Why Pleasure Doesn't Lead To Lasting Fulfillment

Since the love of pleasure is natural to us all, why doesn't it lead to lasting fulfillment? The easy, and correct, answer is because pleasure doesn't last. When we are experiencing something pleasurable, we don't imagine that it will end, or even that there was ever a time without it. Then it invariably ends, and we are left empty handed, and the pleasure seeking begins again, and again, and again. (And we are left at least somewhat in pain from missing our pleasure.)

The more complex, and also correct, answer is that pleasure requires a subject/object relationship that is defined by cause and effect. Something or someone causes pleasure. Something gives us pleasure. We search for objects of pleasure, and then we search for more and different pleasure objects.

Pleasure breeds the desire for more pleasure, and objects of pleasure are many and varied. As we mature our pleasure searching usually matures with us, but remains essentially the same in form. We may no longer derive pleasure from playing with toys (children's toys, that is!), and maybe macaroni and cheese is not our ideal of a sublimely pleasurable meal, but we have found replacement objects. And these pleasure objects do give pleasure, but the pleasure is still temporary. The initial intense thrill has a short life, and so our seeking for new pleasure-giving objects is self perpetuating.

Unfortunately, yet perhaps naturally, people and their body parts become our pleasure objects. Certainly the mother's breast is an essential pleasure object, and one that informs pleasure seeking throughout most lifetimes. All advertising and marketing strategists exploit this obvious fact.

Our pleasure in feeling superior and powerful can lead to wars and allow the willingness that others be powerless in the midst of our plenty. The sensational love affair with pleasure has some dire outcomes for us all.

If pleasure led to fulfillment, our society would be an exemplar of fulfillment. We are bombarded with known pleasure objects throughout our day, and all it leads to is more pleasure seeking and less fulfillment.

Yet there is nothing inherently wrong with pleasure! Many pleasures cause no harm to anyone, and even contribute to the over all atmosphere of well-being. The problem only arises when pleasure (and always more pleasure!) is believed to ultimately deliver lasting happiness or fulfillment, or when pleasure is the central reference point for the life of an individual or a society.

Fulfillment, however, doesn't depend on subject/object and cause and effect relationships. Fulfillment exists in a different realm, a realm out of the reach of the pleasure/pain dichotomy. Fulfillment is deeply pleasurable in itself, but it is a pleasure that doesn't depend on any object for its life.

We already know fulfillment in certain arenas. We can be fulfilled in playing a game whether we win or lose (even if we play hard to win and feel pain in losing.) We can be fulfilled in our work whether it is stressful or not and whether we are acknowledged or not (even though we may wish the stress were less and want acknowledgment.) In fulfillment there is room for all sensations including pain.

Fulfillment is the natural result of realizing peace at the core of your being. Peace in the core of you needs nothing and is present in all circumstances. In a moment of willingness to open to that peace rather than to continue the search for pleasure, fulfillment can be realized.

When this choice is actually present in your daily life, you can notice how the habit, or even addiction, of seeking more pleasure causes you to ignore the fulfillment that is natural to you. When you recognize inner peace, you revel in pleasure when it is present, even grieve a bit at its passing, and still realize your essential unchanging fulfillment.

This brings us to the essential question of this post: Do you want pleasure or do you want fulfillment for your life?

When fulfillment is wanted, then pleasure for its own sake is not the reference point for any particular action, and there are many other questions and reference points, such as:

Does this particular pleasure cause harm to someone?

Does this pleasure demean myself or another?

Is this pleasure in alignment with what my life stands for?

I am sure you can significantly add to this list, and I invite you to do so.

Gangaji will be in Boston for a public meeting September 12th, and in Woodstock for a public meeting September 14. She will hold a seven day retreat at Garrison Institute, NY, beginning September 16th. Read more about Gangaji's events and catalog of books and videos online.

Comments

[DrLaurieMoore]

Precious Gangaji:

I enjoy your strait-to-heart way; using questions that open heart. If tools become distracting, you switch gears.

Recently we shared stories; yours of birds, mine of insects. To intellect, these differently ending stories could have opposing meanings. To heart, the same truth emerged.

We looked at each other understandingly. You said my commitment to truth was beautiful. I saw great love in your eyes, felt myself dissolve into your heart which was mine.

We come to conversations of pleasure from different angles, yet arrive in same fulfillment. Twelve people placing themselves around one flower with cameras, create twelve different pictures with one essence. How fortunate! Our perceptions awaken one another.

Continuing inquiry on pleasure, I sank into fulfillment where no “I” is. Pleasure, neutrality and pain could be. I noticed waves of life pushing me into minute details of pleasure within cells of my body; ecstasy of each finger, hand, arm, etc.

Here, tenderness for strength and vulnerability was felt in love holding aliveness. This feminine time in history offers us richness of soul sinking into body in exquisite vibrancy. Body is heart. For this grace my heart weeps in joy and sorrow together, burning me in LOVE.

This historic window NOW is an easy opening for anyone desiring to slip deeply into Love, Peace and Fullness that holds all experience.

Thank you for taking me into this, Beloved teacher, sister, friend. I appreciate every gathering I attend with you!


Love, Laurie
www.animiracles.com

[DrLaurieMoore]

(Continued from Dr. Laurie Moore’s previous response)

Reading Gangaji’s article, I decided to bypass habitual pleasure. I refrained from taking something available. (Taking is fine yet yearning to know something deeper beckoned).

I found fear (as though going camping with no food or giving a talk without a mouth!). Overwhelm and dissolving into light, perfume, sweetness; cleansing more powerful than other times took me. I was showered within myself by exquisite pleasure as I sat silently.

Temptation to recreate this experience would be okay, but would create resistance to myself as river of life, forever shape shifting me though many experiences. I felt this pleasure come and go… Here I cried deep in my heart for how beautiful life is…we are given so much in giving of ourselves to gratitude and love. Gratitude and LOVE delivered to me the sweetest apple, and cherry tomato who have within them everything I have within myself: fullness, completeness.

Another time I was wishing for pain-relief. A cat, named Shera, suggested I surrender fully into pain instead of hoping for wellness. (Hoping for wellness is good AND the desire to be present beckoned deeper.) In moving into pain, I became an awareness of peace holding pleasure and pain. Pain spilled itself through my body in memories and sensations. I reharmonized into wellness.

May all beings be fed, sheltered, well, loved, loving and love.
May all find sweet pleasures of gratitude and surrender.

Thank you, Gangaji.

Dr. Laurie Moore www.animiracles.com

[DrLaurieMoore]

Gangaji’s article brings me into myself. People misinterpreted the eating of an apple in the Bible. Once, while watering the garden, I popped a cherry tomato into my mouth in gratitude. Filled to the brim, each cell of my body was ecstatic. Loved by life surrounding me, I loved the garden and was full of love. This immense pleasure passed in moments.

The sweet taste of apple, Eve enjoyed, was a tiny pleasure when experienced separately from source. In discovering sweetness as an extension of source; the Sun, the Mother/Father, the entire creation Life, God, Goddess, Allah, Higher Power, Heaven on Earth, and many other names, eating the cherry tomato took me to great care for all beings; full pleasure. I was not seeking pleasure. I was giving gratitude to the tomatoes when this exquisite pleasure graced me.

Invited by Gangaji’s article, I searched to see which pleasures were arriving naturally in surrender to LOVE called life, and which were vacations from deeper parts of my being. I have enjoyed pleasures of love-making, delicious meals, sweet cups of tea, dancing in the wilderness, conversations with friends in BOTH ways; as deepening into LOVE or as a retreating from deepening by hoping for a rerun of the last pleasure which has passed.


Related expression continued in next comment….
Dr. Laurie Moore
ww.animiracles.com

[RubySlipperz]

Gangaji, thinking of you right now, beloved friend in my heart always,
beloved Self in the heart of all Being.

If pleasure were a pre-requisite to fulfillment, those of us in chronic pain and in the midst of treacherous diseases would be damned. Only the healthy would have a chance for true happiness and freedom. That can't be right and it isn't.

I've come to the clear conclusion that there is something more than what sensations can give me, though the sensations are often very strong and demand attention like a hungry baby. There is a refuge, a sanctuary that really begins with "I", and it is here and now, not in time. Most thoughts that comes after "I" appear to be part of the need to find a pleasure that I am conditioned is desirable. I'm just going around in circles and not getting anywhere. Fulfillment has to be distinctly separate from pleasure, perhaps quieter, yet bright, like light on leaves.

Debra J

[Gangaji - Huffpost Blogger]

Yes, Dear Debra! You are the living proof of fulfillment not being contingent on health, wealth, or passing pleasure (however sweet it may be at the time.)
In love, gangaji

[iamjlw]

You ask, 'Do you want pleasure or do you want fulfillment for your life?'

The obvious answer to this question is fulfillment and if I stop for a moment and deeply contemplate fulfillment it gives rise to the question---What is true fulfillment? Is it peace? Freedom? Love? Emptiness?

Gangaji---It is only when I have the courage to look stop, really stop, and follow your gaze deep within the infinite realm of my own heart that I discover the vast depth that no word or words describe. It is in this infinite Silence that I deeply hear--- 'Fulfillment exists in a different realm, a realm out of the reach of the pleasure/pain dichotomy. '

In This vast realm I can deeply rest where no words arise. In that infinitude I discover the most profound fulfillment. What astonishing pleasure is This! Whoa!

In the Deepest Gratitude...
Love Jill

[Michael Byers]

The Self discovering Itself in All, loving Itself. Fullfillment gives pleasure? I don't know, but "Whoa!" works for me.

Love you Jill

[iamjlw]

Whoa! is not just any pleasure...it is 'astonishing' pleasure! Ha! Ha! ; )

Love you to Michael

[JoAndrew]

Well maybe you have had enough pleasure. ,maybe so much that you are bored with it.? A lot of people live out of trash dumpsters, they certainly could use some pleasure. Some people never find love. They would benefit from feeling the touch of a loving partner. Pleasure is a selfish little game. Like someone that says "Money is not important", and they have 30 million.

[MommyMystic]

Thank you Gangaji. I have been thinking about this a lot in relation to meditation. At first, it seems meditation helps release attachment to other kinds of pleasures, and opens a doorway to true fulfillment. And then it can become habitual, a seeking out of pleasurable states of mind instead of true peace. But even then it seems to have some positive effects, some calming and energy health benefits. Distinguishing the difference seems tricky at times. But maybe that's just me, as I do have a tendency to overcomplicate! Namaste-

[kjstjohn]

By Etta May

If thee needs anything and cannot find it,
just come to me
and I’ll tell thee
how to get along without it.

Source: Quaker disciple

[tpaloalto]

Pleasure and pain are, in the eyes of Saints, the same. They are the golden chains and iron shackles that impede the Soul's progress toward realizing It's true self. This world is built upon duality and karma. The ideal is to rise above the body consciousness, beyond mind and emotion. Seek the True Path to the Soul.

[Deb Cool]

Gangaji,
What a PLEASURE it is to read your blog! I love you so much and appreciate everything you have reminded me of! BLESS YOU! Thank yoyu!

[Ed and Deb Shapiro - Huffpost Blogger]

Gangaji

I love you!

One of the cutting edge Spiritual teachers of this age.

and you are my friend,

Ed

[Malkin72]

If your tastes are simple, pleasure is easy enough to fulfill.

[ABeggarKing]

Papaji taught this about desire.
Gangaji shares it at her retreats.

What do you really want?

What would you have if you got it?

Let's go for that.

You can't get it (or lose it), 'cuz you are it.

Sit quietly with that.

Om shanti, shanti, shanti

[khanti]

Good intention but hey, go slow on the pleasure stuff after all we are dealing with worldly people involved with worldly affairs. People are not ready to face reality yet at least not now.
It is like the story of the Buddha extenting a lifeline to a person fallen halfway into a well. Clinging precautiously to a vine the person find a honey comb. Despite poisonous snakes at the bottom of the well the man clings to the vine enjoying the honey refusing the life line.
So the situation is like that with most people. Perhaps teaching people compassion and loving kindness may be easily accepted and practiced.

[worldloveperson]

What about you?
Are you ready to face reality now?
Did you earnestly try the questions at the end of the blog?
Just curious what your experience was when you gave them your attention and time, if you did.
In Love

[linty]

I guess to add to it: I can't answer those questions with a positive. The questions at the end of your blog. Certain pleasures do deman me, and they are not in alignment with my life's purpose, what my life stands for. On and on...but without them life feels even more empty than before. These certain pleasures bring pain but yet who am I without them? Even more miserable...or nobody.

Thank you gangaji...another wonderful blog.