Just a riff off of the neuro transmitter discussion. Is fulfillment without achievement a worthy goal? It is an assumption in MMY's system that it would be a good thing to have complete fulfillment established without any reference to achievement. Now I view this goal as more similar than different to people who take a lot of drugs. In the people I know, only severe addicts want to be in a perfect state of mind at all times. Most of us are comfortable getting uncomfortable as a feedback for our progress towards our goals. Perfect fulfillment sounds like death to me. I think that the whole goal of achieving a state of mental fulfillment without achievement is misguided. It is OK for a temporary state, especially to enhance social interactions (recreational use anyone?), but the people I know who feel compelled to live in such states all the time end up doing macramé, or living on Purusha, IMO.
I spent a lot of my youth pursuing fulfillment without achievement in various forms. These days I enjoy getting my peak experiences from fulfilling my goals in life. I love the ride. It has ups and downs, pain and pleasure, and I feel alive in each turn of the road. I would never give up the grief I felt from the death of a loved one for any state of heightened awareness. There is no state of mind that would have helped or contributed anything of value to that perfect state of pain. I didn't need to witness it from a cosmic perspective, I needed to surrender to the exquisite flip side of loving a mortal person, the ass kicking that time delivers. This may have nothing to do with anyone here pursuing higher states of consciousness. I just can no longer imagine a state of mind better than the one I am riding right now. I have lost a desire to improve my awareness. It has been replaced with so many versions of things that I want to improve in my life and even about myself. I am interested in becoming more aware of things, but I feel like my awareness itself is doing fine, it just gets distracted sometimes. To misquote a great song: "I've got 99 problems but awareness ain't one!" So how are others relating to expansion of awareness as a goal, and fulfillment without achievement as a worthy state?
