161. A Method For Liberation

You know that your problem is attachment. You can’t help wanting things, and you easily become attached to these desires. You know this causes you to suffer in the form of stress, jealousy, anger, grief, anxiety, and so many other painful feelings.

You want to break free from your desires. You want to know what you must do to bring an end to attachment. You want to be given a list of actions, a method you can follow to extinguish your suffering. You want a method because it seems like this is all you need. Once you know what to do, you’ll be able to free yourself by carefully following the method.

But your problem cannot be solved in this way. Any method you could be given would not do what you need. You’d follow the method, expecting your suffering to vanish, but it would continue to arise. The only solution to your problem is the long and difficult work of expanding your awareness. For without awareness, you are too insensitive to yourself and the world to be able to see what you must do.

Awareness expands through open and free attention. You have to allow yourself to look at everything, both what comes from inside and what is found in the world around you. This cannot be done through control. You must allow your attention to be totally free, to linger when it must linger and to wander when it must wander.

As your awareness broadens, you will see how your desires operate. You will understand how you become attached and how this produces suffering. You will also begin to feel the suffering of others as your own. This is not a bad thing. Greater empathy is a sign your sensitivity is improving.

You will see that while your desires come from you they are also objects separate from you. You will see the necessity of creating space between you and them, in order to bring your suffering to an end. You will see how to do this without anyone telling you how. The method will be entirely obvious to you.

But suffering will continue to arise from your other attachments. You will need to keep looking and freeing yourself, over and over again. The need for awareness is not one that is likely to be fully met. You will need to keep expanding your awareness for as long as you live.