Preferences, The Spiritual Path, and Enlightenment
- olivierbranford
- May 6
- 5 min read
Updated: May 14
Your psychology, your psyche, also known as your ego mind, is the sum of your learned experiences. This created and conditioned your ego , through your parents and society's expectations of you, to have preferences: These preferences are either to get what you want or to not get what you don’t want.
When negative experiences came through, you held onto them and collected them inside you like a photo album of bad experiences: Rather than letting them pass through you. This is also known by psychologists as repression, suppression, or denial. This suppression means that we don't feel our feelings and let them go, so we bury negative experiences deep inside of us. They will inevitably resurface with pain, sometimes decades later, as they bubble over.
The beginning of the ‘Third Chinese Patriarch’ of Zen, written by Sengstan Hsin Hsin Ming, blending together Buddhist and Taoist teachings, reads:
“The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences. When love and hate are both absent everything becomes clear and undisguised. Make the smallest distinction, however, and Heaven and Earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the Truth then hold no opinion for or against. The struggle of what one likes and what one dislikes is the disease of the mind.”
Similarly, in Buddhist teachings, desire is considered to be the cause of all suffering. The Buddha's Four Noble Truths explain that suffering (dukkha) arises from this attachment to impermanent things, experiences, and negative thoughts, leading to dissatisfaction and the cycle of rebirth. By understanding and overcoming this craving, Buddhists believe they can achieve liberation from suffering. Desire, as a word, is a poor interpretation, as it brings connotations of passion. A better word would be preferences.
The mind is the ego. The self with a small ’s.’ As opposed to the real Self, the Soul. As the Buddhists say, the cause of all suffering is preference. The Zen passage above also fits with this. If you are able to stop being distracted by your preferences then you are Enlightened. This is the process of continuous, repeated acceptance and surrender, which are the absolute key components of any peaceful and joyful life.
We worry incessantly that we will not be able to handle reality. But reality just is, when we have no preferences. Eckhart Tolle talks about the 'isness' of the present moment. You have been able to handle 100 percent of the challenges and adversities in your life so far. This is spiritual evolution.
Reality is that which has already happened. You can’t change it so you may as well not have any preferences about it being a certain way. You can practice surrender and acceptance every minute of every day from the moment you wake up, by not having any preference when anything happens.
You can choose who you are to be, every day when you wake up. It is a choice. You can either be your ego, like most people, or you can face your day as your Higher Power. The ego lives in fear., and your petrified inner child. Your Higher Power is untouchable by suffering and is fearless.
The secret to the spiritual path is therefore to be here now, remain present, work on not having any preferences, and knowing that you can handle reality, whatever it may be. This is the path to spiritual growth, Self-realisation, and Enlightenment.
Namaste.
Olly
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