The Search

Recently, I’ve been watching an online seminar hosted by Deepak Chopra on well-being. I appreciate watching him in this on-demand format because I often find that he can state an incredibly concise insight in passing, and I sometimes need the time to sit with the thought and absorb it.

In this particular talk on well-being, he was discussing levels of awareness and our reactions to experiences. He made a reference to reactions & addictions when speaking about security, sensations & power with the statement that I’ll paraphrase here:

The search for security is the cause of most insecurity in the world.

He then moved on to the next portion of the talk, but I found myself coming back to this phrase over & over. While he didn’t explicitly spell it out, I believe he implied the same notion with the other words, that is:

The search for sensations is the cause of being desensitized.

The search for power is the cause of being powerless.

This really hit home for me the more I reflected on this and substituted other words that could be goals or desires for me. In the context of an addiction or an unhealthy attachment, it’s the seeking out of a particular thing that no longer fills the need, or provides the satisfaction once it has been attained.

I don’t believe the search itself is necessarily unhealthy, but I now believe that I need to have a better understanding of the intent behind my search. For example, seeking out knowledge or connections in a healthy mindset, not for wanting to feel smarter or more popular or as a comparison against others, is a much better place to start from.

An alternative way that I’ve started to think about this is to start from the mindset that I already have what I am seeking. When I start from a place of “enough” or self-acceptance, I find my approach to searching for something is healthier and I don’t become a prisoner to my own beliefs & actions. I can see now how easy it is to fall into the trap of placing more importance on the search instead of the thing I am seeking, and how that can affect my choices & beliefs.

I enjoy when insights can emerge from short passages and bloom into ideas that have a full, rich structure unto themselves. Thank you for the time you’ve taken to read this and I hope it has resonated with you in some way.