Trap: Fear of the "Good Stuff" Running Out

[Orb]

I notice a trap where I get super excited to make money, establish cool relationships and all that "good stuff", but then theres a fear that goes like "well once I have that stuff the novelty will run out and maybe ill be sad".

What if the good stuff never runs out? Like there is always that better thing to look for in the future. 

Any thoughts on this?

[Nadosa]

Rupert Spira: "You need to run out of options, meaning exhausting the search for happiness in objects, in order to really see there is only happiness which is you, here and now. Have relationships, make money, but eventually you will realize that happiness can never be derived from objects."

I know that fear. What to do is really see there is no running out of stuff, there is no maybe, there is an infinite number of things you can do, as long as you do it from your inherent happiness and dont take the stuff as a means for happiness.

[Faith]

5 hours ago, Orb said:

fear that goes like "well once I have that stuff the novelty will run out and maybe ill be sad".

Yep, just the mind working over-time for no good reason just to re-inforce a "thinker" of the thoughts, but there isn't one. Thoughts "appear" to awareness/consciousness, they come and they go. If we let them go that is... if worry/stress happens, then they gotcha and you'll be just stuck in a thought loop about it until either the situation actually happens and resolves itself or you snap out of the thought loop by resolving the negativity.

I posted this already on another post, but applies here too-

[Mandy]

I remembered bemoaning the fact that I was SURE I'd discovered the end of "good music" when I was a teenager. 😆Never dreamed we would have a Youtube full of infinitely amazing, free music continually being uploaded and more than I could ever discover. 

 

[Unknown]

14 hours ago, Mandy said:

I remembered bemoaning the fact that I was SURE I'd discovered the end of "good music" when I was a teenager. 😆Never dreamed we would have a Youtube full of infinitely amazing, free music continually being uploaded and more than I could ever discover. 

 

That’s gold. I still go through that sometimes. I’ll see an amazing song on YouTube that I stumbled across and think: “this is it, no song can beat this”. Yet I’ll always find that next song. 

[Phil]

@Orb

The magic of This, of creation, of experience,  is that there isn’t that ‘stuff’, or that ‘future’.  That excitement of conscious creation is infinitely (and effortlessly) supplied. Try to run out of that excitement now, and you’ll likely only be feeling it more for having focused upon it.  🙂

[Aware Wolf]

On 3/12/2022 at 4:52 PM, Orb said:

I notice a trap where I get super excited to make money, establish cool relationships and all that "good stuff", but then theres a fear that goes like "well once I have that stuff the novelty will run out and maybe ill be sad".

What if the good stuff never runs out? Like there is always that better thing to look for in the future. 

Any thoughts on this?

What I love about this post is that it's not about sadness -- it's the fear of sadness. The suffering of suffering.  I think what you've hit on is a key question and also an insight.

It reminds me of some differences between pain and suffering. Pain is a  sensation. Suffering is our mental interpretation of it. 

Impermanence is often stressed in Buddhism. Everything changes, as Suzuki Roshi says. Even if it is good, it won't last. Even if we're happy today -- we may not be happy next week, or even tomorrow, We may even die before our next breath. There's a good book by Lama Yeshe, When the Chocolate Runs Out.

How do we respond to the fact of impermance? What's a wise reaction to all of this? 

There's a wide range of answers here and options. What do you think?

Edited March 20, 2022 by Aware Wolf