IN THE GREEN ROOM WITH
BRYAN FRANKLIN
Question: Why Do I Feel More Alive When Seeking Than When Having What I Want?
108 days ago

I Get This Text Message From A Friend:

“Curious about your thoughts on this one: Why do I feel more alive when seeking then when having the experience I want? Hope you had a killer week.”

It took me a while to answer this because it felt like a really important question. How many times have you had the experience of being let down by having exactly the experience you wanted? In the movies, winning the game is more fun than wondering if you’re going to win – but in real life it seems like the opposite can be true.

The “Alive” You Are Feeling Is Not The Feeling Of Life

It is the feeling of adrenaline. It is the feeling generated by your body when you are running from death. Or running from life. The feeling of “alive” can only be felt in the moments when you are the most still. In those moments, where nothing is moving, you can feel the subtle turning over of your cells’ nuclei, moving and rebirthing with an internal energy. That is life. It can be felt in the space between breaths.

Life Is Not A Game. It Cannot Be Won Or Lost

A game arises when the future possibility is more important than the present moment. When what the score might be is more important than what it is. There is no excitement for what has been. No crowd cheers (with adrenaline) for last week’s home run or touchdown.

When You Seek, You Turn Away From Life And Create A Finite Game

When you create a game out of life, you want to win it. You want to run from the death of losing. You want to run from the life of stillness. As you seek, the present moment (the only place where life exists) is always less important than your imagined future.

So.

Do you want life, or do you want the rush of running from it?

20 Comments »

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20 Comments
  1. 1. Gil Friend said,
    February 3, 2012 at 7:31 pm

    Very nicely put. Thanks!

    Reply
  3. 1. David Sals said,
    February 3, 2012 at 7:38 pm

    Great insights, Bryan. I wonder also if there is a “grass is always greener” aspect to this question?

    The object of our seeking is perfect, because it only exists in our imagination and we get to just whitewash over anything we don’t like or don’t want. Human beings also tend to focus on the positive when they fantasize about something. That’s the whole point of a fantasy.

    Real life, on the other hand, gives us the whole package, both sweet and sour. And in real life the tendency for most people is to let our attention go to the negatives of our experience.

    If that’s the mode we’re operating under, reality will never live up to the fantasy. So maybe part of the answer is — as you often say — putting our attention on where we put our attention.

    Reply
  4. 1. Wendy K Yalom said,
    February 3, 2012 at 7:43 pm

    Brilliant as usual and a wake up call to slow down and enjoy this moment right here. wow, thank you!

    Reply
  5. 1. George K said,
    February 3, 2012 at 7:47 pm

    Wow…I never really thought of it that way. I all about the future and constantly seeking and Ive missed out on a alot moments cause of this. Thanks for this!

    Reply
  6. 1. Nick said,
    February 3, 2012 at 7:51 pm

    Hmm. Well, a friend of mine thought me an interesting concept called “holding paradox”; which sort of apply here… my hunch? How about: you take a sprint, STOP, take a few breaths in, sprint again, STOP, take a few breaths in, sprint yet again… take 2 weeks of “a few breaths in”… sprint… loop infinitum. Let’s try.

    Reply
    • 2. bryanfranklin said,
      February 3, 2012 at 9:16 pm

      I think holding paradox here might be stopping and sprinting simultaneously, rather than intermittently

  7. 1. Dash said,
    February 3, 2012 at 8:33 pm

    My answer to your client would be different. I would say – “seeking” is more joyful than “having” because you know how to “seek” and don’t know how to “have what you want”. It is more a statement of your abilities than inherent nature of “seeking” and “having”.

    How you feel is not dependent of where you are in the life-cycle of a dream – but on your attitude towards what you are experiencing. Why does “having what you want” feel any less to you? Are you struggling with winner’s guilt? I would urge you to explore beliefs that come in the way of pulsating with gratitude for a universe that dotes over you…

    And, it is not about winning or losing either – for living fully in any moment is unconditional. One can train oneself to be equally “alive” when you have lost. For every loss catapults you into higher level of “seeking”. By the loss – the universe has impregnated you with a hunger – a dream thousand times more powerful than your last one. So -in the moment of loss – if you choose to focus on the expanded dream – on the music of determination and will that pulsates in your breath…you will feel alive!

    Life flows unconditionally – we need to train ourselves on how to keep our focus on this eternal flow instead of focusing on thoughts that “pinch ourselves” from its magnificence. I congratulate you for having trained yourself to focus on life – when you are seeking – because many don’t know how to do it. However, you have more work to do on learning how to focus yourself when you are “having what you want”.

    Happy Learning!

    PS for Bryan: I believe there is no polarity in our universe. Darkness does not have an independent existence – it is just absence of light. Pain is only an indicator of absence of joy (on a scale where anger, hatred, sad also exist). And – death is absence of life. You cannot chose death – you can only pinch yourself from the magnificent flow of life…

    Reply
    • 2. bryanfranklin said,
      February 3, 2012 at 9:14 pm

      Beautifully articulated. Thank you!

      I once wrote a piece of music called “Non-Dual to the Death” …Thought you’d like that :)

  8. 1. James Hagarty said,
    February 4, 2012 at 1:36 am

    Although I understand the logic of what you’re saying, Bryan, I just don’t know what to do with that insight.

    It seems to me that choosing between stillness or the rush is irrelevant. It’s impossible to experience one without going through the other. Life may be felt in the space between breaths, but we can’t just choose to stop breathing indefinitely. Nor can we continuously take air into our lungs. At some point we have to stop and exhale. Each is fairly pleasant in my experience.

    Can we not learn to want (and love) both?

    Reply
    • 2. Bryan said,
      February 27, 2012 at 1:47 pm

      I think there is a huge amount of value to learning to love both. I also think that ‘wanting’ and ‘loving’ are fundamentally different energies. Loving is a creative act – an attractive force. Wanting is putting your attention on the imaginary idea of what isn’t. Wanting is attending to the gap between what is and your imagined outcome. In general, this attention makes more prevalent that gap.

      What I would most want for you, James is to play and win your games – but do so with enough space between them to stop and experience being alive. And learn to bring life INTO the games you play – rather than running from it. Especially games you feel you are repeatedly losing.

      Thank you for the comments!!!

  9. 1. Zaven Boni said,
    February 4, 2012 at 2:00 am

    I think Bryan points to some subtle truths in his answer! And I might add another answer, addressing a different level of abstraction.

    Human beings are part of the great evolutionary direction inherent in everything. We have been going somewhere for billions of years, and we’re still going! Thus we seek growth and expansion, truth and beauty. There is tremendous importance in learning to be still and fully present in the moment, but I think we should also recognize that there are multiple forces innate in us propelling us ever forward.

    It may be true that we can learn to appreciate the present moment as much as or more than our imagined future. It is also true that on a psychological level we all have specific resistances to opening to the present moment, as Bryan points out. Monkey mind must be contended with.

    For me, it’s equally important to get in touch with and honor the deeper currents that draw me forward. In my experience, the natural outcome of those ‘moments between breaths’, those moments of awareness, stillness, and clarity, is… another moment of seeking (perhaps in a direction different from the one monkey-mind would have sent me.) How could it be otherwise? If not for this natural rhythm to things, what reason would there be for anything to happen at all, or for us to grow, evolve, and expand?

    In other words, once we have recognized and appreciated our psychological reasons for seeking, I think a deeper and maybe wiser level of motivation can become apparent.

    Reply
    • 2. bryanfranklin said,
      February 6, 2012 at 12:12 pm

      Thank you so much for your contribution here, Zaven. How could it be otherwise indeed.

  10. 1. Mihir said,
    February 4, 2012 at 3:13 am

    Hi Bryan,
    I’m a Spiritual/Energy Coach and seem to take a big picture view on this. In my humble view, almost all of us here are knowingly/unknowingly seeking fulfillment of our deepest pure self. This is an experience (many call it Oneness or Pure Love) we once had and what remains now is just a memory of having had that.
    All seeking etc is at the deepest level a yearning for that same experience.
    Hence, in our psyche beneath all seeking is hope, that maybe, perhaps maybe, this anticipated experience will bring THAT fulfillment that we once experienced spiritually. However, given the nature of desires and worldly matters, that fulfillment is never found in things external to us. This leads us back to the humdrum of our lives, until something else triggers that ‘desire machine’ within us. Hopefully, at some point, we recognize this pattern and then we start enjoying the ‘experience’ rather than the ‘seeking’.

    Hope this is not too ‘woo woo’. :) Thanks for your post. Very insightful.

    Love,
    Mihir

    Reply
  11. 1. Camila said,
    February 4, 2012 at 6:38 am

    Dash just blew me away. Excellent article and comments. I am lucky to have read them.

    Reply
  12. 1. Sonya Stewart said,
    February 4, 2012 at 2:56 pm

    Great response!! Really rings true for me. Seems like the mind is designed to seek and therefore the seeking goes on and on and on… The art of being fully alive and present in the moment is no small task. Can sound so simple. “Be here now.” And yet to do this moment to moment to moment, takes a deep dropping in and quieting of the monkey mind that I am still refining. Thanks for the reminder.xo

    Reply
  13. 1. Rochelle said,
    February 4, 2012 at 6:13 pm

    nice points made, and I appreciate your responses Bryan where you point out that paradoxical ‘stuff’ can happen simultaneously.
    To add to the conversation – I reckon we like desiring more than we like getting the object of desire, in part because desiring gives us a sense of identity, not to mention purpose. The feeling of desiring is what we consider to be our ‘self’. So when we get what we desired, desire is gone and we’re left without a goal, or purpose towards which we are directing our life-force, consciousness etc. And if we take to the state of feeling desire as our ‘self’, then when desire leaves, it’s like we don’t know who we are. For some (maybe most people, I don’t know), not knowing who you are is discombobulating, hence a new cycle of desire is born to recreate the conditions in which the ‘self’ can feel like it exists.

    Reply
  14. 1. Joel said,
    February 6, 2012 at 1:52 am

    Wonderful conversation – truly appreciate the variety of perspectives. Here’s one more just to continue the conversation.

    In terms of “feeling” more alive, I might ask why it even matters. For many people I have worked with, their “standard of measurement” for how they are doing in life has to do with how they feel. Much like thoughts, of which we have a seemingly infinite number of every day, feelings come and go. We make some of them very important – in this case feeling “alive” – while we let others pass virtually unnoticed. I might suggest a different relationship to feelings overall, and exploring cultivating a different standard/criteria for assessing if life is going well for you.

    Reply
  15. 1. Edna said,
    February 6, 2012 at 3:14 am

    Understanding your current situation. Why do you want to transform it for the better?

    Reply
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