356. Finding Harmony

A human being is always multiple. You have many needs and you cannot meet all of them at once. There are things you need from the world, which causes you to form intentions. Your desires, aversions, and beliefs are the intentions you form in response to the tension between your needs and the seemingly indifferent world. But your intentions are not always compatible with each other. They can make demands on you that are completely at odds. Powerful tensions also arise between them, fracturing you into parts.

You are controlled by one desire and then by another, distracted by one aversion and then by another, motivated by one belief and then by another. Sometimes one part dominates all the others. You become fully attached to it, and your attention stays locked on its needs, its priorities, its goals. You try to construct a self around this particular attachment (or collection of aligned attachments) and you make it your entire identity. But in doing so, you neglect your other parts. The result is that you suffer feelings of regret, grief, anxiety, stress, and frustration as the needs of your other parts go unfulfilled.

If you can see this attachment and its connection to your suffering, then you gain a chance to bring harmony to your parts. You do this by allowing all of your parts to exist without becoming attached to any of them. Instead of forming your identity around a particular part, you allow it to emerge freely from your actions. You then become capable of seeing the unified needs that have given rise to your intentions, instead of focusing on the separate goals of your individual parts.

When you can see your needs fully and clearly, you can also see what you must do to meet them. This is the action of compassion, which treats all of your parts as they need to be treated. You will still have desires, aversions, and beliefs, but your relationship with them will no longer be one of attachment. Instead you will act to meet needs, and in doing so, your parts will come together to form a harmonious unity, free of suffering and full of joy.