We can put food on the table for our family, we can put a roof over our heads, and we can have every single need met. But if we don’t have a certain number in the bank account that we believe will make us peaceful and happy, we think we need to worry. We think we need to be stressed; we need to be afraid of disaster at any second. And many people live their whole lives with everything they need, and yet their whole lives they were stressed and worried.

So to have everything we could ever need and want in this universe is to simply trust our ability, trust that we can make anything come true that is possible. And it really comes down to whether we see the future as scary and dark, or optimistic and bright.

When we are comparing ourselves to people who have more than us or a better life than we do, comparing ourselves to someone who has less than us can feel better. It can bring us some relief. But we are still lost in this comparative mindset, and we are still creating mental disturbance, mental chaos, useless mental activity and noise that is still causing us to suffer and to miss out on a peace that is available right here and now beneath all of that useless mental activity.

And comparing ourselves to people who have less than us does make us feel better and can be a nice relief from feeling like victims. But it is still an escape, an attempt to deal with suffering and pain that is underneath the surface. And when we can truly let go of that pain, when we can look at it without fear or anger, then there is no longer a need to cope or to make ourselves feel better. And so that’s the true freedom: appreciating what we have and being able to enjoy our lives.

How a Perfect Life Turns Into Misery

It’s a shame that we could have a perfect life, we could live the most idyllic, peaceful, beautiful life in beautiful nature, in the most wonderful, loving village, and then all of a sudden learn about some neighboring village that just got electricity or television, or they struck gold, and now they’re flying to Hawaii. And now our perfect life becomes a source of misery and suffering.

So the more we catch ourselves falling for that comparison trap and falling into that competition, when there is no competition, and bringing other people who have no importance, no significance, no relevance to our situation whatsoever, we need to catch that incorrect thinking. We need to make sure we are competing with ourselves, with our past selves, making sure we’re on track to become our future selves.

Any worry, any thoughts of someone else, whether it’s someone who has more than us and it creates suffering, or someone who has less than us and it creates self-righteousness and feelings of superiority, it’s all a distraction. Instead, we can just focus on ourselves, on what we need to do. That is the way to appreciate what we have, get to the life we want, and have the skill of presence and appreciation to actually enjoy it.

When we start to trust ourselves, we can see that any possible future we want to create is possible. And we can trust that in each moment we will do what is required in that moment to bring about that future.

If we are constantly worried about the future, if we feel separate and disconnected from that future that we wish to get to, that is when we begin to feel afraid of losing what we have and not having what we need.

When we can really just get out of our head, we can see how everything around us is connected. We can see how the world works, and we can see how we can manipulate that to achieve our goals. And so it really takes an understanding of Oneness and a recognition that everything is connected, that we already have everything we need to create any kind of future we want.