An elementary endeavor of every Ego is growing: to be “more”, larger and powerful. They strive to be higher and higher in the hierarchic structure of the world, conquering more and more territory. The individual’s ambitions grow and grow, reaching larger and larger areas.
Ambitions are planted in a child by parents and teachers. Parents tend to think of an even yet unborn child as someone who is going to achieve the parents’ own’s unfulfilled ambitions.
With the educational means of reward and punishment, children are conditioned to excel among their peers, to be the best, strongest, most beautiful, etc. When the children meet the parental–and thus the social–expectations, they are rewarded, when not, they are punished. They therefore soon learn to be ambitious.
These ambitions, though based upon the past, always aim at the future. All through our lives we pursue illusionary objectives, spurred by various ambitions. Naturally, it is not impossible to satisfy an ambition, but it is immnediately replaced by a thousand others, as there are so many areas of life where we have not yet reached our ambitions.
That is how we chase senseless goals all through our lives until we die, when we realize that everybody leaves this world empty-handed, even those who lived their whole lives chasing mirages of past and future. Look into yourself to see what is in you now! See what ambitions are driving you along on the sea of life and in what direction?
We in every moment spent awake face two alternatives: a choice is to be made between the ambitions stretching between past and future, or the quiet, simplicity, purity and emptiness, full of vibrating life, of the present. It is, however, only the latter that brings to our lives the awakened Consciousness !
~From the book: Frank M. Wanderer: The Revolution of Consciousness: Deconditioning the Programmed Mind
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