strock, has practiced psychotherapy for more than 45 years. He wrote the book, Awareness That Heals: Bringing Heart and Wisdom to Life's Challenges, to help develop self-caring and the capacity to respond in an effective way to life's challenges, especially at times when we are most prone to be critical or to withdraw. Together, we will explore how to become aware of our challenging feelings and at the same time find alternative ways to live a more fulfilling and inspiring life.

So I wish you a very warm welcome again to Awareness That Heals, where we give it our best to focus on bringing our hearts and our wisdom to life's challenges, and also to hopefully encourage you to do the same. And while we're on that point, I want to highlight again The importance of this podcast is your attention on yourself and distinguishing this from narcissism. This is the exact opposite of narcissism. This is putting your attention on yourself so you can touch your most universal needs that are going to be of benefit to you in your life while you face your challenges, and that that's gonna be something that's going to lead for benefit to the world as well. So it's a common misunderstanding when we focus on ourselves. There's a way of doing that where it's the most generous thing we can do, paradoxically. So we start again and again with being aware of what's most difficult for us because it so doesn't get press. It's still— it's so not the highlight of the TV shows that we watch. It's so not in our conditioning that we can't emphasize it enough and recognize that these difficulties are not only our own, that they're absolutely universal for all of us, whether we recognize them or not. And Why would we do that? If we stayed right there, it could sound masochistic. Well, yeah, I want to just stay on what's challenging and I want to just absorb myself in a, in a cesspool. No, that's not it at all. We want to stay with what's challenging so we can pivot and join with the question of how can we best care for ourselves at these crucial times. It's a partnership. And it's so important that even as a part of you might not wanna focus on your challenges, and you might summarize these podcasts as, well, they focus on your challenges, which is a real diss. 'Cause really what we're doing is we're focusing on our challenges to support ourselves, to live the absolutely most fulfilling life we can, and to accept ourselves as we really are and not our fictional selves. So it's so important that you hear that we're looking to be resourceful and to discover ways that we can take care of ourselves and those around us in the maximum way possible. And this sets up the ideal conditions for this partnership to exist, for us to be fulfilled in our lives and to contribute to the world. By living from a place that's both our best self and our interconnected self. So today we're going to continue to dive more and more deeply into what I really view as being, of all the practices, the, the one that really has helped the most people. Now, as I say that, I don't want to give short shrift to all the buildup practices that are necessary stepping stones to get here. If you don't have the foundation of all the prior nuances and elements that need to be developed, then we're not going to be able to really significantly do and practice what you're hearing during this series of, of episodes. It's so crucial that you recognize that there are several practices that are all interweaved together. And so this simple link, simple to understand and challenging, especially at first, to practice between experiencing and facing our most challenging feelings and situations we face daily, and how hopefully as close as possible at the same time we can move toward healing and well-being. Now, I'm very careful as I'm speaking to you Because I don't want to get too idealistic, because we can set up another moral ideal of, oh, I want to— whenever I'm challenged, I want to reliably find a way to be resourceful, to move toward healing and well-being. Geez, I failed 9 out of 10 times. Well, 9 out of 10 times, to catch 1 out of 10 at first, that's an enormous success. And so it's never too late to keep evolving, and it's never worthwhile to criticize yourself for your past when it's not going to be a motivation that inspires you. If it's what we might call healthy doubt and you're saying, God, I haven't given this enough attention, and that leads you to put stickers on your refrigerator in your bedroom, fine. But it's not to set up an ideal. That is really a crucifixion. This, in my experience of having this meeting of your challenging feelings, which again, as I'm speaking, please face yours that are existing most today and that you anticipate in the near future, with discovering what needs would be most helpful to you. This marriage is a holy marriage. It is an integrated marriage. It is an acceptance of all of you. It isn't piecemealing yourself. It isn't compartmentalizing. It isn't trying to only be the good you, and so-called, and rejecting the not so good you. This is not being judgmental. This is being, yes, introspective. And even more important than being introspective— that's just a starting point— it's also being resourceful. So it starts with authentically facing what is difficult and then letting it naturally lead you to inquire, how do I, how do we best take care of ourselves and those around us? This is what I truly wish we all learned from the day we were born, energetically, when we were too young to know what was happening. But an aspiration for parents, an aspiration for teachers, school teachers, spiritual teachers, religious teachers, ministers, corporate leaders, political leaders. This is an aspiration to be human and to If we're gonna idealize anything, it's that we're human beings attempting to be our best selves. But that doesn't mean we're gonna act like we are our best selves when we clearly are in our human states. We are going to be doing our best to support you, to support ourselves even while we're talking, to integrate these two as much as possible. Together. So I'd like to start off by introducing Dave, who has been my dear, dear friend for 5 decades and my partner at the Global Bridge Foundation.

Thank you. Great to be here. These, as you said, are, are really the place where we get to implement all the, the things that have come to this point, and we get to really grounded in our daily life. And I'm again looking forward.

Well, thanks for that, So Mai. So in the last episode, we really talked dominantly about the distinction between desire and needs. And desire, for those of you that didn't listen to the last episode, and I would certainly encourage you if you started here to go to listen to the last episode, Desires are distinguished from needs in two categories. One category are desires that are completely unrealistic, like you want to be taller, you, you want your partner to change in ways that they don't want to change, you want the weather to be different than it was, you wanted to have a different childhood, and on and on. And then the other kind of desires, which are innocent, and a part of being human and perfectly fine, but they're not rooted necessarily in the, what we're calling the 75 core needs. They're more individually pleasurable, enjoyable. And of course that's part of a good life. But when those desires that are possible, that are fun, that are enjoyable, are interrupted we can have the same kind of suffering as when our needs are thwarted. And so it's very important that you, that we all recognize which desires do we have where we're most vulnerable to having lead us into a certain kind of suffering, and how do we navigate from there. So I'd like to start off with asking you to ask yourself what has been the greatest desire in your life that's caused the most suffering, or perhaps even what desire is causing the most suffering right now that is occurring in your life. So I'll give you a little bit of a guided, uh, meditation of sorts. Simplistically, where it may be that you want to be in better health. I mean, a perfectly natural desire. And you then ask yourself to come in with a need that says, okay, how can I best take care of my health? Or it might be a desire to have a pleasurable day at the beach, or, or it might be to have a pleasurable day in France or something like that. How is it that those feelings arise in you when your desires are thwarted? And how do you want to guide yourself with starting with a question like, how can I best take care of myself given my desires are either impossible, or, or are they're not able to be— I mean, let's say permanently impossible, or in this moment are impossible. So they may be ones that are realistic or unrealistic, but whichever ones they are, how do I support myself? So just see where you get caught and see If you can find that question in your words that you can imagine yourself implementing when you're suffering from one of these desires, your desires.

Question: What about desires gone awry? What about desires for power? What about so many of the things, I won't mention them because I will absorb myself in discouragement that I see happening around the world. Um, where do those fit in?

Well, it's a great question. When individuals— and unfortunately, as you're saying, I would say for most people in the world, especially the have world, not the have-not world, But in the have world, desires are even more central than needs. And the reason why the world has always had war, the reason why we've had such a hard time with, quote, and I smile as I say this, finding the right religion, Finding the right spiritual path is because we believe there's a right spiritual path, and that's a desire, that's not a need. Needs are more grounded. They're facing reality. There is no one superior religion. There is no one superior spiritual approach. And so whether it's that desire Or whether it's desire for power or wealth, including corruption, whether it's a desire that because of power and wealth leads to us polluting the planet. What, what can we do? What, what, how, how do we look at that? Well, we look at that as someone being lost. We look at somebody as being unconscious. And, you know, early in my life, one of my earlier teachers said something to me, paraphrased, like, uh, don't ever believe that you can change another person's unconscious, because it's so important that you not get grandiose, because that's your desire to change their desire. So what we can do is make our best efforts to wake ourselves up from the desires that are delusional. But, but more importantly, recognize that people that have desires, who appear to be on top of the world, appear to have everything, appear to be happy— now it makes me think of a, a close friend of mine whose brother at that time, this is like 35 years ago, and he said, my fucking brother You know, fucking brother. He was successful in therapy. He's a multimillionaire. He's got a wife that he loves. You know, he's happy all the time. And look at me. I was a failure at therapy. You know, I'm living alone. You know, and he had the whole laundry list of the comparative. And I said to him at the time, 35 years ago, that's bullshit. Your brother's a narcissist. Who's, who's given you a bill of goods. And it's all based on desire. He wasn't successfully therapized. He's lost in the dream. He's lost in the dream of thinking that wealth and power are going to make him happy. Well, 30 years later, the brother's now feeble in his, in his late 80s, with his younger brother being in the middle 80s. And he's basically relying on him for discovering how can I take care of myself while I've lost all these capacities. And the tables have completely turned. And so what, what we need to do is do our best not to judge, not to just be angry. And, and more realistically, we're gonna judge and we're gonna be angry, but not to let that consume us and be able to see people that are living the life of desire. That appear to be on top of the world, because that's the most painful part of people that are living in desires and let's say have made it, quote, and they're living the American dream, is that they appear to be happier than we are. And so we're, we're confused. They don't seem to have challenges. But realizing, number one, that they're, they're living in a land of make-believe. They're living in illusion. And sooner rather than later, they're going to be facing real things like illness and people around them dying, or something's going to go wrong and not going to be on top of the world anymore. Because their life is like built on, you know, on a beach. You know, there's no roots. They have wings, they're flying. But their roots are not in the ground. And so needs are based on facing reality and being resourceful, and they involve an interconnectedness with others. And people that are living dominantly with desires are self-centered. They're not caring about in a significant way. I'm not saying they're not caring at all. But they may be giving 2% of their net worth, and that might, that might be a lot of money relative to what we can give. But 98% of them is self-centered. And so we need to see that as being an illusion and being sincerely unconscious. Now, when I say sincerely unconscious, of course there's degrees. There are some people that are doing it consciously and are just stepping on people. That makes me think of a story of a microfinance organization that, Dave, you and I visited. And one of the players was what appeared to be in a land of unbelievably essential needs, running the largest microfinance entity in the world at the time. Now, microfinance, for those that don't know it, is getting loans, $100 to $200 loans to largely Third Village women to help them expand their self-sufficiency. And when we visited him in India about 15 years ago, he was saying he came to the United States and he studied Walmart and he studied McDonald's and saw how they went to scale. And he was accruing 100,000 borrowers a month. So we asked, how are you doing that? So, well, it's actually not that hard. I'm going to all the programs that have been working for 10, 20 years that have 100,000, 200,000 borrowers. And because that's all they have and we're now in the multimillions, they have to have an interest rate they can offer them and we can offer them a lower interest rate. So we're just helping them. So we're just taking over the microfinance industry. So I said, why don't you— why aren't you looking to expand into areas that don't have any support rather than capitalizing? And I really literally mean capitalizing on people that have already dedicated themselves towards something good and not sabotaging their great efforts. Anyway, long story short, Years later, a couple of years later, the whole microfinance industry in India was shut down because what he was doing was putting so much pressure on the borrowers to pay back the interest rates. And by the way, the way it worked was 30 borrowers would be together and they were co-responsible for each other. And the ones that couldn't pay back the debts felt so much pressure that they were committing suicide. And so there were so many suicides that the that they put the whole industry on hold. Now that's how it can appear. He was a rock star. He was a compassionate, humanitarian, spiritual rock star in the eyes of people. And of course there was no sharing of human elements, but then it all came crashing down. And the corruption of the moving always from desire, was always there, but it appeared like needs. So it's so important that we really discern, is there this interconnectedness? And if there isn't, and we see a person who's living in desires, look at our Hollywood movie stars, our celebrity athletes, et cetera. And we look at them and yes, that part is desire. And yes, it does oftentimes take great discipline, So it's not that there aren't, let's say, essential qualities that they've mastered to fulfill their desires. But if their endpoint is desire, then what's gonna— they, they too will be caught in life because everyone is going to die. Everyone is gonna face loss at a deep level. Now, some of those people that have lived that life of desire do transform it into needs. Some of them are much more mixed. But the key thing is our attitude. We need to be careful that we're not unconsciously feeling envious, competitive, jealous, inadequate, and that we face our challenging feelings when we're looking at people that have desire. And instead of being against them, we need to be for their needs, and our needs. So instead of just being protesters, we need to be inspirers. We need to be advocates for what is interconnected needs. Now, I will be one of the first ones to say that I have a lot of anger and I don't mind being angry. I actually enjoy my anger because it's not out of control very often. And so I listen to the anger and it says, I'm so pissed off at the lack of human acknowledgement by the leaders, by the people that are pretending to be enlightened, to be completely mindful, to have faith, to be the leader of the greatest country in the free world, to have God bless America, have all these things, but not the rest of the world. Have all these things that are rooted in desire. And so we need to be careful that we aren't, out of our desire to kill their desire, losing touch with our own needs and our own humanity. And as Jesus said on the cross, forgive them, for they know not what they do. I believe that has been one of the great teachings of all time. So I'm not going to go as far as forgive, because Jesus is a little bit more evolved than me. And I say that with a smile, because I'm not trying to come close to comparing myself. But to be able to tolerate or barely tolerate, which is more where I vacillate between those two, that are people that are sort of the heroes of the superficial world. And largely run the world. You know, if we look at the powerful countries that have existed in the history of mankind, they've been rooted in desires for power and wealth. And so are we going to spend our time just hating them, or are we going to spend our time trying to find the roots of how we germinate seeds of universal needs in ourselves and others. How can we be for something rather than being caught against something? That's what our challenge is.

Just want to add to that another question for you, because it's the protest aspect of the, the anger aspect of it, and then there's the emulation aspect of it and being caught up for so many years, not being around for the crash and fall. Not necessarily knowing about the microfinance head and the consequences of what he did, but just seeing, "Wow, look what he did. Look what he amassed," and aspiring to do exactly the same thing and so many years of life spent trying to emulate.

Yeah. Well, in a certain way, in the power sector, you've just talked about the story of humanity. And, and I say that with really, really deep remorse, you know, that, that if we look at humanity in a realistic way in terms of the power spectrum of the nations on Earth, and we look at how many of the most powerful countries at any point in time in the history of mankind have dedicated their wealth to the have-nots. It leaves me in silence. It leaves me speechless. And so the emulators have continued to emulate. There's, there's been an endless series of that being why I believe we're in the dilemma we're in with global warming, because desire has been the leader of mankind and universal needs have been a distant second place. And so what you're bringing out is a very, very important point. And it also leads to how important it is that those that have power and wealth reveal their challenges. And it's a, let's call it a destructive partnership, that not only are they glorifying to some extent or to a large extent in their power, they're also suppressing their challenges and they're in their persona of wellbeing and inspiration and leadership. I mean, it's important to recognize that Adolf Hitler in his own mind and his followers that were there in their own minds, were idealists. They were trying to help the world. As a matter of fact, it's important to see that the white nationalists in their own mind are idealists, but they're in desire. They're in desire for power unconsciously. But they believe that those poor, poor fucks like us who are trying to make everybody equal doesn't see the obviousness of white superiority. And they're the only ones that aren't sentimental. That we, the whites that are believing that there's equality in all human beings, are delusional. And part of when that really came clear to me was when I was asking myself, how would I communicate with the white nationalists? How would I really communicate? And I realized that they really are idealists in their own mind. And so it would be something like, given how clear you are that there's superior intelligence, superior traits, resiliency, in every way superiority, it must be hard for you to deal with us. Tell me about that. So I joined their world. So we need to find a way even with those people that we have things against or that we're emulating. We need to find a way, let's say when we're emulating, to see and to investigate, are these qualities that we're going for, greater power, greater celebrity, greater supreme athleticism, greater wealth, we need to see whether or not this is something that is actually treating others like we want to be treated. And if we aren't treating others, at least to a fair extent, like we want to be treated, we are narcissistic. We are self-centered. And that narcissism, that self-centeredness, that when we're emulating those qualities, that is why we are in the imperiled state that we're in. That is why we're so self-centered. We all need to dig deep to not emulate those that are in the appearance of having it all. Now, in my practice for the last 30 years, I have specialized with people who have been very successful and realize that they're empty, realize that they, they, they were, they were basically significantly or partially deluded, and they, they don't feel fulfilled, they don't feel happy, they know there's something missing. And that key thing is They don't want people to emulate them. They don't even want to emulate themselves. And so the key is recognizing that we want to be for and trust our essential needs. We want to stay with being aware of our challenges. We want to see that they have not been facing, or at least acknowledging for sure, their challenges, which is part of how they've gained their power. Last little point before we wind down. You know, I was in a men's group, and in the men's group, you know, we're talking about what your deepest challenges are. And I saw how a level— and of course it got deeper, this is early in the men's group— but I saw how the way power is kept, it's like the deepest challenge is something that is like a pimple. It's just, it's just not a very significant challenge. It's not a challenge to your integrity. It's not a terror. It's not a deep grief. And so the way the powerful stay powerful, the way the people that are living in that persona do it, is by denial of the human element. So of course it appears more shiny and more perfect. And so for those of us that are really looking to live a life of fulfillment, it's important not to be lost in the envy of the shiny objects of people that have run our societies throughout history. And to see that the definition of success so often has excluded interconnectedness, excluded transparency, excluded poverty, has excluded true equality, has excluded caring for others as we want to be cared for. And that will ground us into what we intuitively know and not let us get distracted in wanting to be emulating those that have what appears to be it all. So again, I would really like to thank you all for your attention. And hopefully, as I'm speaking about being envious or feeling inadequate, that you can see who is your shiny object. And have they really revealed their challenges? Are they really helping others in a significant way? If they have a lot, are they really just giving a token amount? It might seem like a lot. Are they idealizing our country and not recognizing our country's only great if we're greatest in helping the world? You know, to take a close look at that and really see what your shiny objects are, what the people are that you've idealized, and maybe take deeper look at that. Thank you so much again for your attention. Thank you.

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