Heaven Earth Natural Therapies Clinic

 A Balance of Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine

 Acupuncture - Herbal Medicine - Lifestyle Counselling - BodyTalk - Kinesiology

Does Retail Therapy really bring happiness?

by Robert Kendall

The Urban Mystic Goes Shopping.
It seems to be a family curse in my family, not knowing what to do in life.
I can remember my mother saying over and over for years, “If I could just find out what I am meant to be doing, then I would be happy.” This was from a woman who was always busy with 100 jobs to do.

I have spent my entire life struggling to find out what I was meant to be doing. There was always this nagging thought that I needed to do something big, real big. That one thing, that I could get totally involved in, totally absorbed by.

I have always envied people who studied and practiced something their whole life.  I envy their dedication, their enthusiasm, their experience, their motivation and their mastery.  This can be an expert cabinet maker or a classical pianist or a professional artist or a fine chief or an athlete or an engineer.

It doesn’t matter what they are doing as long as they love it enough to be totally absorbed in learning, developing and practicing.  You see it’s the joy and satisfaction they get that I envy.

I remember at school looking through the careers book kept in the library and being disappointed that no career quite fit my desires for complete satisfaction.  In the 50’s and 60’s you were expected to know what you wanted to do as work by the time you left school.  You were then supposed to find that perfect job and stay in it for the rest of your life until you retired.

To have a house, a partner, a family, and a retirement fund were all the perfect life’s blueprint for happiness.  But by the 70’s everything was beginning to crumble.  The revolution with sex, drugs and rock and roll, began to make us all feel that there was more to life.  Our parent’s were content to have the house, a family and the long term marriage.  And why not, they had come through a depression and 2 world wars. But their children, us baby boomers, could only see the boredom and the hypocrisy of a life style that didn’t seem to go anywhere.

Television made it even more painful as we could discover the world in our own lounge rooms.  We began to travel on the outside with planes, trains and cars, and on the inside with drugs, TV and movies.  The times were-a-changing fast.  The Vietnam War made it clear you had to live fast and take the best you could find in the moment.  Since the 1970’s the world has become smaller and has become faster.  We all want as much as we can, as quickly as we can and as often as we can.

We have a hunger for sensation.  We have cravings, an empty crawling feeling pulling at our guts. But within that hurry there is a small voice calling out.  Something isn’t right; we aren’t getting the satisfaction we truly desire.  “Desire creates suffering”, said the Buddha.  He also said that “to give up suffering you must give up desiring”.

Yeah right, thanks Buddha.  You want me in a consumer society to give up desire. Hey I’m only just getting started!  I need lots of clothes and shoes; I need two or three cars; and I need a house that has to be fitted with furniture, big screen TV’s and every kitchen item possible.  “I need, no, I want more” and the manufacturers smile and rub their hands with glee.

The Urban Mystic in me tries to make sense of my environment.  I do my best to understand the society I live in and I do my best to understand why the Divine has placed me into such a desire filled, ego distorted, and crazy society.  Nothing is real and yet we all act so certain it is all real.

In my desire for material things - the perfect car, the perfect piece of furniture, the perfect shirt that makes me look hot (or should that be 'cool'?) - am I really just searching for happiness and inner peace?  Is my longing for house, car, wife, kids, really only a belief that says “once I have them all then I will be happy”.

So You get them all, and then you have mid-life crisis.  Now what?  I have it all and I’m still not happy.  So what else is there? More stuff?  More gadgets? Maybe that new super-duper mobile phone will do it for me.  Yeah right.  The mystic within me makes me search behind the object for the main reason to shop until I drop. 

As I move through the computer section of the large department store I can feel my ego getting hungry to buy.  Maybe a new laptop computer, maybe a mobile phone, maybe a new digital camera, and then I need the new printer, oh and I’d better have that mp3 player of course.  Then I need more memory, more ram, need a burner and the best graphics card.  My desire grows; my hunger grows, all for the purpose for satisfying this longing within me to be satisfied, happy and peaceful.  Feed the hunger, feed the desire, and feed the cravings.
 
Be-Do-Have
So what is really happening within me?  The truth is I’m not happy, I don’t feel content,  I’m frustrated, impatient for my life to somehow become better.  Do I need more money?  I will have to work harder and longer to make more money.  I am on this mental treadmill of I have to have money, to do the things that will let me be happy.

In Neale Donald Walsh’s ‘Conversations with God’ book3, God tells Neale that we have got life around backwards.  As creators of our own reality what we need to do is to be happy, no matter what we do and then we will have all we will need in the moment to be happy.

The trick is to know how do to Be?  Well, for starters we have to fake it till we make it.  Happiness lies within me.  Happiness is sitting within me here and now.  So instead of looking out to buying that new wide screen, I stop and turn inwards to my heart.  I create the presence of happiness.  I recall a time I was happy, I place a big smile on my face and smile downwards into my heart.  I get into a state of happiness and I feel the feeling of a smile spreading throughout my body.

Happiness and love generate each other so I often think about times when I have been content, accepting and peaceful.  I think of someone or something that I love.  I love God, my wife, my dog, a rose in bloom, a sunrise etc; I bring myself into one of my memories of when I am happy.  My hungers to buy drop away.  I begin to see all the merchandise as just things, just more stuff.  I remember how little satisfaction actually comes with what I buy.  That the hunger gets filled only for a short time and then the need for something else returns.

The ego personality lives because of mental stimulation; the brain survives and thrives because of electrochemical stimulation.  We must have input to keep the ego identity alive.  Stop the input form outside and the mind will go crazy trying to rekindle your addictive patterns.  Our addictions help us to avoid or slow down the ever increasing flow of consciousness. Addictions are our way of staying unconscious. And yet when we drop the outer world we become aware of what is going on within, we develop inner awareness. 

The busy mind is the real culprit.  The busy, ego mind must stay alive and it does this by continuing to desire.  Here is the cause of all our unhappiness, all our cravings and all our consumerism.  The beast that never gets satisfied, it will have you believe that resistance is futile.

So what else can I do to find peace and happiness?
First I practice not resisting.  I know it sounds crazy but to resist is to create more of what I wish to give up. Resisting means I am focusing on what I don’t want thereby creating more of what I don’t like. I must begin by not fighting with myself. I give myself permission to feel my desires, but instead of going unconscious, this time I observe myself caught by my addictions. I stop telling a negative story about my predicament thereby freeing myself of my attachment to the desire. I drop my resentment of how weak I am when I allow my desires to get the best of me.

 
Second, once I have awareness I am then able to begin to raise my desires up.  I change my desires from wanting a new computer to choosing happiness and inner peace in the moment. Instead of seeing myself with a house full of stuff, I feel my heart full of love and see my mind full of happiness.  I get serious about being happy. I get serious about being silly.  I choose to play with my mind instead of it playing with my feelings. No more crazy mind, no more closed heart.

Now I know that this sounds easy and in reality it can be hard to practice. But there is a trick to it and it is being willing to change your emotional states gradually. Give yourself 30 days of gradually changing your emotional state each day. Do this by talking out loud to yourself about “how you are feeling and how you can see the lessons and how grateful you are for what is happening and how good things are in your life etc, etc”. What you are doing is starting to tell yourself a different story than the same old negative one you have had running and if you can just lift the story up a little each day you will be amazed how you have changed after 30 days. Be creative and dream into it and remember it can be fun.

So ask yourself are you aware enough with your inner process to ask yourself these questions. Can I play with the modern world?  Can I play with consumerism?  Can I be unattached to shopping within a world gone crazy with desire? If your answer is yes it means you are able to see behind a show full of smoke and mirrors and mobile phones.

Always remember the world is a play, a stage, a game and we take it all so seriously.  We don’t have to worry about going to hell; we are creating it here on earth.  Maybe it’s time to stop shopping and start re-creating heaven on earth.

God’s up there laughing

 “Hey they just don’t get it. 
They are looking outside themselves for something
that I have placed inside their hearts long ago.

They travel the world looking for and trying
to buy something that sits within them. 
My never ending joy, my all consuming love
and my internal peace resides within their hearts and souls.

All they have to do is turn within and love themselves. 
I am willing to wait; they have eternity to get it right.

Off you go kids, shop till you drop.
When you realize. That it is all just stuff
Be willing to be still and know that all you seek resides within.” 

For workshop dates click here

Robert Kendall @
HeavenEarth Natural Therapies Clinic
Phone (07) 5522 0411
1/12 Classic Way, Burleigh Waters.

Queensland. 4220 - Australia